Alan Montecillo [00:00:17] Hey, good morning.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:18] And our very special guest this month is KQED senior editor Alexander Gonzalez. What a delight to have you here.
Alex Gonzalez [00:00:25] Hey there, I’m so honored. Thank you.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:28] Yeah, thank you for joining us. Very briefly, Alex, because I feel like maybe folks aren’t familiar with your voice. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do here at KQED?
Alex Gonzalez [00:00:39] Yeah, I’m a features editor. So I’m working a lot behind the scenes on a good part of what you hear in the morning. So some of those longer interviews and stories that take up more time on the radio. That’s what I do.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:53] You’re the producer behind Brian Watt, in other words.
Alex Gonzalez [00:00:57] Oh yeah, Brian Watt is my close friend, collaborator, confidant, working closely with him, so he’s the talent. I’m just trying to be there to support him, what he needs.
Alan Montecillo [00:01:08] So if you’re listening to 88.5, the number one news talk radio station, maybe your voice isn’t on the airwaves, but you’re there.
Alex Gonzalez [00:01:17] I’m in the room. In the mornings, yeah. I’m there.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:19] Well, before we dive into the stories we’ve been following, it’s been a really, really hot month in the Bay Area. Spring is here. It feels like summer is here too. How have you all been dealing with the heat wave and also allergies?
Alan Montecillo [00:01:37] Oh my God. I feel like I’m so annoying in our morning meetings when it’s like, Oh, how are we all doing? And I’m like, Oh, my allergies are still bad, but they have been really bad. I feel two different ways about the heat. On the one hand, I feel grateful. The same day it was 75 degrees Fahrenheit and the Outer Sunset, our niece in Illinois had a snow day. So yeah, not a lot to complain about, but also as a lifelong Zyrtec taker, no free ads.
Alex Gonzalez [00:02:05] Zyrtec life.
Alan Montecillo [00:02:05] Yeah. This is It’s been one of the worst allergy seasons I can remember in a very, very long time. I’m just sneezing and blowing my nose.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:12] Yeah. And I don’t think you’re the only one either. I went to the doctor maybe like a few weeks ago and my doctor looked at my nose and was like, you’re like the only person who’s walked in here who has not had bad allergies this year. It’s really, really bad this year, have you been struggling at all Alex? You look, you look great.
Alex Gonzalez [00:02:30] I have no allergy issues whatsoever, the kinds that you’re describing, but you know, my partner does, and so we have the Allegra and Claritin all at home and stocked up. And as for me, the heat is like the best thing in the planet, like I grew up in Florida, So for me anytime it goes over 70 degrees, I’m like, yeah.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:52] Feels like home.
Alex Gonzalez [00:02:53] Yes it does, take off that jacket.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:56] Well, let’s go ahead and dive into some of the stories we’ve been following this month. I’m gonna go ahead and start with mine. So the city of Foster City in the peninsula voted last week to declare a state of emergency after it was hit by a ransomware attack. This attack took down the city’s network and staff couldn’t make or receive phone calls or respond to emails for a whole week. Basically paralyzing the city’s ability to conduct business and provide services. Phones and emails were finally restored on Friday, but the city was still working to get other functions back online.
Alan Montecillo [00:03:38] So when we say ransomware attack and Foster City’s networks being down, what does that mean exactly?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:45] So employees woke up in the early mornings of March 19th to find that there was a cybersecurity breach on their systems. And basically everything outside of their emergency response system was completely inoperable. There’s now an investigation into just how bad this breach is, but they really have very limited information. They did say that it’s possible that some public information may have been breached as part of this ransomware attack. And they did say that anyone who’s actually done business with the city of Foster City should change their personal passwords and take any measures to protect their personal data just out of abundance of caution.
Alex Gonzalez [00:04:33] So like, if I understand this correctly, everything just went to like a grinding halt. Like, I mean…
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:38] I mean, the city said that if you contacted them while their phones and emails were down, that they basically wouldn’t be able to respond until they were back online. City Hall has remained open this whole time, but basically with limited services available. For example, the system that’s used to track like permitting in the city is totally frozen. I also saw on their Facebook page that things like Summer activity registration for the city’s Parks and Recs Department is delayed because of this system-wide outage, though the city has said that emergency services, 911 calls are completely unaffected.
Alan Montecillo [00:05:19] You mentioned earlier that the city declared a state of emergency. What does that do exactly?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:25] The state of emergency allows Foster City to basically breeze past all the regular city procedures that it takes to buy stuff, especially the necessary equipment and supplies that they need to deal with this attack and to basically solve the issue. And it also opens the door for any sort of financial support from outside agencies as well. KQED actually was a victim of a very similar ransomware attack back in 2017.
Alan Montecillo [00:05:59] Were you here then?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:00] I was, I was here very, very briefly, I think at the very, very start. So I didn’t really deal with the months and months of absolute chaos in the KQD newsroom. But I mean, folks were like using hotspots on their cell phones. It was a crazy time. They were MacGyvering all these ways to keep. The radio going and I think most folks probably didn’t even notice.
Alex Gonzalez [00:06:26] And I also read that as this foster city ransomware attack happened, there’s like a big cybersecurity conference in San Francisco at Moscone, like literally happening right around the same time. So you have basically a lot of expertise here in the city that maybe could have headed over there too.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:52] And that is it for my story. We’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, a rare verdict in a case against social media companies and their impact on mental health, and can San Francisco’s small clubs survive? Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:16] And we’re back with The Bay’s monthly news roundup where we talk about some of the other stories we’ve been following this month. By the way, if you wanna help support shows like The Bay and the kind of work that we’re doing, make sure to go to kqed.org slash donate. And Alan Montecillo, our senior editor from The Bay, what story did you bring today?
Alan Montecillo [00:07:39] Well, it’s a big accountability story for Silicon Valley. A California jury on Wednesday found Meta and Google liable for the depression and anxiety of a 20-year-old woman who says she used these social media apps, specifically YouTube and Instagram, as a small child. They awarded her $6 million. On top of that, this actually comes on the heels of a different trial in New Mexico where Meta was ordered to pay $375 million for not protecting young users from child predators. So… One of the reasons this is significant is I think this is a rare moment of, you know, potential accountability for these companies. And some are wondering whether this could be sort of a so-called big tobacco moment for big tech.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:22] Yeah, Alan, I mean, what was this trial like? What did the people representing this young woman say?
Alan Montecillo [00:08:29] The main plaintiff in this California trial was a woman who went by the name of Kaylee. She’s now, like I said, 20 years old. She says she started using Instagram when she was 11, which by the way is against meta terms of service. You’re supposed to be 13 or older to use Instagram. She says, she suffered depression, anxiety, body image issues, and specifically that there were features with these apps like infinite scroll and video autoplay that played a in causing her to become addicted.
Alex Gonzalez [00:08:56] To these platforms. Partly what’s interesting about this case, right, is like how they went about this legally, like what arguments they made, because I think you, for a long time, there was some law that prevented going after the product specifically, but here they tried to go about this in a different way.
Alan Montecillo [00:09:14] Way, right? Yes, you’re right. The strategy is really one of the reasons why some folks are saying this could be a turning point. So you can’t really hold companies legally liable for the content that people post on their platforms. It’s a federal law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. So instead, the plaintiff here and potentially others as well are saying, you all, social media companies are essentially manufacturers of a defective product that is addictive. And harms people, especially young people. And furthermore, that you knew that. They showed internal documents from Meta in which Mark Zuckerberg and other executives talked about how they were trying to attract young people, one document said, quote, if we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens. Another memo internally showed that 11 year olds were much more likely to keep coming back to Instagram compared with other apps, even though you’re supposed to be 13. So, I think… It’s more about the public health angle and stating a case that these products themselves are designed to be addictive. That’s why the analogies to big tobacco are being drawn here. This is what one of the lawyers in the California trial, Marc Lanier, said after the verdict.
