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Meta Facing $1.4 Trillion In Damages In Teen Safety Case 

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Meta is currently facing $1.4 trillion in damages in a social media addiction case brought on by four states. Thirty-three states have teamed up to sue Meta over allegations that the tech giant was exploiting its young users on Instagram and Facebook for profit by collecting data from children without parental consent, according to reports. 

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California, New Jersey, Colorado, and Kentucky are four states that are claiming Meta misled consumers regarding the addictive design features on the platforms and causing mental health problems in children and teenagers who began using the internet at an early age. 

Those four states specifically are requesting damages that total to $1.4 trillion, according to Meta in a recent court filing. This number could allegedly increase even further with penalties that the attorneys general could add. 

Meta has denied the allegations and even recently attempted to get the addiction claims dismissed, which failed. In the most recent court submission, Meta’s attorneys argued that the $1.4 trillion in damages was unsubstantiated and disproportionate. 

“Meta has not found any case, under any cause of action, where one defendant was ordered to pay over one trillion dollars – or any number remotely close to that staggering figure.”

Reuters reported that although the states’ filings are sealed, the penalties were calculated by multiplying the number of violations, and the estimated amount of younger users impacted by the addictive aspects of the platforms.

Meta is arguing that the number is so high that “it has no parallel in the history of consumer protection enforcement.”

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“Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission recently described a ‘$1 billion penalty’ as the ‘largest ever in a case involving an FTC rule violation.’ The AGs’ demand exceeds even those record figures by several orders of magnitude, and is in gross disproportionate to the specified violations alleged here,” the filings state.”

The case will be moving to a court in August and if the judge rules against Meta, it could become a major financial issue for the company, whose market capitalization is right above $1.5 trillion. 

Meta executives have admitted for months now to investors that they were anticipating some material loss this year over “the scrutiny on youth-related issues.”

Meta has also been facing growing litigation over alleged deceptive social media practices that specifically target vulnerable young users.

Earlier this year, a judge found Meta and Google liable and ordered them to pay $6 million in damages to a young user, who’s now 20-years-old, who stated that the “deliberate addictive design features on social media platforms like Instagram got her hooked from a young age and exacerbated menthol health problems like depression and anxiety,” Ece Yildirim wrote for Gizmodo.  

Meta also currently has over 3,000 similar cases that are pending in California state court. Another 14 states have also brought up claims similar to the $1.4 trillion case and are set to go to trial early next year.

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UK To Ban Kids From Social Media, Ministers Lobby With US To Avoid Backlash 

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The UK has announced that they will be banning social media for kids under the age of 16. Some of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat, have spoken out against this decision, claiming that it will only work to push teenagers to more harmful platforms. The ban was announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday. 

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said: “As we’ve seen in Australia, bans risk isolating teens from online communities and information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.”

YouTube echoed Meta’s sentiment in their own statement: “Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”

And Snapchat said: “Because the majority of time spent on Snapchat is in private messaging between friends and family, an outright ban that disconnects teens from those relationships doesn’t make them safer – it may simply push them to less safe platforms.”

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During Starmer’s announcement at a press conference this week, he said that “social media makes children unhappy, it’s making it easier for billies to harass and abuse them, and it could even be harming their mental health.” He then emphasized the argument that the ban was not anti-tech. 

“I do not accept, and I will never accept, that you can’t be both pro tech and AI, and at the same time say we must protect our children,” he said. 

The plan mimics the one enacted earlier this year in Australia, however, it includes both a ban on all main social media platforms, and separate restrictions on online services such as gaming apps such as removing the option to chat with strangers. 

Under this new ban, kids under the age of 16 will not be able to download Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram. They also will not be able to livestream. Teenagers under the age of 18 will also not be able to use any romantic chatbots designed to simulate sexual relationships. 

“This is not something I do lightly, and I will not present it as cost-free, as if social media has [brought no] benefits to young people, because clearly that is wrong. But the government is always about choices, and it’s clear to me that a total ban is the right choice,” Starmer said.

In Australia, many teenagers have found ways around the bans, which has even led to lawsuits against certain social media platforms for not doing enough to enforce keeping young teens and children off their apps. While this can obviously happen in the UK as well and it is a concern, Starmer stated that it wasn’t the point behind this objective. 

“We don’t say: ‘Oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let’s not bother banning alcohol sales for children.’ We don’t do that, do we? I just don’t accept that,” he said. 

