Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl denied motions for a new trial on Tuesday, according to court documents.

The ruling means a March jury verdict awarding $6 million in damages will remain in place while both companies pursue appeals.

The case was brought by a 20-year-old California woman identified in court records as K.G.M., also known as Kaley.

She told jurors she began using YouTube at the age of six and Instagram at nine, and later developed anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts.

Her lawyers argued that features built into the platforms, including algorithmic recommendations, beauty filters, endless scrolling and push notifications, encouraged compulsive use and contributed to her mental health issues.

After hearing the evidence, the jury found both companies negligent and concluded they acted with malice, oppression and fraud.

Jurors awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and a further $3 million in punitive damages, bringing the total award to $6 million.

Meta was assigned 70% of the liability, amounting to $4.2 million, while YouTube was held responsible for the remaining 30%, or $1.8 million.

The trial attracted attention because it was the first to reach a verdict among more than 1,600 related lawsuits filed across the United States by young people, families and school districts.

The litigation accuses social media companies of designing products that encourage addiction among children and teenagers while contributing to mental health problems.

Several senior technology executives testified during the proceedings. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spent about eight hours on the witness stand and was questioned about internal company documents showing that Instagram had four million users under the age of 13 in 2015.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri also testified and acknowledged that spending 16 hours a day on the platform could be “problematic.”

Meta said it “respectfully disagrees” with the verdict and plans to appeal. The company argued that teenage mental health is influenced by many factors and cannot be linked to a single app.

Google, which owns YouTube, also intends to challenge the ruling. The company argued that the case “misunderstands YouTube” because it views the service as a streaming platform rather than a social media network.

As it stands, lawmakers and child safety advocates are currently pushing for stronger protections for young users online, including uncompromising age-verification requirements, expanded parental management and changes to platform design.

The Meta-owned platform said on Monday that it had uncovered and stopped a series of spear-phishing attempts linked to NSO after receiving reports from users.

According to WhatsApp, the attackers tried to lure targets into clicking malicious links that directed them to websites outside the app.

“They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp,” the company wrote. “We also caught them creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp, which we took down.”

WhatsApp said the operation shared similarities with another campaign uncovered in Jordan in 2024. In that case, victims who clicked malicious links were infected with Pegasus, NSO Group’s spyware.

Following its latest findings, Meta has asked a US federal court to hold NSO in contempt, arguing that the company breached a permanent injunction issued during a long-running case between both firms.

The court order stemmed from a 2019 hacking campaign in which more than 1,400 WhatsApp users were targeted through the platform. After discovering the breach, WhatsApp alerted affected users and filed a lawsuit against NSO.

A jury later ordered the spyware maker to pay $167 million in damages. That amount was subsequently reduced to $4 million.

The latest court filing is another chapter in an issue that has lasted several years and drawn attention to the high use of commercial spyware around the world.

NSO Group has been repeatedly cautioned over Pegasus, a surveillance tool capable of infiltrating mobile devices through so-called “zero-click” and “one-click” attacks. 

Investigations by journalists, security researchers and technology companies have linked the spyware to operations targeting journalists, activists, dissidents, human rights defenders and political opponents in several countries.

WhatsApp said it has continually exposed suspected spyware campaigns, notified victims and strengthened protections for users who may face a higher risk of digital surveillance.

Other technology companies, including Apple and Google, have also introduced additional security measures designed to help protect users from advanced spyware attacks.

Meta’s latest legal action has attracted support from civil society groups. A coalition of 12 civil rights organisations, privacy advocates and security researchers has filed court briefs backing the company’s position and urging the court to maintain pressure on NSO.

The spyware maker is also still under pressure from the US government. NSO is still listed on the US Commerce Department’s Entity List, a designation that restricts its access to American technology.

Washington has imposed similar measures on other spyware firms, including Intellexa and its founder.

In 2025, a group of US investors acquired NSO and began efforts to rebuild the company’s reputation while seeking the removal of US restrictions. However, the company remains on the Commerce Department blocklist.

The NSO Group did not respond to requests for comment on the latest allegations from WhatsApp.

The company revealed that over one million businesses already use early versions of the agent which was built inside Meta’s messaging platforms, where over a billion conversations happen daily between people and businesses.

The Business Agent, which works in local languages, responds to customer questions without delay and also makes product suggestions from a company’s catalogue. It can book appointments, qualify incoming leads and complete sales.

Businesses can set the tone, and the agent adjusts its language to match.

At the event in London, demonstrations showed how quickly the agent replies to customer messages, with one test illustrating a full product enquiry handled from start to checkout without human input.

