Meta Platforms

Owner of Instagram and Facebook, the primary targets of youth mental health litigation. - Lead defendant in bellwether trial

The Los Angeles bellwether trial testing whether social media platforms can be held liable for addictive design features is now in active proceedings, with opening statements delivered February 9 and key executive testimony underway. Mark Zuckerberg testified for nearly eight hours on February 18, defending Instagram against claims that the company deliberately designed features to addict children while knowing the harms. Internal documents presented in court showed Instagram aimed to increase daily user time to 46 minutes by 2026 and that roughly 4 million users were under 13—about 30% of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the U.S. at the time—despite the company's public policy prohibiting users under 13. The trial, which began jury selection January 27, represents the first time major tech companies face a jury over allegations their products harm children's mental health.

Updated Feb 19

Social media conglomerate executing a strategic shift from virtual reality to AI, with $73 billion in cumulative Reality Labs losses. - Pivoting from metaverse to AI infrastructure

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—guided to over $650 billion in combined AI infrastructure spending for 2026 during their February earnings reports, up sharply from $350 billion in 2025, and have begun tapping debt markets to fund the buildout. Microsoft and Meta reported on January 28-29 with divergent market reactions: Microsoft shares plunged 12% on $37.5 billion quarterly capex, while Meta surged on $115-135 billion 2026 guidance. Alphabet stunned investors February 4 with $175-185 billion capex plans—doubling last year's spend—while Amazon topped all on February 5 with a $200 billion pledge, 50% above 2025 and $50 billion over expectations, prompting a share selloff despite strong revenue beats.

Updated Feb 10

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Reality Labs, has become a primary destination for departing Apple talent, especially in AI and design. - Key competitor aggressively poaching Apple’s AI and design talent

After more than a decade of remarkable executive stability under CEO Tim Cook, Apple experienced its largest leadership shake-up since the post–Steve Jobs reorganization, spanning from March 2025 into early 2026. The company repeatedly delayed its flagship Apple Intelligence upgrade to Siri, signaling strategic and engineering problems in artificial intelligence (AI). By early December 2025, Apple’s longtime AI chief John Giannandrea announced he was stepping down, human interface design chief Alan Dye joined Meta, and Apple revealed that general counsel Kate Adams and environment/policy head Lisa Jackson would retire in 2026, with Meta’s legal chief Jennifer Newstead coming in to run a newly combined Legal and Government Affairs organization.

Updated Feb 6

Parent of Facebook, Instagram; accelerating nuclear partnerships to fuel AI data centers. - Securing up to 6.6 GW nuclear capacity via Vistra, TerraPower, Oklo deals

Google spent $4.75 billion over a year ago to acquire Intersect Power, owning the power plants feeding its AI data centers. Amazon bought a nuclear-powered campus in Pennsylvania. Microsoft restarted Three Mile Island in September 2024. Now Meta has announced nuclear deals unlocking up to 6.6 gigawatts—through partnerships with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo—to power American AI leadership. Tech giants aren't just buying electricity. They're securing or building the grid themselves.

Updated Feb 4

Owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, whose Meta Pixel tracking tool is central to most VPPA lawsuits. - Third party in VPPA litigation wave

Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act in 1988 after a reporter published Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history. Thirty-eight years later, the law has become the basis for hundreds of class action lawsuits against media companies using tracking pixels on their websites—and the Supreme Court just agreed to decide who can sue under it.

Updated Jan 31

Meta is a U.S.-based technology conglomerate that operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other platforms, and runs a large global network of data centers increasingly dedicated to AI workloads. - Became one of largest corporate nuclear buyers in U.S. history while facing criticism for gas plant in Texas

Since late 2022, U.S. regulators and utilities have warned that a new class of digital infrastructure—AI-optimized data centers—could reshape national power demand, ending an era of flat electricity consumption and forcing a rapid buildout of generation and transmission. By early 2026, those warnings have crystallized into concrete challenges: PJM Interconnection's December 2025 capacity auction hit the $333.44/MW-day price cap and failed to meet reliability requirements for the first time in its history, with data centers accounting for $6.5 billion—or 40%—of the auction's $16.4 billion in costs. Regional grid operators now project U.S. data center electricity consumption will grow from 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to over 400 TWh by 2030, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates data centres globally could more than double their electricity use to approximately 945 TWh in the same timeframe, with AI-optimized servers as the main driver.

Updated Jan 27

Parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, serving billions of users globally. - Implementing major content moderation policy shifts

Mark Zuckerberg banned Donald Trump after January 6th, calling the risks of keeping him on Facebook too great. Four years later, on the anniversary of that ban, Zuckerberg killed Meta's entire U.S. fact-checking program. Between those two moments: a Mar-a-Lago dinner, a million-dollar inauguration donation, and the elevation of a Bush-era Republican to Meta's top policy job.

Updated Jan 7

Meta is a social media and technology company operating Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, heavily scrutinized by EU privacy and competition regulators. - Subject to GDPR, DMA and fresh antitrust probes over data and AI policies

The European Union is in the middle of an unprecedented crackdown on Big Tech, using a new arsenal of digital laws — the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and long‑standing competition and privacy rules — to challenge the power and business models of U.S.-based tech giants. Since 2023, Brussels has designated six major platforms as “gatekeepers,” imposed structural obligations on their core services, and begun opening formal proceedings against firms like X, Google, Apple and Meta over monopolistic conduct, opaque algorithms, deceptive interface design and failures to police harmful content.

Updated Dec 11, 2025