Meta agrees to restrict US teen use of its social media platforms

12:38Former Meta Insider:I hope so. But I have to tell you, at this point, I'm a skeptic just based on everything that's happened historically with Meta and their changes that they've made, like their teen accounts have proved to really amount to nothing. And so I'm going to stay guarded for now and then make that decision after people test these products and really tell us the outcome.

13:01Tim Curry:That is Amy Neville, co-founder of social media Victims Remembrance Day and I should say that in the last four minutes a newsflash from Reuters has said that the judge in this case has said that she will accept the settlement as an end to the federal proceedings against Meta.

13:26Tim Curry:I'm Sean Lay and this is NewsHour. A French court has recognised cosmic radiation for the first time as a factor in a breast cancer claim brought by a former flight attendant against her employer. Sophie Lénault worked for Air France for 30 years, clocking up more than 12 ,000 flying hours, many of them at night. The court decided that a combination of passive smoking and prolonged night work, as well as cosmic radiation, were all occupational hazards that had contributed to her illness. The judgment means Miss Lainault, who's in remission from her cancer, can take early retirement and any further treatment will be fully reimbursed by the French health system.

14:09Tim Curry:But what's the science that informed this judgment? I've been asking Dr Vishal Patel, who's clinical fellow in surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He's a scientist at Harvard Medical School. First of all, he gave me a definition of cosmic radiation.

14:24Former Meta Insider:They're just very high energy particles that arise outside of the solar system. They're usually protons, plus maybe some other particles that are thrown off by the sun. And when those hit the upper atmosphere, they shatter into secondary particles. Neutrons are actually a big component of that. And that matters because neutrons can be damaging biologically. So cosmic radiation is actually just a subset of ionizing radiation, which is the same sort of radiation that you get from an x-ray, for example.

14:57Tim Curry:What about the exposure of people who are flying? What sort of risks does that create? Is it a well-established link between exposure and developing certain kinds of cancer?

15:09Former Meta Insider:So ionizing radiation itself, it's been shown as very well established to cause cancer. You know, atomic bomb survivors, medical and occupational cohorts, and several other lines of investigations have shown that several cancer types, specifically cancers like leukemia, along with breast, thyroid, brain cancer, are distinctly affected by ionizing radiation. And some other cancers don't really show very much association.

15:39Tim Curry:And you've done quite a recent study which looked at people in particular professions.

15:44Former Meta Insider:That's right. Well, it's really difficult to study cosmic radiation. You can't randomize people to get radiation or not. So we use a sort of a natural experiment, if you will, where there's certain occupations that have extreme exposures cumulatively to this type of radiation. And pilots and flight attendants are two of those occupations.

16:07Tim Curry:Right. And what did you find?

16:08Former Meta Insider:So we looked at about 13 million deaths occurring across about 500 different occupations in the United States. And flight attendants and pilots came top and second for the share of deaths from radiation-associated cancers. and then when you look at cancers that are not linked to radiation, air crews sort of sat in the middle of the pack. There wasn't a general excess.

16:41Tim Curry:Now what's interesting about this court judgment in France is that not only is that link acknowledged in the court, it's saying there are multiple factors and these are three that we think are related to occupation. So exposure to passenger smoking in the days when passengers still smoked Also, the fact that they were flying a lot at night. But the third factor is cosmic radiation. And this appears to be the first time it's been cited in this kind of court case.

17:12Former Meta Insider:Yeah, and you know, it is honest to say that flying may just happen to bundle all those together. And we can't really separate out radiation from any of the other causes. But it is striking to see that a court is acting on this while regulators really have it. So with this information, airlines may be able to change how they schedule flight attendants and pilots to work, you know, rotating crew members off the highest dose routes, because right now there isn't really an answer as to how we can shield this radiation completely. Maybe we don't have the materials to be able to do that, but we do have ways of potentially reducing exposure.

17:54Tim Curry:Dr. Vishal Patel of Harvard Medical School. The World Rowing Championships are being held in the Netherlands this week, an important staging post for athletes hoping to compete in the LA Olympics in two years' time. Great Britain's Imogen Grant already has an Olympic gold from the previous Olympic Games in Paris, but that was in the women's lightweight class. It no longer exists, and now she is getting used to winning another without having to worry about her weight. When I spoke to Imogen, I asked her whether knowing her lightweight category was going to be abolished, made winning the gold in Paris bittersweet.

