It's a bad week in the courts for Meta, and also for Google and YouTube, after juries in two states came back with verdicts against the companies in high-profile cases about the dangers of social media.

Meta and Google were both found liable Wednesday by a jury in Los Angeles in a closely watched case involving social media addiction and teens. The jury found that both Instagram and YouTube were responsible for cultivating the increased usage of their platforms by plaintiff KGM, whose first name is Kaley — who, her attorneys say, began using YouTube at age 6, and Instagram at age 11, and she is now 20 years old.

Plaintiff's attorneys argued during the month-long trial that both Meta and Google had purposely designed their platforms to be addictive, and that they were aware of the harms they were doing to children and teens. In KGM's case, that addiction led to mental health crises, including depression and suicidal ideation.

The jury awarded KGM $6 million, as NPR reports, with $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, and with Meta covering about 70% of that sum.

"For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features," said co-lead attorney for the plaintiff Joseph VanZandt. "Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived."

The trial was attended by multiple sets of parents of teens who took their own lives or otherwise suffered mentally due to social media addictions. And the attorney of record for the plaintiff was Matthew Bergman of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center.

Reminder: This is the same case where CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed up to testify himself in February, and members of Meta's staff were called out by the judge for appearing to be illicitly recording the proceedings using Meta's Ray-Ban sunglasses with built-in cameras.

As NPR notes, the case has drawn comparisons to the landmark cases brought against Big Tobacco in the 1990s over similarly dangerous practices to encourage addiction to their products.

Meta is reportedly weighing its option, and Google has already said it plans to appeal the case. A spokesperson for Google, José Castañeda, said in a statement, "This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site."

Wednesday's verdict in Los Angeles follows another defeat in court involving Meta on Tuesday, in a case out of New Mexico. Both civil cases were being tried simultaneously, and the monetary damages in the New Mexico case are far larger.

As CNN reports, a jury returned a verdict in the New Mexico case after less than a day of deliberations, following a six-week trial, finding Meta liable for failing to warn users about the dangers of child predators on its platforms, and failing to protect young users from being targeted by those predators.

The jury found that Meta had engaged in “unfair and deceptive” and “unconscionable” trade practices, and ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages.

The case was brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez in 2023, following a whistleblower account from Arturo Bejar, a former engineering director at Meta, who testified at the trial that his own 14-year-old daughter had been targeted with sexually explicit messages on Instagram.

Torrez's investigation involved the creation of fake accounts purporting to be those of children, which investigators found were then contacted by child predators. Two of those men were subsequently arrested at a New Mexico motel in May 2024, after they allegedly arrived there seeking to have sex with a 12-year-old girl, depicted in one of those fake accounts.

Meta has said it will be appealing the case, and the company's attorneys argued in court that while bad actors and messages may slip through its safety filters, it had invested heavily in child safety on its platforms. A company spokesperson earlier said "child exploitation is a horrific crime and we’ve spent years building technology to combat it."

Andy Stone, Meta's longtime communications chief, critized Torrez's probe ahead of the verdict last week, tweeting that it was "an ethically compromised investigation into Meta that knowingly put real children at risk." And, he said that Torrez had "opted for a self-promotional political victory over child safety."

Stone specifically called out Torrez and the law firm that led the investigation for crossing legal and ethical lines through the use of real photos of actual children, without their consent, to create the fake profiles they used as bait for predators.

"And how did they justify using images of real children who would then be forever linked with their new online personas and predatory activity? Because they were 'profile pictures of minors from outside the United States,'" Stone writes. "That's right, it was OK because they weren't American children."

Stone also accused Torrez and his team of "proactively posting sexualized 'teen' content and friending adult strangers en masse" as part of their sting.

Per CNN, Torrez calls Meta's criticisms, "a distraction" and that the company should "focus on their own accountability."

Previously: Meta Team Scolded For Wearing Those Ray-Ban Glasses In Court During Zuckerberg Testimony

The next big shoe to drop in the local tech world that is being blamed on AI is a massive layoff reportedly about to happen at Meta, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing heavily in AI over the last year.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, is planing sweeping layoffs, possibly as soon as this week, with a reported plan to cut around 20% of its staff.

The layoffs were first reported by Reuters on Friday, and the intention of them is reportedly to offset the massive costs of Meta's investments in AI. There was no timeline given for when this layoff may occur.

And news of the layoffs, much as happened with news of Block slashing 40% of its staff three weeks ago, sent Meta's stock rising over 2% Monday morning.

With a reported headcount of 79,000 as of December, Meta's layoff will be much more impactful in terms of the tech job market and potentially the local economy, than Block's. A downsizing of 20% would mean this layoff would impact almost 16,000 employees.

