Global News Podcast - Meta and Google found negligent in social media addiction trial

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

A jury in California has concluded that Meta and Google intentionally built addictive social media platforms, in a case brought by a 20-year-old woman who said her compulsive use of social media as a child led to mental health problems. The woman, known as Kaley, has been awarded $6m in damages. The outcome of this trial is likely to have implications for hundreds of similar cases now winding their way through US courts. Parents who say their children were also harmed by social media algorithms celebrated the result outside the court. Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, alongside Google, the owner of YouTube, have both said they will appeal. Also: President Trump has claimed Iran is ''afraid'' to admit it is negotiating with the US, as Tehran continues to deny reports of dialogue with Washington. The boss of AirCanada is facing calls to resign, after he released a condolence message for the recent deaths of two pilots in English, but not in French. More than 350 years after the death of the legendary French musketeer d'Artagnan, his remains may have been found under the floor of a Dutch church. And scientists now believe dogs became man's best friend much earlier than previously thought.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

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It's time to see it differently with Britbox. Watch with the free trial now at Britbox.com. Their company's success helped build a nation. The company is such a big part of Korea's economy. But who are the family behind one of the world's tech giants? The major corporate empire that we now know today. Samsung. Inheritance Samsung from the BBC World Service explores the real-life dramas of the Lee family.

There's a succession style drama underneath of all this. Inheritance, Samson. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Thursday the 26th of March, these are our main stories. A young woman wins a landmark social media addiction case against two tech giants, setting a precedent thousands of others could follow. After Iran rejects negotiations with the US, President Trump claims its leaders are afraid to admit to talks because they fear being killed.

Also in this podcast, has anything changed for Venezuelans since Nicholas Maduro's capture? January 3rd was a really big step. It's not enough. We want the investment of the US, we want the investment of the international companies, and we want democracy now. And just how long have dogs been man's best friend? You may be surprised by the answer. It's a landmark case that could transform social media and open the floodgates for tech giants to be sued by thousands of young people and their families. A 20-year-old woman, known as Kaylee, went to court to argue that two of the world's biggest tech companies, Mehta and Google, designed their apps to be addictive.

and harmful to adolescents. And a jury in Los Angeles found them both liable for harming Kaylee's mental health. She's been awarded a total of $6 million in damages over her childhood addiction to social media. Her lawyer, Mark Lanier, called the ruling A Righteous Moment. We've sent a message with this, that you will be held accountable for the features

that drive addiction. That's a huge message for these companies. Mr. Lanier was speaking. outside the courthouse, surrounded by a group of parents who claim their children were also harmed by social media. Many of them were seen celebrating and hugging each other after the verdict. John DeMay, whose son Jordan killed himself after being extorted on Instagram, is waiting for his own civil case to be heard against Meta. He welcomed Wednesday's unprecedented ruling. It's quite interesting Jordan's four-year death anniversaries today, so it's a lot of emotions. It's the

right move, it's the right decision. Really the only way to affect change on a business in America is you can either sue them civilly or you can press legislation against them because the only way that they're going to learn is either going to be hit in the pocketbooks or there's going to be some laws that they have to follow, right? And this is just one little crack in the system and the floodgates are going to start to open for sure. And eventually they're going to start to fall like dominoes. Google and Meta have said they disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal. Here's Meta's spokesperson, Ashley Nicole. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to

defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online. Well, this all comes a day after a jury in New Mexico found meta liable for the way its platforms endanger children and expose them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators. Let's hear from someone who knows the inner workings of meta. Francis Hougan is a former Facebook employee who became well known as a whistleblower. Some of the documents that have come out through these court cases are really good, almost like, what went wrong here?

