Meta agrees $18bn social media settlement

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. No bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Join host Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioural scientist and author of the best-selling book How to Change, as she shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, and researchers. She tells authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we make the choices we do and how to make better ones to help avoid costly mistakes. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk, and in the early hours of Thursday the 27th of August, these are our main stories. Meta agrees to a multi-billion dollar settlement over claims brought by a number of US states that its social media platforms harm children. The world's most valuable company, NVIDIA, which creates microchips for AI, sees a boom in revenue. Plus. They started shooting indiscriminately. If you run into a room, they set the room on fire. If you come out and start running, they shoot you. How bandits are running rampage and terrorising residents in northwest Nigeria. Also in this podcast, rescue teams work through the night to locate survivors of the devastating flash floods that hit northern Nepal and Tibet, killing nearly 200 people. And we'll look back at the life of one of the leading figures in Palestinian art, Sliman Mansour. $18 billion. The amount Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to pay a group of US states that had accused it of harming children. The company's also agreed to bring in changes to better protect young people. Crucially, though, as part of this deal, the company has admitted no wrongdoing. And the deal also brings to an end early a high-profile trial in California, in which lawyers for the states were arguing that Meta knew millions of 11 and 12-year-olds used their sites, but did little to keep them off. Our North America correspondent, Lily Jamali, sent this report from the federal courthouse in Oakland, California. Multiple states had sued Meta, alleging it deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive, then misled the public about how problematic apps like Instagram and Facebook are for young users. The company had also been accused of improperly harvesting the data of young users without parental consent. California's Attorney General, Rob Bonta, described the settlement as a watershed moment. This is a significant victory for families across the country, for parents, for children. This is a major breakthrough, a milestone moment, a watershed moment. This is a major breakthrough, a milestone moment, a watershed moment, a watershed moment, a watershed moment. We believe the proposed settlement filed today addresses some of the concerns at the core of our lawsuit and that it will force transformative changes necessary to protect our children. And importantly, these changes will be made within months. As part of this settlement, the company is set to pay up to $17.1 billion. It's also agreeing to a framework for change, including two-hour daily limits for teens on their apps, as well as night mode and school mode with muted notifications during those times. Meta has not accepted any wrongdoing as part of this settlement. Matthew Bergman is a lawyer who represented a young woman who won a case against the company earlier this year. Their actions in agreeing to this monumental financial amount, but even more importantly, agreeing to make common sense changes to its design to make it safer for kids, speaks volumes in terms of their accountability and their acknowledgement of their role in contributing to the youth mental health crisis. But this settlement is a framework for the company's first step. The company wants to see competitors, including Google's YouTube and TikTok, agree to daily time limits as well. They don't want to be at a competitive disadvantage. Lily Jamali there. Now, this settlement comes after years of campaigning from parents around safety on social media platforms. Amy Neville is the co-founder of Social Media Victims Remembrance Day. This is historic. This is a really big moment. But let's not give Meta credit for these changes. They certainly did not volunteer to make any design changes. This is being done by the company. This is being forced upon them. That's been brought to court by 29 AGs. There's no apology with this. And this is the beginning of the fight. We're still in the early stages of this fight. This is definitely not the end of the fight for accountability. We lost our son, Alexander, in June of 2020 to fentanyl poisoning after being groomed by a drug dealer on Snapchat. Going back to this case, how are predators still not going to reach our kids? That part's not clear. You know, we're talking about the addictive design features that they're going to fix, supposedly, which will need to go through rigorous testing to really see if they amount to anything. But what's going to keep the predators away from our kids? Let's get the perspective of Arturo Bejar, a former Meta insider who turned whistleblower because he was concerned about the company's handling of child safety. During his time at the social media firm, he worked to combat cyberbullying. So what does he think of this settlement? It should not be interpreted as an all-clear sun by parents or public officials because while the settlement addresses a number of things, there's some safety concerns. There are significant problems which remain. It requires the other companies to join in. But then another part which is also critical is that it allows Meta to define harm. And behind my whistleblowing was this internal knowledge that Mark Zuckerberg knew that the harm that the company was reporting publicly was 100 to 400 times less than what the new people were experiencing, especially young people, suicide, all these kinds of things. And the