Meta's last big round of layoffs, in February 2025, impacted around 3,600 employees, or around 5% of its total headcount. But between November 2022 and March 2023, the company let go of some 21,000 employees in two big layoffs, after the company's headcount ballooned to around 87,000 during the pandemic. At the time, a contrite Zuckerberg said, "I got this wrong," saying that the company's big bet on the metaverse, among things, was to blame.

Clearly the Meta headcount had creeped back up to nearly 80,000 over the last two years.

As KRON4 notes, with the stock price jump today, it is yet another example of the market rewarding companies for slashing jobs in the name of AI, so we can expect more of this kind of news in the coming months.

Elon Musk has reportedly ordered sweeping layoffs at xAI, which is not a public company and was folded into SpaceX last year, saying in a tweet that the company "was not built right the first time around," and will now be rebuilt "from the foundations up."

Previously: Meta Acquires 'Social Network for AI Agents' Moltbook, While OpenAI Hires One of Its Vibe Coders

Top image: Sign with logo in front of the headquarters of Meta at 1 Hacker Way in the Silicon Valley, Menlo Park, California, July 11, 2024. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Opening statements started Monday in a trial where plaintiffs allege that Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are acting as ‘digital casinos’ designing their platforms to addict kids, and Zuckerberg will be forced to testify.

The big global news in social media is that the nation of Australia banned social media for kids 16 and under last month. Here in the US, a series of trials are set to be heard this year over social media companies allegedly fostering addiction among kids on purpose, including nine cases in LA, and several school districts nationwide rolling up their lawsuits into one large suit that will be heard in Oakland.

And the New York Times reports that one potentially landmark case had its opening statement on Monday and continues today, with some pretty damning evidence that Facebook. Meta, and YouTube designed their platforms to be like “digital casinos” fo children that are meant to be as addictive as cigarettes.

“They didn’t just build apps, they built traps,” plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier said in his opening argument Monday, per the Times. “They didn’t want users, they wanted addicts.”

The charges are considered serious enough that Mark Zuckerberg himself will be forced to testify in this trial. Also scheduled to testify is YouTube CEO Neal Mohan.

And the plaintiffs have some pretty powerful evidence on their side in the “digital casinos” allegation. Namely, they have internal Google/Alphabet/YouTube documentation that refers to the platform's offerings as “slot machines,” accompanied by images of casinos. Further, that documentation also comes right out and says “These are attention casinos,” and “The house always wins.”

The documentation has Meta employees saying that (in the Times' words) “the company’s tactics reminded them of tobacco companies." But there are also direct quotes from Instagram employees saying that their platform is “like a drug” and that employees were “basically pushers.”

The Associated Press points out that Snap and TikTok already settled on ths lawsuit, so there are probably some merits to all this. That said, both tech companies settled for undisclosed sums, so maybe they just bargained down to an amount that they were happy to just write the check and make this go away.

The plaintiffs in all of these cases are hoping for something similar to Big Tobacco’s historic 1998 $206 billion settlement where cigarette brands admitted they were marketing to kids and agreed to stop. But this may or may not get a similar result.

Remember, there have been a few of these “landmark” casses against Big Tech over the last two years. And Big Tech tends to usually win, or even when they lose, the consequences are so threadbare that it pretty much counts as a victory. We’ll see this time how the high-powered attorneys of Big Tech handle the adversaries of government lawyers and glorified class-action attorneys.  

Related: Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp [SFist]

Image: jjron via Wikimedia Commons

Just two years after Gavin Newsom brokered a $250 million deal with Google and Meta for them to help preserve the local newspapers that their business models have destroyed, Newsom himself is now dismantling the deal.  

Back in 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a deal that persuaded Google and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $250 million over five years to help save local California newspapers, a medium whose advertising had been completely siphoned off by Google, Facebook, and Instagram, among other companies. At the time, Newsom declared, “This agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California — leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians.”

Fast forward a year and a half later, and Newsom has quietly killed the deal. Newsom just introduced his proposed $400 billion budget for 2025-27, and Bay Area News Group reports that Newsom has eliminated the newspaper subsidy in that budget.  

Moreover, Newsom’s office has not commented on why, or given any explanation for doing this. But other parties have plenty of comment about the program being eliminated.

“It seems shockingly short-sighted when it comes to supporting local journalism which by now we know has no commercial future,” University of Pennsylvania professor of media policy Victor Pickard told the News Group. “I understand there may be budget shortfalls and there are always thoughtful decisions that need to be made about funding … but local journalism should be a higher priority.”

The state of California was paying into the fund, as were tech companies like Google and Meta. California contributed $10 million in 2025, which was matched by Google, though Meta’s contribution is not mentioned. This year, Google will make like Gavin Newsom, and not contribute to the program.

And the company put out a pretty cheeky statement about how they don't have to pay the $10 million per year now that the state's not paying their share, either.

“We stand ready to match the state’s contribution to the Civic Media Program and are awaiting the final budget later this year,” a Google spokesperson told the News Group.

Related: Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp [SFist]

Image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 03: California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during the 2025 New York Times Dealbook Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 03, 2025 in New York City. NYT columnist Sorkin hosted the annual Dealbook summit which brings together business and government leaders to discuss the most important stories across business, politics and culture. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

We had to do a double-double take at Glassdoor’s new Best Places to Work 2026 list, as they ranked fast-food chain In-N-Out as a better place to work than the cushy, high-paid confines of Nvidia, Facebook, and Google.

If you had your choice between job offers from the Silicon Valley tech giants Nvidia, Google, and Meta, with their massively lucrative stocks and lavish perks and salaries, or a job offer flipping burgers at a local In-N-Out, which offer would you take? According to the just-released Best Places to Work 2026 list from the employer review site Glassdoor, you would want to take that job flipping burgers at In-N-Out.

Yes, KTVU reports that Glassdoor’s new list of the best places to work in California ranks In-N-Out ahead of Nvidia, Apple, Meta, and Google. And these are not corporate jobs at In-N-Out’s headquarters in Irvine, California, we’re talking crew jobs at In-N-Out, many of which are largely occupied by high school students.  

As seen above, Glassdoor's Best Places to Work 2026 list is not of the best places to work in California, it’s of the best places to work in the entire US. And In-N-Out does not come in at Number One nationally — that distinction belongs to Crew Car Wash, another odd choice, a car-wash chain that only exists in Indiana and Minnesota.

But In-N-Out is the top-ranked company that is based in California, and comes in at Number Two nationally, just ahead of Nvidia at Number Three. And yes, Glassdoor knows they are ranking a burger joint ahead of perhaps the most lucrative tech company on earth.

"By outranking Silicon Valley heavyweights like Nvidia, Google, and Apple, In-N-Out has signaled a major shift in the American workforce, where the perceived instability of the tech sector — marred by ‘forever layoffs’ and AI-driven anxiety — is being passed over for the stability and clear upward mobility of the service industry," as KTVU explains.

And hey, nothing against In-N-Out (except that the company is run by a right-wing lunatic nepo baby who pushes her anti-vaxx idiocy on the the public at large). In-N-Out pays well over $20 an hour even to starting employees, and store managers are routinely paid six-figure annual sums. Compare that to the stingy Shake Shack, who closed California stores in response to the state’s $20 fast-food minimum wage law.

And maybe Glassdoor really has a point about In-N-Out being a better place to work than the Menlo Park Facebook headquarters. After all, Meta just laid off another 1,000 employees after Mark Zuckerberg was dumb enough to blow $77 billion on the wildly unsuccessful Metaverse project.

Related: The Only In-N-Out in Oakland Is Closing ‘Due to Ongoing Issues With Crime’ [SFist]

Image: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA- MARCH 14: The In-N-Out Burger logo is displayed outside of one of their restaurants on March 14, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

A yearslong fight between the Federal Trade Commission and Meta, which dates back to when it was still called Facebook, has ended with Meta prevailing, and a federal judge declaring that the company likely does not hold a monopoly in the social media sphere anymore.

Mark Zuckerberg is having a good day today, after a federal judge ruled in an antitrust case that could have turned very badly for Meta, and the social media properties that constitute its greatest hopes for future growth, Instagram and WhatsApp. In contrast to how a different federal judge ruled in two cases brought against Google/Alphabet, Facebook/Meta has been given a pass — though implicit in the ruling is the idea that Facebook and its parent company Meta don't exactly rule the school anymore in the social media universe.

As the Associated Press reports, US District Judge James Boasberg ruled Tuesday that Meta exists in a different world now than it did when the FTC first started investigating it for antitrust violations. And, Boasberg writes, at trial the FTC "continue[d] to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions."

"Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now," Judge Boasberg said. "The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so."

The lawsuit dates back to the first Trump term, several years after the company then called Facebook acquired Instagram (for $1 billion in 2012) and WhatsApp (for $22 billion in 2014). By April 2025 when this went to trial, these deals were very old news, and rivals like Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok had long ago changed the ways people shared content online. The FTC argued that the acquisitions, which it approved all those years ago, needed to be unwound due to evidence that Facebook sought to "neutralize perceived competitive threats" in making them.

Meta's lawyers subsequently argued that the FTC's arguments were all trapped in the past, using a "gerrymandered a fictitious market" to make the argument that Meta was a monopoly that had squeezed out competitors Snapchat and MeWe — ignoring TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube completely, and what the hell is MeWe?

Further, Meta argued that neither WhatsApp nor Instagram were particularly successful before Facebook acquired them — this is debatable — and that they only became so huge thanks to the company's efforts. And, the lawyers contended that Facebook/Meta had made all sorts of acquisitions over the years, many of which went nowhere. Why should these two acquisitions be treated differently?

Judge Boasberg, an Obama nominee to the federal bench, was clearly swayed by these arguments. And in a statement Tuesday, Meta expressed gratitude, saying the ruling "recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition" in today's marketplace.

