A Landmark Verdict on the Danger of Social Media, and Trump’s Call to Punish ‘Rogue Judges’

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A jury found that Meta, the parent company of Instagram, and YouTube were essentially liable for the mental health distress caused to a plaintiff because of the design of their apps. The case was brought by a young woman who said that she started using social media almost constantly around age six, and that it led to anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self-harm. She testified that features like infinite scroll and constant new recommendations from algorithms kept her hooked, saying, quote, I just felt like I wanted to be on it all the time. If I wasn't on it, I was gonna miss out on something. The jury agreed, and Ryan says, while the damages she was ultimately awarded of $6 million are obviously just a drop in the bucket for the trillion dollar companies involved. The moment is bigger than that. This is just one of thousands of lawsuits filed by teenagers, school districts, and states against social media platforms, and it could pave the way for more, potentially exposing the internet giants to bigger financial penalties, and even forcing them to change their products. The verdict has essentially validated a novel legal theory that social media can be addictive, and as harmful as products like cigarettes. That's led to this being called social media's big tobacco moment, a callback to when companies like Philip Morris were accused of hiding information about the harms of smoking. Those companies ultimately reached a $200 plus billion settlement. After that, many tobacco regulations went into place, and smoking declined. In Iran, the Israeli military is in an all-out race to strike as many targets as it possibly can as part of a 48-hour blitz ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to senior Israeli officials, Netanyahu ordered the strikes after the Israeli government got a copy of President Trump's draft proposal to end the war. The idea of the US potentially moving to wrap up the conflict alarmed Netanyahu and other top advisors who feel they haven't fully accomplished their goals yet. That includes making sure Iran can't build a nuclear weapon and stopping it from being able to fire ballistic missiles. Some Israeli security officials told the Times the country still has an extensive list of sites it could go after in Iran. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill yesterday, Pentagon officials gave classified briefings to members of Congress. But according to people familiar with the sessions, the officials declined to answer many questions about the war, including about its objectives, its costs, and whether ground troops will be deployed. And while Republicans have largely backed the president's campaign in Iran, several GOP lawmakers came out of those meetings criticizing the lack of information. Representative Mike Rogers, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee said, quote, we want to know more about what's going on. We're just not getting enough answers. Another Republican, Representative Nancy Mace, said there's been a deeply troubling gap between how the administration has justified the war to the American public and what officials are saying behind closed doors. A few other quick updates now on the Trump administration, from airport chaos to dramatic new numbers from the Census Bureau. First, the Times has confirmed that at several airports across the country, ICE agents are now checking travelers' IDs and performing other screening duties. The Trump administration deployed about 150 agents earlier this week, but until this point, they'd largely been doing things like guarding exits. It's not clear if their deployment has had any effect on wait times for passengers, which have shot up to hours in some places, as 50,000 TSA officers go unpaid because of congressional deadlock over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Some are sleeping in their cars, selling their blood in plasma and taking on second jobs to make ends meet. Speaking to lawmakers yesterday, the top TSA official warned that if funding isn't restored, wait times could get even longer and some small airports could be forced to close. Also, their criminals, what they do to our country, the decisions that they hand down and hurt our country. President Trump took his attacks on judges to a new level yesterday, calling on Republicans in Congress to put together a crime bill that, quote, cracks down on what he claims are rogue members of the judicial branch. Trump, along with Vice President J.D. Vance and top White House aides, have been escalating their rhetoric against judges, in particular, since the Supreme Court struck down the president's sweeping tariffs earlier this year. After that ruling, Trump labeled the justices who ruled against him fools and lap dogs, who'd been corrupted by slime balls. In response to questions from the times, the White House didn't provide any specifics about what would be in the bill that Trump is pushing or what a crackdown on judges would look like in practice. And last update, new data released by the Census Bureau this morning shows how Trump's immigration policies are helping reshape the demographics of the U.S. In 75% of all counties last year, overall population growth slowed or turned negative. Large urban areas and counties along the border saw the biggest drop-offs in population as immigration rates dipped across the entire country while the population did go up by 1.8 million people. The U.S. had one of the slowest growth rates in history because of a combination of low birth rates and fewer people entering the country. And finally, the man who helped supercharge the online porn industry, building the site only fans into a global juggernaut has died at 43. Leonid Rudvinsky bought a stake in the site a little less than a decade ago. At that point, it was making about $2 million a year, connecting adult content creators with subscribers. By last year, thanks to some of his innovations, only fans was earning an estimated $7 billion a year. He helped grow the site by encouraging creators to post content on social media to boost their visibility, essentially combining porn with influencer culture. And he invited celebrities to open accounts. The pop singer, Lily Allen, said at one point, she was making more money selling photos of her feet on the site than from her music. Rudvinsky was a very private person. Only a few photos of him appear to exist and details about his life are thin. He was born in Odessa, Ukraine, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union. And he emigrated with his family to Illinois when he was about six. By high school, he'd already started a business that sold adult oriented domain names. He was so young that his mom signed the incorporation documents. Over the years, interestingly, only fans has actually had kind of a complicated relationship with the very thing that it's known for, explicit content. It has at some points banned that, though obviously that didn't stick. Still, the site insists it offers a wide range of content, including cooking and dirt bike racing. Rudvinsky, who died of cancer, had been looking to sell only fans over the last year, which has been valued at about $8 billion. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, more about the chaos that America's airports and what Congress might do about it. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday news quiz.