Meta agrees $18bn social media settlement

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1:14This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 27th of August, these are our main stories. Meta agrees to a multi-billion dollar settlement over claims brought by a number of US states that its social media platforms harm children. The world's most valuable company, NVIDIA, which creates microchips for AI, sees a boom in revenue. Plus, they started shooting indiscriminately. If you run into a room, they set the room on fire. If you come out and start running, they shoot you. How bandits are running rampage and terrorising residents in northwest Nigeria.

1:59Also in this podcast, rescue teams work through the night to locate survivors of the devastating flash floods that hit northern Nepal and Tibet, killing nearly 200 people. And we'll look back at the life of one of the leading figures in Palestinian art, Slimane Mansour.

2:2218 billion dollars. The amount Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to pay a group of US states that had accused it of harming children. The company's also agreed to bring in changes to better protect young people. Crucially though, as part of this deal, the company has admitted no wrongdoing. And the deal also brings to an end early a high-profile trial in California, in which lawyers for the states were arguing that Meta knew millions of 11 and 12-year-olds used their sites, but did little to keep them off. Our North America correspondent, Lily Jamali, sent this report from the federal courthouse in Oakland, California.

2:58Multiple states had sued Meta, alleging it deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive, then misled the public about how problematic apps like Instagram and Facebook are for young users. The company had also been accused of improperly harvesting the data of young users without parental consent. California's Attorney General Rob Bonta described the settlement as a watershed moment. This is a significant victory for families across the country, for parents, for children. This is a major breakthrough, a milestone moment, a watershed moment. We believe the proposed settlement filed today addresses some of the concerns at the core of our lawsuit and that it will force transformative changes necessary to protect our children.

3:39And importantly, these changes will be made within months. As part of this settlement, the company is set to pay up to $17.1 billion. It's also agreeing to a framework for change, including two-hour daily limits for teens on their apps, as well as night mode and school mode with muted notifications during those times. Metta has not accepted any wrongdoing as part of this settlement. Matthew Bergman is a lawyer who represented a young woman who won a case against the company earlier this year. Their actions in agreeing to this monumental financial amount, but even more importantly, agreeing to make common sense changes to its design to make it safer for kids, speaks volumes in terms of their accountability and their acknowledgement of their role in contributing to the youth mental health crisis.

4:26But this settlement is a first step. The company wants to see competitors, including Google's YouTube and TikTok, agree to daily time limits as well. They don't want to be at a competitive disadvantage. Lily Jamali there. Now, this settlement comes after years of campaigning from parents around safety on social media platforms. Amy Neville is the co-founder of Social Media Victims Remembrance Day. This is historic. This is a really big moment. But let's not give Meta credit for these changes. They certainly did not volunteer to make any design changes. This is being forced upon them. That's been brought to court by 29 AGs.

5:03There's no apology with this. And this is the beginning of the fight. We're still in the early stages of this fight. This is definitely not the end of the fight for accountability. We lost our son, Alexander, in June of 2020 to fentanyl poisoning after being groomed by a drug dealer on Snapchat. But going back to this case, how are predators still not going to reach our kids? That part's not clear. You know, we're talking about the addictive design features that they're going to fix, supposedly, which we'll need to go through rigorous testing to really see if they amount to anything. But what's going to keep the predators away from our kids?

5:34Let's get the perspective of Arturo Bejar, a former Meta insider who turned whistleblower because he was concerned about the company's handling of child safety. During his time at the social media firm, he worked to combat cyberbullying. So what does he think of this settlement? It should not be interpreted as an all-clear sound by parents or public officials, because while the settlement addresses a number of things, there's some significant problems which remain. It requires the other companies to join in. But then another part, which is also critical, is that it allows Meta to define harm. And behind my whistleblowing was this internal knowledge that Mark Zuckerberg knew, that the harm that the company was reporting publicly was 100 to 400 times less than what the new people were experiencing, especially young people, suicide, all these kinds of things.

