🏛️ Facebook Files become a tobacco-style liability event

“The reason why I think this is interesting is that whether it happens in the United States or someplace else, when I read that article, my immediate thought went to the tobacco MSA because I was like, well, okay, there's a public health issue that may or may not have been covered up. Cover up, you know, it's definitely not been covered up. There could be criminal liability. There's probably civil liability. ... But I think what also can be right is, are we really willing to bet that now there are not 50 individually ambitious, politically ambitious state AGs licking their chops, reading this stuff, wondering how many kids in their state may have suffered from an eating disorder or anxiety and blame it on one of these apps?”

“this idea that social media is as bad for you as cigarettes has been around for several years now. And I've always wondered whether that was a hyperbolic claim. I mean, can it really be the case that using Facebook is as bad for you as lighting something on fire and sucking its carbonized ash into your lungs? ... But I don't believe that Facebook or social media created those issues. ... I do think that the traditional media has an incentive to blow this out of proportion a little bit.”

“There have been other industries that have influenced this, but I don't think that they were as pernicious and as frequent in their use of as social media. ... And that correlates directly with social media becoming part of what we're doing here.”

“And business success ultimately over time in consumer markets will always ultimately be driven by products that have at scale deleterious effects on the consumer market. ... I'm just pointing out that there isn't, in my opinion, something unique here.”

“it felt to me a little bit like Philip Morris changing his name to Altria Group. And by the way, I don't buy the idea that Facebook is like cigarettes. I don't believe that at all. I don't think it's bad for people in the way that it's been hyped up to be.”

“they're losing young people at an extraordinary rate on Facebook. US teenagers were projected to decrease by 45% over the next two years.”

“It sounds like they want to do a PR initiative around the points that you've always made on this pod. ... there's something distasteful about that. But the point that they're making is kind of true. ... whatever problems people have with Facebook, they should have them like 10x with TikTok.”