Meta's $18B teen safety settlement has a hidden play against TikTok and YouTube. Plus: is training AI on copyrighted books actually legal?
Meta agreed to an $18 billion multi-state settlement over claims it designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive and harmful to kids. The financial penalty is the headline, but the real story is buried in the terms: Meta is offering $5.3 billion to the 29 states in the suit (Oklahoma included) to pursue its competitors. Ashley breaks down why Meta's biggest fear was never the teen account restrictions, it was being the only platform that had them.
Then: is it legal to train AI models on copyrighted books? A judge ordered Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to authors, but ruled the training itself was lawful. The problem was where the books came from. Daniel unpacks the fair use question, why copyright law hasn't been meaningfully updated since 1976, and what this precedent means for independent creators whose work was scraped without permission or payment.
AI news you should know about, in under 10 minutes.
In this episode:
(00:38) Meta's $18B settlement and the teen account restrictions
(01:28) The $5.3B incentive to go after TikTok and YouTube
(02:37) Beauty filter limits and what they actually cover
(03:52) Anthropic's $1.5B payout and the piracy distinction
(04:48) Why 1976 copyright law can't handle this
(06:53) Sora, scraped creator content, and getting paid zero
Links: Show notes include "If Meta's going down, it's taking TikTok and YouTube with it" (The Verge) and the full AI copyright piece.
Follow Daniel at @danielhillmedia on Instagram, Threads, and YouTube. Follow Ashley at @ashleyrcoffey89 on Instagram, and grab the free AI newsletter linked in her bio.