So, for example, one of the studies that they presented in this case talked about how they knew sending notifications to kids during the school day, sending notifications to kids late at night, interfered with their school, the ability to focus in school, interfered with their sleep. If you're someone who's struggling with mental health issues, having trouble sleeping is one of the biggest things that's going to make that worse, right? They ran experiments where they just did something simple. They turned off the notifications late at night. Kids said, I feel less stressed. I'd be able to focus in school. And yet they didn't launch that because people use the platform overall 1% less. What is the value of a healthy

child. What is the value of avoiding struggling with an eating disorder, struggling with self-harm? Is it worth 1% less usage? Those are the kinds of things where, you know, until you have outside consequences, the platforms will just brush it under the rug so they can show their investors positive numbers each quarter. Former Facebook employee Francis Hogan. Well, our technology editor, Zoe Kleinman, says the LA verdict is groundbreaking. This is a real game-changing moment. for social media. Whatever happens next and there's likely to be appeals and legal processes to follow the long-term impact on these platforms that are used by billions of people could be really dramatic. Perhaps we'll see the design features that the jury found made the sites more addictive,

things like auto-scrolling, things like algorithmic recommendations, perhaps they'll have to go. And that would fundamentally make using social media a very different experience and a much less appealing one. And perhaps social media is going to become an over 16s or even an over 18s experience. We've already had some experts tonight described this as big tech's big tobacco moment, and we know how that worked out. Might we see health warnings on screens or restrictions on advertising? I honestly think the verdict has come as a shock to META and Google. They have fought this hard at huge expense.

They've spent $1,000 an hour on legal fees. The other two companies that were involved in this, TikTok and Snatchos, to settle before the case, even started, META maintains that a single app cannot be solely responsible for a teen mental health crisis. But it isn't a shock to the campaigners and the parents who have tirelessly argued that children are in danger on social media and the tech companies aren't doing enough to protect them. Zoe Kleinman. Let's turn to the conflict in the Middle East now, which has been raging for nearly four weeks. The Iranian regime has dismissed President Trump's claims that they're ready to make a deal, saying it has no intention of negotiating with the US for now.

Instead, Tehran has set out demands of its own, including compensation and guarantees that it won't come under attack again. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Arakchi said messages may have been conveyed between the US and Iran by friendly countries like Pakistan and Turkey, but that didn't amount to dialogue. And the fact that the US was now talking about negotiations showed how its position had weakened. Why are they talking about negotiations?

There are no negotiations to be had. But the fact that the enemy, who is looking for our unconditional surrender, is now seeking negotiations, requesting conversations, and preparing their highest ranking officials to come and negotiate with the Islamic Republic. That means accepting defeat. Despite being constantly rebuffed by Tehran, the White House insists that it is very close to meeting its goals in Iran. Speaking at a Republican fundraising event in Washington, President Trump repeated that negotiations were underway. And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they figure they'll be killed by their own people.

They're also afraid they'll be killed by us. A correspondent David Willis told me that the conflicting messaging and President Trump's handling of the conflict is causing divisions in the Republican Party to deepen further. We're starting to see signs of frustration on the part of lawmakers who up to now have given the Trump administration pretty wide latitude in regard to the waging of this war. Some emerged from classified briefings on Capitol Hill yesterday. complaining about the lack of detail in regard to such things as the possible deployment of ground troops. And concerns have also been expressed about the rising cost of the conflict and the lack of a timeline. And indeed, perhaps the most outspoken concern was expressed by a Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

And she said she left the briefing troubled by what she described as shifting explanations and unclear military objectives. And she later wrote on social media that the longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people, Jeanette. David Willis. Meanwhile, as attacks on Tehran continue,

many Iranians are still trying to flee the country. Dan Johnson has been reporting from the Iran-Turkey border for several weeks. From the city of Van, he told us what he'd been hearing from people who'd recently arrived there. Yeah, more people coming over the border, leaving the country, while ever the prospects of peace look remote.