6:25And the agreement as it stands does not make that better. It could, there's still things that can happen, but our kids will not be any safer. They'll just get less exposure to things. The features that Meta has touted as its safety commitment are mostly theatre, which can be independently tested and verified. And so ultimately, the grade that META should be given should not be based on what they claim their efforts are, but by the measurement of the impact that they've had on the harm reduction that young people are experiencing. And until that is happening in any country that's thinking about this, our kids are not going to be any safer.

7:06And that's what really should matter in the way that this is approached. That was former Meta employee Arturo Bejar. Now, we should tell you, a Meta spokesperson says the company works hard to keep people safe on its platforms and has been transparent about the challenges of removing harmful content. Well, let's move on from the difficulties of one tech giant to the seemingly never-ending good fortunes of another. The expansion of the world's already most valuable company, NVIDIA, is showing no signs of slowing down. The firm, which makes the chips for companies such as Amazon and Microsoft that are used to power AI data centres, has reported a better than forecast quarterly revenue, with CEO Jensen Huang saying the industry is running at full steam.

7:49Our business editor Simon Jack told me more. So they made$96 billion in the three months at the end of July, which is about double what they made in the same period a year ago. and importantly what people were looking for was what they're going to make in the future and they said in the next quarter they're going to make 108 billion give or take one or two percent and at that point when those numbers first came out in after hours trading the shares dropped a little bit because even though these are wowy numbers they've got used to being totally incredible but then when jensen wang started talking to people on the call around these numbers he started of talking about 70 % increase in revenue by 2028, at which point the shares started going up again.

8:36And this is important because I would say that not only is NVIDIA the most valuable company in the world, it's got a fair claim to being the most important company in the world because it sits like a kind of sun in the middle of a solar system with all these other companies revolving around it because it supplies chips to the AI revolution. You know, it is the dominant player in that business. And of course, that is what is carrying the hopes and the fears of millions of people. Some people think it'll revolutionize the world. Some people think it'll ruin the world in terms of, you know, taking jobs.

9:14but people are worried about at some point does this bubble burst and i think that what happened tonight is that a little bit of air was flown back into that bubble and say actually demand looks pretty strong and so on we go but that's why people are so focused on nvidia because it's right at the center of this ai revolution it's not just at the center though is it it's because it makes the chips that power everything it's also right at the start of the supply chain so Do people often use it as almost a bellwether to see where they think the AI industry is going? And based on this, it just seems grow, grow, grow.

9:48That's right. I mean, demand seems to be incredibly strong. They supply chips to all the sort of hyperscalers. That's the name they give to people like Google's parent alphabet, Amazon, Meta, etc. And on these numbers, it looks like things are going pretty well. Now, what people worry about, I guess, is that not only is NVIDIA the biggest supplier of chips to these companies, it's also become, because of its riches and its incredible earning power, it's become almost like a private bank to some of these companies. And so it's done quite a lot of like buying stakes or lending billions of dollars to its own customers, which has made people get a bit nervous because they think about circular financing.

10:31If you're actually giving your customers the money to buy the stuff from you, given that people think they're going to be winners and losers in the AI race, if they all own stakes in each other, do the losers bring down the winners? But on these numbers, I think those fears for now have been brushed aside. It's our business editor, Simon Jack. Nepal is still yet to learn the scale of a devastating flash flood and mudslide. It hit the north of the Himalayan country, near the border with Tibet, at around 9am local time on Wednesday morning. The death toll has already reached nearly 200. Among those missing, more than 600 are tourists.

11:07The Chinese authorities in Tibet say three people have been killed and more than 250 are missing. The footage we've seen is dramatic, to say the least. Huge brown waves of water, boulders and mud surging across the landscape, smashing through villages and leaving destruction in their wake. When people living along the riverbanks heard the roaring sound approach, they would have had very little chance to flee. At the Jirong border crossing between Nepal and Tibet, in an area popular with trekkers and pilgrims, long-range CCTV footage shows people running for their lives before a wall of water slams into the huge building.

11:44Other footage posted online shows the desperate fear of those in sudden mortal danger. Azadeh Mishiri has this report.

