New Mexico asked a state judge for up to $40 billion from Meta after a jury found more than 43 million violations of its Unfair Practices Act. That is seven to eight times Meta's 2019 FTC settlement, sought over public statements about privacy and hate speech.
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YouTube changed Shorts recommendations on Oct. 2 to show fewer clips re-uploaded from other creators without additions of their own. Podcasters and streamers who rent reach through clip accounts now have to pay for original commentary or real editing to keep it.
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New Mexico jurors found Facebook broke the state's Unfair Practices Act nearly 44 million times, at up to $5,000 per violation. A judge sets the penalty in the coming weeks from findings that Facebook's public statements about data sharing misled its users.
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Meta disabled President Lula's Facebook page and campaign ad account a week after an Eko Movement test got 87% of its disinformation ads approved. The Workers' Party says Meta gave no reason for a restriction imposed less than 11 days before Brazil's first round.
Publishers:panamericandispatch.org
Reality
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Qustodio says Australian teens were back online at pre-ban levels within months of the under-16 social media ban, largely via false ages and VPNs. Meta's teen limits, New York City's classroom AI ban and any workplace AI rule written for company devices face the same test.
Reality
- Evidence40
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Santa Fe jurors counted 31 misleading Meta statements on privacy and moderation as about 43 million violations of New Mexico law. Judge Francis Matthew sets the rate on Oct. 1, and at the $5,000 cap the state wants, one statement carries up to $10.5 billion.
Publishers:cbsnews.com · santafenewmexican.com Reality
- Evidence72
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Elttam says two packets and an offline crack of weak encryption let attackers run code on TACACS+ servers before login. Only the Shrubbery Networks build has a patch, leaving sites on the archived Facebook fork to migrate or limit who can reach port 49.
Reality
- Evidence40
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Meta will let games built in its two new AI tools, Horizon Create and Horizon Studio, play inside Facebook and Instagram feeds with no download. For a Horizon platform that has struggled to draw players, the feed slot matters more to creators than the prompt box.
Reality
- Evidence50
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Meta lost a second New Mexico consumer-protection jury trial this year, on findings the state's lawyer counts as 43.9 million violations worth up to $5,000 each. A judge sets the penalty next, and that same lawyer expects Meta's appeal to hold back any cash for four or five years.
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California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey say features built to extend teen sessions are the defect. A court has already dismissed Meta's Section 230 appeal in the case.
Perspective Coverage
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The 16MB download matters less than what it plugs into: Instagram and Facebook accounts, ad campaigns and Google Workspace, with Meta's training and ad-targeting policy attached.
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California's AG says the child-safety case is about civil penalties and restitution, not damages. The exposure sits between $200 billion and $1.4 trillion, plus an order to strip features.
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A federal jury in Oakland is hearing that Meta built addictive products for children. After a $6m bellwether loss, retention design now sits in the same risk register as privacy.
Reality
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Default 2-hour caps, a midnight-to-6am block and age assurance are now written down, with a contingent payment attached to Snap, TikTok and YouTube adopting the same defaults.
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The deal binds only Meta, yet it puts hard numbers on age signals, notification defaults and overnight lockouts, and Meta collects about $5.3 billion less if TikTok and YouTube decline to match them.
Reality
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A judge signed off on the payout, but the enforceable part is a list of product defaults only a parent can undo. Meta's rivals had the terms written for them.
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The cash amortises over a decade. The enforceable part is a short list of numbers with an independent auditor attached, agreed by 29 attorneys general without any finding of liability.
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Fifty-one attorneys general did not just extract a payment; they wrote a testable product specification and hired someone outside the company to check it. The open question is what the age checks may look at.
Perspective Coverage
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Elttam says a TACACS+ server flaw lets attackers run code before login with two packets and an offline crack of the protocol's weak encryption. Of the two main server codebases, Shrubbery Networks' has a fix that still has no CVE and Facebook's archived fork will get none, so the first job is finding out which daemon answers on port 49.
Reality
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The fixed $12.7 billion works out to roughly two days of Meta's revenue a year, while the contingent tranche, worth about nine days of sales, only gets paid if three competitors decline to restrict teens the way Meta now must.