agreement as it stands, does not make that better. It could. There's still things that can happen, but our kids will not be any safer. They'll just get less exposure to things. The features that Meta has touted as its safety commitment are mostly theater, which can be independently tested and verified. And so ultimately, the grade that Meta should be given should not be based on what they claim their efforts are, but by the measurement of the impact that they've had on the harm reduction, that young people are experiencing. And until that is happening, in any country that's thinking about this, our kids are not going to be any safer. And that's what really should matter in the way that this is approached. That was former Meta employee Arturo Bejar. Now, we should tell you, a Meta spokesperson says the company works hard to keep people safe on its platforms and has been transparent about the challenges of removing harmful content. Well, let's move on from the difficulties of one tech giant to the seemingly never-ending, good fortunes of another. The expansion of the world's already most valuable company, NVIDIA, is showing no signs of slowing down. The firm, which makes the chips for companies such as Amazon and Microsoft that are used to power AI data centers, has reported a better-than-forecast quarterly revenue, with CEO Jensen Huang saying the industry is running at full steam. Our business editor, Simon Jack, told me more. So they made $96 billion in the three months at the end of July, which is about double what they made in the same period a year ago. And importantly, what people were looking for was what they're going to make in the future. And they said in the next quarter, they're going to make $108 billion, give or take one or two percent. And at that point, when those numbers first came out, in after-hours trading, the shares dropped a little bit because even though these are wow-y numbers, they've got used to being totally incredible. But then when Jensen Huang started talking to people on the call, around these numbers, he started talking about 70% increase in revenue by 2028, at which point the shares started going up again. And this is important because I would say that not only is NVIDIA the most valuable company in the world, it's got a fair claim to being the most important company in the world because it sits like a kind of sun in the middle of a solar system with all these other companies revolving around it because it supplies chips to the earth. It's got a fair claim to being the most powerful company in the world. And of course, that is what is carrying the hopes and the fears of millions of people. Some people think it'll revolutionize the world. Some people think it'll ruin the world in terms of, you know, taking jobs. But people are worried about, at some point, does this bubble burst? And I think that what happened tonight is that a little bit of air was flown back into that bubble and say, actually, demand looks pretty strong, and so on we go. But that's why people are so focused on NVIDIA, because it's right at the center of this AI revolution. It's not just at the center, though, is it? It's because it makes the chips that power everything. It's also right at the start of the supply chain. So people often use it as almost a bellwether to see where they think the AI is going. Where the AI industry is going. And based on this, it just seems grow, grow, grow. That's right. I mean, demand seems to be incredibly strong. They supply chips to all the sort of hyperscalers. That's the name they give to people like Google, parent Alphabet, Amazon, Meta. etc um and on these numbers it looks like things are going pretty well now what people worry about i guess is that not only is nvidia the biggest supplier of chips to these companies it's also become because it's riches and it's incredible earning power it's become almost like a private bank to some of these companies and so it's done quite a lot of like buying stakes or lending billions of dollars to its own customers which has made people get a bit nervous because they think about circular financing if you're actually giving your customers the money to buy the stuff from you given that people think they're going to be winners and losers in the air race if they all own stakes in each other do the losers bring down the winners but on these numbers i think those fears for now have been brushed aside so our business editor simon jack nipul is still yet to learn the scale of a devastating financial crisis flash flood and mudslide it hit the north of the himalayan country near the border with tibet around 9 a.m local time on wednesday morning the death toll has already reached nearly 200 among those missing more than 600 are tourists the chinese authorities in tibet say three people have been killed and more than 250 are missing the footage we've seen is dramatic to say the least huge brown waves of water boulders and mud surging across the landscape smashing through villages and leaving destruction in their wake when people living along the riverbanks heard the roaring sound approach they would have had very little chance to flee at the jirong border crossing between nepal and tibet in an area popular with trekkers and pilgrims long range cctv footage shows people running for their lives before a wall of water slams into the huge building other footage posted online shows the desperate fear of those in sudden mortal danger azadeh has this report in nepal families scramble up the mountainous terrain one man filming i'm scared highways hydropower stations bridges destroyed a school bus in trishuli survivors children can do nothing but look on oh oh i saw around nine trucks being swept away by the floods including people it's a heartbreaking incident i've been teaching here for 18 years and i've never seen anything like this here before my family members were swept