18:29Former Meta Insider:Yeah, it was a funny feeling in a lot of ways, because the lightweight double was meant to be removed after the Tokyo Games. And actually the Covid pandemic was the only reason that we had one final chance in Paris 2024. So in some ways it was sad that it's going, but also I felt really grateful that we actually did have that second chance, once having come fourth in Tokyo, to be able to actually come back and make it an unbeaten Olympiad and stand on the top of the podium and give it a proper send-off.

18:59Tim Curry:Was it tempting to say, look, I've won the gold at the Olympics, maybe I'll just bow out now rather than have to get into a whole new discipline?

19:08Former Meta Insider:Yeah, I think there was some temptation there. Once you have that medal, things do change a little bit and I'd say my motivations now are a little bit different. There's not quite that desperation, I suppose.

19:19Tim Curry:Now tell me about the changes you've had to make in order to kind of adapt both your routine, your diet, but also kind of changes to you in order to be able to compete in this different category.

19:33Former Meta Insider:Yeah, it feels like a lot of changes and also not very much changing all at the same time. Rowing is still rowing no matter what size you are. And so a lot of things, the training, the technique, the teamwork, all of that is all the same. But the big difference is I'm no longer a lightweight. When I was a lightweight, I would weigh in at 57 kilos before races. And now that the lightweight discipline has been removed, I'm racing as an open weight, which of course has no weight limit minimum or maximum. So it's much more about just trying to see how fast I can get. And for me, that means trying to gain a bit of weight and gain a bit of muscle.

20:10Tim Curry:Do you think you're getting better use out of your body as an athlete as a result of not having to kind of meet a particular weight restriction?

20:17Former Meta Insider:I think it's difficult to say. I think I fit being a lightweight really well. I think it was a comfortable weight class for me to be in, in terms of really maximizing that power to weight. I was a very powerful and strong lightweight. But what's been really gratifying is actually since gaining a bit of additional weight, I'm faster and stronger than I have ever been before. so it's quite nice to know there's a bit new you know new opportunities there that i can take hold of um now that i don't have that weight restriction did it surprise you how much difference it made yeah a little bit um you know in the summers when you're a lightweight you know you do have to think about what you're eating to make sure that you are the right weight otherwise you literally can't race um and just having that extra buffer of more fat more calories it means that i I feel like I can withstand more training than I ever have done before.

21:11Tim Curry:So you're putting yourself under even more pressure in some ways.

21:16Former Meta Insider:Yeah, in some ways, because also competing with open weights, I'm always going to be probably the smallest and weakest. And so I do have to make sure that I'm overcoming my size difference for my teammates.

21:31Tim Curry:Now, the other thing I was intrigued to read about, Imogen, was that you're doing this, gaining this extra rate, this extra power on a vegan diet. And that might surprise some people.

21:42Former Meta Insider:Yeah, I think it's something I haven't talked about that much. I went plant-based about four years ago now and haven't really looked back from it. I think it's the single most important thing that someone can do to minimise their impact on the climate and sustainability, which is why I chose to make that change. but it's not as common as you might think within athletes but I've definitely found ways to make it work and I feel like I eat well.

22:08Tim Curry:That's the British rower Imogen Grant. Good luck to her team as they continue to compete at the World Rowing Championship semifinals or on Thursday.

22:31Former Meta Insider:Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.

22:49Tim Curry:Welcome back to NewsHour. Russia is waging a campaign to destroy petrol stations in Ukraine. More than 200 of them have been hit so far and the strikes are getting worse. Some villages near the front line are now without. In response, local authorities have started dispensing fuel straight from road tankers, which changed locations in order to minimise the risk of being hit. Vitaly Shevchenko has more.

23:15Former Meta Insider:Filling up your car with fuel can be a dangerous endeavour in Ukraine.

23:23Former Meta Insider:And the authorities are urging drivers to be extremely careful when pulling up to the pump. Igor Terechov, the mayor of Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, wrote in social media warning people to fill up quickly and move on to avoid becoming targets.

23:43Former Meta Insider:Attacks come both in the form of smaller drones and much bigger and more expensive Shahed drones. The Ukrainian government says 4 % of the country's petrol stations have been damaged or destroyed. Oleksandr Sirenko, an analyst with the Ukrainian energy think tank Naftorynok, says 246 so far.

24:09Former Meta Insider:From April, we have been seeing a concerted campaign to implement orders or intentions to destroy frontline petrol stations. Not just vehicles that turn up for refueling, but actual petrol stations in five regions closest to the frontline. Such attacks are getting more frequent. The Centre for Information Resilience, a non-profit organisation based in London, says the number jumped by 72 % in July. However, Ukraine has so many petrol stations to start with that there are still ways of getting fuel in the affected areas if you're willing to drive a bit further and take the risk of pulling up at the pump.

24:49Former Meta Insider:Ukrainian soldier Andrey Kabanok says it's still possible to get fuel even right next to the front line. Almost all petrol stations here in Donbass have been hit, but some have been partly repaired by operators who try to keep them going so that people can fill up. Everyone knows which petrol stations to go to. I can go get fuel now, be it petrol, diesel or LPG here in Slovyansk. Logistics got a bit more complicated, but I wouldn't say it's a catastrophe. But still, Russian strikes targeting forecourts have caused major issues locally. Some key roads have no functioning petrol stations left. After all filling stations were destroyed in one town in north-eastern Ukraine, the local authorities started dispensing fuel straight from road tankers.

25:44Former Meta Insider:They keep changing their location to minimise the chances of being hit. And petrol station owners are also taking steps to protect their customers. Russian airstrikes against Ukrainian petrol stations have so far failed to cause fuel shortages. But they are yet another way of increasing pressure on the embattled country.

26:07Tim Curry:That's Vitaly Shevchenko reporting for NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

26:20Tim Curry:You're listening to NewsHour.

26:27Tim Curry:In Nepal, more than 150 people have died and hundreds more are missing after flash flooding close to the country's border with Tibet. Landslides combined with the floods to funnel debris and mud into hundreds of different parts of the area. Aid workers say whole settlements have been buried by water and mud. These people in Nuwakot district described what happened.

26:55Former Meta Insider:My brother-in-law had a liquor store here. I got a call from him this morning and they were crying and said their entire house had been swept away. Three family members were rescued, but his brother is still missing. I 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.

27:22Tim Curry:Well, the International Operations Manager of REACT, a British charity, Paul Taylor, was involved in the rescue effort after the Nepal earthquake of 2015. in which 9 ,000 people died. He says those responding to this latest disaster will face many hurdles. I think there's three main challenges. The first one is going to be access, actually getting there. It's challenging anyway in remote parts of Nepal. Roads are going to be washed out, bridges have been damaged. There's also the threat from secondary hazards, from further landslides and flooding downstream to other communities that haven't been affected yet.

27:57Tim Curry:And then the third challenge is communications, and part of that is coordination. really difficult to coordinate when you can't communicate with people. So the terrestrial infrastructure, which isn't great anyway, will have been knocked out. So people will have to rely upon satellite phones, dishes, etc. to communicate and coordinate the efforts. Raj Kowali works in the tourism industry in Nepal, and he's been describing with the area where the floods took place to news hours, James Menendez.

28:22Former Meta Insider:This is one of the borders that we have with Tibet. It's a crossing border for humans and for goods. It's an incredibly narrow valley. And once it reaches the border, it goes pretty much straight up into the Tibetan plateau. So it goes up all the way to 4 ,000 meters on the top. And this one, the border is quite a huge drop right at the bottom. And it's a river. And that river runs all the way from the border all the way to India. So yeah, it's really tragic and devastating. I mean, there are villages, small townships in the Lantang trekking area that we usually start from, which are completely wiped out, completely.

29:07Former Meta Insider:And in terms of visitors to the area, those climbing up, I mean, is this a particularly busy time of year? It is a busy time for people going to Tibet from Nepal and coming back. So and the main point where the water came in is exactly at the border from what we have seen. and it hit the immigration point. And so people who are crossing, almost for sure, have got swept away.

29:40Tim Curry:That was Raj Gawali there, talking to the BBC's James Memendez. Well, Pradeep Bashal from the BBC's Nepali service gave me this update from the capital, Kathmandu. Officials say there has been huge loss of life and property, but yet to present a clear picture. And I was talking to the officials just a while ago, and they say at least 600 missing, reportedly missing. So it's a totally chaotic situation. And also, if you check the figure of foreigners, we already know that around 300 foreigners, especially tourists, are missing, including 33 British nationals. and many security persons are also among the missing and many hydropower workers.