Meta also built in a morning briefing feature that sends business owners a summary of missed messages and highlights from customer chats. It is aimed at teams that cannot stay online all day.

The company is also expanding access with new businesses being able to set up the agent in minutes. The entry option is free, but Meta plans to introduce paid tiers later for different business sizes.

Discovery is also changing, letting customers search for businesses directly on WhatsApp soon. They can also share contact cards in chats as well as trigger direct conversations with companies and Meta says this will make response times faster once customers reach out.

Behind the tool is a larger system called the Meta Business Agent Platform. It allows companies to build and customise their own agents and also connects with external services such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee. This gives the agent the ability to act on behalf of a business across different systems.

Larger companies get added features including guardrails, measurement tools and options to set policies around customer interactions. Meta says this is aimed at ensuring consistency and oversight at scale.

The company is expanding support across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. It says businesses will eventually be able to use the system for more than customer service. Future plans include market research, product insights, calendar management and competitive tracking.

Meta is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure, with spending expected to reach $145 billion. The Business Agent aims to turn messaging platforms into full business tools.

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all building similar AI systems for enterprise use. Meta’s focus is strongly on integrating these tools directly into its social and messaging apps, where businesses already operate.

A report by the Wall Street Journal said Meta had repeatedly delayed plans to make the API available to developers and, as of Tuesday, had not set a launch date. The report cited people familiar with the matter.

However, Meta disputed suggestions that the project had stalled. A company spokesperson said on Wednesday that testing is already underway with a group of early partners and that the company still expects to release the API later this month.

“The muse spark API will be coming soon,” Meta AI Chief Alexandr Wang announced in a post on X in April.

Meta AI Unveils Spark to Power Next-Gen AI across Platforms

The API would allow developers to integrate Muse Spark into their own software and services. An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a software bridge that enables different systems to communicate and work together.

Meta introduced Muse Spark in April as the first model developed under its Superintelligence Labs initiative, which was created to strengthen the company’s position in the competitive AI market.

The model is designed to narrow the gap between Meta and competitors including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

While Muse Spark is already available to consumers through Meta’s applications, users can currently access it only through built-in modes such as Instant, Thinking and Contemplating. Developers still do not have access to a public API, and Meta has yet to release documentation, pricing details, rate limits or eligibility requirements.

The lack of information has created apprehension among developers hoping to build products around the model. Without a public timeline, waitlist or technical documentation, companies interested in integrating Muse Spark are unable to plan deployments or assess costs.

The delays also come at a sensitive time for Meta. Investors have been monitoring the company’s AI strategy as it spends heavily on infrastructure, talent and product development.

Questions about execution have grown following reports of an Instagram security incident involving Meta’s AI-powered support system, which exposed weaknesses in automated account management processes.

Earlier on Wednesday, Meta unveiled a new AI agent designed to help businesses handle day-to-day tasks, showing that the company is going beyond consumer chatbots and into enterprise services.

The launch highlights Meta’s goal to compete more directly with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google across multiple areas of the AI market.

Muse Spark is expected to bolster that strategy. It is the first in what Meta has described as a new generation of advanced models from its Superintelligence Labs unit.

However, the repeated postponements have left analysts, developers and investors waiting for evidence that the company can translate its AI investments into products that are ready for global use.

Access is still currently limited to a small group of testing partners, while the developer community is waiting for Meta to open the platform to the public.

The attack involved manipulating Meta’s AI support tool into resetting account credentials without properly verifying identity.

In some cases, attackers were able to take over accounts linked to the Obama-era White House Instagram page, beauty retailer Sephora, and a senior U.S. Space Force official.

The accounts were not breached through Meta’s core systems. Instead, hackers targeted the chatbot’s decision-making process, using what cybersecurity experts describe as prompt injection techniques, combined with VPN tools to mimic the location of the account holder.

Once inside the recovery flow, attackers reportedly asked the AI to link new email addresses to targeted accounts. The chatbot then sent verification codes to those emails. After that step, password resets followed.

A security researcher familiar with the incident described how quickly access could be lost and regained. Jane Manchun Wong, a former Meta employee whose account was affected, said in a post on X: “Quite concerning,”.

She also reported repeated password reset attempts and a brief lockout before regaining access.

Posts on social media showed users discussing similar takeovers. Some said they were locked out without warning, while others complained about the lack of human support during recovery.

Meta confirmed the issue had been addressed. Andy Stone, a spokesperson for the company, said: “This issue has been resolved and we are securing impacted accounts,”. In a separate response, he said claims that world leaders’ accounts were compromised were “totally false”.

One of the affected accounts linked to the Obama-era White House page briefly posted content before being recovered, according to reports by 404 Media. The page has been inactive since 2017.

