The “Authentic Flavors, Real Fruit” Edition

About this episode

The episode discusses recent national security news, focusing on legal verdicts against social media companies and political negotiations regarding the Department of Homeland Security funding.

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Roberts, Tyler McBrien, and Renée DiResta to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “The Meta-verse of Madness.” On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury reached a $375 million verdict against Meta after a seven-week trial that focused on whether the social media company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and facilitated child sexual exploitation through its algorithms. And just before recording, another verdict came down in a jury trial in California about whether Facebook and YouTube are too addictive in a way that harms an individual plaintiff in that case. Several other similar civil cases are set to go to trial in the coming months. What do we make of these verdicts, and do they signal a turning tide against social media companies for the algorithms that make them both profitable and (potentially) addictive? “SAVE-ing Face.” President Trump and Republican congressional leaders went back and forth this week over a deal that would put forward a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, or at least less controversial parts of it, despite Trump’s threats not to sign any pieces of…

People in this episode

Host: Scott

Guests: Molly Roberts, Tyler McBrien, Renée DiResta

Topics covered

• national security
• social media
• mental health
• legislation
• politics
• addiction

Keywords

• Meta
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Trump
• SAVE America Act
• mental health
• algorithms
• legislation
• national security

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Meta, Facebook, YouTube, Department of Homeland Security, Republican

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