Marc Lanier [00:10:27] We’ve sent a message with this, that you will be held accountable just because of the features alone that drive addiction. That’s a huge message for these companies.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:38] I mean, I can think of so many people in my personal life who say, like, I need to take a break from Instagram. It is not good for my mental health. I mean I’ve taken a break from Instagram myself before. But what is the argument on the other side that the tech companies were making in this trial?
Alan Montecillo [00:10:57] Well, Meta and Google plan to appeal this decision in California. They say they’ve put in plenty of protections in their products for young people. Metta, and Google also say that there are all kinds of reasons why young people, including the plaintiff, have mental health challenges and that it’s unfair to basically single out social media companies like them as the main cause of it. And Ashly Davis, a spokesperson for Meta. Essentially said as much after the trial.
Ashly Davis [00:11:29] Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.
Alan Montecillo [00:11:44] There’s also a Google spokesperson, Jose Castañeda, who said, quote, this case misunderstands YouTube. Remember, this is YouTube and Instagram, who are kind of on the hook here, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site. So look, I mean, these companies have a lot of money. They have a lotta lawyers. This is an ultimate defeat for them by any means, but it is significant.
Alex Gonzalez [00:12:04] So Alan, one of the interesting details about this trial was this jar of M&M’s. Can you talk more about that? Cause it’s kind of, it’s fascinating.
Alan Montecillo [00:12:13] Yeah, Marc Lanier, the lawyer I mentioned earlier, showed the jury a jar full of M&M’s and said that each piece of candy represented a billion dollars that Metta was worth, which kind of brings us to the six million dollar figure that the companies now owe. You could take it a couple different ways. One is like, look, Mark Zuckerberg made more than six million dollars by like the end of this sentence, right?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:37] Drop in the bucket.
Alan Montecillo [00:12:38] Drop in the bucket. An M&M. Right. An M& M in the Bucket. Yeah. It’s not a lot of money, but when you think about all the people who use social media and the fact that this is $6 million in damages for one plaintiff, you add that up, it could be a slightly larger drop in the buckets.
Alex Gonzalez [00:12:54] I think this could be a bellwether case, right? This could set some precedent, right.
Alan Montecillo [00:12:58] Well, I think it literally is a Bellwether case. It’s tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits that are brought by parents and school districts. And in fact, this summer there will be a federal trial in the Northern District of California with a series of claims made by parents and school district. So lots of people were watching this. I mean, there were parents outside the courthouse whose kids had taken their own lives and they, you know, in part blame social media. Many people had to testify in this trial, including Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Alex Gonzalez [00:13:27] No, there have been reports of young people themselves saying they’re like trying to go phone-less, right, and like getting rid of it. There’s that song by Lorde where she throws the cell phone in the water. And I feel like there’s this sense of in the air that young people themselves recognize that tech companies are maybe doing things that, you know, not responsibly done, or you’re not totally aware of, like, your relationship to this tech could be something that I need to change myself. There’s more ownership of our relationship to technology than maybe when we were kind of first starting to use Facebook, where we were just like, wow, this is so cool, a website where we can connect with people. And it feels like we’re light years ahead of where… That place is right now for all kinds of reasons.
Alan Montecillo [00:14:10] I mean, you even see there’s some phone-free school districts, you know, and the results from that can be hit or miss, but what are the other vectors of this feeling that maybe this isn’t great for us?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:14:23] Such an interesting story, Alan, thank you so much.
Alan Montecillo [00:14:26] You’re very welcome.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:14:29] And last but not least, Alex Gonzalez, editor at KQED, very curious what story you’ve brought for us today.
Alex Gonzalez [00:14:37] Yeah, so this comes from our colleague, Nastia Voynovskaya, and her question for this story is, can San Francisco small clubs survive?