And people have said to us that they're confused about exactly what's happening, the number of different twists and turns that they've been in this conflict so far. They can't work out for themselves where this is heading and what they should do to try to keep themselves safe. Iranians, I've spoken to have talked about, how they feel they can't trust Donald Trump, how he's not a man of his word. But they also see that the regime is not going to give in, is not going to crumble. One woman said that she thought the regime would see the country destroyed

before it gave in. So it's difficult for Iranians. They are trying to keep themselves safe. Many, of course, afraid to talk to us openly because of the risks that they may face if they return to the country. But I have spoken to one man who spoke to us openly without fear. This is Kamal Abassi, who said he didn't want to return to Iran. He didn't think it was safe to go back there wherever that regime is in place. He's been telling me about. the protests that he joined, the impact of the war on his home and his family. He started off by telling me about participating in those protests at the start of the year. What I saw was a very harsh and severe repression by the government.

They used direct shooting at the protesters. They killed and murdered many, many more were arrested, waiting harsh sentences like execution, capital punishment or long-term imprisonments. Was it frightening to join those protests? Very frightening. You have first even think of the possibility of death when you want to join such a protest in Iran. If you take part in a protest, it's better to die rather than to be caught. People honestly expected something better from this United States and Israeli intervention,

but I think it backfired at the moment. Because Iranian people right now seem to be trapped and caught between war on one hand and domestic repression on the other hand, like a dilemma. We thought that the American intervention would release us soon. However, that freedom which we wanted didn't happen.

Many people, even, many civilians are getting killed because of those bombings. And this is what happened to your family, right? Tell us that story. All the windows started shaking and breaking and my father, 82 years old, was shocked badly,

taken to hospital and later lost his life because of receiving such a shock. And my house also damaged the walls, cracked down. It was not habitable anymore. I had to leave it. Should the conflict continue? If it ends in a ceasefire,

I am much worried about those people who have been arrested during the protest. There may be 200,000 people are now in prison waiting to face harsh sentences. I don't like my country to suffer more than that, but on the other hand, I don't like the regime of Ayatollahs to survive. What do you think your future is now?

I try to be optimistic. I try my best to survive, make a new and bright future, something which I was the pride of in my country. Living in Iran is a very dark experience. Now that I'm in Turkey, Turkey is not a fully Western country. It's a Muslim country like Iran. But when I see the lives, I see the people and comparing them to my own country and to all my people.

I see and I understand a very huge gap. And just it's because of those people who have got the upper hand in my country. I mean, the Ayatollahs. Of course, until no, many people, we have lost many people. Many people have been injured or in jail. But I think that's the price we are paying for our freedom. Kamal Abassi speaking to Dan Johnson. Still to come in this podcast.

We had a few tells. They were loose and we wanted to repair them. And when we took them out, we found bones. Could a body found in a Dutch church be that of the French soldier d'Artagnan, who inspired the three musketeers? Their company's success helped build a nation. The company is such a big part of Korea's economy. But who are the family behind one of the world's tech giants?

The major corporate empire that we now know today. Samsung. Inheritance Samsung from the beach. BBC World Services explores the real-life dramas of the Lee family. Here's a succession-style drama underneath of all this. Inheritance, Samsung. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast.

The former president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, will appear in court today in New York to face drug trafficking and weapons charges. It will be his second court appearance since U.S. Special Forces seized at the start of the year. In the past three months, Venezuela's government, once hostile to Washington, has begun working with it, opening its oil and mining sectors to foreign investment and releasing some political prisoners. But beyond the political shifts, what's actually changed for Venezuelans? Here's our South America correspondent, Ione Wells. Here, the coast of Sukre, one of Venezuela's poorest states, is where the US military action

against Venezuela's started. These strikes on small alleged drug-smuggling boats, now responsible for killing more than 150 people, started months before the U.S. Special Forces raid on Caracas and the seizure of Nicolas Maduro. Now, with Maduro appearing in court in New York, the U.S. and Venezuela say change is coming. But here in Sukre, does anyone believe it? Here in the coastal town of Wiria, many families tell me their relatives were killed in the boat strikes. One morning, I got up as usual thinking he was feeling. I found out the news on social media.

Dianis Noriega, a mother of five, tells me her husband, Luis, was one of them. At school, the kids were telling my daughter that her dad was blown up on a boat. She fell into depression. The U.S. claim those on board were narco-terrorists, but hasn't yet offered evidence. De Anis tells a different story, poverty pushing ordinary fishermen to take these jobs. Poverty, she says, that military action can't bomb away. Since Maduro's arrest, there are already some tangible changes in the nation's capital Caracas, like the release of some political prisoners.

Jesus Armas, who worked on the opposition's last election campaign, was detained for 10 months before his release in February. They torture me. They used plastic bags and put these plastic bags all over my face. In January 3rd, was a really big step. It's not enough. We want the investment of the US. We want the investment of the international companies. and we want democracy now.

Here on the coast, jobs are scarce and shortages are common. Cues of cars stretch from miles in the capital, Kumanah, waiting for fuel, and people have had no water for two weeks, not even for flushing the toilet. In the fishing town of Waka, the first delivery of cooking gas since December has just arrived. In the world's most oil-rich nation, this fisherman Pablo Marin can barely afford fuel. Average salaries are less than $200 a month, and yearly inflation of nearly 500% last year makes his earnings in Venezuela's currency worthless.

Ten years ago, money had value. Now you're paid in cash and it's worth nothing. In another country, in Ecuador, a family could make $500, catching 100 kilograms of fish, pay for fuel and still have enough leftover for food. Here, if you can't. 100 kilograms of fish, you would have to find another 100 to cover your expenses, so you are left

with nothing. Just off the coast here, the oil company Shell has signed deals with the US and Venezuelan governments for a huge new gas project since Maduro's arrest. Jumari Martinez, a resident from a local family of fishermen, has hopes the local area will benefit. But it's unclear whether these offshore projects will employ. local workers will lead to investment onshore. We're hoping for a new change, a new improvement, new projects,

and that new opportunities will be offered to the fishermen, to the Venezuelan people, as a whole. This part of Venezuela in Sukhru feels miles away from the political bubble of Caracas, with all the talk of new mining and oil deals there. Poverty, the economic crisis, destitution are all very important. embedded in this part of the country. And even with the talk of new foreign investments, quite literally on the horizon here, the prospect of real change for people still feels very distant.

Ione Wells reporting. The head of Canada's national airline Air Canada is facing calls to resign after issuing a condolence message only in English and not in French following a crash at a major US airport that killed two pilots. Carla Conti. On Sunday night, as an Air Canada plane was landing a New York's LaGuardia Airport, travelling in more than 200 kilometres an hour, a fire truck crossed at an intersection on the runway. The plane hid the truck. Both pilots were killed. While some of the passengers and crew were

injured, they all survived. Tributes have poured in for the two men, Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forrest. Shortly after the accident, Air Canada's Michael Rousseau released a video of condolence on X, but only in one of Canada's two official languages, English, despite the fact that one of the two men who died, Anton Forrest, was from French-speaking Quebec. First, and most importantly, I want to express our deepest sorrow where everyone affected. Our efforts are focused on the needs of our passengers and crew members, along with their families and loved ones. This has outraged many in a country where more than one in five people speak French.

Canada's parliamentary committee on official languages summoned the airline boss to explain himself before MPs. And the Prime Minister Mark Carney has waded into the row, saying Mr. Rousseau's response showed a lack of compassion and calling on him to step down. Companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages regardless of the situation. I'm very disappointed in, as others are, in this unilingual message of the CEO of Air Canada, it doesn't matter of the circumstance, but particularly in these circumstances, lack of judgment and lack of compassion. Mr. Rousseau lives in Montreal, but despite his name, is an Anglophone. It's not the first time he's been criticized for his lack of French.

