The Rise and Rise of Big Tech Social Damage

good afternoon there's nothing uh speaker likes more than the first slot after lunch so thanks for indulging us um when Linda first asked me if I would uh accept the privilege of speaking this afternoon on the rise of litigation against big tech class action and otherwise I said you know I think can get it done if we streamline within the8 hour window that we're provided and then uh Linda said it's 8 minutes uh at which point I recognized uh challenge accepted so thanks for joining you know in the US in the 90s we started with social harm litigation against big tobacco one product cigarettes a finite number of companies and then as this social harm litigation has matriculated it became a taxon big Pharma retail Distributors retail pharmacies for opioids the difference between tobacco and opioids and big Tech is Big Tech is enormous the products are infinite and it is evolving on a daily basis and so as we see the transition to litigation first in the US and as it's matriculating across to the UK and Europe to the Middle East and to Asia as you'll hear from our panelists it's not not surprising to see why big Tech is in the crosshairs large market caps Deep Pockets if you just look at the top 10 publicly traded tech companies at least before China opened up its antitrust investigation into Nvidia yesterday the total global market cap for those 10 companies alone is $20 trillion and that's not counting all the other big Tech and emerging Tech so clearly a deep pocketed industry to go after the reach is global and on the present it is everywhere around the globe it touches almost every aspect of the human population including starting as young as three four five years old the minors who are being exposed to social media platforms at the start of their lives and the litigation in the US that is targeting harm to those miners at from the from addiction from exposure to bullying and violence online and from the misuse of data uh biometric information personal health in information and as we've all seen and it doesn't just need to be in the political system within the us there has been mistrust sown in the collective human experience with big Tech and emerging tech for the last decade individuals are concerned about the misuse of their private information they are concerned about censorship on social media platforms they are concerned about content moderation on social media platforms they are incredibly unsure and concerned about what does the future look with AI and generative AI in particular and I believe you had a panel earlier today talking about the rise of Regulation and the potential next wave of litigation with respect to generative Ai and that is all focused on big Tech and emerging Tech and it is novel it changes the technology on a most hourly basis and it changes well ahead of the legal Frameworks both in the US in the UK Europe in the Middle East and in Asia to deal with the consequences of lawsuits particularly class actions targeting big and emerging Tech and it touches every social issue from mental health to privacy issues and on in the US where this started was with the social media addiction litigation and plaintiff's lawyers who have become very creative in looking for the next wave of litigation followed on the heels of at least 30 State Attorneys General in the US who identified the failure to warn parents and minors about the addictive nature of their social media platforms and brought actions investigating which plff lawyers then turned into class actions starting in California a hot B of class action litigation against big Tech but now Crossing through the United States opening up into Collective actions in the UK in Australia in certain spots in Europe and what the panel and I will talk about shortly is what does that look like from the standpoint of emerging Collective or other activist actions in the Middle East or in Asia as emerging Tech continues to lean into generative Ai and there's more and more novel theories developed in the US The Playbook is now being used for video game addiction so rather than Facebook and Instagram and Tik Tok and the use of YouTube the Google platform it's now failing to warn about the addictive nature of video games and video gaming that have caused allegedly Addiction in young children uh and adolescents and this is all in parallel with the attack on big check with respect to Big privacy litigation ATT tax on the use of biometric information or the release of that biometric information the collection in certain circumstances of marketing data when you opt in on your Facebook or your LinkedIn or your Instagram site and the terms and conditions allow unless you opt out expressly the collection and use or misuse as class action lawyers identify of your marketing data your use online what sites you visit the cookies that are stored in your browsers and how they use that to sell you or sell your children which is what the class actions have been focused on mostly in the US a Non-Stop Onslaught not just on the biggest tech companies but on the emerging tech companies and one of the things we will talk about on the panel is how is that impacting investment decision making the concern about reputational risk and harm disclosures to the public to shareholders to the investor base and what does it look like going forward well what it looks like is Tech's going to continue to be in the crosshairs unlike tobacco and unlike opioids which saw giant settlements to remedy harms on public nuisance and private nuisance theories to fund treatment plans to fund cancer research Tech Evolution will continue to see attacks and onslaughts as we transition into the AI and generative AI phase and plaintiff lawyers are creative and they're becoming more creative by the Day in the US they have now convinced several federal courts to look at online platform parental controls and filters when your kids put a filter on their face a Mickey Mouse hat when they're Tick Tock those filters are now being argued to be products not cars that can explode not lawn MERS that can break and injure people but parental controls and filters as products subject to the product liability laws that have been developed over decades and decades in the United States so as an end run around the first amendment idea of protected speech online and the legislative protect in the United States for some of these platforms as a platform to allow First Amendment and Immunity for Content attacks based on First Amendment protections plain lawyers are now taking the product liability approach where will that develop we don't know but once you convince a few federal judges in the US to give some Credence to that idea Tech will remain in the crosshairs going forward and the tech companies are thinking about this as well 10 years ago when you clicked your terms and conditions when you signed up for a social media page you would be typically in the US opting in to mandatory arbitration tech companies with a lot of us lawyers telling them hey it will be very cost prohibitive for plaintiffs to sue you serially one after another after a thousand every time there's a claim you should opt into mandatory arbitration and that will have a chilling effect well plaintiff's lawyers in the class action field in the US got creative as well and they said okay we'll file Mass arbitrations we'll file a thousand or 10,000 individual arbitrations at the same time and meta or Instagram or Google YouTube you're going to have to spend the dollars to litigate every single one of those individually so some of you might have seen that meta announced for Instagram on January 1st 2025 the terms conditions have now changed there will no longer be mandatory arbitration the companies are now inviting class actions because they're the more efficient forum for them to now defend against these actions than what they thought they would be 10 years ago and then the rise of collective actions outside the US in the UK in Australia and other and elsewhere both Consumer Fraud activists and to take the playbooks established in the US and move them forward this isn't a topic about other Industries but I will say it's not just big Tech and for those of you on the investment side on the acquisition side in the room there are industry after industry after industry that are in the crosshairs for this type of creative litigation that is generally coming out of the US the Pharma and Med device industry is facing now the start of the proliferation of the gp1 OIC type lawsuits what does obesity look like and what are these these drugs really do the people in five and 10 years we don't have studies we'll see but those suits are already starting chemical manufacturers The Pest and micro Plastics litigation in the US is starting to proliferate I think you'll probably hear a little bit about it in the next panel that talks about number four which is the energy industry climate change litigation when we're done you'll hear about climate change litigation but it's already there in the US the big five big six oil and gas companies are all big Target defendants and climate uh change litigation throughout the US and the food industry the Obesity crisis around the world and undisclosed food additives and chemicals also in the crosshairs it's not just Tech the tech attack will be here when everyone in this room is retired when they do resolve 2044 and we're all retired they're going to talk about what's The Cutting Edge litigation in the US and elsewhere targeting what is a emerging Tech today what will likely be big Tech in 20 years and then we'll talk a little bit about how are acquisitive companies and investors looking at risk tolerance disclosures to their shareholders and investors if they're thinking about putting money to work in big Tech or emerging Tech what are the risks how are deals and Investments being priced based on this risk can you offset the risk with indemnification or Insurance where are those products going to to evolve over the next couple years we saw with re and warranty Insurance about 10 15 years ago every carrier every big insurer in the world is looking at a way to write policies to price in how they can make money uring this type of risk for investors in big and emerging Tech that is under a regulatory and a litigation scrutiny and finally how do you deal with these disputes in your dispute resolution Clauses with your counterparty whether it's an acquisition or investment