Zuck’s tough week, women save climate data, and Sonnenfeld fights for dictators
Story of the Week (DR):
Social Media's 'Big Tobacco Moment': Meta Faces $1.4 Trillion Fine for Allegedly Fueling Teen Suicide and Addiction
Meta is being sued by 33 US states, led by California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey.
12 blue/12 red/9 purple
The states allege that Meta deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children and teens, fueling a youth mental health crisis (including anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide).
They also accuse Meta of violating child privacy laws by collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent.
Meta warned a federal court that it could face up to $1.4T in penalties if the states prevail at the upcoming trial (set for August 18, 2026). Meta extrapolated this massive figure—which is roughly equivalent to the company's entire stock market value—based on the methodology proposed by the lead states for calculating damages.
Meta calls the penalty "outlandish" and "unsubstantiated," arguing it has no precedent in consumer protection history: 'A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement.' The company accuses the states of improperly multiplying penalties (e.g., stacking fines based on daily usage time). Meta denies the allegations, asserting its platforms have extensive safety tools and that the claims are unmoored from actual unfair practices.
‘I Don't Think I'm Ever Going to Stop,' Says Mark Zuckerberg. Even With 'Infinite Money,' He Has No Plans to Retreat to His Massive Hawaii Estate
Meta found to breach EU laws with 'addictive' Instagram, Facebook designs
Instagram and Facebook’s “addictive” designs have put Meta in breach of the European Union’s digital laws, the EU concluded Friday in a preliminary report.
The tech giant violated the EU’s Digital Services Act by failing to adequately consider the risks associated with design features that affected the physical well-being of its users, including minors and vulnerable adults, the European Commission said.
These features include infinite scroll, which constantly shows fresh content, autoplay, push notifications and highly personalized recommendation systems — feeding users’ compulsion to continue using platforms and putting them into “autopilot mode.”
The EU Commission also accused Meta of ignoring available information about how much time young people are spending on Instagram or Facebook at night, and how different types of content formats, from reels to stories, could lead to excessive use of its services.
Meta said, “We disagree with these preliminary findings.”
New Zealand Moves To Ban Climate Change Litigation. Will The U.S. Follow?
New Zealand has proposed a bill to limit the ability of individuals to sue high greenhouse gas emitters over the impacts of climate change, relying instead on the enforcement measures taken by the government. The bill appears poised to pass.
The women who wouldn’t let climate data disappear MM
After losing their jobs at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Rebecca Lindsey, her sister Mary and colleague Anna Eshelman teamed up to rebuild a pivotal resource the Trump administration took offline
Rebecca Lindsey, a technical writer for NASA–one of 280,000 federal workers fired by Musk/Trump, joined forces with former NOAA employees Anna Eshelman, and Mary Lindsey, her older sister, to become the core team behind the deactivated site’s successor, Climate.us, preserving over 15 years of key climate data and resources.
Elon Musk says he always wanted his SpaceX employees to get rich — and now thousands of them are millionaires
Elon Musk's 'Chainsaw for Bureaucracy' Just Left an $11 Billion Budget Hole as Trump Rehires Staff
The trove features key maps, educational materials and climate indicator reports, including the now-deleted Fifth National Climate Assessment, the government’s most comprehensive analysis of climate change that was at risk of being lost to the public
Jersey Mike’s $12 billion IPO filing reveals a $50 million payday for the founder’s stepson and a $41 million jet
Family members of founder Peter Cancro were employed Jersey Mike’s in various roles and received compensation in excess of $120,000 from the Company as follows for the years ended December 28, 2025 and December 31, 2024 and 2023:
John Cancro, Mr. Cancro’s brother, received total compensation of approximately $20,019,231, $519,231 and $500,000, respectively;
Paul J. Cancro, Mr. Cancro’s son, received total compensation of approximately $8,001, $216,022 and $208,023, respectively;
Robert Cancro, Mr. Cancro’s son, received total compensation of approximately $38,462, $1,038,462 and $1,000,000, respectively;
Tatiana Cancro, Mr. Cancro’s wife, received total compensation of approximately $11,538, $311,539 and $300,000, respectively;
Caroline Jones, Mr. Cancro’s daughter, received total compensation of approximately $38,462, $1,038,462 and $1,000,000, respectively;
Alexandra Powers, Mr. Cancro’s sister-in-law, received total compensation of approximately $0, $1,165,437 and $0;
Daniel Powers, Mr. Cancro’s brother-in-law, received total compensation of approximately $30,213,462, $1,793,952 and $0;
John Tesauro Jr., Mr. Cancro’s brother-in-law, received total compensation of approximately $0, $0 and $2,429,628, respectively;
Phillip Sivolobov, Mr. Cancro’s stepson, received total compensation of approximately $50,011,538, $311,539 and $276,923, respectively.
GRAND TOTAL: $112M
Stepson Phillip got $51M, brother John got $21M
Other Peter Cancro schwag in 2025:
Got a $41 million jet and an additional fixed amount of $166,666.66 per month in light of the business expenses incurred by Mr. Cancro related to air transportation to travel from time to time for business purposes.
