alt Hacker NewsThese were the opening remarks of the lawyers on one side. You’re right that it’s theater, because they’re trying to hook the jury with an idea and get it to stick.
It’s also not a great sign that they’re relying on such tricks and props to hook the jury. In stronger cases they’ll rely on actual facts and key evidence, not grand but abstract claims using props like this.
I don’t know how the rest of the opening remarks went, but from the article it looks like Meta’s lawyers are already leaning into the actual evidence (or lack thereof) that their products were central to the problems:
> Meta attorney Paul Schmidt countered in opening remarks to the jury that evidence will show problems with the plaintiff's family and real-world bullying took a toll on her self-esteem, body image and happiness rather than Instagram.
> "If you took Instagram away and everything else was the same in Kaley's life, would her life be completely different, or would she still be struggling with the same things she is today?" Schmidt asked, pointing out an Instagram addiction is never mentioned in medical records included in the evidence.
Obviously this is HN and we’re supposed to assume social media is to blame for everything, but I would ask people to try not to be so susceptible to evidence-free narrative persuasion like the ABC trick. Similar tricks were used years ago when it was video games, not social media, in the crosshairs of lawyers looking to extract money and limit industries. Many of the arguments were the same, such as addicting children’s brains and being engineered to capture their attention.
There’s a lot of anger in the thread about Discord starting to require ID checks for some features, but large parts of HN aren’t making the connection to these lawsuits and cases as the driving factor behind these regulations. This is how it happens, but many are cheering it on without making the connection. Or they are welcoming regulations but they have a wishful thinking idea that they’re only going to apply to sites they don’t use and don’t like, without spilling over into their communication apps and other internet use.
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I blame the consumer, but I think it's really different from the video game cases. Those lacked a social component and came with a warning and a rating system, and only simulated interactions.
Social media technology, according to former employees, is intentionally engineered to capitalize on dependency, unbeknownst to the user, came with no rating system or warnings, and hosts real interactions not simulated ones.
I think they have a much better case here.
> Meta attorney Paul Schmidt countered in opening remarks to the jury that evidence will show problems with the plaintiff's family and real-world bullying took a toll on her self-esteem, body image and happiness rather than Instagram.
I feel like this must be an indication of an inherent flaw with a society designed around the idea that litigation originates in an individual's singular harm received from a company, outside of I guess class action lawsuits, which to be fair, I don't know much about. But I'm reminded of the McDonald's coffee case, when McDonald's was able to leverage their incredible capital power to make that woman look like such a crazy litigious hysterical lady that people to this day use it as an example of how Americans are just inherently trivially litigious, when in reality, that coffee was just way too hot.
Nobody can stand up to the might of a trillion dollar company. The resources they have at hand are just too vast.