Zuckerberg takes the stand
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified Wednesday in a landmark social media addiction trial brought against his company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The lawsuit, which is being heard in federal court in Los Angeles, was filed in 2023 by a now 20-year-old woman referred to by the initials KGM. The outcome of the trial is expected to influence settlement negotiations in roughly 1,600 social media addiction lawsuits.
Mark Lanier, KGM’s lawyer, has argued that his client’s social media use as a child hooked her on the platforms, which in turn intensified her mental health problems and suicidal thoughts. Lawyers for Meta have argued her “struggles” stemmed from familial abuse.
Lanier also noted that Meta has, for years, aggressively sought to hook 10- to 13-year-olds on its apps. He referenced a 2015 memo in which Zuckerberg urged his executives to ensure that children and teenagers spend more time on Facebook and Instagram. He also mentioned an internal company document from the same year that prioritized having 10-year-olds spend more time on Instagram.
“I don’t remember the context of this email from more than ten years ago,” said Zuckerberg, who was providing his first jury testimony on child safety. “I think the way we should build things is to build useful services for people to connect with their family and friends and learn about the world.”
Despite Meta’s stated policy of barring users under 13 from its platforms, Lanier cited an internal Meta document from 2018 that said, “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.”
Zuckerberg, who said it is “very difficult” to enforce age restrictions on its platforms, claimed that Meta no longer sets performance goals based on maximizing the screen time of its users. But “if something is valuable, people will use it more because it’s useful to them,” he added.
The issue of Instagram’s “beauty filters” also came up. The filters, when applied to a photo, allow users to alter their appearance, often by making their teeth appear whiter or their skin appear smoother and clearer. Lanier noted that outside experts consulted by Meta said the filters exacerbate body dysmorphia among young girls. But Zuckerberg said he would not remove them from Instagram, as he believes there is insufficient evidence to prove they are harmful and that he has a “high bar” for “paternalistic” rules.
At one point in the questioning, Lanier pointed to an internal Meta document from 2017 that advised Zuckerberg to sound less “robotic” and more “authentic” and “human” when discussing child safety. Zuckerberg said the advice was basic “feedback” but acknowledged, “I’m actually well known to be sort of bad at this.”
Meanwhile, two members of Zuckerberg’s entourage were called out by the presiding judge for showing up to the courtroom wearing Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which feature a camera and microphones. If anyone had used smart glasses to record from inside the courtroom, “you must delete that, or you will be held in contempt of the court,” the judge said. “This is very serious.”
This Week in Zuck:
Meta plans to pour $65 million into state-level political races this cycle, backing candidates who support the AI industry and oppose regulations that could curtail it. The spending will be spread across four super PACs and will begin this week with races in Texas and Illinois. It marks the company’s largest-ever effort to influence the outcome of American elections. (New York Times)
Internal testing conducted by Meta in 2025 revealed that its AI chatbots had a 66.8% failure rate when it came to shielding children from “sexual exploitation,” according to documents introduced at a New Mexico trial on Monday. Similar failure rates were reported for cases involving “suicide and self harm” and “sex related crimes/violent crimes/hate.” New Mexico’s attorney general is suing Meta for failing to protect its underage users from online predators. (Axios)
Over the past few months, Meta has complied with administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security to provide the identities of users who are critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or have shared locations of its agents. Administrative subpoenas are not signed by a judge but are instead issued directly by DHS. (New York Times)
Warner reopens sale talks with Paramount
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced Tuesday that it was reviving negotiations with Paramount Skydance, giving the studio another chance to outbid Netflix. In a statement, WBD said it had turned down Paramount’s most recent $30-per-share offer but would give the company until Monday to submit its strongest and final bid.
Paramount is led by David Ellison, who acquired the conglomerate last year thanks to funding from his father, the centibillionaire Larry Ellison. The father-son duo, both of whom are friends with Donald Trump, are now looking to expand their media empire by buying up the Warner Bros. studio, HBO, CNN, and the rest of WBD’s brands.
While Trump has claimed not to be involved in Paramount’s fight to acquire WBD, David Ellison visited the White House earlier this month to privately meet with the president, according to CNN. The Ellisons, for their part, have continued to bend CBS to the Trump administration’s whims.
On Monday, Late Show host Stephen Colbert revealed that CBS had barred him from airing an interview with U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, a Texas Democrat. Lawyers from CBS had told the host that broadcasting the interview would violate the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time provision, Colbert said, despite a longstanding practice that exempted interviews of politicians on talk shows.
Colbert added that CBS had “generously” accepted a new interpretation of the equal-time provision from Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, which would include talk show interviews. “[CBS] told me, unilaterally, that I had to abide by the equal time rules, something I have never been asked to do for an interview in the 20 years of this job,” he said.
Amazon cancels Flock partnership amid corporate surveillance controversy
During the Super Bowl, Ring, the Amazon-owned home security company, aired a commercial that showed how a lost dog was returned to his family. It was all thanks to “Search Party,” an AI-powered feature that analyzes footage and biometric data gathered by Ring’s sprawling network of customer-owned doorbell cameras.
The commercial did not go over terribly well with the public, with many viewing it as a threat. “If they can track a pet, they can track a person, they can track a license plate, they can identify what you are bringing into the house, and they can even tell when you mow your lawn,” one Reddit user wrote. “The panopticon is watching you, and you brought it into your house.”
The backlash was so substantial that Ring announced last week it was ending its partnership with Flock Safety, a private surveillance company that supplies security cameras and automated license plate recognition technology to law enforcement agencies, businesses, and other customers. The company, however, is continuing to operate its Search Party surveillance product, which is on by default for Ring camera owners.
On Wednesday, 404 Media reported that Ring founder Jamie Siminoff wrote about expanding Search Party beyond just “finding dogs” in an October email to staff. “I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission,” he wrote. “You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods.”