Perspective Coverage
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Earlier coverage
- Ghost casino apps exploit Google Play's ratings-free Early Access channel
Security · September 10, 2026 · 2 publishers
- Meta discounts its Indian app add-ons four times harder than its AI bundles
Invest · September 16, 2026 · 4 publishers
- Meta One Core undercuts the three app plans inside it by $2.98 a month
Product · September 15, 2026 · 6 publishers
- Meta One's $7.99 bundle undercuts its own single-app plans by $2.98
Build · September 16, 2026 · 3 publishers
- Temu moves its Meta ad volume out of creator partnerships after a fake-account report
Invest · September 25, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Shell pages make up 3.64 million of Meta's 3.8 million Singapore scam takedowns
Security · September 24, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta's settlement with 52 states turns a two-hour daily cap into a teen product default
Product · September 22, 2026 · 1 publisher
- TAKE IT DOWN Act gives platforms 48 hours to remove a reported AI nude
Security · September 19, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Surfshark's agreeable bot personas evaded detection 62% of the time
Security · September 18, 2026 · 1 publisher
- A fake account swapped two letters in Brian Druker's name to sell ivermectin for cancer
Science · September 18, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Reading a JSON array as a string held every Facebook Page to three posts
Build · September 18, 2026 · 1 publisher
- The Oversight Board pulled a councillor's deepfake after Meta's systems skipped human review
Product · September 17, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta One's business tiers top out at $499 a month for the most Business Agent capacity
Product · September 17, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Fake support accounts are answering airline complaints under the brand's verified posts
Security · September 16, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta AI's suggested question assembled two children's names, birth dates and a deleted photo
Security · September 15, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Voss rests the case against license-level charging on three reversals and one buyout between 2017 and 2025
Build · September 15, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Schneier and Cohn trace 25 years of US mass surveillance back to the government's post-9/11 response
Security · September 15, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta prices heavier AI use across nine plans that top out at $499 a month
Invest · September 15, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Newsom's 13-bill package multiplies platform liability by the number of children harmed
Invest · September 14, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Splitting tasks by machine strength erodes the operator skill the next incident needs
Build · September 14, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta fixes the AI suggestion that asked a mother to identify her own child
Product · September 12, 2026 · 2 publishers
- Fitting Annex K to WhatsApp's returned JPEGs leaves a 37% mean residual
Build · September 12, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta fixes the prompt that turned relatives' posts into a profile of two children
Invest · September 11, 2026 · 1 publisher
- A forwarded link reports utm_source=facebook even when the click came from WhatsApp
Build · September 11, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta cleared 43 of 55 reported AI-CSAM ads in India as compliant with its Advertising Standards
Security · September 8, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta's $17.1 billion settlement caps how long minors scroll while leaving ad targeting intact
Science · September 11, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta recruits Community Notes writers in 16 Latin American countries before any note goes live
Product · September 11, 2026 · 1 publisher
- San Francisco demands Meta account for 350 paid ads that cleared its own review
Product · September 9, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta's reviewers cleared 43 of the 55 CSAM ads that TTP managed to report
Product · September 9, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Australia's draft duty of care bill turns the recommendation algorithm into a user setting
Science · September 9, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Canberra unveils draft law requiring algorithm opt-out via pop-up
Product · September 8, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta's settlement puts a two-hour daily clock on every under-18 account
Invest · September 6, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta's teen curfew narrows the window influencer contracts were priced against
Leadership · August 29, 2026 · 8 publishers
- UNICEF traces almost 60% of online child sexual abuse incidents to social media
Product · September 3, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Exporting American polarization findings hands other democracies the wrong levers
Science · September 2, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta agrees to age-check every Facebook and Instagram user in the 52 settling jurisdictions
Product · September 2, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta's $18bn settlement turns age estimation into an audited obligation
Product · September 1, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Meta has 12 months to make its age-guessing AI survive an outside audit
Invest · September 1, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Cloudflare tests compressing its cache at rest rather than buying more disk
Build · September 1, 2026 · 1 publisher
- Reuters found 39 more banking-malware ads still running on Meta after India's advisory
Product · September 1, 2026 · 1 publisher