Brad Young on Meta social media addiction lawsuit, data center regulations

Hey, it's Jen Hatmaker. Here's what I've learned in midlife. Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what this new series on For the Love is all about. The sacred yes. It's choosing delight, rest, and pleasure on purpose. Because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your sacred yes with me. Follow and listen to For the Love wherever you get your podcasts. And let's do our weekly visit with KMOX legal analyst Brad Young, partner it. Harris Dow and Kaiser and joining us right now. Brad, a lot to get to when it comes to legal topics this week. And one that caught our eye was this meta back and forth. First of all, you know, there are so many different lawsuits that meta is facing, but this one has to do with a social media addiction. That's right, Michael, and good morning. Yeah, the Ninth Circuit made an very important ruling this week when it comes to all of this meta litigation. And of course, as you well know, there's a lot of litigation nationwide, not focused on the content that's on the social media, but on the algorithms. on how the companies have designed the algorithms to be addictive. We've all experienced that and whether there are damages as a result of that. So the Ninth Circuit reached an important decision this week, not on liability, but on procedure. Because under federal law, Section 230 of the Online Child Protection Act, It shields companies from liability for content that's posted by other individuals. And so META was taking the position that they could not be sued because the content that would cause harm would be from other people that were posting on Facebook or Instagram, etc. But the Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 is not a bar to litigation because the nature of the lawsuits are going to the algorithms, which are controlled by the companies, not the content, which is based on people uploading content. So all of these lawsuits are more than 3,000 of them right now. They can all move forward under federal law because of this ruling from the Ninth Circuit. Yeah, you know, somebody might say, well, just don't log on to Facebook then or just don't look at the things you don't want to see. But these lawsuits do accuse meta of baking this into the design, whether it's making it easier to bypass parental controls, exploitative content, and the way they manipulate the algorithms, allegedly, to put material in front of you that they know is going to make you scroll even further. And so I guess that's kind of the tug of war here.

It is a tug of war because, again, these companies, the tech companies are saying, we can't be sued for content that is coming from third parties under federal law, Section 230. But this ruling by the Ninth Circuit gets really to the heart of the issue, not finding liability, but finding that the companies, the social media companies, cannot use federal law as a blanket shield for any liability. And now all of these cases have to go to trial. Our second topic this morning has to do with data centers. Seems like that's a topic every week, almost every day these days. And St. Louis County is taking a look at regulations, not necessarily for a specific project, but just generally. Planning Commission met this week. Talked about a 300-foot buffer between homes and data centers, which is half the distance that the city of St. Louis is considering. County says it is willing to consider tax breaks for data centers. Is it interesting that this is such a discussion about a specific industry? history when when previously I think it had been based on what is the impact you know what are the zoning rules for a specific parcel these are such broad discussions about just a general industry well exactly and and we've all seen All the litigation, all of the protests, for example, out of Festus, that's really the playbook here for how things are occurring nationwide, Michael. But with regard to St. Louis County, Missouri law, and in fact, the Missouri Constitution gives St. Louis County the broad discretion to establish zoning overall unincorporated parts of St. Louis County, and there are very large swaths of land that fall under that category. And so really what St. Louis County at least the proposal we've seen so far, it creates four different size categories. It bars data centers from sensitive zoning districts, and it also requires conditional use permits for standard and major facilities in commercial or industrial districts. The takeaway here is that really, St. Louis County should look at Festus, not to model what Festus did or didn't do, but to look at that as a blueprint for how to not make it a PR nightmare, and how to not make it a litigation nightmare. So this is a proposal that's in front of the county council right now, and hopefully they're looking at Festus to make sure that they check the right boxes to ensure that whatever decisions they make, that are solid and can be backed up legally. What's interesting about this and so many other discussions in St. Louis and St. Charles counties is the unincorporated factor here. So, for instance, this doesn't apply to municipalities like the proposal at the Emerson campus in Ferguson. Exactly right, because cities maintain their own authority to control the zoning within specific cities. And, of course, as we all know, St. Louis County is flush. with different cities and municipalities. So this really only applies to unincorporated St. Louis County. But listen, it's still an important factor because obviously at some point the St. Louis County unincorporated area will abut a city or a municipality. And so there needs to be in this proposal baked in protections to make sure that we don't start another launch of litigation by neighboring cities or a

budding municipalities that would challenge or degrade the ability of St. Louis County to monitor these data centers. And our third topic this morning, if you've been to a gas station and you've thought, wait, are they allowed to sell marijuana drinks and other products? Is this a dispensary? We're talking about hemp-derived THC products where they kind of chemically alter it to mimic marijuana. Those were going to have to leave shelves at places like gas stations on November 12th, but that may be delayed because of some action on the federal level. Right. And what happened in Missouri is this, and this is a key point, Michael, is that this isn't stuff that you see sold in dispensaries. This is really a loophole under Missouri law because these products are derived solely from hemp, not from marijuana, even though the end result is often the similar or the same. And so Missouri linked their regulation of these products, drinks, gummies, so forth, to federal law. But now the Senate has proposed, the U.S. Senate has proposed delaying the implementation of their new hemp law. And if that delays, if that implementation is delayed, then since Missouri law is linked to the federal law, then the implementation in Missouri would equally be delayed. So we have to keep our eyes on Washington to see how they proceed. And there is concern about confusion with this, so much so that the state of Missouri Department of Health and Human Services has launched a verified dispensary. with a logo and stickers and all sorts of things to make sure that people know the difference. Sure, because if some store just opens up and says we're a dispensary and they're selling these types of hemp products, consumers could be confused. There are checks and balances on the sale of marijuana products. There are essentially no checks and balances, no regulations on the hemp products. So this directly impacts consumer safety when it comes to these types of products. Partner at Harris Young and Kaiser, KMOX legal analyst Brad Young. Thank you so much for talking with us this morning on KMOX. My pleasure, Michael. And we'll talk with you tomorrow here on Total Information a.m. That's right. Hey, gang, it's Jill Schlesinger. I'm launching a new show. It's called Money Moves, and we are going to move. We are going to answer your financial questions and take the mystery out of your financial life. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts.