WSJ What’s News - Meta Reaches $18 Billion Settlement Over Claims It Harmed Teens

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

P.M. Edition for Aug. 26. Tech reporter Meghan Bobrowsky tells us why the Meta settlement could change how teenagers use some of the world’s most popular apps. Plus, the FDA approves a milestone therapy for pancreatic cancer. WSJ reporter Xavier Martinez discusses how the nearly $40,000-a-month drug from Revolution Medicines could change patient outcomes of one the deadliest cancers. And the FBI shuts down a sprawling hacking network linked to China that targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve and critical infrastructure. Sabrina Siddiqui hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Meta has reached an $18 billion settlement over social media's harm to teenagers, and it could mean big changes for how kids use the Internet. Plus, the FDA approved a breakthrough drug for one of the deadliest cancers. In talking to oncologists and researchers, this doesn't seem like something that happens every year or even every decade. And the FBI took down a sprawling Chinese hacking network. whose targets included NASA, the Fed, and the Senate. It's Wednesday, August 26th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal,

filling in for Alex Osce. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Meta has agreed to an $18 billion settlement with nearly all states in the U.S. over claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed teenagers. It ends a massive federal trial in Oakland, California that was just getting started. As part of the deal, META will limit time on its apps to two

hours a day for users who are under 18 years old. There's also a nighttime shutdown and a school mode that blocks notifications during class hours. Megan Brabowski, who covers meta platforms at the Wall Street Journal, has the latest. Megan, why did META settle now? Meta has been facing a lot more of these trials, and they've lost two big ones already. This was the third one and arguably the biggest one that they've had this year, and it could have ended in $200 billion plus dollars of liability for them. What changes will people actually see on Facebook and Instagram, and how big of a difference could that make in how people use these apps? There won't be any changes for met as adult users on Instagram and Facebook, but for users who are under the age of 18, there's all these settings

that they're going to have that already exist on an often basis. This is now going to be the default. So having a lot of push notifications disabled, having light counts hidden, and it will give teens a little pop up every 15 minutes that they've been using the app and will tell them when they've hit an hour and when they've hit 90 minutes, two hours, of course, being the limit for the day. But other apps might have to make changes too, right? Because this deal has a unique structure. Meta only pays out the full amount if TikTok and YouTube agree to similar restrictions and payments of their own. When I reached out to both of the companies, neither of them provided a statement to me. So we're not exactly clear on how that went down or if those companies are going to participate in this. Meta is now trying to get TikTok and YouTube to join them in a settlement that Meta has already agreed to.

Megan, at the risk of aging myself, Facebook came out when I was in college and Instagram not long after that. I've been using these apps on a day-to-day basis for almost two decades. So I'm constantly thinking about how my kids will interact with these platforms. How much of an effect could these limits have on the next generation of social media users? That's like the million-dollar question, right? We actually don't know what it looks like to have this more measured relationship with social media. That's going to be one of the really interesting things to see play out over the next few years. That was the Wall Street Journal's Megan Braborski.

Thank you, Megan. Thanks for having me. Elsewhere in tech, NVIDIA reported another blowout quarter after the market closed. Its sales came to just over $96 billion, beating Wall Street expectations. Its profit also topped estimates. But investors sent shares down in after-hours trading. For more on the chipmaker's earnings, go to WSJ.com, and we'll have more analysis on tomorrow morning's show. And we're exclusively reporting that U.S. officials say they've shut down a big hacking operation tied to China. The hackers targeted networks at NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy,

and the Senate, as well as power companies and hospitals. The operation hit its tracks on a global network of hacked devices, cloud computing infrastructure, and even clandestine networks. The FBI says a Chinese company has run the group since 2018. The company sells this access to hack networks and stolen data to China's foreign and military intelligence services. China has previously denied that it engages in hacking. The FDA has approved a new pancreatic cancer drug, Razon Q, from Revolution Medicines. It's the first therapy to target a mutation that's driven a third of all human cancers and stumped researchers for four decades. In a late stage study, patients on the drug lived more than 13 months, nearly twice as long as those on chemotherapy alone.

When presented at the world's largest gathering of cancer researchers last spring, the results drew a nearly minute-long-standing ovation. The Wall Street Journal, Xavier Martinez, joins us to discuss. Xavier, a standing ovation for drug results? That sounds really promising. How big a difference is this treatment expected to make for patients? This is a massive difference for patients with pancreatic cancer. It's one of the fastest moving and deadliest cancers. Patients often are given a year or less to live when they're diagnosed.

And so even a few months, when it comes to pancreatic cancer, that is a world of difference. There was just another big breakthrough on cancer treatment, the results of the trial from Moderna and Merck for a personalized vaccine. Are we entering a new frontier for potential cancer treatments? That certainly seems to be the way that we're going in talking to oncologists and researchers. This doesn't seem like something that happens every year or even every decade. These are sort of personalized medicines. They're more targeted. That's just so different from what we've seen in the past,

where really the strategy from oncologists was just to pump in toxins and try to just kill cells left and right. That was the Wall Street Journal's Xavier Martinez. Xavier, thank you. Thanks so much. And as for Price, Xavier told us after we spoke with him that the pancreatic cancer drug from Revolution Medicines

will cost close to $40,000 a month. Coming up, Flash, floods tore through Nepal and Tibet, leaving at least 100 people dead and hundreds more missing. We'll have more after the break. In markets, stocks closed down slightly lower today. The Dow led the declines and lost 0.2%. In economic data out today, the Fed's preferred inflation metric held steady at 3.7% for July. That's a reminder of the nagging problem facing the central bank's chairman Kevin Warsh, as he prepares for his speech on Friday at Jackson Hole.

The State Department has paused processing of immigrant visas, the kind that lead to a green card, so officers can be trained on new guidance for vetting applicants' finances. It's not the first time the administration has frozen this process. A similar pause on immigrant visas from 75 countries lasted nearly eight months until a federal judge ruled this month that it discriminated by national. nationality. WSJ immigration reporter Michelle Hackman says that the Trump administration has been trying to limit legal immigration of all kinds. The administration has been trying to find ways to curtail immigration

by people of limited financial means. They are requiring a lot more information of people who want to immigrate to the United States like bank records, even things like health records. They've attached fees to various visas that are really meant to discourage people from using those visas. For example, a student visa allows you to work in the United States for up to three years after graduation. And the administration doesn't like that. So what they're considering doing is attaching a $100,000 fee to employers who want to hire international students. And economists are projecting that that will drive most international students to basically leave right after they graduate or just not come at all. And in Asia, flash floods tore through towns,

along a popular pilgrimage route on the border of China and Nepal today, killing at least 100 people. Hundreds more are missing, including more than 130 travelers from India and almost 50 people from the U.S. Rescue operations are still in early stages, and officials expect the death toll to rise. There's also been damage to infrastructure, like bridges, roads, and hydropower plants, and buildings have been left buried in silt. It's the second time in just over a year that flash floods have devastated the area. Scientists around the world are trying to solve the mystery of what caused such a destructive flood today, since there hasn't been a lot of rain.

For now, the leading theory is that a cascade of ice and rock from a glacier broke off into rivers below. And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Danny Lewis with supervising producer Tali Arbell. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. I'm