Furthering Zuckerberg's of-late ass-kissing of Trump, the statement continues, "Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America."

The campaign that began under Trump 1.0 to stick it to Silicon Valley Democrat CEOs — many of whom, including Zuck, have since turned tail, kissed the ring and thrown money at him — may finally be winding down.  

A federal judge last year ruled that Google/Alphabet did have a monopoly over web search, but in ruling on the remedy this past September, that judge stopped short of forcing the company to spin off its web browser Chrome or take any other drastic measures. A judge in a separate suit about Google's ad sales network also ruled against the company in April.

Previously: Meta Faces the Antitrust Lawsuit Mark Zuckerberg Never Wanted

Photo by Greg Bulla

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook content moderation had “gone too far” earlier this year, and promised less censorship. Until his boss man Trump told him to censor a Facebook page that ICE complained about, and Zuck quickly complied.

It was well before Donald Trump had even been reelected yet when Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to Republicans for adhering to the Biden administration’s request to “censor certain COVID-19 content” because that content was complete bullshit about ivermectin and such. (The Biden administration’s request came at a time when thousands of American were dying every day from COVID). Once Trump was back in office, Zuckerberg declared that Facebook censorship had “gone too far,” and that Facebook/Meta would stop censoring controversial posts and start “protecting free expression.”

So if the Facebook posts happen to bother Trump, will they still be uncensored, and will their “free expression” be protected? If you understand what a Trump suck-up Zuckerberg is these days, you can probably take a wild guess.

NBC News reports that Facebook removed a page that was critical of ICE, and did so specifically at the request of Trump’s Department of Justice. As seen in the tweet above, Attorney General Pam Bondi crowed that “Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target @ICEgov agents in Chicago,” and that “The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.”

Bondi gives no information whatsoever on how ICE agents were supposedly being doxxed or targeted. And she likely just pulled this claim out of her ass.

But it’s yet another example of a well-established pattern where the Trump administration can simply bully spineless tech CEOs into doing whatever Trump demands. You’ll recall that one developer made an iOS app to track where ICE agents are this summer. The Trump administration demanded that Apple pull the app from the App Store, and Apple of course caved.

The app’s developer Joshua Aaron told NBC News that the app just pointed out the presence of law enforcement agents, which the traffic app Waze does every day. “This is about our fundamental constitutional rights in this country being stripped away by this administration, and the powers that be who are capitulating to their requests,” he said to NBC News.

This is nothing new for the Trump-simping Mark Zuckerberg and his platforms at Meta. As Reuters points out, “the company contributed $1 million to the president's inaugural fund and scrapped its diversity and fact-checking programs” at Trump’s request, and “Meta also agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit over the suspension of his accounts after the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack.”

Related: Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies [SFist]

Image: WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 04: (L-R) Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump listen during a dinner at the State Dining Room of the White House on September 4, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump hosted tech and business leaders for dinner after they joined the first lady’s meeting of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education Task Force at the White House this afternoon. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

SF author Rebecca Solnit had her Facebook account suspended after she posted an essay about the LA protests, but Facebook undid the suspension about 24 hours later, and this all likely happened because of the slapdash AI that Facebook uses for content moderation.

We’ve recently had newfound interest in the work of San Francisco author Rebecca Solnit, because of her very well-reviewed new collection of essays just published in the book No Straight Road Takes You There. Yet that is not why Rebecca Solnit is in the news today.

Rebecca Solnit is in the news because Facebook suspended her account in the wake of her post about the current LA protests, according to the Chronicle. But Facebook then unbanned the account within a day, claiming the ban was “an error.”

The "incriminating" post from Monday is seen above. “I also believe that those of us who are older, whiter, safer from the threats of state violence do not have the moral ground to lecture the younger, browner and blacker, more directly impacted on what they should and should not do,” she writes in her a Facebook post, with an external link to her own website. “One thing to remember is that they'll claim we're violent no matter what; the justification for this ongoing attack on immigrants and people who resemble immigrants in being brown is the idea that America is suffering an invasion and in essence only a certain kind of white person belongs here in this place that was never all white.”

And by Tuesday, Solnit’s Facebook account was in limbo. “Facebook decided to suspend my account because of a piece (below) I wrote Monday about violence which in no way advocates for it (but does point out who is violent in the current ruckus),” Solnit said in a Bluesky post whose visibility is restricted.

Solnit included a screenshot of Facebook’s rationale, which said, “Your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our Community Standards on account integrity.”

That’s obviously quite vague! Solnit appealed the decision, but Facebook responded that the account “still doesn’t follow our Community Standards on account integrity. You cannot request another review of this decision.”

The Chronicle published their piece on this Wednesday afternoon. Within 30 minutes of publication, Solnit’s Facebook account was restored. And as seen above, Chronicle writer Lily Janiak says that "Facebook's communications staff got back to me saying their decision, which Solnit was told she couldn't appeal, was a mistake.” So, Facebook was clearly aware that there was media coverage of this when they decided to reverse their decision.