Alan Montecillo [00:14:48] Yeah, I mean, how are San Francisco Small Gloves doing? I feel like I thought about this a lot in the immediate post-pandemic economic recovery phase, I guess, when places were fully opened and we were wondering, oh, are we all going to things?
Alex Gonzalez [00:15:04] Yeah, you’re totally right. So I think that’s kind of part of what’s happening here. So this was kind of came about from an industry summit during San Francisco’s music week. So it’s kind an insidery thing, but one of the main points that Nastia brings up in this story is, you know, kind of the concern for the health of the local music ecosystem. And specifically these places categorized as like independent music venues. So these are your lay. You know, in San Francisco, Thee Parkside, Bottom of the Hill. But these also happen to be two venues that are gonna be closing this year. And it’s part of this larger trend that was reported on by this trade association recently that said just around a third of these kind of independent music venues are actually profitable. Even though that same report said that they generated billions of dollars for the nation’s economy, then this tension is really What I found interesting and what, Alan, you just brought up about kind of where we are. Six years now this month from the COVID-19 lockdowns, right? Can you believe it? Six years.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:11] I was just going to say this actually reminds me of a story that we worked on on the Bay about small local theaters around the Bay Area very similarly struggling with getting people to come back to their theaters post pandemic and closing as a result because of that sort of behavior shift.
Alex Gonzalez [00:16:31] That behavior change has been difficult for a lot of folks to sort of get away from, right? We’re just, the competition is the couch.
Alan Montecillo [00:16:38] Powerful competition.
Alex Gonzalez [00:16:39] It’s powerful competition, right? Because you think, what’s going to motivate me to drive to a place, to pay for an expensive ticket, to then you maybe want to partake in a drink. Those drinks are expensive, right. So then that’s kind of what makes this really interesting is that you have all of these structural things, but at the same time, this component of human behavior all coming together when you think about a small independent music venue. It’s like really interesting how we. How there’s an ecosystem around it. If we have fewer of these places that are allowing up and coming acts to give them a chance to do, to showcase their art and also to make money off of what they’re doing, right? To sort of see a career around this, we’re losing that like platform for interesting talent, for new talent to sort of then maybe make it big, right, or find an audience even, right. And let’s not even talk about becoming the next, you know, pop star here. It’s just like. Making it as an artist too, that’s also kind of at play here, just in the way that actors and producers and playwrights want to make it work in a local theater, because if not, then we’re just going to have Marvel the musical. Right. That probably exists. There is a Spider-Man the musical actually. Yeah, that exists. Yeah.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:54] That’s crazy, I did not know that. Yeah, very similarly to this local theater story. It’s like you’re losing this whole part of the pipeline for local artists to make it big.
Alan Montecillo [00:18:08] So what’s the move here? I mean, there’s these sort of structural, very high semi-fixed costs that all of these businesses are facing, and then there’s also the consumer behavior side of it. What do we do about it?
Alex Gonzalez [00:18:19] So this is kind of the interesting thing that our colleague Nastia brings up in this story and that she reported on in that some of the panelists at this industry summit were suggesting like kind of recreating a version of the recovery fund that we saw during the COVID lockdowns for artists. So one of the panelist like pitched the idea of like putting a dollar for every ticket sold at a corporate backed concert into like this recovery fund. And then dividing that up among smaller venues, which is kind of interesting, right, that a dollar even can potentially go a really long way. There are things too that artists themselves can do. They can maybe try to push back, you know, push back their agents telling, you know who maybe wanna push them to more profitable venues or places where they’re gonna sell out more tickets and actually say, hey, we actually wanna perform at a bottom of the hill kind of a place, right? And then finally, we the fans, right. We just have to leave the couch, which is… Very challenging i know, but if you do go out there and support these places then that can that can also be an avenue too.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:19:23] I mean, it is kind of a relief to know that I have some agency in helping to solve this problem.
