Forbes Daily: Meta And Google Face A Landmark Social Media Verdict |
A landmark court decision against two social media giants on Wednesday is the latest chapter in the growing backlash over the platforms’ addictive qualities.
A jury found Meta and Google, the parent company of YouTube, liable for harming a woman’s mental health due to addictive design features, and must pay $3 million in damages. In a separate decision one day earlier, a New Mexico jury ordered the Facebook parent firm to pay $375 million for enabling child exploitation. The companies plan to appeal the verdicts.
“I see firsthand how hard the company is trying to ensure there is not harmful content, to ensure that we are empowering parents to the best of our ability,” Meta president and vice chair Dina Powell McCormick said at an Axios conference shortly after Wednesday’s verdict was announced.
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ARE WE HEADED TOWARD A RECESSION?
As the war with Iran sends ripples through the economy, the risks of a recession are mounting.
Several key firms hiked their recession outlook over the next 12 months, including Moody’s Analytics, which now puts the chances of a recession at 48.6%, while Goldman Sachs raised its odds from 25% to 30% this week.
“This still isn’t a recession, but given how fragile the [U.S.] economy was even before the conflict began, not much else would have to go wrong in the Middle East to precipitate a downturn,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi wrote on X.
Higher energy prices impact not only how much consumers pay at the pump but also, crucially, the cost of shipping goods. On Thursday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that headline inflation in the U.S. could hit 4.2% this year due to the spike in global oil prices.
Still, economists say the extent of the damage comes down to how long—and by how much—prices remain elevated. Oxford Economics predicted in a research note this month........