Meta has agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle lawsuits filed by dozens of U.S. states accusing it of designing Facebook and Instagram to foster addiction among minors.Some time ago, it caught attention to know that some executives of large technology companies strictly limited their children's access to social networks. Perhaps no one knew better than them the power those algorithms had to retain attention.The 17,000 million accepted represent the implicit recognition that something went wrong. What we can no longer recover is the lost time or the consequences that all this business may have left on an entire generation of young people and adolescents.If a company pollutes a river, the money from the fine can be used to clean it up. If an accident is compensated, the victims can be compensated. But how is adolescence repaired? How is the deterioration of self-esteem, the permanent comparison with unreal lives, the lost hours of family coexistence, or the anxiety problems that many psychologists associate with the intensive use of social networks compensated?I'm clear: there are damages that can no longer be repaired.And this is the most important thing. The problem is not just Meta. The problem is that the legislator and the judiciary continue to arrive late when it comes to technology. It happened with the internet. It has happened with social networks. And it will happen again with artificial intelligence.It is not about stopping innovation. The Internet and social networks have brought extraordinary things. AI will also bring them. The issue is something else. If we know that a technology can modify behaviors, generate dependence, or affect delicate processes such as learning, mental health, or the development of minors, does it make sense to wait ten years to start regulating it?Bill Gates has just written on his personal blog that governments must pace the advancement of AI with the capacity of economies to absorb the labor and professional retraining that it will entail.Technology will continue to advance much faster than laws. And needless to say, also much faster than social and economic policies. Precisely for this reason, the big debate should no longer focus on what sanctions we impose when damage has already been done. It should focus on what limits we want to establish before damages appear that no compensation can repair.It is something that I find incomprehensible. How is it possible that we take so long to adopt measures and establish limitations to protect health, employment, and job stability?And this is said by a liberal.

Meta accepting to limit Instagram and Facebook use to two hours daily for minors under 18 in the United States is important news. The agreement with different North American states also includes nighttime restrictions, fewer notifications during school hours, and more age controls. It's a victory that limits are starting to be put in place, but we need to go further.

Last week, a trial began in Oakland that could mark a before and after for the technology industry. In just four days, Meta has agreed to introduce substantial changes to Instagram and Facebook and pay 17 billion. The agreement avoids a sentence, but above all, it avoids weeks of testimonies, internal documents, and headlines that would have allowed the company's business decisions to be publicly reconstructed. Accepting the agreement on the fourth day can therefore be read as an extraordinary concession, but also as a reputational risk mitigation strategy. Meta pays, redesigns part of the product, and raises a firewall before the trial reaches Zuckerberg. The markets seem to have interpreted it this way: the stock price rose by 1.3% after the agreement became known.

Meta avoids a historic trial and dodges the risk of reliving the 90s setback against tobacco companies. Mark Zuckerberg has agreed with 47 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories to pay approximately 17 billion dollars – about 14.3 billion euros – in exchange for dropping the case accusing the technology company of designing addictive social networks for minors and deceiving consumers about the safety of its products.

The historic trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for the pernicious effects of its social networks on children and adolescents, forces the debate on young people's access to social networks to be reopened. The Spanish state is already studying a regulation to oblige digital platforms to establish effective controls to ban minors under 16 years of age; a proposal that the Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, hopes will be approved after the holidays, according to statements made in a recent interview with the Europa Press agency. Spain would join a movement led by Australia, which banned access to networks for minors under 15 years of age in December. France also aspired to join the trend; although its law, which was to come into effect on September 1, was overturned by the Constitutional Council, alleging that the prohibition "did not provide the necessary legal safeguards to guarantee the right to respect for private life." The body also observed a clear conflict with the freedom of expression of the affected users.

Food is not usually good or bad in itself. It all depends on how it is used (or abused). The same applies to social networks, from Instagram to X. On the other hand, there are activities that are not permitted for minors, such as the sale of alcohol or tobacco. So, why shouldn't there be any kind of limitation on minors' access to social networks, which, in addition to positive contributions, also have negative ones, especially for users who have not yet reached adulthood and are still developing?

The consequences of the social media business model may be catching up with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The giant led by Mark Zuckerberg faces the first session of a trial this Tuesday that could place limits on what part of the US administration considers digital excesses. 29 US states, led by Colorado, California, New Jersey, and Kentucky, accuse the multinational of having introduced features and dynamics on its main platforms that generate addiction among children and adolescents.

If the Passbook standard exists for show tickets and transport tickets, why do I so often have to install the concert promoter's app or the airline's app on my mobile to have the QR code that will allow me to enter a show or a flight? Why can't I load it directly into the wallet app (wallet) from my phone? And if any audio file uploaded on a website is accessible with a podcast player, why would someone force me to listen to them on Spotify? In the first case, the answer is that by making me install the app, it will be able to capture personal data from my phone and, moreover, try to sell me tickets for other shows. In the second, it's because the platform provides the creator with listening statistics that they wouldn't have if I downloaded the audio and listened to it in local mode. What both cases share is that they serve as examples of the hijacking of open internet technology by companies with commercial objectives, a hijacking that some of us have been denouncing for decades and which even has a name: "modification.