Facebook/Meta spokesperson Andy Stone tweeted a response tweet at 1:30 pm on Wednesday that “This was an error and the account has been restored.” This continues Facebook and Meta executives’ curious trend of sorting out Facebook controversies on the rival Twitter/X platform instead of, you know, their own platform.

We still don’t know with certainty why Solnit’s account was banned or flagged. But Facebook’s content moderation policies spell out that “Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is central to our content review process. AI can detect and remove content that goes against our Community Standards before anyone reports it.”

So yeah, probably AI bot going a little haywire.

Per the Chronicle, Solnit herself blamed Facebook’s “inane algorithms that often delete posts.” Solnit said in a post after her account was restored that “My account wasn't just suspended. When I asked for a review of the suspension I was told my account was disabled and there would be no further appeal. Permanent out.”

And we can’t help but suspect it’s a factor here that Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have definitely taken a Trumper turn over the last year or so, or rather, a position of cowardly appeasement to the Trump administration’s bullying. They changed content moderation policies to appease the right wing, added the wholly unqualified UFC president and MAGA figure Dana White to their board of directors, and gave $1 million to the Trump inauguration.

Regardless, here is a link to the full Rebecca Solnit essay whose post got her banned from Facebook, entitled “Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence.”

“I think maybe it's begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that's happened over the past several decades,” Solnit writes. “The advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, workers, the right of us all to be free from being poisoned by food, water, air."

Related: Meta Playing Hardball to Prevent Sales of Ex-Employee’s Tell-All Book [SFist]

Image: Rebecca Solnit (Photo by Rebecca Sapp/WireImage, Getty Images)

Back in his philanthropy era, Mark Zuckerberg made a grand pledge to put $1 billion toward building new housing, to combat the affordability crisis in California that companies like his had contributed to. But that project has quietly been jettisoned, with only a portion of that money put toward housing.

Remember back in 2019, when Zuckerberg was still vaguely liberal and Facebook, having faced a punishing series of privacy scandals, with Cambridge Analytica being the most prominent, was trying to burnish its public image? That was also the year that dozens of states signed on to an antitrust lawsuit that has just this year gotten underway in federal court, and the company was doing everything it could to prove its "good corporate citizen" status.

In June 2019, Google had pledged to put $1 billion toward the housing problem in California. And four months later, Facebook followed suit, saying it was going to be issuing a package of grants aimed at constructing 20,000 new housing units for middle- and lower-income households, totaling $1 billion.

But, fast-forward a few years, and the company now known as Meta has other priorities. The company has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs, Zuckerberg has signaled multiple times that he's willing to change his political stripes to avoid Trump's wrath — including dropping many of Facebook's content moderation policies — even though it isn't saving the company from that aforementioned antitrust trial. And Zuckerberg's own foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, abruptly decided last month to pull funding for a non-profit elementary school that it had helped to found for low-income students in East Palo Alto, for reasons it has yet to justify.

Now, as Bay Area News Group reports, via internal sources at Meta, the project to put $1 billion toward housing is now dead, and no company employees are working on it anymore, with only a fraction of the intended funds having been put to use.

"The program, while never formally canceled, is a shadow of the operation it once was," the news group reports, via its sources. And after it "withered to a one-person operation focused on research and small grants" around 2022, that last person was laid off in 2023.

The housing initiative was intended to last for ten years, and Meta told Bay Area News Group that it still intends to fulfill its commitments by 2029. And, the company suggested that the work is now being done by outside consultants, rather than internal employees.

But as of now, $193 million has been doled out to fund new construction, out of a total $775 million pledged. $150 million of that went to fund low-cost loans for affordable housing projects. And the company donated $225 million worth of land it owned in Menlo Park to be used for residential construction, but that construction has not yet begun and the company has provided no construction timetable to the city. Company sources allegedly provided documentation that the program has been essentially dormant since 2022.

A purported $250 million funding commitment, for a fund aimed at financing mixed-income housing on surplus state land, has allegedly been pulled off the table.

"As an active partner in addressing the region’s housing shortage, Meta has made significant investments in affordable housing development, teacher housing, grant funding, housing policy support, land development and modular housing," the company said in a statement to Bay Area News Group, via spokesperson Tracy Clayton. "There is still much work ahead, but we are proud to join individuals and organizations who started working on these issues long before Meta existed."

Still, with California housing affordability being one of the absolute least concerns of the current administration in Washington, Meta likely wants to put its money elsewhere. I hear there's a "white genocide" they could be addressing in South Africa? Also, ICE would like some help rounding up immigrants who are not white.

Previously: Facebook Pledges $1 Billion For CA Housing As 45 States Join Antitrust Probe

Top image: Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Ricky Carioti - Pool/Getty Images)

The FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta, focusing on Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago, kicked off in federal court Monday morning, and Mark Zuckerberg is testifying.

