Photoillustration by Clark MillerAn Asbestos Lawyer’s New Crusade: Suing Social Media Companies
Matthew Bergman won $900 million for plaintiffs over a 25 year career filing asbestos lawsuits. Now he sues Meta, TikTok and other social media companies, claiming that they’re hooking teenagers on their apps.
In January, after members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had spent hours grilling tech CEOs about their platforms’ effects on children, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley pounced on Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Hawley, a Republican firebrand and a vocal tech critic, accused Zuckerberg of ignoring internal company data that suggested Meta’s Instagram made life worse for some teenage girls and exposed them to unwanted sexual advances and nudity. He then asked Zuckerberg if he wanted to turn around and apologize to the families in the gallery at the hearing whose children had died or had been harmed after incidents involving the use of social media platforms, including Instagram.
“I’m sorry for everything that you’ve all gone through,” Zuckerberg said to the people, a couple dozen of whom stood holding pictures of their children.