“Our laws are rules, but they’re also an expression of our values. They shape the social contract, and so this will change the conversations that parents have, and the expectations of children over time.”

“It will make a huge difference. It will make our children safer. It will make our children happier. It will give them more time, more security, full freedom to grow up, more opportunity, and that, at the end of the day, is what this government is about,” he added. 

The other side to this is combating the giant companies that are widely against these bans, which is intertwined with talking to the US government and president and reassuring them that this isn’t a targeted ploy towards US tech companies. 

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UK ministers have been working on a lobbying operation to prevent backlash from the Trump administration. The administration had previously threatened the UK with “a big tariff” if the government does not drop its digital services tax, so they’re moving extra cautiously when it comes to this ban. 

“I honestly think that across world leaders there has always been a recognition that leaders have to take steps to protect children,” Starmer said. “In relation to President Trump, I spoke to him on Saturday, I’ll see him again this afternoon and, yes, of course, we’ll discuss this and many other issues, and lots of other leaders are very interested in it.”

Elon Musk, who owns X and has worked closely with the president, said “this censorship law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.” 

Ministers are working on every detail of this ban and what it will entail. They’ve announced late-night social media curfews for 16-and-17-year-olds. One of the workarounds that teenagers have used in Australia is using virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent geographical internet controls, so the UK is looking into regulating those networks as well. 

This move will have a major impact on young people. In the UK, among 13-to-15-year-olds about 90% have a social media account, and have stated that their main resource for getting the news is YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, according to reports from the Guardian. 

The UK’s technology secretary, Liz Kendall, echoed Starmer’s sentiment regarding the importance of protecting children and their mental health and not having such a focus on how teens can work around the bans. 

“I have no doubt children who are currently on social media, for whom it’s an integral part of their lives, will try and get around the ban, and many will succeed,” she said. 

“But we do think we need to draw this line in the sand, give greater clarity to parents and greater protections for children.”

“I’ve never thought that the ban will be a complete silver bullet … It will be as much about resetting expectations and social norms for children who are seven, eight, nine, 10, now that they won’t be going on social media until they’re 16,” she told the BBC.

“This is a huge statement of our values, who we are as a country, and it’s a way of actually bringing our country together,” Starmer said.

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Meta’s Hidden Face-Recognition Tool for Smart Glasses Found Inside AI App

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Meta has repeatedly said it has not launched face recognition for its smart glasses. But a WIRED analysis found that much of the technology needed to make such a feature work has already been placed inside the company’s live Meta AI app, which has been downloaded more than 50 million times. The system, internally called “NameTag,” appears designed to identify people seen through Meta’s smart glasses and alert the wearer when a face is recognized.

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Mark Zuckerberg Creating AI Version Of Himself So Meta Staff Can Talk To Him Directly 

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Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is working on creating an artificial intelligence version of their founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, so that the company’s 79,000 employees can “talk directly” to the boss when they need him.

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Meta, TikTok, YouTube, And Snapchat Not Complying With Child Social Media Ban In Australia 

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In December 2025, Australia enacted a law that banned kids under the age of 16 from having accounts on social media. Now, the continent is considering legal action against platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube over allegations that they’re not making enough of an effort to keep children off of the sites. 

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Experts have stated, according to reports, that Australian courts can decide what steps the platforms can reasonably take in order to meet the requirements of the law. 

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, released a compliance report that demands 10 platforms remove all Australian account-holders younger than the age of 16. 

With the law enacted, 5 million Australian accounts have been deactivated. However, a significant number of Australian children continued to maintain their accounts or created new accounts and bypassed each platform’s age assurance systems, according to the report. 

Inman Grant said in a statement her office had “significant concerns about the compliance of half of those 10 platforms.” Grant’s office was gathering evidence against five platforms that haven’t taken “reasonable steps” to prevent children from having accounts.

Courts could potentially order fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to comply. eSafety is the power deciding on whether to initiate court action against any of the platforms by the middle of the year. 

Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Kick, Threads, and Twitch are age-registricted platforms that aren’t under investigation. Communications Minister Anika Wells stated that the five main platforms being looked into are allegedly not complying with the Australian law on purpose. 

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“Social media platforms are choosing to do the absolute bare minimum because they want these laws to fail.”