When he was appointed a CEO of Air Canada in 2021, a journalist asked him why he had learned the language, despite living in Quebec for more than a decade. His response, that he didn't have the time, sparked outrage. He later apologised and promised to learn French. Mr. Rousseau is until the 1st of May to appear before the committee. Amid concerns that safety failures may have been to blame for the accident, the Rau has sparked a fresh debate about linguistic inclusivity in Canada. Carla Conti, deep underground in a cave in the UK, at discovery has changed our understanding of the evolution of dogs and when they became man's best friend. Our science correspondent Palak Ghos visited the site. Water drips from the rocky icicles

hanging above the winding chambers of Goff's cave. Here a sliver of jawbone has reshaped the story of where the first dogs came from and how their fate became entwined with ours. We had Stone Age hunter gatherers and their dogs living and inhabiting this cave. I'm walking through the meandering tunnels with Dr. Lockhe-Skarsbrook from Oxford University, one of the scientists behind the discovery. This is a very long-standing relationship between humans and dogs, and it's been pushed back for 5,000 years earlier than we thought before. It's been pushed back because of a genetic analysis of a jawbone,

long thought to have come from a wolf, but now shown to be one of the first dogs, living closely with humans here, 15.000. thousand years ago. Dr. Scarsbrook thinks it's a significant finding. Not only is this earlier than we thought for dogs, it's 6,000 years earlier than cattle, pigs, sheep, all of these other domestic cats only entered our homes 2,000 years ago. The Goff's cave finding prompted the research team to analyze other bones in museum collections across Western Europe. The result showed that these ancient dogs were not only genetically similar to the jawbone found in Goff's cave, chemical tests showed they ate the same food

as their masters, a finding that indicates that the dogs traveled with their human owners across Europe to Britain from Turkey. Taken together, the finding showed that the friendship between dogs and humans runs deeper than we thought, and was there almost from the very start. Palab Ghosh. Now to another historic discovery. You may think that d'Artagnan is just a fictional character in the Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas' tale of dashing French soldiers in the court of Louis XIV. But there was a real life, D'Artagnan, who was the inspiration for the hero of the novel

that has entranced generations of readers and spawned dozens of movies and TV shows. For more than 350 years, his final resting place has remained a mystery. Now, archaeologists who have spent decades searching for his grave, Think that they've found it under the collapsed floor of a church in the Netherlands. Chantelle Hartle has a story. The raucous gallantry of a handful of men, the three musketeers. The story of the swash-buckling French soldier D'Artagnan,

as told in one of the many stage adaptations of the three musketeers. D'Artagnan, whose real name was Charles de Bates de Castlemour, was the right-hand man to France's most flamboying. King Louis XIV, trusted with matters of espionage, secret missions and personal protection. He died in battle in 1673 during the French siege of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

His body was rumoured to have been buried in a church in the Dutch city, but there was no record of a burial in the church archives and no evidence had emerged until last month when part of the church floor collapsed, revealing a skeleton. The deacon, Jos Volk, called an archaeologist and says there was a moment of silence when they saw the first bone properly. We had a few tels that were loose and we wanted to repair them. And when we took them out, we found a wall in the ground. So that was interesting and we cleaned the wall a bit.

And then we found bones. Volk says he is 99% certain that these are the remains of D'Artagnan. Not only were bones found under the floor, but a muscle. bucket bullet at chess level and a French coin from 1660. And he says the location of the grave, right beneath where the altar used to be, is also significant, as only royalty or other important figures would have been buried there at the time. The archaeologist who took part in the excavation is more cautious. Wim Dyckman is waiting for final confirmation of the skeleton's identity before getting his hopes up. A DNA sample taken from the jawbone is currently

being analysed to see if it matches that of D'Artagnan's descendants. If the tests come back positive, Dijkman said this will be the highlight of his career, having spent almost 30 years trying to find the legendary Musketeer's grave. Chantal Hartle. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at BBC.co.uk. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Russell Newlove. the producer of a Chivuong Lee.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Jalil. Until next time. Goodbye. Their company's success helped build a nation. The company is such a big part of Korea's economy. But who are the family behind one of the world's tech giants? The major corporate empire that we now know today. Samsung.

Inheritance Samsung from the BBC World Service explores the real-life dramas of the Lee family. There's a succession. style drama underneath of all this. Inheritance, Samsung. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.