Meta’s Day of Reckoning

Wednesday was a day for the social-media history books.

In the middle of a landmark trial, Meta Platforms abruptly announced an $18 billion settlement agreement with a coalition of states that had sued it. The suit alleged the company had misled the public about the safety of its platforms and hooked kids on its apps.

I had been planning to spend days at the Oakland, Calif., courtroom where CEO Mark Zuckerberg was expected to appear, but it was all over.

Meta agreed to make annual payments to 48 states for the next decade and implement sweeping changes designed to prevent children from spending too much time on Instagram and Facebook.

The other two states? New Mexico already won its case against Meta. Florida just said no. In a statement posted on X, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called the payout “peanuts” compared with the harms driven by its platforms. He said he looks forward to seeing Meta at trial.

Now the company has six months to update its apps, including limiting users under the age of 18 to two hours a day and blocking them from scrolling feeds overnight.

In an unprecedented twist, Meta said it would only pay out the full $18 billion if TikTok and YouTube agree to similar daily time limits and their own $5.3 billion payments.

Meta is still facing thousands of cases from school districts and individuals. So while child-safety advocates hope this settlement can usher in a new, healthier era of social media, Meta isn’t fully off the hook.

——Meghan is a San Francisco-based tech reporter who covers Meta.

Also read: New Teen Safety Measures for Instagram and Facebook Are Coming. Will They Work?

Support for bans stands at 48% of American adults, up from 36% two years ago, according to a new study from Pew Research Center. The question now is, do school phone bans actually make a difference in students’ lives? The answer depends on what aspect of improvement you’re looking for.

Apple is releasing new models of its AI-friendly desktop machines—the Mac Mini and Studio—after the previous generations became sleeper hits, and vanished from shelves. While the next-generation hardware looks identical to previous models, it packs faster, pricier chips, not to mention higher price tags. But can Apple build enough to meet demand?

I’ve long been a skeptic of personal AI—my privacy paranoia has made me one of those people who always rejects cookies and app-tracking requests—but my experiences with it lately have me turning into one of those AI guys. Pretty soon, you might be one too.

The Silicon Valley playbook is failing AI. And the messier things become, as they did again in the past two weeks, the more out of touch many tech leaders appear. That suggests that even if Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs live up to Wall Street’s lofty expectations, these companies will be long dealing with risky political and regulatory headaches atypical for nascent industries.

Since graduating from Columbia University in 2021 as the class valedictorian at age 19, Leopold Aschenbrenner has worked his way into the upper echelons of technology. He spent time working out of now-convicted crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s compound in the Bahamas and then at OpenAI in San Francisco. Even as he drew attention as a troublemaker among some of his bosses, according to people who worked with him, he grew close to the industry’s top players.

The progressive agenda of New York City’s socialist mayor is bringing him head-to-head with Amazon. Zohran Mamdani pulled off a historic victory in New York City’s November mayoral race running on an antiestablishment, pro-worker platform. He campaigned on a rent freeze, free buses and city-owned grocery stores and proposed raising taxes on wealthy residents and companies. Since taking office, Mamdani has made a number of moves directed at the retail-and-cloud-computing giant.

There’s a new frontier in job interviews and it goes something like this: Remove your Zoom background and pan your camera around the room. Now, could you please wave your hand in front of your face? Employers want to ensure the people they’re hiring really know what they’re talking about and are who they say they are.

Let’s Get Physical: Nvidia wants to run the world’s robots. China is an eager customer. Business in physical AI is growing, and Chinese companies rely on U.S. chips and software.

Future Funding: Nvidia insists it can keep printing money to fund the AI boom. Meanwhile, it paused some revenue-sharing deals with AI cloud providers.

Byte Spies: The FBI disrupted a China-linked hacking operation that broke into U.S. government networks and critical infrastructure, while hiding its tracks on a global network of hacked devices, cloud-computing infrastructure and even clandestine networks.

Safety Dance: Google is moving a team focused on the risks and societal impact of AI out of Google DeepMind. Researchers have raised concerns about the change’s effect on their independence and ability to detect threats from newest models.

…when a quantum computer could guess all of our passwords in the blink of an eye.

The Technology newsletter is a weekly digest of tech reviews, columns and headlines from Anne Steele and Wilson Rothman. Write to Wilson at wilson.rothman@wsj.com and Anne at anne.steele@wsj.com. Got a tip for us? Here’s how to submit.