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Wait, just how addicted to Facebook and YouTube are Americans today?

While a jury found both Meta and Alphabet have designed addictive apps, usage among US adults has dropped off.

3/26/26 1:04PM

In what some are posing as the possible beginning of a “Big Tobacco” moment for Big Tech, a Los Angeles jury yesterday found social media titans Meta and YouTube liable for designing addictive products.

On Wednesday, jurors in a first-of-its-kind trial ruled that both companies deliberately engineered social media platforms with addictive features — like infinitely scrollable feeds, video autoplay, and algorithmic recommendations — and failed to provide adequate warnings about their potential dangers, thus posing harm to young people using the apps.

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The case’s 20-year-old plaintiff was awarded $6 million in damages, with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, ordered to pay 70% of the total, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, to fork out the rest. The ruling also came just one day after Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in New Mexico for its social media conduct, with Mark Zuckerberg’s company slumping as much as 7% today.

While the penalties are peanuts compared to the companies’ multibillion-dollar revenues, they could mark the start of a wave of litigation that trickles down to tighter regulations — and ultimately dents user engagement, the lifeblood of ad-powered, attention-based social media apps. Data from Pew Research Center, however, suggests a portion of US adults might already be using Facebook and YouTube less frequently.

YouTube and Facebook usage chart — Sherwood News

Looking at Pew’s social media survey results over the last few years, the share of Americans who report using the apps at the heart of the case every day has shrunk, with daily Facebook users down from 71% in 2021 to just 52% in 2025.

Even with roughly half of respondents saying they logged on to both Facebook and YouTube daily, the recent slump perhaps indicates that peak engagement for older Americans may have already passed — though the share of adults that say they ever use each platform remains strong.

Still, as signified by yesterday’s trial, “addictive” social media features are considered to have a greater impact on younger people, with the same survey finding that a whopping 95% of 18- to 29-year-olds reported ever using YouTube.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5