A lawsuit that dates back to the first Trump term, originally brought by a coalition of states along with the Federal Trade Commission, accuses Meta of "anticompetitive behavior" in its now 13- and 11-year-old purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was likely hoping that all his ass-kissing of Trump the last year might get him out of this litigation, but it is still happening, and the court proceeding began Monday morning in Washington with now nationally known US District Judge James Boasberg presiding.

As the New York Times explains, via legal experts, this case is likely to be an uphill climb for the FTC and its lawyers, in part because it seeks to unwind two acquisitions that the government itself approved over a decade ago — something that rarely happens. The case also requires the government to prove a hypothetical that can't really be proven, basically that Facebook/Meta would not have been able to thrive if it had not acquired Instagram and WhatsApp when it did.

"One of the most difficult things for antitrust laws to deal with is when industry leaders purchase small potential competitors," says Gene Kimmelman, a former member of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, speaking to the Times. Kimmelman also points out that Facebook/Meta "bought many things that either didn’t pan out or were integrated. How are Instagram and WhatsApp different?"

Meta put out a statement on its blog Sunday calling the FTC's case "weak," and adding that it "ignores how the market actually works and chases a theory that doesn’t hold up in the real world."

The statement goes on to say that "billions of users enjoy" Instagram and WhatsApp every day for free, and that the apps themselves were not as successful before Meta bought and improved them.

"With features such as in-app messaging, live streaming, Stories and Reels, we have grown Instagram from a small app with an uncertain future into one that more than two billion monthly active users enjoy today, providing them with an engaging place to discover, connect and create," the company says.

Indeed, as the Times' Mike Isaac recounts today, Facebook was widely mocked for paying $1 billion to acquire Instagram in 2012, largely because it was seen as a fairly basic app where people posted heavily filtered photos, and that was that — hardly much of a threat to Facebook, which was still dominant at the time.

"A billion dollars of money?" Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show when the story broke back then. "For a thing that kind of ruins your pictures?"

But, of course, Instagram is now a dominant force in our lives, addicting millions to the habit of scrolling — alongside competitor TikTok. And the app is seen as far more than just a photo-sharing app, with video, integrated messaging, and a whole ton of ads to boot.

"These benefits would not have been achieved without Meta’s investment and the excellence of the thousands of Meta employees who have worked on them," the comapny says. "We also help hundreds of millions of businesses reach and engage with their customers, hire new employees and grow."

But for the next eight weeks, the goverment's lawyers will present evidence that Facebook executives knew what they were doing when they made these key acquisitions, keeping these apps out of competitors hands and circling their wagons, so to speak, around a social media empire. And Meta's lawyers will argue that this was all just good business, and that it's insane to try to wind the clock back on this and engage in what-ifs.

We do know that the government has what they call a "smoking gun" email from Zuckerberg himself in February 2012 in which he discusses the rising popularity of Instagram and the idea of "neutralizing a potential competitor."

Meta's lawyers will also argue against what they say is a "gerrymandered a fictitious market" that the government has imagined in which "in which Facebook and Instagram compete only with Snapchat and an app called MeWe." It will not be hard to prove, they say, that TikTok and YouTube are also enormous competitors for user eyeballs, and that Meta, therefore, is no monopoly.

There are a lot of headlines out today wondering what would happen if the government succeeded in the case and demanded the breakup of the company, but that seems fairly far-fetched.

Google/Alphabet lost its own big antitrust case last year over its monopoly of the internet search business. And while the court's "remedy" is yet to be decided, it is likely not going to be anything so drastic — though the company may be asked to separate its advertising and search businesses.

Previously: FTC and States Join Forces In Antitrust Lawsuits Against Facebook, Calling It an Illegal Monopoly

Top image: Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Ricky Carioti - Pool/Getty Images)

Remember when all those Bay Area tech CEOs cuddled up to Trump with $1 million inauguration donations? Boy did that just blow up in their faces! They lost billions today, and one yelled “Oh shit!” when he checked his stock on a live earnings call.

Future historians will chuckle (well, if we survive long enough that there are any future historians) over a detail about today, April 3, 2025, which was the US stock market's worst day since, well, the last time Donald Trump was president. That detail is seen below, as this morning’s opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange was rung by the head honchos of right-wing news outlet Newsmax, with a probably drunk Rudy Giuliani on hand.    

The New York Stock Exchange would promptly plummet 1,700 points, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the US stock market lost $3.1 trillion in a single day today.

The biggest losers were tech stocks, which are disproportionately Bay Area companies. But the funniest moment from all this carnage came from a non-tech CEO, SF’s own Restoration Hardware (now called RH) CEO Gary Friedman. Friedman was actually on a live conference earnings call when he checked the company’s stock price, and then blurted out an obscenity on the call.

