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...
Image: Salman Rushdie Twitter Salman Rushdie has inspired the hashtag #MiddleNameUsers. The story on how this came about goes like this. Facebook deleted the world-famous author's account over the weekend. Reason cited was this - the author was not using his real name. His birth name is Ahmed Salman Rushdie but as the whole world knows he goes by the name of Salman Rushdie. Facebook has a name policy and you can not allowed to use your middle name. The author took to Twitter to voice his discontent and Facebook eventually relented. They had to as there was no other choice because in real life Salman Rushdie is know as Salman Rushdie. Since the Ahmed has been dropped. We have previously covered the Facebook Name policy and you can read about it here . Now this has prompted a popular hashtag on Twitter #MiddleNameUsers since many famous people no not go by their first name but by their middle name. It is up to an individual to go by the name that best suits them and what they are kno...