Meta introduced the Instagram AI support chatbot in March 2026. It was designed to handle account recovery and reduce reliance on human support, an area where users have long complained about delays and limited access.

However, the incident has drawn attention to the risks of giving automated systems control over sensitive actions. Security specialists say the problem lies in how these tools are authorised.

Brian Westnedge, vice president for alliances and partnerships at cybersecurity firm Red Sift, said: “This is a foundational architecture failure. The model was given privileged actions without privileged access controls.”

He added that the situation reveals the pressure on Meta, which has cut staff while investing heavily in artificial intelligence systems.

Cybersecurity experts have also warned that the issue is not limited to one company. Prompt injection attacks have appeared in other systems since the rise of AI chatbots after 2022.

Cliff Steinhauer, director of information security and engagement at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, said: “The concern isn’t necessarily AI itself, but whether adequate safeguards exist around what the AI is authorised to do.”

Engin Kirda, a professor at Northeastern University, said attackers are now targeting systems rather than individuals. He noted: “In the past, people were targeted by scams. Now, we are seeing agents being targeted by scams.”

Meta shares fell by more than 5% after reports of the breach, as investors are concerned about the company’s AI spending plans, which are expected to reach up to $145 billion.

The company says it has secured affected accounts and patched the vulnerability. It has not provided further technical details on how the exploit was carried out.

The new plans, called Instagram Plus, Facebook Plus and WhatsApp Plus, are launching globally and will give users access to extra features for monthly fees ranging from $2.99 to $3.99.

Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus will each cost $3.99 per month, while WhatsApp Plus will cost $2.99 monthly.

Meta said the subscriptions are aimed at users who want more tools for customisation, audience engagement and account management across its apps.

Instagram Plus includes features such as Story rewatch counts, unlimited audience lists, extended Story visibility beyond 24 hours, anonymous Story previews and weekly Story spotlight boosts.

Subscribers will also get profile customisation tools including custom fonts, app icons, extra profile pins and animated “Super Heart” reactions.

Facebook Plus offers many of the same features, with a focus on profile expression and audience engagement.

WhatsApp Plus is centred on messaging and personalisation. Subscribers will have access to custom ringtones, app themes, premium stickers, more pinned chats and list customisation tools.

The new Plus plans will not replace Meta Verified, its existing paid verification service focused on identity verification, impersonation protection and customer support.

At the same time, the company is testing another subscription programme under a new brand called “Meta One”, covering creators, businesses and Meta AI users.

For Meta AI, the company will begin testing two plans next month. Meta One Plus will cost $7.99 per month, while Meta One Premium will cost $19.99 monthly.

According to Meta, the Premium tier will allow access to more advanced processing for complex requests, alongside expanded image and video generation features across its apps.

The AI subscriptions will first launch in Singapore, Guatemala and Bolivia.

Meta is also preparing professional subscription plans for creators and businesses in markets including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand and Bangladesh.

The Meta One Essential plan, priced at $14.99 per month, includes a verified badge, impersonation protection and an upgraded links page for directing users to websites and social profiles.

The more expensive Meta One Advanced plan will cost $49.99 monthly and adds tools designed to improve visibility and audience growth across Facebook and Instagram.

Subscribers on the Advanced tier will be able to appear higher in search results, receive stronger promotion in feeds and use a bold “Follow” button on Reels. The plan also includes advanced analytics, scheduling tools, account-sharing features for moderators and alerts when other users repost their content.

Meta said the long-term goal is to bring all subscription products together under the Meta One brand.

The company has looked for new sources of revenue as growth across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp slows in several markets. Subscription services also arrive as Meta continues spending heavily on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Investors reacted positively to the announcement, with Meta shares growing nearly 3% on Wall Street following the rollout.

Meta now joins companies including Snapchat and X in offering paid subscription tiers, though its strategy combines consumer features, creator tools and AI services within one broader subscription system.

• Big Tech calculated to harvest up to $162,492 per person in inflation-linked commercial value from internet users worldwide over a lifetime, according to first-of-its-kind report
• Across the world’s estimated 6,000 million internet users the report’s upper lifetime estimate would amount to approximately $745 trillion in commercial value.
• The study, which assessed 129 major companies, found Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Anthropic are some of the most significant beneficiaries of data capture.

Web3 Foundation today launched ‘The Hidden Price of Free: What Your Data Is Really Worth’, a groundbreaking report revealing that Big Tech and AI companies earn upto $160,000 in commercial value from each internet user over a digital lifetime.

This equates to a staggering $745 trillion across the combined global population of internet users over a period of 60 years.

