Meta’s $1.4T Trial Over Child Safety Begins & Is AI Buying and Destroying Used Books?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Are you sucking wind from trying to keep up with AI and its impact? Take a breather and tune in to The Intelligence Shift, Morning Brew's new podcast with PwC. It bridges the gap between big picture AI concepts and what it actually means in practice. Host Dan Priest is joined by expert guests to discuss AI's role in sports, music, HR, and more. Listen to The Intelligence Shift wherever you get your podcasts.

**Neal Freyman** (0:25)
Good Morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neal Freyman.

**Kayla Lopez** (0:28)
And I'm Kayla Lopez.

**Neal Freyman** (0:29)
Today, Meta stares down its biggest legal challenge yet.

**Kayla Lopez** (0:33)
And a mystery source is buying up all the used books.
It's Tuesday, August 18th. Let's ride.

**Neal Freyman** (0:43)
Good Morning. I am once again joined by Kayla Lopez for a few more days.
Kayla, did you know that your dinky first car is now a hot collector's item? The Wall Street Journal reported that seemingly mundane cars from the 90s and the 2000s like Honda Civics, Toyota Corollas, and Buick Roadmaster wagons are a fast growing segment of the car collector community. At one insurance company that specializes in classic cars, 40% of insured vehicles were built since 1980, and another said they've seen the number of 2000 Civics and Corollas they insured double in just the past three years. For the collectors themselves, many of them younger, it ties back to nostalgia and capturing that feeling when you were 17, driving around your hometown with your buddies, getting up to shenanigans.

**Kayla Lopez** (1:28)
Yeah, some of my favorite memories from high school are in my best friend's Honda Civic with the blown out subwoofers, just driving very slowly around suburban Cleveland.
But if you think about it, this generation is fixing up classic cars, yes, sure, maybe a Honda Civic is slightly different than a Cadillac from the 50s, but the generation before us was fixing up cars from the 50s and 60s. Kind of the same as us fixing up cars from the 80s and 90s.

**Neal Freyman** (1:54)
Some people would say that the 90s and 2000s cars don't have the same aura as the other ones, the boxy sedan look. But yeah, shout out Chandler and his Ford Taurus.
I will never forget that car. I mean, I spent so many hours driving around our hometown in that Ford Taurus, I wonder where it is. Maybe it's getting scooped up by some hot young Gen Z collector.
Okay, now a word from our sponsor, Rubrik. Kayla, do you feel like you're up to date on cybersecurity?

**Kayla Lopez** (2:25)
Well, my laptop doesn't turn on anymore, and I don't know why, so no.

**Neal Freyman** (2:28)
Yeah, the old model of cybersecurity was built on protection, safety nets, recovery plans, systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo can't hold up to the present day.

**Kayla Lopez** (2:39)
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**Neal Freyman** (2:48)
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**Kayla Lopez** (2:56)
To learn more about how Rubrik rewrote the industry rulebook, head to rubrik.com/mb. That's rubrik.com/mb.

**Neal Freyman** (3:07)
Today, Meta finds itself in a familiar place, a courthouse, with unfamiliar consequences, $1.4 trillion in potential damages and the risk of being forced to make key changes to its apps, Facebook and Instagram.
Four states, California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, brought a case against Meta, whose trial begins this morning in Oakland. These states accuse the company of getting kids hooked on its social media platforms using addictive design features, then misleading the public about the possible harms of kids being on those platforms. They're seeking up to $1.4 trillion with a T in damages, which is almost as much as Meta's entire market valuation and a makeover of its products to be more safe for kids. It's the biggest trial yet in what many have called Big Tech's Big Tobacco Moment when a wave of lawsuits brought the cigarette industry to its knees decades ago.
So far, so not good for Meta. Earlier this summer in New Mexico, a judge ordered the company to pay nearly a billion dollars in damages and restitution in a case over child sexual exploitation. Meta was also ordered to make changes to its products like blocking push notifications to children late at night and during school time. But while New Mexico was the opener of this case in California, the most populous state in the country, is the headlining act with the verdict determining the future course of its apps that reach 3.6 billion people around the world.