away by the flood in front of my eyes my father my mother sister and her kids are all swept away they could not escape the flood there was no chance at all the disaster hit a remote region making rescue operations extremely difficult here rescuers reach a villager whose home has barely escaped the torrents of mud rope and a human chain pull others to safety more than a dozen helicopters have been deployed one of them a lifeline for this man areas downstream are on high alert with rescue teams working through the night the true scale of this disaster is yet to emerge azadeh mashiri there now it was initially thought that an earthquake caused the flooding but it's now believed it was triggered by a huge chunk of collapsing glacier ice that crashed into a river our correspondent in beijing laura bicker gave me an update on the situation in tibet just before we started recording this podcast what we've heard is that 558 people are now missing on the tibetan side according to chinese authorities they're saying that three people have been confirmed to have died and two people have been rescued out of those missing 260 are said to be foreigners now i think one of the things you have to explain to your listeners is this is one of the most controlled areas in china to travel there you need a number of different permits it's one of the reasons why we can't go there ourselves and all the information we're getting is through chinese state media president xi jinping himself issued instructions yesterday for all out efforts to go ahead to try to ensure that anyone alive is rescued we heard from the people's liberation army and the air force they did manage to get an aircraft in the air to try to survey the area but it does seem that even getting near the affected region is extremely difficult at this time not only are they dealing with high altitude but they're dealing with the aftermath of this disaster which seems to have blocked all roads and still communities and communities of color are affected by this disaster are blocked that's the situation in the tibetan side as we understand it and how is this being reported in in china is the sense of great tragedy being being felt across the country yes i think obviously chinese state media are reporting it with gravity but everything is very carefully controlled so each message is coming to us in a carefully controlled manner they're trying not to start any kind of panic what we're hearing from experts on the chinese side is they are saying that they believe that after days and days of very heavy rain after high temperatures in the area it does seem that experts here believe that a glacier may have been to blame now you said just a little while ago there that at first this seemed like a seismic event i mean i got the earthquake alert myself saying that there had been a seismic event at the border region now it seems that the landslide itself caused so much of a tremor shook the earth so much that it did appear like an earthquake so that gives you an idea of the force of the water the force of the landslide that forced its way through the valley laura bicker in beijing on tuesday john ratcliffe the head of the cia traveled to moscow on a military plane given he runs the us's spy agency it's perhaps fitting we still don't know why he went exactly who he met or what they discussed but a day on our russia editor steve rosenberg takes a look at what we do know it's a moscow mystery that has the world's scratching its head and wondering where russia and the west are heading unannounced unexpected there's been a high level foreign visitor he kept well away from the cameras but the military plane he flew on was spotted arriving in moscow and then leaving a few hours later on board was john ratcliffe the head of america's central intelligence agency what was he doing in russia who had he come to see not president putin kremlin spokesman dmitry peskov says the cia chief had been meeting russian intelligence officials and what did they talk about i ask iran or ukraine and amid fears that moscow may try to test nato's resolve i also ask did he deliver a warning to russia mr peskov's reply i have nothing to add there are times when you just have to pull up your hands and say look we do not know not yet what is going on here because of the lack of information and because of the cloak of secrecy around what is happening and that applies to this surprise visit by the head of u.s intelligence later in an interview president trump gave few details of john ratcliffe's talks but hinted that the focus had been on ukraine so william burns was the last cia director to travel to moscow nearly five years ago he'd warned moscow not to launch a full-scale invasion of ukraine russia went ahead anyway now u.s and russian intelligence are talking again so what will be the upshot of these conversations peace or further confrontation steve rosenberg reporting from moscow still to come in this podcast there's certain occupations that have extreme exposures cumulatively to this type of radiation and pilots and flight attendants are two of those occupations a landmark ruling in france as a court recognizes cosmic radiation as a factor in the breast cancer of a former flight attendant investing with schwab is like spending a saturday at a great farmer's market you can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything maybe you go for some free range self-directed investing or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse you can even get help from a dedicated advisor that's full service wealth management mix match and change your mind whenever you want because at schwab you can invest your way no matter your goals or appetite for investing schwab has everything you need all in one place visit schwab.com to learn more get more with bbc podcasts wherever you listen be the first to listen to your favorite shows