CNBC captured the moment. “Where’s our stock now?” Friedman asks on the call, apparently not knowing the truth yet. “ I guess the stock was down based on some of the numbers we reported, and we got killed because of — really? Oh, shit! Okay. I just looked at the screen. I hadn’t looked at it.”

At the “Oh, shit!” moment, RH had lost 25% of its value today. By the time the markets closed, RH had lost 40% of its value.

The big tech companies took it the hardest, though. Apple's stock nosedived by 9.2% just for the day today, representing a loss of roughly $311 billion. Meta stock plummeted 9% and lost $132 billion in market capitalization, Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia’s stock fell by 7.8%, and Google/Alphabet fell by 4%.

Hey, remember when all those tech CEO’s were lining up to give Trump million-dollar donations for his inauguration, because they thought Trump might be good for the tech industry?  How’s that working out for you, guys?

Of course, Trump thinks it’s all working out great. “I think it’s going very well,” he told reporters after the market closed. “It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on.”

Trump had better hope that operation was a lobotomy if he wants to keep his support among the wealthy tech set — or anyone with a retirement account.

Related: Tacolicious Alters Menu Over Trump’s Tariffs, Now Serving ‘Avocado Garbanzo Guacamole’ [SFist]

Related: WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson - Pool/Getty Images)

Well well well, Mark Zuckerberg suddenly wants less free speech and more content moderation when it comes to a former Facebook employee who’s written a book exposing what it was like to work there, and they’ve hauled the publisher to court.  

If you told me that some former Facebook employee wrote some tell-all exposé on what it was like to work for that company, I would tune in to Stephen Colbert or whatever talk show that author might be appearing on to see the interview. If you told me that Facebook was suing the publisher of that book to prevent the sales and promotion of that book, I would buy that book as soon as possible and devour it from cover to cover.

Yes, Meta has sued publisher Macmillan Books and their subsidiary Flatiron Books over former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams’s new book Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook from 2011 to 2017, and apparently the juicier tidbits of the book include Sheryl Sandberg putting the makes on her female assistant and buying herself and the assistant $13,000 worth of lingerie, forcing Wynn-Williams to work when she was in labor, naming some creepy alleged harassment details about top Facebook exec Joel Kaplan, and that Mark Zuckerberg allegedly letting the Chinese government censor the platform at will in that country.

You probably never would have heard of any of these wild allegations if it weren’t for Meta's lawsuit to stop the book. They sometimes call this the Streisand effect.

Still, Meta won Round One of this lawsuit, as the New York Times reports that a judge ruled that the publisher must stop promotions and sales of the book. The judge ruled that Wynn-Williams violated her non-disparagement agreement, and sent the dispute to arbitration.

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Silencing the author? “Non-disparagement agreement?” Funny, this is from the same Mark Zuckerberg who’s been recently saying “It's time to get back to our roots around free expression.”

The publisher is not backing down, though. “We are appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a nondisparagement clause in a severance agreement,” Macmillan spokesperson Marlena Bittner told the Times. “The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this.”

Meanwhile the Chronicle picks up a statement from Meta spokesperson Andy Stone, who calls the book a “mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives.”

Despite the ruling, the book is still for sale on Amazon and numerous outfits listed by the publisher.

Related: Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies [SFist]

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, attends the United States Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th President of the United States. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

The Super Bowl hangover day is particularly rough at Facebook’s parent company Meta, as nearly 4,000 employees are learning that they’ve been pink-slipped today, though it’s unknown how many Menlo Park employees are getting the boot.

We learned last month that Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta would be laying off 5% of its workforce, or more than 3,600 employees, with an announced layoff date of February 10. Well, here it is February 10, and sure enough, KTVU reports that those layoff notices have been rolling in today. The layoffs are global, covering not only the US but also Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, so we don’t know how many of these will be local layoffs affecting the company's Menlo Park headquarters. But we do know that the “I just got laid off from Meta” social media posts are already popping up.

When he announced the layoffs in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed he was trying to "raise the bar" and eliminate the "lowest performers." But this may be a complete canard. We know that Meta already slashed its content moderation efforts, so that’s a lot fewer employees needed right there. And KTVU points out some industry speculation that the top brass at Meta are determined to punish those employees who pushed back against the company’s back-to-the-office mandates, or spoke negatively about Zuckerberg’s recent Trumper turn on internal company message boards.

And Business Insider has some pretty brutal anonymous quotes from inside Meta HQ. One says Zuck is “creating a culture where you have to be loyal to him or else"; another said the company’s workplace "feels like living in a George Orwell novel." A third added that even exceptional performers "have been disappearing all year, and when you ask about it, you're just told, 'They're no longer with the company.'"

Terminated employees are reportedly being offered 16 weeks severance, plus two more weeks for every year the person has been with the company.