This Week in Bezos:
In a LinkedIn post last week, former NBC News chairman Andy Lack said that Bezos had once pushed him “to stand up to” Donald Trump. “I think it was in 2018 at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in L.A. that Jeff Bezos confronted me with a simple question: ‘When are you guys going to stand up to Trump?’ I was at NBC at the time, and a bit startled – ‘What do you mean?’ I said. He was in my face. ‘Come on, you’re letting him off the hook!’ He was steely eyed – I pushed back. ‘I don’t think that’s quite right…’ Before I said anything more, he shook his head and moved on,” wrote Lack. Bezos, despite his previous opposition, has repeatedly maneuvered to ally himself with Trump over the past two years. (LinkedIn)
Amazon has overtaken Walmart to become the world’s biggest company by sales. It was able to dethrone the traditional retail giant in part through its significant advertising revenue and the growth of Amazon Web Services, the top cloud computing provider. (CNN)
Since Bezos’ conservative overhaul of The Washington Post’s editorial board last year, the paper has become a notable purveyor of climate change denial. The board recently praised Trump for neutering the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to police dangerous pollutants and published a separate op-ed from a climate change denier. Meanwhile, The Post’s climate reporting team was gutted this month amid the Bezos-mandated mass layoffs. (Climate Colored Glasses)
SpaceX eyes Pentagon contract for drone swarm technology
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and wholly owned subsidiary xAI are competing in a secretive new Pentagon contest to produce voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology, according to people familiar with the matter.
The entry of the two Musk companies — which he announced in early February would merge – into a new frontier of AI-enabled weapons development marks a new and potentially controversial departure for Musk. While SpaceX is a well-established defense contractor and Musk is enthusiastic about advancing AI, he is among those who have also previously argued against making “new tools for killing people.”
Musk’s companies are among only a handful that were selected to compete on the $100 million prize challenge launched in January, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive topics.
As part of the competition, the Pentagon is seeking to develop a technology that would enable a single operator to control a drone swarm via audible commands. The competition is an outgrowth of the Trump administration’s push to have tech firms more closely involved in defense work, including the development of lethal autonomous drones.
The news comes after Brigadier General Matt Ross stated last month that the U.S. military could place “low-collateral kinetic” interceptor drones at all of its domestic installations. (Kinetic interceptors are similar to traditional suicide drones in that they are designed for single-use and to explode on impact, but they are intended for defensive purposes.)
This Week in Musk:
xAI is still using more than a dozen unpermitted gas turbines to power its data centers in the Memphis area, according to new thermal camera footage captured by Floodlight, a climate nonprofit. The turbines emit smog-forming pollutants and formaldehyde, worsening the air quality in Tennessee and Mississippi communities that are already heavily polluted. The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center said Monday that they are preparing to sue xAI for violating federal law. (The Guardian)
Humain, an artificial intelligence company owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, said it has invested $3 billion into xAI. (Reuters)
On Tuesday, the European Union’s data privacy watchdog announced an investigation into Musk’s X over sexually explicit images of children generated by Grok, the platform’s integrated AI model. Likewise, the government of Spain said that it would ask prosecutors to probe whether X, Meta, and TikTok had allowed for the creation or sharing of AI-generated child sexual abuse material. X and xAI are already facing similar investigations in France and the United Kingdom, while Democratic members of the U.S. House sent a letter to Musk on Thursday demanding answers about Grok’s “creation of nonconsensual sexualized images.” (Reuters)
Despite the investigations targeting Grok in Europe, Tesla is integrating the xAI chatbot into cars across E.U. and the U.K. (CNBC)
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has decided against imposing a 30-day suspension of Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses after the company agreed to drop the misleading “Autopilot” term from its marketing materials in the state. (Reuters)
Tesla’s partially self-driving cab service in Austin, Texas, is causing car crashes at a rate four times that of human drivers. (Fortune)
Over the past week, Musk has repeatedly attacked Anthropic research scientist Amanda Askell for being childless. “Those without children lack a stake in the future,” Musk wrote on X in response to a Wall Street Journal profile about Askell and her work developing AI “morals” at Anthropic. In response to Musk, Askell wrote that she intends “to have kids, but I still feel like I have a strong personal stake in the future because I care a lot about people thriving, even if they’re not related to me.” (Business Insider)
Oligarch Roundup
OpenAI’s president said he gave millions to a Trump super PAC to benefit “humanity.” Last year, Greg Brockman, also a cofounder of OpenAI, gave $25 million to MAGA Inc. When asked about the donation by Wired, Brockman said, “This mission, in my mind, is bigger than companies, bigger than corporate structures. We are embarking on a journey to develop this technology that’s going to be the most impactful thing humanity has ever created. Getting that right and making that benefit everyone, that’s the most important thing.” (Wired)
Palantir moves its headquarters from Colorado to Miami. The company, which had faced frequent protests in its former home state, is the latest tech company to move to Florida. It marks the company’s second move since the pandemic, with Palantir having left California for Denver, Colorado, in 2020. (Bloomberg)
Musk company selected to build tunnels connecting Universal amusement parks. The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling and transit startup, has been chosen to construct several miles of underground tunnels linking Universal Orlando’s primary complex to its Epic Universe park, which is several miles away. (Orlando Sentinel)
Oligarch Posts
On X, Elon Musk has continued grumbling about purported anti-white discrimination, writing on Thursday that “there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against anyone White, straight or male… ENOUGH.”
After an X user called for someone “to evangelize Elon Musk,” the centibillionaire said Thursday that he already agrees “with the teachings of Jesus.”
They are all drug pushers but using digital addictions instead of pharmaceutical ones.
Why in the photo does Zuckerberg’s entourage include a guy identified as “Police DHS?”