Meta agrees $18bn social media settlement

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Russian is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, but it's also the language of their enemy, and its public use is now heavily curtailed. Does that prevent the spread of Russian influence or is it to deny of the very liberty Ukraine's fighting for? Join me Tim Huell to hear from both sides in the language battle. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

1:02I'm Will Chorkin in the early hours of Thursday, the 27th of August. These are our main stories. Metta agrees to a multi-billion dollar settlement over claims brought by a number of US states that it's social media platforms harm children. The world's most valuable company Unvidia, which creates microchips for AI, sees a boom in revenue. Plus, this set a shooting indiscriminately. If you run into a rum, they said the rum on fire. If you come out and start running, they shoot you. How bandits are running rampage and terrorising residents in North West 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, Sleeman Mansor.

2:03$18 billion dollars. The amount Metta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to pay a group of US states that had accused it of harming children. The companies 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 Metta 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 Metta, 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.

3:06This is a major breakthrough, a milestone 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. Metta 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

4:06in contributing to the youth mental health crisis. But this settlement is a 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 Metta credit for these changes. They certainly did not volunteer to make any design changes. 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 Finsanel Poisoning after being groomed by drug dealer on Snapchat. But 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

5:06that they're going to fix supposedly, which we'll 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 Beihar, a former metter insider who turned whistle blower 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 son by parents or public officials, because while the settlement addresses a number of things, there's some significant problems which remain. It requires the other companies to join in. But then another part, which is also critical, is that it allows metadata to define harm. And behind my whistle blowing 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. So aside all these kinds of things, and the agreement as it stands does not make that better.

6:11It 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 the 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 Beihar. 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

7:12most valuable company and video 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 Wang 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, 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 wowy numbers, they've got used to being totally incredible. But then when Jensen Wang started talking to people on the call around these numbers, he started talking about 70% increase in revenue by 2028. So which point the shares started going

8:17up 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 AI revolution. You know, and it is the dominant player in that business. And of course, that is what is carrying the hopes and the fears of millions of people, something to think 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 that's pretty strong. And so on we go. But that's why people are so focused on Nvidia because it's right in 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

9:20supply chains. Are people often use it as almost a bellweather to see where they think the 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's parent alphabet, Amazon, Meta, etc. 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

10:21own 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, Nepal is still yet to learn the scale of a devastating flash flood and mudslide. It hit the north of the Himalayan country near the border with Tibet at around 9am local time on Wednesday morning. The death toll has already reached nearly 200, among those missing more than 600 atourists. 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 river banks heard the roaring sound approach, they would have had very little chance to flee. At the Jirong border crossing between the pool 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.

11:25Other footage posted online shows the desperate fear of those in sudden mortal danger. Asaday Mushiri has this report. In Nepal families scramble up the mountainous terrain, one man filming, Yelzabwee, I'm scared. Highways, hydropower stations, bridges destroyed. The school bus in Threshuli, survivors, children can do nothing but look on. 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.

12:28There 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. One go! Areas downstream are on high alert with rescue teams working through the night. The true scale of this disaster is yet to emerge. As a day of mischievousness, it was initially thought that an earthquake caused the flooding, but it's now believed it was triggered by a huge chunk of collapsing glassier ice that crashed into a river. Our correspondent in Beijing, Laura Bicke, 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

13:34authorities. 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 that 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 communications are blocked. That's the situation in the Tibetan side as we understand it.

14:38And how is this being reported in China? Is the sense of great tragedy being felt across the country? Yes, I think obviously Chinese state media are reporting it with gravity, but everything is very carefully controlled. 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 glassy 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 forces us through the valley. Laura Bicker in Beijing. On Tuesday, John Rackliffe, the head of the

15:43CIA, traveled to Moscow on a military plane. Given he runs the US 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 now. It's a Moscow mystery that has the world 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 Rackliffe, the head of America's central intelligence agency. What was he doing in Russia? Who had he come to see? Strait with President Russia. Not President Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the CIA chief had been meeting Russian intelligence officials.

16:46And 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? I'm a manion by the team in Burshry. 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 US intelligence. Later, in an interview, President Trump gave few details of John Rackliffe's talks but hinted that the focus had been on Ukraine. 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, US and Russian intelligence are talking again.