Zuckerberg is selling the downsizing as an effort to promote “efficiency,” saying the company will have an “intense year” and a pivot to AI. But this is the same man who has blown nearly $100 billion and Metaverse and VR projects, which… Does anyone even know anyone who uses that shit? Clearly Zuckerberg backed the wrong horse on that one, and may be using the old “pivot to AI” as a more cost-effective do-over.

Meta is not the only company committing to this bit. As KTVU points out, Pleasanton-based workforce did 1,700 similar layoffs last week, and Salesforce also had a few hundred let go, claiming these roles could be replaced with AI.

Related: Meta to Lay Off Around 3,600 More Employees as It Faces 'Intense Year,' Zuckerberg Says [SFist

In an interview with Jesse Eisenberg on Fresh Air this week he talks about his changing view of a man he portrayed over a decade ago, Mark Zuckerberg. And, apparently, a sequel or follow-up to The Social Network may be in the works.

The Social Network was something of an Oscar darling after it came out in 2010, getting nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for star Jesse Eisenberg, and going on to win Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin) and Best Score (Trent Reznor — who, sidebar, got snubbed today with no nomination for the Challengers score).

This week, as Eisenberg gets a second Oscar nod, this time for his screenplay A Real Pain, he was on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. And the conversation naturally came around to The Social Network, and how Eisenberg's view of Zuckerberg, whom he portrayed as a younger man in the 2003 to 2007 era of Facebook, has changed.

He tells Gross that he saw Zuckerberg as "an outcast in the world" who created a platform where people could interact virtually because "he felt uncomfortable connecting with other people through more traditional social norms."

She asks him if he feels at all connected to Zuckerberg when he does something that makes news, especially something he's vilified for, like ending fact-checking and some forms of content moderation on Facebook.

"As an actor, your job is to kind of like really understand your character, even if your character is a villain in a movie, your job is to defend your character," Eisenberg says. "So I spent a lot of time thinking about this guy... and at the time, when I was acting in it, I thought, 'This is wonderful. I'm totally defensible. This is a guy who is ambitious because he has this great thing he is going to unleash on the world.'"

But, Eisenberg says, his views on Zuckerberg have of course changed, and he isn't so defensible anymore.

Regarding moves like the recent one to end fact-checking, or going on Joe Rogan's podcast to brag that he's making Facebook "more MAGA-friendly," Eisenberg says, "I wonder if that's really an extension of that same person, a person whose ambition sort of supercedes their caution in a way that can be pretty dangerous."

He says, of where Meta/Facebook has gone in the last decade, and who Zuck has become, "I feel a little bit sad. Like, 'Why is this the path you're taking?'... This is that same person that I spent a long time humanizing and thinking about and trying to justify his behavior."

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin mentioned last year that he is working on a script for a January 6th movie, which no doubt could get greenlit this year, which sounds like it could center on Facebook and decisions around content moderation following the 2020 election. He added that he "blames Facebook" for the January 6th debacle (though surely we have to blame Twitter and Telegram too).

E! Online took this to mean this could be a sequel to The Social Network, but it could also just be a different film in which Zuckerberg figures in as a supporting character.

When asked if he would be up for reprising his role as the older but un-wiser Zuckerberg, Eisenberg told E! in November, "Will I be in that movie? Yeah, I'll be in anything."

Related: Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies

Millions of Facebook and Instagram users were shocked to find that they were suddenly following Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Melania Trump, but the company insists it was just the normal switching of official accounts that happens for every presidential transition.

Over the last couple days since Donald Trump returned to office, many Facebook and Instagram users have complained that they suddenly find themselves following Donald Trump on those platforms. And can you blame them for thinking that this was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s latest capitulation to Trump? After all, those platforms’ parent company Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been kowtowing to Trump for months, he attended Trump's inauguration with a $1 million handout, and  Meta just added the Trumper UFC president Dana White to its board of directors.

Some people also saw they were suddenly following JD Vance and Melania Trump. So it was reasonable to assume that the fix was in.

Not so, says Meta. CNBC reports that these were automatic transitions to the official @POTUS, @VP and @FLOTUS accounts, neutral accounts that until Monday belonged to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Jill Biden.

“People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady,” Meta communication director. Andy Stone said on Threads. “Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes. This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition.”

But a look at the comments on that Threads link show remarks like “Many users report having unfollowed and blocked those accounts, only to find they are following them again.” And others used saltier language to explain they did not believe Stone’s explanation.

“It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands,” Stone said in his explanation.

So we’ll see how this shakes out, and whether people are still following Trump’s account even if they don’t want to. But keep in mind that this is a relatively new process for Facebook and Instagram, as this is only the fourth presidential transition since official accounts for these offices were established under Obama’s presidency. Oh, and Zuckerberg is laying a bunch of people off right now, so there may be other happy accidents that favor Trump.

Related: Meta Continues Its Trump Turn, Adds UFC President Dana White to Its Board of Directors [SFist]

Screenshot via Instagram