The study calculated the companies earn upto $8,500 per year from USA internet users per year, upto $2,206 per user in United Kingdom and Europe and $407 in the rest of the world. Globally this equates to an annual amount of upto $908 per internet user.

Over a lifetime that means the commercial value for a user in the USA is $511,869, UK and Europe $132,387, $24,424 in the rest of the world and overall $54,499 globally – or a huge $1.08m in the USA, $260,542 in UK and Europe, $72,821 elsewhere and $162,492 globally when inflation-linked.

In relative terms, the lifetime figure is equivalent to almost five years of full-time employment in the UK, using the ONS 2025 benchmark of $52,474 per annum.

On an inflation-linked basis, the US lifetime figure of $831,301 is roughly equivalent to two times the Q1 2026 median sales price of a new US house. Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta are explicitly listed in the report, each earning up to $1,000 annually on a single internet user.

The report shows that the modern internet is not free but paid for through personal data. Searches, clicks, locations, purchases, prompts, messages, images, preferences and behavioural signals are collected, analysed and monetised by some of the world’s most powerful companies, usually without users having meaningful visibility, bargaining power or participation in the value created.

Unlike previous attempts to estimate the value of personal data, which have focused mainly on advertising revenue per active user, Web3 Foundation’s methodology takes a broader view of how human data is monetised in the modern digital economy.

The study examines advertising, AI subscriptions, enterprise licensing, API access, data brokerage, marketplaces, algorithmic recommendations and AI-driven cost savings.

This allowed the findings to account not only for social media and search platforms, but also for emerging AI firms, hardware-linked digital ecosystems and data brokers whose business models increasingly depend on collecting, analysing and reusing personal data at scale.

The report stresses that the figures are not presented as precise valuations or direct cash entitlements owed to individuals. Instead, they are intended as a benchmark for understanding the scale of commercial value associated with personal data and the extent to which that value is captured by companies rather than users.

Why AI changes the data economy

Web3 Foundation argues that artificial intelligence makes the imbalance more urgent. Personal data is no longer used only to target adverts. It is used to train models, improve recommendations, power enterprise systems, build behavioural profiles, create predictive products and generate new forms of machine intelligence.

Every search query, location signal, online purchase, social interaction, uploaded image or chatbot prompt can become part of a wider data economy. As AI systems become more capable, human-origin data becomes more valuable, while users remain largely excluded from the economic upside.

Web3 as a different model

The report says Web3 offers a fundamentally different vision for the internet. Rather than relying on centralised platforms that collect and monetise user data behind closed doors, Web3 technologies are built on decentralised digital infrastructure that can give individuals greater control over their identity, assets and online activity.

In a Web3-enabled internet, users could decide what data they share, with whom and on what terms. The report argues this could shift power away from dominant technology platforms and towards the individuals who generate the underlying value.

“For too long, the internet has operated on an implicit bargain that users do not fully understand: convenience in exchange for surveillance. This report helps expose the scale of that imbalance. The modern digital economy is powered by human data, yet the people generating that value have little visibility, control or participation in the upside. Web3 technology can offer a path toward a more equitable internet, where individuals have genuine ownership over their digital lives rather than simply being the raw material for someone else’s business model.” – Gavin Wood, founder, Web3 Foundation

“The internet does not have to work this way. For decades, digital platforms have been built around centralised control, where users hand over their data, identity and value in exchange for access to services. Web3 represents a fundamentally different model, one where individuals can own their digital assets, verify their identity without surrendering personal information and participate more fairly in the online economy. As AI accelerates and data becomes even more valuable, building a more transparent, user-led internet is becoming increasingly urgent.” – Bill Laboon, vice president, Technical Operations, Web3 Foundation

The company began the process on Wednesday morning, starting with staff in Asia.

Workers in Singapore received the first emails at around 4 a.m. local time, while employees in the United States and other regions are expected to hear later in the day.

People familiar with the plans said the notifications will roll out in stages across time zones.

Meta has asked many of those affected to work from home while the process continues. The cuts are part of a restructuring as the company moves more resources into artificial intelligence and reduces costs elsewhere in the business.

The reductions are expected to hit engineering and product teams the most. Some staff were told earlier that further changes could follow later in the year, depending on how the restructuring progresses.

At the same time, Meta has moved about 7,000 employees into newly formed teams focused on AI work, including product development and autonomous systems. The company ended March with just under 80,000 employees before these latest changes took effect.

In an internal memo, Meta’s Head of People, Janelle Gale, said the company is moving towards a flatter structure.

“We’re now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership.”

“We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding,” she said.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence the company’s main priority.

Meta has committed more than $100 billion in capital spending this year on AI infrastructure and related projects, as it tries to keep pace with competitors including Google and OpenAI.