11:55In Nepal families scramble up the mountainous terrain One man filming I'm scared Highways, hydropower stations, bridges destroyed A school bus in Trishuli Survivors, children can do nothing but look on

12:23I saw around nine trucks being swept away by the floods, including people. It's a heartbreaking incident. I've been teaching here for 18 years and I've never seen anything like this here before. My family members were swept away by the flood in front of my eyes. My father, my mother, sister and her kids are all swept away. They could not escape the flood. There was no chance at all. The disaster hit a remote region, making rescue operations extremely difficult. Here rescuers reach a villager whose home has barely escaped the torrents of mud. Rope and a human chain pull others to safety. More than a dozen helicopters have been deployed.

13:10One of them a lifeline for this man.

13:17Areas downstream are on high alert, with rescue teams working through the night. The true scale of this disaster is yet to emerge. Azadeh Mishiri there. Now, it was initially thought that an earthquake caused the flooding, but it's now believed it was triggered by a huge chunk of collapsing glacier ice that crashed into a river. Our correspondent in Beijing, Laura Bicker, gave me an update on the situation in Tibet just before we started recording this podcast. What we've heard is that 558 people are now missing on the Tibetan side, according to Chinese authorities. They're saying that three people have been confirmed to have died and two people have been rescued.

13:59Out of those missing, 260 are said to be foreigners. Now, I think one of the things I have to explain to your listeners is this is one of the most controlled areas in China. To travel there, you need a number of different permits. It's one of the reasons why we can't go there ourselves. And all the information we're getting is through Chinese state media. President Xi Jinping himself issued instructions yesterday for all out efforts to go ahead to try to ensure that anyone alive is rescued. We heard from the People's Liberation Army and the Air Force. They did manage to get an aircraft in the air to try to survey the area, but it does seem that even getting near the affected region is extremely difficult at this time.

14:45Not only are they dealing with high altitude, but they're dealing with the aftermath of this disaster, which seems to have blocked all roads and still communications are blocked. That's the situation in the Tibetan side as we understand it. And how is this being reported in China? Is the sense of great tragedy being felt across the country? Yes, I think obviously Chinese state media are reporting it with gravity, but everything is very carefully controlled. So each message is coming to us in a carefully controlled manner. They're trying not to start any kind of panic. What we're hearing from experts on the Chinese side is they are saying that they believe that after days and days of very heavy rain, after high temperatures in the area, it does seem that experts here believe that a glacier may have been to blame.

15:33Now, you said just a little while ago there that at first this seemed like a seismic event. I mean, I got the earthquake alert myself saying that there had been a seismic event at the border region. Now it seems that the landslide itself caused so much of a tremor, shook the earth so much that it did appear like an earthquake. So that gives you an idea of the force of the water, the force of the landslide that forced its way through the valley. Laura Bicker in Beijing. On Tuesday, John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, travelled to Moscow on a military plane. Given he runs the US's spy agency, it's perhaps fitting we still don't know why he went, exactly who he met or what they discussed.

16:14But a day on, our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg takes a look at what we do know. It's a Moscow mystery that has the world scratching its head and wondering where Russia and the West are heading. Unannounced, unexpected, there's been a high-level foreign visitor. He kept well away from the cameras. But the military plane he flew on was spotted arriving in Moscow and then leaving a few hours later. On board was John Ratcliffe, the head of America's Central Intelligence Agency. What was he doing in Russia? Who had he come to see?

16:55Not President Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the CIA chief had been meeting Russian intelligence officials. And what do they talk about, I ask? Iran or Ukraine? And amid fears that Moscow may try to test NATO's resolve, I also ask, did he deliver a warning to Russia. Mr Peskov's reply, I have nothing to add. There are times when you just have to pull up your hands and say, look, we do not know, not yet, what is going on here because of the lack of information and because of the cloak of secrecy around what is happening. And that applies to this surprise visit by the head of US intelligence.

