Tech Giants Face Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial; Google Settles Privacy Lawsuit; TikTok Apologizes for Outages

A landmark trial concerning social media addiction began Tuesday in California, while Google agreed to a multi-million dollar settlement over privacy concerns, and TikTok apologized for widespread app issues.

The social media addiction trial pits a 19-year-old woman, identified as KGM, against tech giants Meta (owner of Instagram and Facebook), ByteDance (owner of TikTok), and Google (parent company of YouTube), according to BBC Technology. KGM alleges that the platforms' algorithms were designed to be addictive and negatively impacted her mental health. Snapchat settled with the plaintiff last week. Top tech executives, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify during the closely-watched trial.

Meanwhile, Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly recorded private conversations through its Google Assistant, BBC Technology reported. Users alleged that the virtual assistant, present on many Android devices, was inadvertently triggered and recorded private conversations. These recordings were then allegedly shared with advertisers for targeted advertising. While Google denied wrongdoing in a filing seeking to settle the case, it stated it was seeking to avoid further litigation.

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, the platform's new US owner, apologized after thousands of users reported issues affecting the video-sharing app, according to BBC Technology. Downdetector, a platform outage monitor, reported over 600,000 reports of glitches from US TikTok users over the weekend. Problems included videos appearing repeatedly on "For You" feeds, content not displaying, and new posts receiving "zero views." The company stated it was "working to restore our services following a power outage at a US data center impacting TikTok and other apps we