Conceptual portrait of smartphone addiction and endless scrolling.
Marco Piunti | Eplus | Getty Images
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meta The company says it faces trillions of dollars in fines and damage to its advertising model. However, this trial may go beyond just one company. Social media may become unrecognizable.
States are asking courts to force Meta to remove “certain addictive design features” from its platforms Instagram and Facebook. These include infinite scrolling, video autoplay, disappearing content like Instagram Stories, beauty filters, and algorithm-driven feeds.
California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill said in opening statements Tuesday that Meta has chosen profit over safety, concealing the “reality” of under-13s on its platform, and that its business model is to “capture users, detain them for as long as possible, collect data, and then hide the truth from the public.”
“This case could spell the end of social media as we know it,” said Kate Winnick, principal analyst at Forrester.
“Any verdict against Meth would set a huge precedent,” Winnick added. “These cases are often compared to the Big Tobacco cases of the ’90s, and the outcome will likely be similar. The product will be less accessible to young people, and the cultural messages surrounding social media will change.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta also said Mehta was only a “first choice” among various U.S. state attorneys general to sue social media companies over damages. There is a pending lawsuit against YouTube. snap Too.
“Who goes first? Who goes last? Ideally, everyone goes at the same time,” Bonta said. “That’s not possible. In an ideal world, they would all commit to the same reforms and changes for all children and keep them safe.”
Meta and YouTube have already been found at fault in a major social media addiction trial in Los Angeles in March, where the plaintiff was a young woman who said she became addicted to the company’s apps at a young age. She said the platform’s design caused severe body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts.
Winick predicted that other social media platforms like Snap, which have younger user bases, are likely to make “preemptive changes” to match the changes forced on Meta by the trial.
“While this is unlikely to permanently kill the industry, we will see a significant decline in usage in the long term as younger users are not introduced to the platform,” she added.
“The real existential threat to meth and social media as an industry is similar lawsuits being filed by adults alleging the same issues and impacts,” Winnick said.
News editing
OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT for Teens, a dedicated chatbot experience for users under 18 with “stronger safety protections built in.”
alibaba’s Net profit fell 75% in the June quarter due to a surge in AI spending.
OpenAI’s chief financial officer told employees that the company will go public as early as 2027.
Amazon plans to offer drone delivery in about 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of the year.
Anger over AI data centers is showing up everywhere from advertising to elections, making the facilities a physical representation of widespread anti-AI sentiment.
One more thing
Nvidia is acting as a matchmaker, trying to connect companies with its graphics processing equipment to data center operators capable of deploying it in Northern Europe, people familiar with the matter told CNBC’s Kai Nicol-Schwarz.
This comes as semiconductor giants seek to expand their influence in the AI ecosystem in the race to build infrastructure.
Nvidia has proposed connecting Nordic data center operators with companies looking for additional capacity using its GPUs, two people familiar with the matter said.