17:40Later, in an interview, President Trump gave few details of John Ratcliffe's talks, but hinted that the focus had been on Ukraine. William Burns was the last CIA director to travel to Moscow nearly five years ago. He'd warned Moscow not to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia went ahead anyway. Now, US and Russian intelligence are talking again. So what will be the upshot of these conversations? Peace or further confrontation? Steve Rosenberg reporting from Moscow. Still to come in this podcast. There's certain occupations that have extreme exposures cumulatively to this type of radiation and pilots and flight attendants are two of those occupations.

18:34A landmark ruling in France as a court recognises cosmic radiation as a factor in the breast cancer of a former flight attendant.

19:09Mix, match and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

19:44And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

20:08This is the Global News Podcast. On to a bandit crisis that's bringing terror to huge swathes of northwest Nigeria, with armed gangs on motorbikes raiding towns and carrying out mass abductions. Analysis by the BBC World Service of attacks recorded by the ACLED monitoring group show the problem is getting worse. Incidents between January and June were up 78 % on the same time last year. The World Service's Yemesi Adaguke sent this report from Gusau in Zamfara, one of the areas at the heart of the crisis.

20:45Shots ring out as gunmen on motorbikes ride into a village in northwest Nigeria. This is the sound of Nigeria's bandit crisis. It's seen hundreds of thousands flee their homes, people kidnapped and murdered, and parents too scared to send their children to school. The military is still struggling to contain the crisis, which is now threatening to spread from the country's northwest to other areas. Zamfara is one of the states worst affected by the bandit crisis. With no airport, the only way to get in is by road. Being escorted by the military because there have been some attacks in the surrounding villages.

21:29because a lot of security personnel have been killed in this area. It's a sense that you just kind of want to make it past this zone.

21:42In the state capital, Gasal, we meet some of the 800 ,000 people across the north-west who fled their homes. Many of them are escaping bandit violence. Fatima breaks down as she recalls how her village was attacked. Her husband was killed, along with six of his brothers. They opened fire without a care in the world. They started shooting indiscriminately. If you run into a room, they set the room on fire. If you come out and start running, they shoot you. What's left of Fatima's family now lives in a makeshift camp on the edge of the city. While they now have some protection, she says they find it difficult to even pay for food.

22:28Sat on a motorbike by the side of the street with an assault rifle in his lap, we meet one of the men authorities are turning to to help combat the bandit problem. With the security forces struggling to cope, fighters are being hired from local communities to help support the army and police. Let them understand that when they attack a place, they can kill, but they can also be killed. When we get told that the bandits are out, we try to get to where they are going, before they arrive. And with God's help, we are successful in chasing them away. But there are concerns that arming more people could lead to a spiral of violence that authorities can't contain.

23:09This is Malik Samuel from Good Governance Africa. At the end of the crisis, how are you able to disarm them, right? But if you look at the issues in the Northwest, many of these communities don't have protection from the state. So what are they supposed to do? Authorities say they're taking the fight to the bandits. 28 ,000 new soldiers are being recruited. And President Bolatinibu announced a record$4 billion for defence and security in the latest budget. To bandits, kidnappers and sponsors of terror, surrender or face the full force of the Nigerian state. But in the northwest, the number of bandit attacks is continuing to rise.

23:51The return to normality that Fatima and her family in Zanfara desperately crave seems a distant possibility. We had peace. We had money. Now everything has changed. We have become beggars. Fatima ending that report by Yemesai Odaiga Kei. Mexico can be a dangerous place to be a journalist. And now dozens of Mexican media outlets are calling on the country's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to do something about it. The press freedom organisation, Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, is backing the call as well. It says at least 17 reporters have been killed since President Sheinbaum took office nearly two years ago, despite her pledge to strengthen protections for the media.

24:34Ella Bicknell reports. According to Reporters Without Borders, seven of 22 journalists killed worldwide so far in 2026 hail from Mexico. That's prompted more than 40 local media outlets to endorse the NGO's statement, urging President Sheinbaum to take action. It says many of the attacks go uninvestigated and unpunished. calling for better coordination across all levels of government to find those responsible for the deaths. This was a recent information campaign video by the RSF. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard flight RA150 to Mexico City, Mexico. Should you report on organised crime, please remember to reach for the bulletproof vest located within your reach.