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...
Facebook places currently available in the US, allows users to tag other without their prior express permission. How and why is this a problem and what impact does this really have. Consider this scenario for a moment, you have invited all your friends out for dinner and innocently tag everybody at that diner in a Facebook Places update and share with all your friends on Facebook. Innocent enough, imagine the various impacts it might have. How many people have made excuses to be there for the dinner; maybe a friend has left work early, telling his boss there is an emergency. His Boss could be his friend on Facebook - result fried. Each person sitting on that dinner table might have made some excuse to have made time to be there; telling their partners and co-workers half-truths to make themselves available. So now everyone knows where they really are based on an update from a friend. So what is wrong with Facebook places. This is just one broad case scenario, there are definitely 1000s...