like evil genius good bad billionaire and you're dead to me with a subscription to bbc podcasts premium on apple podcasts you can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad free with an amazon music subscription this is the global news podcast on to a bandit crisis that's bringing terror to huge swathes of northwest nigeria with armed gangs on motorbikes raiding towns and carrying out mass abductions analysis by the bbc world service of attacks recorded by the Akhled Monitoring Group show the problem is getting worse. Incidents between January and June were up 78% on the same time last year. The World Service's Yemesi Adagoke sent this report from Gusao in Zamfara, one of the areas at the heart of the crisis. Shots ring out as gunmen on motorbikes ride into a village in northwest Nigeria. This is the sound of Nigeria's bandit crisis. It's seen hundreds of thousands flee their homes, people kidnapped and murdered, and parents too scared to send their children to school. The military is still struggling to contain the crisis, which is now threatening to spread from the country's northwest to other areas. Zamfara is one of the states worst affected by the bandit crisis. With no evidence, no evidence. At the airport, the only way to get in is by road. Being escorted by the military because there have been some attacks in the surrounding villages. A lot of security personnel have been killed in this area. It's a sense that you just kind of want to make it past this zone. In the state capital, Gusao, we meet some of the 800,000 people across the northwest who fled their homes. Some of them are escaping bandit violence. Fatima breaks down as she recalls how her village was attacked. Her husband was killed, along with six of his brothers. They opened fire without a care in the world. What's left of Fatima's family now lives in a makeshift camp on the edge of the city. While they now have some protection, she says they find it difficult to even pay for food. Sat on a motorbike by the side of the street with an assault rifle in his lap, we meet one of the men authorities are turning to to help combat the bandit problem. With the security forces struggling to cope, fighters are being hired from local communities to help support the army and police. Let them understand that when they attack a place, they can kill, but they can also be killed. When we get told that the bandits are out, we try to get to where they are going before they arrive. And with God's help, we are successful in chasing them away. But there are concerns that arming more people could lead to a spiral of violence that authorities can't contain. This is Malik Samuel from Good Governance Africa. At the end of the crisis, how are you able to disarm them, right? But if you look at the issues in the Northwest, many of these communities don't have protection. So what are they supposed to do? Authorities say they're taking the fight to the bandits. 28,000 new soldiers are being recruited. And President Bolotinibu announced a record $4 billion for defense and security in the latest budget. To bandits, kidnappers and sponsors of terror, surrender or face the full force of the Nigerian state. But in the Northwest, the number of bandit attacks is continuing to rise. The return to normality that Fatima and her family in Zamfara desperately crave seems a distant possibility. We had peace. We had money. Now everything has changed. We have become beggars. Fatima ending that report by Yemisai Adai-Geke. Mexico can be a dangerous place to be a journalist. And now dozens of Mexican media outlets are calling on the country's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to do something about it. The press, reporters without borders, or RSF, is backing the call as well. It says at least 17 reporters have been killed since President Sheinbaum took office nearly two years ago, despite her pledge to strengthen protections for the media. Ella Bicknell reports. According to reporters without borders, seven of 22 journalists killed worldwide so far in 2026 hail from Mexico. That's prompted more than 40 local media outlets to endorse the NGO's statement, urging President Sheinbaum to take action. It says many of the attacks go uninvestigated and unpunished, calling for better coordination across all levels of government to find those responsible for the deaths. This was a recent information campaign video by the RSF. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard flight RA150 to Mexico City, Mexico. Should you report on organised crime, please remember to reach for the bulletproof vest located within your reach. When covering subjects linked to corruption, please take your belongings and, return to where you came from as quickly as possible. The most recently documented murder was that of Francisco Alejandro Liva Aguila, a political columnist from the state of Oaxaca. In July, he wrote a column criticising the local governor and several members of his administration. The next day, he was shot dead at a food store whilst buying breakfast. A year earlier, he had told the local authorities that he'd been receiving regular death threats. As well as general pressure to provide more press protections, he was accused of murdering his own friends and family. Last week, President Scheinbaum's administration received condemnation for publishing the names of individuals and media outlets that had criticised the government. Ms Scheinbaum had denied that she was intimidating journalists. She said there had been incidents of fake news and said the names would not be circulated again. But journalist groups say the killings, attacks and threats continue to create an atmosphere of silence, threatening the right of millions of people to be informed. Ella Bicknell reporting. For the first time in France, a flight attendant has succeeded in having her breast cancer recognised as an