30:30Tim Curry:So I think it might take a few more days, if not weeks, to get the exact figure of the loss. You mentioned tourists. Why is this area so popular with foreign visitors? This is the major point of business between Nepal and China. More than two-thirds of Nepal's business with China happens through this Keroen port. And also besides that, that is also another entry point for one of Nepal's major trekking routes, known as Langtang trekking route. Access is presumably difficult because the flooding will have taken away so many of the roads and cut off some communities altogether. What help is the government able to deliver?

31:15Tim Curry:Presumably it's having to use the military. Yes, even without this disaster, That is a very rough terrain, I would say, very narrow roads. And also that there was a flood like this last year also in the same region. So it's already a very difficult terrain. And if you see the figure from authorities, 19 bridges and 40 kilometers of roads have been damaged due to this flooding. So there is very little chance, very little accessibility through land. and there has to be helicopter rescue. And government have already ordered all private helicopter operators, and including Nepal Army helicopters, to stand by and be ready to operate there for the rescue.

32:01Tim Curry:But actually the problem one official was saying to me a few hours ago, it's a very chaotic situation. They don't know where to start or where to begin, whom to look after. Because tourists were missing in hundreds. There are hydropower workers who are also missing in hundreds. There are security personals and also obviously there are so many locals. So it's a very unprecedented, very devastating situation even for rescue workers. But throughout the day, they have rescued around 250 people. But given the devastations we are seeing, it will take several more days to know the whereabouts of missing people.

32:41Tim Curry:Well, I spoke to Pradeep Bashar a little earlier. It's now 2.30 in the morning on Thursday morning in Nepal. And the authorities have since we recorded that interview indicated that they believe nearly 600 people, including over 450 foreign nationals, are missing. On the other side of the border, China, which controls Tibet, has also confirmed people missing and dead. Jakob Steiner is a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria and a fellow at the Asian Mountain Academic Alliance. He spoke to me from Bangladesh and I asked him first what he thinks might have caused this flood.

33:18Former Meta Insider:So we have indeed had problems the whole day or challenges to find out what has exactly happened. But we've managed to piece that together now that basically a big chunk of a mountain on the border between Nepal and China broke off, dropped onto a glacier below and a lot of unconsolidated rock material that then started to move. And that material blocked the river further downstream for many hours, actually, created a lake. Eventually, that dam wasn't able to hold the lake back anymore. And that dam breached and caused a huge flood that we saw on many, many videos during the day on social media as well.

33:54Former Meta Insider:And that's why we see so much water, because it had many hours to accumulate the water behind that dam.

34:00Tim Curry:Just picking up one thing, we don't know what would have caused that bit of the mountain to break off.

34:06Former Meta Insider:yes so exactly we don't know yet and and to be really really sure we will need probably more weeks or months and we often after these events investigating this a lot more in detail as scientists but it seems like a small earthquake actually has happened in the area that could have contributed to it but sometimes these pieces of mountain just break off because you know mountains erode on the long scale as well and and of course climate change also plays its role i mean there has been much more ice in past decades on this mountain it has been receding which generally contributes to the instability of mountains and because of that the chances that something like this collapses are also much higher so there are a couple of different reasons that come together

34:47Tim Curry:in the long run and in the short run we talk a lot about the changes that are happening as a result of what kind of man has been doing to the climate in this industrial era how does that translate on the ground? Because I know we can never say a specific event is caused by. It's a question of contributory factors. How big is this as a contributory factor to the sort of kind of weather uncertainties that people are experiencing in your part of the world?

35:18Former Meta Insider:Yeah, it is indeed difficult, but I think this is a nice example. Because what we see on this mountain is that ice has been retreating a lot in recent years and decades. And as you can imagine, if this cover is gone, the rock underneath is much more exposed, right? So it's also more exposed to temperature cycles. So what we then, we see already from other more instrumented locations that what happens is that mountains start to crumble much more. That's one thing that's definitely linked to climate change. We know that. And that also what's linked to climate change is that these events tend to happen more often.

35:50Former Meta Insider:So in this exact location, last year, a big event has happened. And in 2024, again, and because there was so much material lying around, I strongly suspect that this became even bigger this year around. So we have a higher frequency of mass movements, of these kind of erosive events, that erosion has happened always. This is not a climate change thing. But at this scale, this is clearly driven by unprecedented change. And because of this, dimensions we see can very likely be contributed to a changing climate as well, especially at these altitudes. Right.

36:24Tim Curry:I suppose it raises a question of what can be done in the future to minimise the risks that come from incidents of this kind. There is presumably no kind of warning system that exists in the area to alert people as soon as there are signs of trouble, you know, further up the mountain or in another valley that might have an impact elsewhere.