“This is the world-leading law. We’re the first in the world to do it. Of course they don’t want these laws to work because they want that to be a chilling effect on the dozen countries that have come out since Dec. 10 to follow Australia’s step,” Wells told reporters. 

eSafety has emphasized “poor practices” from these platforms. For example, they all allow unlimited attempts for a user to pass their age assurance methods, and even prompt the user to try to pass the age assurance methods. 

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, told AP that they were “committed” to complying with Australia’s social media ban. “We’ve also been clear that accurately determining age online is a challenge for the whole industry.”

Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., said that they have locked 450,000 accounts to align with the law and are continuously doing so daily. “Snapchat remains fully committed to implementing reasonable steps under the legislation and supporting its underlying goal of improving online safety for young Australians,” they said in a statement. 

Lisa Given, information sciences expert at RMIT University in Melbourne, stated: 

“If a tech company has said: look, we put in age assurance, we’ve done all these steps. That’s reasonable. Even though the aged assurance technologies are flawed, whose fault is that? Should they be held accountable for a piece of technology that is not 100% and likely not going to be 100% foolproof any time soon?” 

“That’s really the crux of it: what the courts will deem reasonable,” she said.

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Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta In Landmark Trial Regarding Social Media Addiction 

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently testified during a landmark trial in Los Angeles Superior Court regarding social media addiction and safety, particularly in teenagers and kids.

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US Senators Call For Scam Ads On Facebook And Instagram To Be Investigated 

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US senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal are calling on the heads of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to open an investigation regarding revenue made from ads on Facebook and Instagram that are promoting scams and banned goods. 

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“The FTC and SEC should immediately open investigations and, if the reporting is accurate, pursue vigorous enforcement action where appropriate to force Meta to disgorge profits, pay penalties and agree to cease running such advertisements,” both Hawley and Blumenthal wrote to the federal agencies.

It was reported earlier this month that internal documents from late 2024 stated that Meta was projected to earn 10% of its overall revenue from illicit advertising, which equated to around $16 billion. One document stated that Meta earned around $3.5 billion in revenue from “higher risk” scam advertisements every six months. 

Documents also stated that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has anti-fraud rules that don’t apply to a lot of these advertisements. 

In response to the report, which came from Reuters, Meta stated that they reduced user reports of scams by 58% throughout the last 18 months.  

Meta spokesman, Andy Stone, said:

 “[The Hawley-Blumenthal letter] makes claims that are exaggerated and wrong, we aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it and we don’t want it either.”

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Both Hawley and Blumenthal expressed their skepticism over Meta’s work to combat illicit advertising, pointing out the company’s “ad library,” which is a publicly accessible database of advertising on Meta’s social media platforms. 

“Even a short review of Meta’s Ad Library at the time of this letter shows clearly identifiable advertisements for illicit gambling, payment scams, crypto scams, AI deepfake sex services, and fake offers of federal benefits,” they said. 

“Scams have been allowed to take over Facebook and Instagram as Meta has drastically cut its safety staff, including for FTC mandated reviews, even as it dumps unimaginable sums into its generative AI projects.”

“While Meta has been warned about advertisement deepfakes impersonating politicians, it still continues to run fraudulent clips,” their letter writes. 

“The beneficiaries of these scams are often cybercrime groups based in China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the Philippines.”

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Facebook And Instagram Will Charge UK Users For Ad-Free Versions Of The Platforms 

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Meta has announced that Facebook and Instagram users in the United Kingdom will now be offered ad-free versions of the platforms if they pay a monthly fee up to £3.99 ($5.37) a month.

This announcement comes from Mark Zuckerberg as a response to regulatory warnings about personalized advertisements which are generated by using users’ data placed in an algorithm to produce targeted ads. The ad-free subscription service gives users the option to get out of targeted ads. 

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Reports indicate that web users will be charged £2.99 ($4.02) a month and mobile users will be charged £3.99 ($5.37) a month to scroll through Facebook and Instagram without seeing advertisements. 

Additionally, if accounts are linked, users will only need to pay one monthly fee. In a statement, Meta stated: 

“This will give people based in the UK the choice between continuing to use Facebook and Instagram for free with personalized ads, or subscribing to stop seeing ads.”

Users who opt not to pay the monthly fee will continue to see advertisements on their pages as usual. In their statement, Meta said the paid tier services will be rolled out throughout the upcoming weeks. 

