Big Tech loses lawsuits all of the time.

What you don’t see beyond the headlines: Big Tech is also great at getting lawyers to wrap the lost cases in so many appeals that nobody wins, because they’d rather pay $100m in legal fees than $100m to plaintiffs.

But this week, a $6m suit was lost by Meta and Google for their product design causing depression, then Meta lost another case in New Mexico for $375m for child exploitation.

This feels different. Finally society is coming to terms with something study after study after study has shown:

Social media is terrible for kids’ mental health

What were the lawsuits' findings and what could this mean for social media regulation in the future (if the complete and total Congressional gridlock ever ends, that is)?

We’ll explore based on what other less ‘stuck’ countries are doing.

Also in this edition:

🤔 Stop Saying No One Will Watch AI Content (Thoughts Are My Own)

🤖 Sora is No More-a

🫦 EU Proposes Banning ‘Nudification’ AI

3️⃣ Orca and Sapphire Studies Form Third

🐤 X Loses Lawsuit Against Advertiser Boycott

💪🏼 Jobs from Saatchi US, Amazon, and TikTok

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

TLDR:

We may never know who ‘Kaley’ is, but this 20 year old plantiff may have changed the trajectory of social media regulation in America.

A court found she was indeed harmed by the product design of Instagram and YouTube, citing their beauty filters, infinite scroll, and internal memos that included lines like “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.”

This $6m lawsuit was immediately overshadowed when a New Mexico court found Meta failed to protect children from sexual exploitation to the tune of $375m.

And that’s not all. This summer, there will be yet another similar case filed in the city of Oakland, California pitting six school districts around the country against the social media giants.

Based on these verdicts, I don’t see this going well for the platforms.

So will the platforms change overnight to protect their teen users?

No way.

Remember, Meta’s revenue topped $200b in 2025. The way these platforms operate are working well for revenue, even if it’s costing the mental health and, in many cases, lives of teenagers.

And if one platform takes a harder stance against teens, the platforms that make it easier for teens to get any content they want will get all of their customers.

The platforms are in too deep.

Instead, they’ll have to make tiny, incremental changes to make their products more defensible in court in the future.

But as we know from bellwether cases, this is going to lead to a lot more filings in court as people harmed by social media sites dive into this dark gold rush.

Okay, so all of the platforms are screwed. What’s next?

We’ve seen ‘platform ending’ events like record-label lawsuits, ad-pocalypses, and terrible moments in front of Congress before, so we know the process.

In other words, let’s not get over our skis here.

The platforms will appeal for years. The changes will be small and incremental. They aren’t going to start caring more about teens as much as money.

But this does force them to think about their actions through a new frame. Because the only real way to affect change at these platforms is hurting their stock price.

If you’re one of the people saying of AI content, “If you don’t spend the time to make it, who is going to spend the time to watch it?” the answer is becoming clear: a lot of people.

The New York Times wrote a piece about ‘Fruit Love Island’, a very, very AI-looking parody of Love Island featuring sexy fruit that racked up hundreds of millions of views cross-platform.

But this is small potatoes compared to their largest inspiration, the Italian Brainrot fad, wherein an endless all-AI cast of animal/machine hybrids with silly names kind of, just, exist. But it’s truly cross-platform, and Roblox versions have made hundreds of millions of dollars.

One of the hottest new short-form shows is Chloe vs History, wherein an AI woman travels through time to AI environments and gives her AI views on the AI things she sees.

If you start doing searches around AI horror, AI cartoons, AI South Park, and AI cute animals, you’ll start to realize that billions of views are already attributed to clearly AI content.

In other words, no matter how much you don’t want it to be true, a lot of people like AI content.

The “AI can never write Shakespeare” excuse isn’t resonating.

Then again, when’s the last time you cracked ‘Twelfth Night’ over a glass of wine?

So what are the common threads between the well-viewed, highly viral AI content vs the slop getting all of the backlash?

The AI that’s successful is creating like a creator:

Strong, clicky premises, good hooks, reliable brand, entertaining stories, and quality that doesn’t distract, even if it’s not quite perfect.

In other words, it’s just another content genre.

I’m sorry creatives. I know you wanted AI to go down in flames so human-made content retained its value. It’s just not going that way.

In fact, it’s happening faster than we thought.

People would rather talk about Sora going down in flames than all of the highly successful AI on major platforms.

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

🤖 Sayonara Sora! Open AI’s short AI video creator and feed will be shutting down after initially retaining a #1 position in the App Store only to meteorically fall down the charts. But the real reason: they were burning $1m per day on costly video generation without a path to get people to pay to the point of profitability.

🫦 The European Parliament approved a ban on sexualized deepfake technology, also known as ‘nudification apps’, and it’s expected to be finalized. Good news for everyone who isn’t the outspoken founder of Grok.

3️⃣ Social shopping giants Orca and Sapphire Studies merged to form a new entity called Third. This gives the new entity global reach for production, brand management, and operations. Congrats Max and Lauren!

🐤 In 2024, the World Federation of Advertisers pointed out that hate speech was on the rise on X leading to an advertiser boycott. Despite that being true, Elon tried to sue them. And after millions of dollars in legal fees and two years, he lost. I despise when the rich try to punish their enemies by weaponizing the judicial system, especially from someone who lies about being a free speech absolutist. Big King Joffrey energy.

Community Content Specialist, Saatchi US

It’s not in the job title, but this role is specifically looking for an outdoor enthusiast who knows adventure creators inside-and-out. If you’re a van-life, backpacking, bouldering-with-a-camera super fan and want a hybrid role where you can still take weekend trips to Joshua Tree, this is an amazing opportunity.

Associate Producer, Creative Content, Amazon

Amazon has some amazing original shows (shout out to Fleabag and Invincible), and this role is focused on producing marketing materials for Amazon MGM’s originals. Amazing way to learn digital marketing while getting to play the ‘Hollywood game’ with some of the best IP around.

Head of News Creator Partnerships and Operations, TikTok

We’re entering an election year, so news content is about to absolutely explode. Who am I kidding? It’s already exploded. This role will give you a front row seat into news creators and publishers as they try to figure out what the heck we’re supposed to do about ‘news’ in a social media-first world.