Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial Begins as Meta Explores Premium Subscriptions

A landmark trial concerning social media addiction began Tuesday in California, while Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, announced plans to trial premium subscriptions for its platforms. The social media addiction trial involves a 19-year-old woman, identified as KGM, who alleges that the design of social media algorithms caused her addiction and negatively impacted her mental health. The defendants include Meta, TikTok's owner ByteDance, and YouTube parent Google, according to BBC Technology. Snapchat settled with the plaintiff last week.

The trial is expected to feature testimony from top tech executives, including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, according to BBC Business. The case is being closely watched as it raises questions about the responsibility of tech companies in designing platforms that can be potentially addictive.

Meanwhile, Meta is experimenting with paid services, planning to trial premium subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp users in the coming months, according to Peter Hoskins of BBC Business. These subscriptions would provide access to features including expanded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Core services on the platforms would remain free to use. Meta also plans to test subscriptions for features like its Vibes video generation app, which the company says "can bring your ideas to life with new AI visual creation tools." Vibes was announced in September as part of the latest version of the Meta AI app. The company also aims to use Manus, a Chinese-founded AI firm.

In other news related to social media regulation, the European Commission launched an investigation into Elon Musk's X over concerns that its AI tool Grok was used to create sexualized images of real people, according to Laura Cress of BBC Technology. This follows a similar announcement in January from the UK watchdog Ofcom. If X is found to have breached the rules of the EU's Digital Services Act, the Commission could fine the company up to 6% of its global annual turnover. X's Safety account previously stated that the platform had stopped Grok from digitally altering pictures of people to remove their clothing in "jurisdictions where such content is illegal."