This new subscription model is very similar to one that already exists between Meta and the European Union. However, the EU deemed that policy in breach of the digital markets act by the European Commission. The digital markets act is a piece of legislation that was designed to crack down on the overwhelming power big tech holds. 

The commission fined Meta €200 million ($235,125,380) this year after claims that the company could, and should, have released a free version of their sites that utilized less personal data including the users gender, age, and location, to be used to make targeted ads. 

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The Informational Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s data watchdog, and they stated that they support the move from Meta. 

“This moves Meta away from targeting users with ads as part of the standard terms and conditions for using its Facebook and Instagram services, which we’ve been clear is not in line with UK law,” said an ICO spokesperson according to the Guardian. 

The ICO stated this year that internet and Meta users should have the option to “opt out” of their personal data being used to create and push targeted ads. This statement came after Meta settled a court case with a UK citizen regarding targeted advertisements. 

More specifically, Meta agreed in the court case to stop targeting Tanya O’Carroll, a human rights campaigner who alleged that the company breached UK data laws by neglecting to respect her right to demand that Facebook stop collecting her data for the sake of personalized ads. 

After the lawsuit and settlement, Meta announced it was considering creating and implementing an ad-free subscription service to its social networks. 

Gareth Oldale, a partner at UK law firm TLT, stated that the ICO’s support for the new subscription service from Meta exemplifies a divergence between the EU and UK. 

“This position is certainly pro-business and illustrative of the UK government’s direction to regulators to support economic growth and development of the digital economy,” he said. “It does, however, mean that the divergence between the UK and the EU positions has grown a little wider.”

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Mark Zuckerberg Hands Out Noise-Canceling Headphones and Donuts as Furious Neighbors Endure Years of Construction

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is no stranger to criticism online. Now, he’s facing it offline too—from the people who live next door.

The 41-year-old billionaire has been embroiled in a simmering feud with residents of Palo Alto’s Crescent Park, the affluent neighborhood where he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have been steadily expanding a massive residential compound for over a decade. The project, estimated to be worth around $110 million, has disrupted the once-quiet community with nonstop building, security patrols, and a revolving door of contractors.

This week, Zuckerberg attempted a peace offering. Families disturbed by the grinding sounds of construction received noise-canceling headphones, bottles of sparkling wine, and boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. The gesture, first reported by Fortune, was intended as a neighborly olive branch. Instead, it has fueled fresh outrage.

The tension has been building for years. In 2011, Zuckerberg made his first Crescent Park purchase: a $7 million home that remains the centerpiece of his estate. Since then, he has scooped up 10 additional houses, often paying well above market value. Some homeowners recall being approached out of the blue by intermediaries offering millions more than their property’s worth.

The effect has been dramatic. What was once a patch of tree-lined streets is now dotted with guesthouses, sprawling gardens, and elaborate security systems. One neighbor described the takeover bluntly: “No neighborhood wants to be occupied,” longtime resident Michael Kieschnick told The New York Times. “But that’s exactly what they’ve done.”

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Property records reviewed by the Times reveal the scale of the transformation. A 2012 purchase added a $4.8 million house behind the couple’s main residence. In 2013 alone, Zuckerberg bought three more properties—one for $10.5 million and two more for $14 million and $14.5 million each. By 2022, the spree extended across the street, where he paid $5.7 million, reportedly $200,000 above the asking price.

Construction crews have since outfitted the compound with a hydro-floor swimming pool that can vanish beneath a retractable deck, a pickleball court, and a statue dedicated to Chan. Beneath the manicured lawns, a 7,000-square-foot underground bunker connects several of the homes. One property has even been repurposed as a private school, according to The New York Times.

“Another property has been used for the past few years as a private school for 14 children, even though that is not an allowable use of a house in the neighborhood under city code. Six adults, including four teachers, worked there this past school year.”

For many neighbors, the daily inconvenience of this empire-building outweighs the architectural marvels. The ceaseless rumble of bulldozers, jackhammers, and trucks has become a familiar part of the neighborhood’s soundscape. Zuckerberg’s response—headphones, wine, and donuts—has only amplified the criticism.

On social media platform X, reactions were swift.

“Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy headphones to silence all who complain about your excessively opulent lifestyle.”

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Another user added: “Sorry for being an insufferable d—enozzle, here are some noise-canceling headphones. These people live in such a different world than us, and it’s sickening.”