occupational disease. A court found that 59-year-old Sophie Lenon, who worked for Air France for decades, had frequently worked night shifts, been exposed to cosmic radiation and to cigarette smoke until the airline banned smoking in 2000. A study this month at the Harvard Medical School in the US found that out of hundreds of professions, flight crews and pilots had the highest level of radiation-related cancer deaths. Dr Vishal Patel led the study. There are certain occupations that have extreme exposures cumulatively to this type of radiation, and pilots and flight attendants are two of those occupations. So we looked at about 13 million deaths occurring across about 500 different occupations in the United States. And flight attendants and pilots came top and second for the share of deaths, from radiation-associated cancers. Our correspondent in Paris, Hugh Schofield, told us about the magnitude of this ruling. It is the first time that breast cancer has been officially recognised in France as an occupational illness of flight crews. The connection spelled out in the court is threefold. First, when this lady started, there was still smoking on planes. The other thing is night time working. There's evidence that suggests that night time working disrupts women's body clock, and so on, which can be an aggravating factor in breast cancer. But the third thing is cosmic radiation. Cosmic rays, the same sort of things that cause the northern lights, for example, which are of particular danger to flight crews. Why? Because they're flying at very high altitudes, and also because a lot of long-haul flights are going over the poles, particularly the north pole for Air France, which is where these charged particles from cosmic radiation concentrate. The rest of the world is protected. By the Earth's magnetic shield, but not at the poles. So this scientific detail is what's been adduced in this case. So doctors have examined her extensively, obviously, and there's no genetic particular risk in her family. There was no lifestyle risk attached to the way she was living, and so on. So the court has decided that, therefore, there is enough evidence to suggest that it was occupationally linked. And it is, of course, a big victory for her. But more to the point, in a way, is how this might then open the gates for more similar claims. And there is growing evidence from medical studies that show that there is a higher level of risk of breast cancer attaching to flight crews than there is to the general population. Hugh Schofield in Paris, though. A funeral for one of the leading figures in Palestinian art, Sleeman Mansour, has taken place near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The painter, sculptor and cartoonist died earlier, this week, at the age of 79. For more than half a century, his work helped capture and define the Palestinian experience. Carla Conti told me more about him. He was born in the village of Brzett in British Mandate Palestine in 1947, a year before the state of Israel was established, and a year before the first Arab-Israeli war took place, during which more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in what is known as the Nakba, meaning the catastrophe, or disaster in Arabic. And Mansour spent most of his career documenting the life of Palestinian people using olive groves and citrus trees and traditional embroidered dresses and other vibrant imagery to bring his paintings to life. But above all, people will remember his art as a symbol of Palestinian resistance under the Israeli military occupation. And one of the most enduring and from 1973 called The Camel of Hardship. which depicts an elderly Palestinian man carrying the city of Jerusalem on his back, the weight of it heavy on his body, which looks weary but perseveres ahead despite the burden. And during the first Antifada, or uprising, which began in 1987, Mansour helped found the New Vision Collective with fellow artists, turning to mud, straw, wood and other natural elements. After Palestinian artists boycotted, Israeli made supplies. And this sparked a change in his career, a shift to a darker art, if you will, which is something he discussed in 2018 while speaking to the BBC's Stephen Sacker. A big difference between these figures and the figures of the heroic people that I used to do in the 70s and 80s. It depends on the situation, you know, the political situation. I hope it will change another time. Because I love to make heroic paintings. To reach again that feeling of being hopeful and optimistic. And an example of this shift that he just spoke about can be found in his 1996 piece titled The Shrinking Object, which features a map of Palestine built completely out of mud. And as the mud begins to dry out over time, it naturally begins to crack and break apart. Much like the Palestinian territories at the time. It's quite an incredible career. And I guess that that was reflected in the crowds at the funeral. Yes, the turnout was massive. And it was crowds of mourners followed the hearse from his hometown in Berzette to a packed Anglican church, which was led by uniformed scouts playing bagpipes. And friends say they'll remember Mansour as a humble, soft spoken man who loved to share his work, who had a talent for. Turning complex stories into simple but effective artwork. And in a symbolic tribute, his coffin was draped in olive branches in a nod to the landscapes that defined his work. Carla Conti there. That's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at [email protected]. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. We have a sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth. And beyond the headlines on One Big Story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Masood Ibrahim and the producer was Emma Joseph. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm Will Chalk. Until next time, goodbye.