The European Commission has announced that it is giving Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, five working days to open access to competing companies in the sector and allow other artificial intelligence (AI) assistants to provide services on this messaging application. In this way, the Community executive says in a statement released this Tuesday that it will prevent the US technology company from committing "irreparable harm" to competition in a rapidly expanding sector. "There is a risk of harming competition at a key moment for the development of this market, where smaller players and new competitors can challenge large established companies," the Community executive points out.

New crusade by European consumers against tech giants. This Thursday, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC, for its English acronym), together with 29 associations from the 27 member states of the European Union, has denounced Meta (the parent company of Facebook, TikTok and Google) to the European Commission and national authorities. The reason is having allowed the proliferation of fraudulent financial advertisements on its platforms and having ignored calls to remove them, contravening the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA, for its English acronym). contravening the Digital Services Act (DSA, for its English acronym) of the Union.

The European Commission has opened an investigation into Meta this Wednesday for violating the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA) and not preventing minors under 13 from using Facebook and Instagram. The Commission has pointed out that the measures the technology company is implementing on these platforms to assess the age of its users "do not seem efficient".

New offensive by the European Commission against the Meta group. Brussels announced this Wednesday that it has indications that the social networks Instagram and Facebook "fail" to ensure that minors under thirteen years of age can access them. Thus, the community executive considers that the American technology company may be violating the Digital Services Act of the European Union.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will carry out a new round of layoffs affecting approximately 10% of its workforce, which is about 8,000 employees. The measure will be applied on May 20, according to an internal memorandum leaked by Bloomberg this Thursday. In the communication addressed to employees, the company's chief people officer, Janelle Gale, confirms that the decision will also involve the closure of about 6,000 unfilled vacancies.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will carry out a new round of layoffs affecting approximately 10% of its workforce, which is about 8,000 employees. The measure will be applied on May 20, according to an internal memorandum leaked by Bloomberg this Thursday. In the communication addressed to employees, the company's chief people officer, Janelle Gale, confirms that the decision will also involve the closure of about 6,000 unfilled vacancies.

A landmark double legal precedent has been set against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. A jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA), has ordered the tech giant to pay $375 million in damages, finding that the company prioritized profits over safety and concealed what it knew about the potential harmful effects of its apps. According to the state attorney general, who initiated the proceedings, After seven weeks of hearings and just one day of deliberation, the jury found that Meta violated state consumer protection laws by failing to disclose the potential harms of its apps. Specifically, they pointed to risks of child sexual exploitation and consequences for the psychological development of young children. New Mexico law allows a maximum of $5,000 for violations of this type, so the total is based on the 37,500 violations the jury determined, taking into account the number of minors who could have suffered these consequences. Beyond the amount—relatively small for a corporation that generated $200 billion in revenue last year—this is the first time a state has won against a major technology company for harm to minors. And it opens the door to similar lawsuits across the United States.The verdict comes as Meta faces two other major legal proceedings. The first is in California, where the alleged permissiveness of Meta's platforms in blocking minors from accessing the platform has been judged. For now, the jury has concluded that the big tech He is guilty, but the sentence and any potential compensation have not yet been made public. The case stems from a complaint filed by a 20-year-old woman who suffered from an addiction to the group's social media platforms, which began when she was six years old. The young woman received her first mobile phone at age nine, which has also sparked debate about parental responsibility. According to records, she spent up to sixteen hours a day on the apps. The plaintiff also accused Google, owner of YouTube, which attempted to argue that its video-on-demand service could not be considered a social network.

Organizations advocating for child safety online are celebrating a significant victory. After years of controversy, Meta has agreed to prevent communications between Instagram users from being encrypted. The change was introduced discreetly, with an unpublicized update, and will begin to be implemented in May. The modification of this clause will allow the company that manages one of the most followed social networks by young people to view the content of messages sent by users if required by judicial authorities.

Mark Zuckerberg has put an end to the virtual reality version of Horizon Worlds, the platform that was supposed to be the gateway to his metaverse. He announced it last Tuesday on Meta's official forums and in emails to users. It's no surprise: it's the formal liquidation of a project that had been agonizing for years and never surpassed 300,000 monthly active users; a ridiculous figure for a company that hosts 3 billion humans on its platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg has put an end to the virtual reality version of Horizon Worlds, the platform that was supposed to be the gateway to his metaverse. He announced it last Tuesday on Meta's official forums and in emails to users. It's no surprise: it's the formal liquidation of a project that had been agonizing for years and never surpassed 300,000 monthly active users; a ridiculous figure for a company that hosts 3 billion humans on its platforms.

Last Tuesday, the Council of Ministers decided enough was enough: after months of watching how the artificial intelligence tools of big tech companies became automatic generators of child pornography, the Spanish government has ordered the State Attorney General's Office to investigate X, Meta, and TikTok for possible crimes of sexual abuse of minors. Let no one say they weren't warned: when users of Grok, Elon Musk's AI, created 3 million sexualized images in 11 days – 23,000 of which showed minors – perhaps someone in Silicon Valley could have suspected that things weren't going well.

Pedro Sánchez is not backing down and is taking another step in the crusade against Big Tech. The Spanish government on Tuesday asked the Public Prosecutor's Office to investigate X, Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram), and TikTok for the sexual violence crimes they may be committing in the creation and distribution of child pornography using their artificial intelligence (AI) tools. "These platforms are threatening the mental health, dignity, and rights of our sons and daughters. The State cannot allow this. The impunity of these giants must end," Sánchez himself stated early in the morning in a message published on X.