36:48Former Meta Insider:that exactly so that's the big problem at the moment nothing like this exists no what we call an early warning system in place in this location also it becomes complicated because it's a border area so you would have to communicate between two different countries so in the immediate future what we can do is put installations that actually alert people in the downstream and that's possible that's that's not you know that's not a far reach we know what kind of sensors need to be placed and We can even watch these mountains from space. So there is potential to do something, but there needs also be the willingness to do that by the local governments.

37:21Former Meta Insider:You need stable governments that are able to follow through with this and maintain these equipments. That's not to be underestimated. It's not just about engineering.

37:30Tim Curry:We know that Nepal has a new, much younger prime minister, a kind of different kind of political generation has taken over in Kathmandu. Are you hopeful that they may be not only sympathetic, but they might understand the kind of technological potential that now exists that could make things that in the past seemed impossible possible now?

37:53Former Meta Insider:You're touching on an incredibly important point. Yes, I am hopeful, but I'm not just hopeful about the prime minister. This really shouldn't be his job. There are people under him and that's a bit the challenge that he needs to delegate his workload. And there are many capable people in Nepal who realize.

38:07Tim Curry:The other question you mentioned already in this interview is that it's a border region and China is not known for being very keen to even talk about incidents of this kind that happen within its territory. And obviously it treats Tibet as part of its territory, has effective political control of Tibet. How important is it to engage the Chinese in any potential changes?

38:32Former Meta Insider:It's absolutely crucial. And actually we do that. We do collaborate with Chinese scientists on our side, right? I'm a scientist. I work with other scientists on the Chinese side, and we have been in touch the whole day via social media. In this case, WeChat, because that's the app they use. And they have been in the – they had people go to these locations already. So we got information from them. Yes, it's difficult. It's still – there's still a gap in the way we communicate and our interests. But we do collaborate very, very closely. And, you know, I've seen positive change in recent years, also some more difficulties on other fronts.

39:06Former Meta Insider:But we do exchange and that's absolutely crucial. If this wouldn't happen, we would be in much more trouble.

39:11Tim Curry:That's Jakob Steiner, geoscientist. This is NewsHour. Do you please stay with us? I'm Sean Lay. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. And we're going to return to our top story. The multi-billion dollar settlement between Meta and most of the state attorneys general in America. They'd been pursuing a joint legal action claiming its platforms harmed children. Well, earlier I talked to a former Meta insider who turned whistleblower because he was concerned about the company's handling of child safety. Arturo Bejar, who testified in the court action brought by the states, worked on combating cyberbullying at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, returning as a consultant to the wellbeing team at Instagram between 2019 and 2021.

39:54Tim Curry:What does he make of this settlement?

39:56Former Meta Insider: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.

40:07Tim Curry:In your judgment, is one of those that this is in part dependent on other social media platforms kind of joining in and doing the same things?

40:16Former Meta Insider:That is part of it. So it requires the other companies to join in. But then another part, which is also critical, is in 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. And 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.

40:59Tim Curry:So you have reservations about this in terms of what the company has done in the past. Its argument and an argument its lawyers repeated during the course of what has begun as a court case, but is likely now to be settled by this agreement is to say, look, if we you could say you might be able to make an allegation against us. But the evidence is that we actually did introduce restrictions, that we did impose, for example, parental controls. And that demonstrates that we were taking seriously concerns about the exposure children had to our sites.

41:35Former Meta Insider:Yes, I've seen that and I've done both independent testing as well as worked with academic institutions testing those features. And most of those features are either broken, they don't do what Meta says they do. buried and they're in a setting, so it means people don't use them or they've been deprecated. And so 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.

42:19Tim Curry:Are you at all disappointed that the different states decided to settle this rather than let a court case go to its full potential? potential?

42:29Former Meta Insider:I think that the states have done incredible work to bring the issue to the front. And then there's some meaningful changes in the agreement, which will do good. But there needs to be independent understanding measurement and reduction of harm. And that's what MEDA should be accountable for. And until that is happening in the UK through its regulatory process in Europe with the DSA, in any country that's thinking about this, our kids are not going to be any safer. And that's what really should matter in the way that this is approached.

43:05Tim Curry:That was former meta whistleblower Arturo Beja talking to me here on NewsHour. I'm Sean Lay. Thanks very much for your company. Do please join us again.

43:25Former Meta Insider:listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.