Despite owning what amounts to an entire block, Zuckerberg himself is largely absent from day-to-day neighborhood life. Residents told The New York Times that he is rarely spotted outside, though his presence is felt through the elaborate web of security cameras, guards, and the seemingly endless rotation of contractors.

Ironically, the CEO who built his empire on connecting people has instead insulated himself from his community. The Crescent Park compound is designed for privacy, even secrecy, but the scope of his project has made it impossible to ignore.

When Zuckerberg first planted roots in Palo Alto, his fortune was estimated at $13.5 billion. Today, it exceeds $250 billion. His real estate holdings have grown in tandem with his wealth, transforming Crescent Park into a billionaire’s enclave.

What began with one $7 million house has expanded into a neighborhood-sized buffer zone. And for those who once described their block as “idyllic,” the constant construction has replaced tranquility with tension.

Zuckerberg’s headphones and donuts may offer a temporary distraction from the noise. Still, to many of his neighbors, the gifts symbolize something larger: the yawning gulf between Silicon Valley’s richest and the communities they inhabit.

As one resident put it, the Zuckerbergs haven’t just moved in. They’ve taken over.

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Meta Settles Shareholder Lawsuit Tied to $5B FTC Penalty, Zuckerberg Avoids Testimony

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Meta has reached a settlement in a high-profile shareholder lawsuit that accused the company’s board of failing to prevent massive breaches of user data—an oversight that plaintiffs said cost the company billions.

The agreement, revealed Thursday morning in a Delaware courtroom, came just as the second day of an anticipated eight-day trial was set to begin. A lawyer representing the plaintiffs, a group of pension funds with minor Meta holdings, informed the judge that the parties had reached a resolution.

The lawsuit had alleged that Meta’s directors ignored a 2012 consent decree with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which required Facebook to protect user privacy more aggressively.

That failure, plaintiffs claimed, ultimately led to the 2019 $5 billion FTC settlement, one of the largest ever imposed on a tech company, following data privacy lapses that enabled groups like Cambridge Analytica to access vast swaths of user data.

Speaking of both settlements and Zuckerberg’s successful evasion of testifying, Jason Kint, the head of Digital Content Next, a trade group for content providers, said,  “That reckoning is now left unresolved.”

“Facebook has successfully remade the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data.”

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While the specifics of Thursday’s settlement remain confidential, they are expected to be formally filed with the Delaware Court of Chancery in the coming weeks. A source close to the negotiations said discussions had stretched on for months and continued late into Wednesday evening, even after the trial had begun. According to this source, Meta’s directors and officers’ insurance policy will foot the bill.

The legal action, known as a derivative lawsuit, means that any proceeds will go to the company itself rather than being distributed directly to the shareholders. Such cases are rare but growing in frequency, as boards of major corporations increasingly face scrutiny over operational misconduct. However, Kint remains unsatisfied.

“This settlement may bring relief to the parties involved, but it’s a missed opportunity for public accountability.”

This case marked the first time Meta’s board was directly challenged in a Delaware trial over its internal oversight practices. The proceedings had been closely watched, not only because of the high-profile names involved, but also for the precedent it could set for corporate accountability.

Among the witnesses was Jeff Zients, who served on Meta’s board from 2018 to 2020 and was White House Chief of Staff under former President Joe Biden. He testified on Wednesday. Marc Andreessen, the influential venture capitalist and longtime Meta director, was slated to take the stand Thursday.

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Company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with former COO Sheryl Sandberg, were expected to appear next week.

Meta’s legal team had been preparing to argue that the board’s decision to settle with the FTC in 2019 was reasonable and not indicative of negligence. However, the plaintiffs claimed that Zuckerberg’s control over the company allowed him to shape the outcome in a way that protected him from personal accountability, while leaving Meta to shoulder the financial burden.

Zuckerberg was also accused of insider trading, with the plaintiffs alleging he sold Meta stock while fully aware of the looming fallout from the company’s data privacy failures.

The case comes amid broader debate within the tech world over Delaware’s role as the go-to corporate jurisdiction. Like Tesla and Dropbox, Meta has reportedly been exploring a potential relocation to a state more favorable to founder-led governance structures. Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm co-founded by Andreessen, recently announced plans to move a major subsidiary to Nevada and encouraged others in tech to consider similar moves.

Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, who presided over the case, congratulated both parties on the resolution and stated that she looked forward to reviewing the final terms once they were submitted.