The company has already carried out several rounds of layoffs in recent years as part of an efficiency stimulation. It has also encouraged staff to use AI tools in daily work, including coding and internal systems automation.

Inside the company, the changes have created unease. Some employees have complained about job security and the direction of internal AI projects.

More than 1,000 staff members signed a petition asking the company to avoid extensive data collection from employee devices for AI training, including inputs such as keystrokes, mouse movement and screen activity.

“Automators like Meta risk no longer being an employer of choice as it’s being revealed that they will cut out the human when the opportunity presents itself,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics and behavioural science at University of Oxford.

“Doing so might well lead to short-term cost savings but risks longer-term growth potential by undermining employee wellbeing and engagement.”

Investor considerations have also grown around the scale of Meta’s AI spending and whether it will deliver returns.

While the company describes the job cuts as a way to offset the cost of its AI expansion and restructuring, analysts at Evercore estimate the layoffs could generate about $3 billion in savings for Meta.

That figure is small compared with its bigger investment plans, and capital expenditure could reach about $145 billion this year, with expectations of further heavy spending on AI infrastructure over the coming years.

The company said on Tuesday it will apply its latest detection tools in 27 European Union countries and also bring the system to Facebook in the US for the first time, with the UK and EU rollout on that platform set to follow in June.

This builds on earlier work to identify teenagers even when they enter false birth dates. Meta has been testing systems that flag accounts it believes belong to younger users and then apply stricter settings automatically.

“This technology will be expanded to 27 countries in the European Union. Meta is also expanding this technology to Facebook in the United States for the first time, with the UK and EU to follow in June,” the company said in a blog post.

Pressure has been growing on technology firms to show how they protect young users. Regulators and parents have complained about harmful content, online abuse and the effect of social media on teenagers.

Meta says it now relies more on artificial intelligence to assess whether an account belongs to a minor. The system does not depend only on the date of birth entered by users. Instead, it reviews activity across profiles.

That includes posts, comments, captions and other signals. For example, references to school life or birthday celebrations may point to a younger age. The company has also added visual analysis, allowing its systems to review images and videos for general age cues.

Meta stressed that the technology is not facial recognition, saying the system looks at broad features, not identity.

If an account is judged to be underage, it may be deactivated, while the user would then need to prove their age to restore access. Meta is also trying to stop repeat attempts by users it believes are below the minimum age.

At the same time, Meta is expanding its “Teen Account” settings. These place limits on who can contact younger users and the type of content they see. Accounts suspected to belong to teenagers are moved into these settings by default.

The company further revealed it has already enrolled hundreds of millions of users into these protections across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger since 2024.

For parents, Meta will begin sending notifications in the US with guidance on how to check a teenager’s age settings. The messages will include advice on discussing honest age reporting online.

“We’re continuing to strengthen our underage enforcement measures by using AI to remove people under 13 from our services.”

Meta added that age verification is an industry problem. It said app stores should take a stronger role by confirming users’ ages and sharing that information with developers.

Driving its own systems, Meta plans to expand the technology further this year, aiming for more global coverage.

The proposed deal follows a $30 billion bond issuance last year, the largest in the company’s history. With this new development, Meta is again turning to debt markets rather than relying only on its cash reserves.

A day earlier, Meta Platforms increased its 2026 capital spending forecast by $10 billion. It now expects to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion this year. The capital will go into data centres, custom chips, and energy systems needed to support AI tools and large-scale model training.

Across the industry, spending is increasing fast, with Big Tech companies expected to invest more than $700 billion in AI infrastructure this year.

Meta’s new bond sale is expected to include up to six tranches. One portion could mature in 2066. Early pricing discussions suggest the longest-dated notes may offer a yield of up to 1.8% points above US Treasuries, based on people familiar with the matter.

The company has not responded to requests for comment.

S&P Global has rated the planned debt as investment-grade and kept a stable outlook on the company. Its analysts said they expect Meta’s leverage to remain “well below” the downgrade threshold for at least two years.

Still, they noted that the scale of AI spending is beginning to affect the company’s credit profile.

To support this change, Meta has reduced spending on its metaverse unit, which has recorded losses for several years. At the same time, the company is preparing for job cuts.

Reports reveal plans to reduce its workforce by 20% or more, with an initial round affecting about half of that set for May 20.

Meta is not alone in raising funds this way. Other technology firms have also issued large amounts of debt this year.

Amazon raised about $54 billion across US and European markets in March, Alphabet has issued roughly $32 billion in dollar and euro-denominated notes, while Oracle completed a $25 billion bond sale that drew strong demand.