In the span of just 48 hours this week, two separate juries in two different US states delivered verdicts that could reshape the entire social media industry — not because of the dollar amounts involved, but because of what those verdicts legally establish for the first time. On Tuesday, March 24, a jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram. Less than 24 hours later, on Wednesday, March 25, a jury in Los Angeles found both Meta and Google (YouTube) liable for engineering addiction in young users — finding them negligent in the design of their platforms and awarding a further $6 million in damages. Two days. Two states. Two juries. Both pointing at the same conclusion: that Big Tech can no longer hide behind the legal shields it has relied on for nearly three decades. This is the story of what happened, why it matters far beyond the headline numbers, and what comes next for the s...
Google has threatened to quit it's China operations citing a massive cyber attack on it's computers that originated there. As a result Google has said that they will no longer censor their search engine and may completely exit altogether. Google said that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human right activists, but that the attack also targeted 20 other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical sectors. In a blog posting by David Drummond , the corporate development and chief legal officer, Google said that it had found a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” He further went on to say " Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to ...