This was a bit of a shocker and a bit of a huge story today.

Yeah.

The settlement here, uh, up to 17 billion, potentially a little bit more than that.

But also remembering that this was potentially gonna be up to a $1 trillion settlement for Meta at one point.

So really fractions and pennies on what this company is making.

They're making about $60 billion within one quarter this year, and 17 billion they're gonna pay out over the next 10.

So it's a very small bill for a company of that size, and especially given the amount that investors were worried they might have to pay in relation to this, uh, landmark lawsuit here.

... uh, uh, or i- is this just a Band-Aid or, I mean, is this, is this really gonna stop these kids from, from doing the most addictive things?

So what has happened and what has it agreed to?

Yeah, so they've agreed to sweeping changes really for under 18 users, things like time limits, two hours a day on Facebook and Instagram, um, blocking from the platform, uh, from the hours of midnight to 6:00 AM.

Also, seems like they're gonna be limiting notifications during, uh, school day hours.

Um, likes and reactions on posts won't be seen by kids, and then parents will also have additional controls, things like being able to see what their kids are searching on the platform.

Um, and lastly, this is super interesting to me, kids won't be able to use any cosmetic filters on the platform as well.

Do you think they will start changing their policies in advance of that?

Yeah.

Well, what's fascinating is that a big part of this settlement for Meta calls on other competing social media platforms to make the same changes.

Is there any relief in sight? And how much higher could prices go?

Yeah, part of the problem, as you all have been covering so great over the last 20 minutes here, is that there are a lot of factors at play that lead to a ton of uncertainty.

It's not just the Iran war leading to gas prices getting higher, over $4 a gallon for the first time in a month.

But we also have this new slate of tariffs that the president announced yesterday.

last week, leading to even more uncertainty about how high prices are going to go going forward.

Meantime, you've got a Federal Reserve that's still been trying to fight a war against inflation that was really spiked after the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of those factors coming together, not a great time for a war to be nearing six months in this country, given the inflationary challenges.

So why are costs going up?

How's Meta responding, aside from obviously rolling it back?

Yeah, so we had a Meta statement coming out where they said, uh, what you had mentioned, that they missed the mark on this feature.

And what I find really interesting is that originally this was complete opt-in, uh, and as they mentioned, their intention was for this to be kind of a creative tool.

But, uh, at first everybody who has a public Instagram account was opted into this feature.

You had to go into your settings to toggle them off to choose to opt out of it.

Instead of just allowing for users to opt into it, Meta took away this tool entirely.

So I think that that's an interesting development, the level of response that they had.

How are tech and AI companies navigating those transparency issues?

[laughs]

You know? Like, we could retire early and do whatever we want.

Um, nobody knows what's, what's the crystal ball is of investing.

Uh- And I'm sure that there will be examples in history where, like Amazon, like Apple, if you had bought in at the IPO, you would be very happy.

But I think the Meta example is a good one because they struggled so much 12 months after IPO-ing.

Even if you bought in at that trough a year after Meta IPO'd, you would still be up thousands and thousands of percentage points since then to where we're at today with Meta's stock.

So even following that advice of just waiting a year, uh, you would still be very much so netting out ahead, which is also important because you don't wanna be getting in and out of these stocks because of the capital gains taxes you would have to pay, too.

How do you think about that contradiction?

Are you allowed as a reporter to give a truth versus fiction?

Yeah, well, the water debate alone we could spend an hour on because this is something I've been doing some research on lately that it's kind of, you can pick data to tell whatever story you want.

So I could pick 50,000 people drinking water is equivalent to a data center, but you could also pick, compared to any golf course in America, data centers are using a tiny, tiny percent.

It's like one day of a golf course is a data center for an entire year.

So you can kind of pick your data on the waterfront.

But I think that the it's not necessarily in the people who I talk to who are pushing back against data centers.

They're not always going to their local community board meetings because of the water usage.

Would you go all in on AI or would you completely zag and go a completely different direction, something that may never be impacted by AI? And if so, what is that?

[laughs]

Um, but part of the problem with that is that Anthropic can, or OpenAI, any of the AI labs, can book that as revenue, and that feeds into that valuation number that we're getting.

But that revenue could also just be money that they are getting from Google that then they're giving back to Google in the form of compute capacity, and then Google has that compute capacity and is giving it over to another AI lab.

And so it's all very circular right now.

[laughs] Um, he, after saying that they were so worried about it, they only brought it to the government and certain companies.

Exactly.

A- and because of that, I, I think that people haven't necessarily seen a lot of the benefits of AI because it's getting better so much faster.

Um, a- and so people are, you know, hearing about a data center in their backyard.

This is much worse than people think.

Yeah, I mean, we were just starting to get our hands around the inflation problem that is plaguing so many consumers in the United States.

Uh, and now we have a global supply shock to energy prices that risks raising prices, like you said, Don, really across the board.

This is something that impacts, uh, every single ind- industry.

Energy is what is underpinning so many of the different sectors of our economy.

When you think about airlines, they have to buy jet fuel, that, those prices are going up, so air tickets are going up.

Um, food, fertilizer, medicines, all of these different things are going to be impacted by this energy shock.

What do people do with this, just real quickly, Madison, when they're worried about their 401ks, they're worried about gas prices, they're worried about the cost of medicine, the cost of healthcare right now, and then you've got the official White House turning this into a video game?