Lease agreements valued at $1M in rent (leases go to 2030)
Controlled company: Blackstone (will control more than 50% of voting power)
Board: 8 directors
Blackstone:
Chair Nigel Travis (also chair of Abercrombie & Fitch)
David N. Kestnbaum
Devon L. Rinker
Michael J. Staub
Founder/former CEO/chair: Peter Cancro
CEO Charles R. Morrison
Cheryl S. Miller, director on two controlled companies:
Tyson Foods
Old Dominion Freight Line (Congdon brothers)
Fran Horowitz, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch (where chair serves as chair)
Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):
DR: Amazon, Walmart and Other Large Employers Could Face New Costs As New Jersey Targets Companies With Medicaid Workers— Will Other States Follow?
DR: UBS says rich people will be younger, female and openly queer thanks to the Great Wealth Transfer
MM: Meta Buried Research Linking Instagram To Teen Harm While Facing $1.4 Trillion Penalty That Could Erase Its Entire Worth
MM: ESG!
Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities
An internal Madison Square Garden database of VIPs labels Joe a “medium risk,” one of roughly 400 celebrities given a risk score.
If you’re a celebrity and you’re marked with a risk score—even as a low risk—it means “you’ve done something in the publicity world, the social media world, that has caught the attention of the wrong people,” the source continues.
The talent database also tracks some celebrities’ race, gender identity, and sexual orientation; 93 entries are marked as “LGBTQIA.”
MM: California vs. Elon Musk: Tesla Snubbed as New EV Incentives Boost Rivian, Lucid MM DR
Assholiest of the Week (MM):
Billionaire amplification
Ken Griffin says everyone is misinterpreting the AI revolution — and wishes Zohran and Bernie would ‘read a damn history book for once’
“[Capitalism is] the greatest success story in the history of humanity,” Griffin said, urging the self-identified socialist politicians, “whether it’s Bernie Sanders, whether it’s Mamdani,” to “read a damn history book for once and then tell us how to run our country.”
Jeff Bezos 'Made All of Our Lives So Much Better,' Says Billionaire Investor Tim Draper
"Amazon has made all of our lives so much better," Draper said.
Draper said he has benefited from what Bezos has done, and that's a part of the world economy that isn't spoken about enough.
"Those geniuses who create this incredible world for us are benefiting all of us."
40 Epstein-Tied Billionaires Have Injected $1.6B Into US Elections, Report Finds
These are the millionaires and billionaires pledging to fund Trump accounts
Zuck
Meta AI Data Centre Contractor Triggers Biohazard Scare After Flushing Rare Bacterium Into Public Sewers
Meta Platforms To Build $9 Billion A.I. Data Centre In Canada
The $145 Billion Lie? Zuckerberg's Leaked Town Hall Audio Exposes Massive AI Failures After Mass Layoffs
Meta jumps into AI coding market in effort to chase Anthropic and OpenAI
What person in their right mind would trust Zuckerberg with their coding?
Hollywood Vs Zuckerberg: CAA Warns Meta's AI Image Tool Needs A Major Privacy Overhaul
‘I Don't Think I'm Ever Going to Stop,' Says Mark Zuckerberg. Even With 'Infinite Money,' He Has No Plans to Retreat to His Massive Hawaii Estate
Jeff Sonnenfeld - DR
In defense of Musk, SpaceX, and dual class shares
“the rigid formulas of proxy advisors create a perverse, socially destructive incentive: hoard your wealth like an oligarch to maintain your good governance rating, or give it away and risk losing your company”
“The proxy advisors want a world governed by rigid mathematical formulas because auditing a checklist is easy. Evaluating human character, industry dynamics, track records of success and failure, and the capacity for visionary leadership is hard. But it is exactly that hard work of judgment which is vital. When it comes to dual-class shares, it is time for the critics to step out of the theoretical vacuum and look at the real-world scoreboards”
Headliniest of the Week
DR: OpenAI Wants a $1 Trillion Valuation. But College Students Are Testing At The Level Of 10-Year-Olds AND Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%
MM: ‘Waymo Takes Revenge, Dropping Drunk Teens Directly Into Squad of Cops
MM: West Virginia spent $3M to create university program to fight ‘woke ideology.’ One student is enrolled
Who Won the Week?
DR: Free Float’s new platform
And blowhard Jeffrey Sonnenfeld for arguing that dualclass owners are necessary because the dualclass mechanism allows them to sell shares and maintain voting power so they can “cure diseases, endow universities, and combat poverty”
MM: Free Float data: Elon Musk and the age of the corporate leviathan
Above a certain size the ordinary rules of governance apparently cease to apply.
Of the 16 listed firms worth more than $1trn, seven are shareholder fundamentalists.
None has an elaborate statement of corporate purpose, since they are mostly content making heaps of money
Free Float says Nvidia, Amazon, Broadcom, Micron are all TOTALITARIAN
Next are the corporate paternalists, who believe that the problem with shareholder democracy is that its voters do not know what is best for them.
Free Float says Berkshire, Google, Meta are all TOTALITARIAN
The final clan presents the strongest argument against the end of corporate history: individual shareholders consent to hand over all of their rights to the world’s richest man, who then governs as he sees fit.
Free Float says SpaceX, Tesla are TOTALITARIAN
Basically, it’s nice of the economist to recognize everything Free Float says every week
Predictions
DR: Jeff Sonnenfeld writes something on Fortune that triggers me
MM: Jeff Sonnenfeld writes something on Fortune that triggers Damion
