These are live images outside the courthouse in Los Angeles, where a verdict has been reached in a potentially landmark social media addiction trial, meta, and YouTube, essentially on trial.

And based on a jury's finding on Wednesday, liable for damages.

The jury, in Los Angeles Superior Court, said that META and YouTube's negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff,

who went by her initials KGM in court.

The jury also said the companies failed to adequately warn users of the dangers of Instagram

and YouTube.

New York Times tech reporter Ryan Mack was at the courthouse.

I asked him to describe the scene for me when the verdict came down, after nine days of

deliberation.

There were camera crews outside who were also very tired waiting for this

verdict, three sets of lawyers, and, you know, also these families of these social media users who

had died, you know, or, you know, committed suicide after having bad experiences on social media.

So those families were also around

the courthouse. But everyone was just kind of waiting for this thing to come in.

Nine days of deliberations is a pretty long time. Were you expecting this verdict?

You know, after a certain point, I think I was expecting something to happen, at least a verdict against

these companies. I think it would have been easier for the jury to come, to go into deliberation

and be like, you know, oh, you know, this is, there's no big deal here. Let's, you know, get out of

here and no one's liable. But they really took their time going through the evidence

and going through everything that happened in the trial. I think they understood the gravitas of

this case, which, you know, is a bellwether case, one of nine cases to be held in LA regarding

social media. And they took that responsibility pretty seriously.

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