Hello ODI Supporter,
A jury in Los Angeles has found Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked a young user and led to them being harmed. The trial lasted six weeks, jury deliberations lasted nine days, and in the end, the plaintiff was awarded $6 million in damages as both companies were found to have provided inadequate warning about the potential dangers of their products. Snap and TikTok were also defendants, but reached settlement agreements before the trial.
The young woman, known as Kaley, testified she became addicted to YouTube aged six, and to Instagram aged nine. By the age of 10, she had become depressed and engaged in self-harm, and by 13 was diagnosed with body dysmorphia disorder and social phobia. The ruling came a day after Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties after a jury in New Mexico found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation. While both companies plan to appeal to the Los Angeles ruling, some experts have called this a ‘big tobacco’ moment for social media platforms, and postulate that this could be the beginning of the end of the social media era.
Tech companies are currently protected in the US from liability for the content that is published on them, but some see this shield under threat. Meanwhile, in the UK, the House of Lords have defeated the government for a second time on plans to give ministers 12 months to decide which social media platforms should be available for under-16s. While the government has opened a consultation on a ban, and is trialling social media limitation for six weeks with 300 teenagers, the House of Lords want the government to take action more quickly to protect children. The CoCoDa project, in which we collaborate, posted on the subject yesterday, so check that out.
New data published by the Department for Work and Pensions has revealed that London has the highest rates of child poverty in England, with 38% of children in the capital living in relative poverty compared to a national average of 29%. The measure of poverty is those households earning less than 60% of the national median income after housing costs are taken into account. Experts believe poverty levels in London are driven by the capital’s housing crisis, where rising rents affect a household's ability to afford basic essentials. Across England, the figures reveal 13.4 million people live below the poverty line, including 4 million children.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has awarded Palantir a contract to investigate its internal intelligence data, granting the company access to highly sensitive financial regulation data. The financial watchdog made the move in an attempt to improve its efforts in tackling financial crime, such as fraud, insider trading and money laundering. It is believed Palantir will pay more than £30,000 to analyse the FCA’s data lake during a three-month trial, which could lead to a full procurement. Campaign groups have sounded the alarm about Palantir for some time, but that has not stopped the company from embedding its technology in the NHS, the police and military in the UK, with contracts worth over £500 million. What on (middle) earth would Gandalf say?
It’s been a busy week at ODI Towers. We published an AI-ready prototype of the National Data Library, collecting datasets from six governmental sources, and then demonstrated how the resulting data product could be used. We announced a partnership with SAP to help organisations build trustworthy, AI-ready data infrastructure. We are looking for people to co-design an open, interoperable blueprint for AI-ready enterprise data, so sign up for more information. And we reached a milestone in our open data project for volunteering, where we published the outcomes of the project to date, so click the link and find out more.
We’re hosting a two-day tournament (April 28–29) to coincide with the launch of Solid26 - the first annual release of the Solid specification. We’re looking for people to build a new generation of personal AI agents, apps, and websites that give people real control over their own data. If you are interested, sign up now! And don’t forget, tickets are now on sale for the Solid Symposium, 30 April - 1 May, which will bring together people from science, business, the public sector and academia to discuss and learn about the latest developments in Solid, and related technologies in the Linked Web. Book now for early-bird tickets!
And finally… OpenAI has wound down its Sora AI video platform after less than two years, saying instead it wants to focus on robotics. And with that goes the $1 billion content partnership it had with Disney, which was announced at the end of 2025 and allowed Sora users to create content from more than 200 licensed Disney characters. The Hollywood Reporter reported (I mean, it’s what they do), “However generative AI changes video development and production, it appears that Sora will end up as a footnote, rather than a game-changing piece of software.” I detect a whiff of schadenfreude.
Until next time.
David and Jo
