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...
Starting next month Facebook's 400 million users are going to begin to see a new type of status update, one which carries geo-location. With the success of other geo-location players like Foursquare, Facebook is ready to take the wraps off their geo-location status updates. Facebook has said that this feature will be an opt-in and we hope not an opt-out. The New York Times reported that In preparation for the introduction, Facebook updated its privacy policy last November. The new policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.” One of the people familiar with the project said that the company was not trying to beat the smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla. Instead, Facebook wants to go head-to-head with Google in the fight for small-business advertising. Facebook redesigned its business pages last year, with the hope of offering more featur...