17:51So 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. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Russian is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, but it's also the language of their enemy and its public use is now heavily curtailed. Does that prevent the spread of Russian influence or is it to deny of the very liberty Ukraine's fighting for? Join me Tim Huwak to hear from both sides

18:53in the language battle. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. One of the most notorious gangs of hackers that ever existed. All of your files were encrypted with military-grade algorithms, making our outrageous demands. I'm Jeff White and I'll take you inside a business like no other, where cybercriminals piled up the cash until divisions grew and somebody took revenge. GORRY TO YOU GRAND! Cyberhack season 4, the Conti Files, all episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

20:00This is the Global News Podcast. On to a bandit crisis that's bringing terror to huge swaves of North-West Nigeria with armed gangs on motorbikes, raiding towns and carrying out mass abductions. Analysis by the BBC World Service of attacks recorded by the Act-Cled 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 Yemasee Adygokay sent this report from Gusau in Zamfara, one of the areas at the heart of the crisis. SHOTS RING OUT AS GONE MENON MOTABikes ride into a village in North-West 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

21:02from the country's North-West to other areas. Zamfara is one of the states worst affected by the bandit crisis. With no airport, the only way to get in is by road. In the state capital, Gusau, we meet some of the 800,000 people across the North-West. He fled their homes. Many 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. Sankhavutta with al-Bahulibah. They opened fire without a care in the world. This satyr shooting in discriminately. If you run into a wrong, they said they were rum and fire.

22:04If you come out and start running, they shoot you. 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 or authorities are turning to to help combat the bandit problem, but 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 before they arrive, and we've got help, we are successful in chasing them away. But there are concerns that army 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?

23:07So if you look at the issues in the north-west, many of these communities don't have protection from the state. 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 Wallachinibu announced a record 4 billion for defense and security in the latest budget. To bandits, kidnappers, as sponsors of terror, surrender or freeze the full force of the Nigerian state. But in the north-west, the number of bandit attacks is continuing to rise. The return to normality that Fatima and her family in Zambara desperately crave seems a distant possibility. So what is it? It has a behead piece. It had money. Now everything has changed. We have become beggars. Fatima ending that report by Yemissai Adyga Key. Mexico can be a dangerous place to be a journalist, and now dozens of Mexican media outlets are calling on the country's president,

24:08Claudia Shainbaum, to do something about it. The press freedom organisation, reporters without borders or RSF, is backing the call as well. It says at least 17 reporters have been killed since President Shainbaum 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 Shainbaum 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 RA-150 to Mexico City, Mexico. Should your report on organized crime, please remember to reach for the book prefaced located within your reach. When covering subject's link to corruption, please take your belongings and return to where you

25:13came from as quickly as possible. The most recently documented murder was that of Francisco and the Andro Leaver Aguila, a political columnist from the state of Oaxaca. In July, he wrote a column criticizing the local governor and several members of his administration. The next day, he was shot dead at a food store whilst by breakfast. Year earlier, he had told the local authorities that it had been receiving regular death threats. As well as general pressure to provide more press protections, last week, President Shainbaum's administration received condemnation for publishing the names of individuals and media outlets that had criticized the government. Shainbaum had denied that she was intimidating journalists. She said there have been incidents of fake news and said the names would not be circulated again. But journalist groups say the killings, attacks and threats continued to create an atmosphere of silence, threatening the right of millions of people to be informed. Ella Bickner reporting. For the first time in France, a flight attendant has succeeded in having her

26:16breast cancer recognised as an occupational disease. A court found that 59-year-old Sophie Lennon, who worked for Air France for decades, had frequently worked night shifts, been exposed to cosmic radiation and to cigarette smoke until the airline band smoking in 2000. A study this month at the Harvard Medical School in the US found that out of hundreds of professions, a flight cruise and pilots had the highest level of radiation-related cancer deaths. Dr. Visheld Patel led the study. There's 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 Skyfield, told us about the magnitude of this ruling.

27:20It is the first time that breast cancer has been officially recognised in France as an occupational illness of flight cruise. 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 clocks and so on, which can be an aggravating factor in breast cancer. But the third thing is cosmic radiation. Cosmic rays are the same sort of things that cause the Northern Lights, for example, which are a particular danger to flight cruise. 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 France, which is where these charged particles from cosmic radiation concentrate, the vessel 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,

28:22and there's no genetic particular risk in her family, and 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 cruise than there is to the general population. Hugh Scothield in Paris there. A funeral for one of the leading figures in Palestinian art, Sleiman 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 Berset in British mandate Palestine in 1947.

29:26A 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 cypress 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 striking images to come out of his body of work is a painting 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 wary but perseveres ahead despite the burden. And during the first Antifida or uprising which began

30:31in 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 brought 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 depends on the situation, you know, the political situation. I hope to 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

31:35mud. 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 Berset to a packed Anglican church, which was led by uniformed scouts playing backpipes. And friends say they'll remember Montserr 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 straped in all of branches in a nod to the landscapes that defined his work. Carla Comte there. That's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk.

32:35You 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 Masoud Ibrahim and the producer was Emma Joseph. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm Will Chalk. Until next time, goodbye. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Russian is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, but it's also the language of their enemy and its public use is now heavily curtailed. Does that prevent the spread of Russian influence or is it a denial of the very liberty Ukraine's fighting for? Join me Tim Hewall to hear from both sides in the language battle. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcast.