Meta's $18 billion problem.

0:01Emma: Coming up on today's episode, we are going to talk about the iconic Dolly Parton, all of the economic business, every financial decision that she made that meant she died with a$500 million net worth.

0:14Soph: We'll also be delving into the landmark legal case, which has led to Meta having to pay$18 billion in a legal settlement. We'll be looking into what that means for the consumer, that's us, and what that means for the company's future projections as a business.

0:30Emma: And finally, how much are people paying to try and find a traditional life? It is a lot of money. This is tied into the yesteryear conversation. So if you haven't read the book, do not stress. We'll tell you what's going on. This is The Curve Weekly where we read the finance news so that you don't have to. I'm Sophie Hallwright. I'm an ex-television radio producer. And I was really sick and tired of not understanding the economy, money, or how to grow my wealth. So we started this podcast.

0:57Soph: And my name is Emily Boynton, a writer, newly published author and broadcaster. Open up the conversations we're typically taught not to have. But first we've got a quick word from today's sponsor.

1:09Emma: Did you know Generate have a team of advisors who will actually meet with you and help you make sense of KiwiSaver? You can book a no-cost KiwiSaver advice session via the link in our podcast show notes. And thanks to Generate for sponsoring this episode of The Curve Weekly. Emma how was your week what's going on you know what I have that really weird thing on a bank

1:32Soph: holiday weekend where I could not tell you one thing I've done you know that really nice back to school feeling that always comes around every September even though I haven't been at school for what like four I mean 20 years or more yeah my kind of yearly rhythm is still so orientated around the school clock and so this end of summer feeling always begins to set in at the end of August. So it's very kind of restful, restorative period in the lead up to term time, which is not beginning for me, but it feels like it is.

2:02Emma: I, because in New Zealand and Australia, the start of the year is obviously January, February. So for us, it's the new year, it's the first of Jan, and then you go into your school year. And Emma, how are things for you financially? Has it been a good week? Has it been a bad week? What's going on?

2:18Soph: You know, it's a very neutral week, actually. I feel like I'm not splurging or spending a ton because I'm in my rest and recuperation period prior to September. I've got quite a lot of travel and work stuff coming up as like book tour stuff kicks back into gear. But so I'm not spending a lot. I would say I'm in neither red nor green. I am an absolute neutral right now. What about you, red or green?

2:36Emma: Okay, so I'm very lucky I'm out in the country with my boyfriend's family. And I will say there's something about being at someone's home. I mean, obviously you bring a gift, you know, like flowers or a bottle of something. but there's something about going away for the weekend when you're not in a city where you actually just don't spend a lot stunning love that like if you don't want to have me over you just let me know I'll be there breakfast lunch dinner it's a great saving hat

3:09Emma: so for anyone that's missed this Dolly Parton died on the 25th of August this year so just a couple of days ago really and she was 80 years old. I have seen tributes for this woman absolutely everywhere from all different types of people, different industries and I think it kind of made me realize she's one of those people that is so universally loved and so today I really wanted to speak about her career decisions and the financial decisions that she made which were so before her time and built an amazing empire. You're a writer, Emma, and she had a lot of, I want to say, literary blood in her family.

3:50Emma: Before she died, were you already a big Dolly fan? Did you follow her career or did you not know much about her?

3:56Soph: I've always loved her and feel that it's so iconic that she's Miley Cyrus's godmother, which just is the most phenomenal powerhouse duo I wasn't super attached to her as a public figure but not for any reason like I didn't I know I think she's amazing I just didn't really track her career that much and so when she died I was also kind of quite taken aback by the global outpouring that her death prompted there was a guy in my gym the other day who I was like hey love like how you doing and he was like oh it's been a really hard week I was like oh I'm so sorry why and he said well Dolly Parton's death you know he's like I can't stop crying and I was like god that's so poignant so I think obviously it's only like retrospectively I've delved into the kind of Dolly archives and read a bunch of obituaries and been like oh god her the mark she's left in the world is is such a profound one and I was actually reading an obit um in the times yesterday and I love they quoted this um it said when Dolly Parton was asked how she would prefer to be remembered she invariably answered as a songwriter you're putting something in the world that wasn't there yesterday in which you hope people are still going to be singing after you're gone and I read that and I thought god how magical like everyone is singing your praises and your songs after you're gone so yeah I feel like I'm kind of retrospectively appreciating the imprint that she had on the world you know I feel exactly

5:09Emma: the same I I always thought she was amazing I will say that people will slaughter me for this but the song Jolene I will say is a um a non-favorite of mine which I know I know I have to just give context as to why. So when I was at broadcasting school, so we used to run a radio station as a part of our degree. So you had to present, write the ads, you had to do the promo activity. It was sort of, it was a very practical degree. And they had a catalogue of music that was very limited. So you're having to create like, you're like, oh, there's this real white space. You know, we should create a radio show that speaks to, you know, 14 to 19 year old people who have this take, You create this fake radio station to run for a part of the market that you think is sort of like a gap.

5:59Emma: But they didn't have much in the way of music. So we were just, I mean, Jolene was playing every third song, but I was like, I can't hear that song again. And then when I realized it was her, and recently, since I've done some looking at what she's really done for the world and for women and all the lessons we can learn from her financially and otherwise, I was like, what a legend. But I think really interesting. So you'll see all these amazing posts and people talking about her, but actually her financial decisions are like a masterclass in what to do because she owned her entire song catalogue.

6:35Emma: catalog and that for someone that started in like the 50s and 60s wild you know like a lot of people didn't and they relied so heavily on record labels and other people to help with promotion with all the different elements of what it means to be an artist and she really stood on her own two feet so when she died her entire catalog is estimated to be worth 120 million which she completely owns which is so cool. She launched her own publishing company in 1966 with her uncle and she held on to her publishing rights the whole way through. And ultimately that is the best financial decision she ever made.

7:19Emma: And I just think there's so much to learn from this in the sense that a lot of us, I think, outsource to big companies or businesses or want to get, I don't know people behind that almost give you the kudos or the um approval for whatever it is you're doing and I know we did this with our podcast really early on we signed the second season with this big media company thinking it was going to like you know help us out so much and actually it kind of did the opposite and so to have that much faith in yourself and your ability when in the 60s so many women weren't even really working let alone in the creative spaces to like hold her own the whole way through is insane so she and and also the other thing that i wanted to highlight is that she turned down a lot of opportunities which so many of us are scared to do because you're worried that another opportunity isn't going to come around again

8:14Soph: i mean she's so fundamentally believed in herself and her skill i mean like most notably after she recorded i will always love you the iconic song that we all know and love um and had a hit elvis Elvis Presley, none other than Elvis Presley, asked to record the song, but he demanded in return that she should give him half of the songwriting credit and the ensuing royalties. I mean, Elvis Presley is quite a hard person to turn down. I mean, that would have been a guaranteed, like, you know, made it successful overnight. And she didn't know how big that song was going to be yet, but she refused and he never recorded the song.

8:49Soph: And then in 1992, Whitney Houston recorded I Will Always Love You for the film Bodyguard, hence why we all now kind of know and love it. And her version became a number one hit around the globe. And as a sole author, Dolly Parton earned some 10 million from the recording, which obviously she would not have been entitled to had Elvis Presley co-owned it. So it's decisions like that. And you have to remember, she was making these decisions. Her background was not, you know, she didn't have a gilded background. She grew up really poor. You know, she grew up in a tiny one room log cabin in rural East Tennessee.

9:20Soph: And I read somewhere, I think her family was, there were 14 people in her family and they all shared this small cabin had no indoor plumbing or electricity like she did not grow up in the entertainment industry surrounded by people who could be giving her the sort of advice that would might make these decisions and this self-belief make more sense so this is really coming from her which I find extraordinary in retrospect is it awful to say

9:45Emma: that the song I will always love you I thought that that was a Whitney Houston original isn't

9:52Soph: I think everyone did. I think because it became so synonymous with Whitney. And obviously she, I mean, she, Whitney Houston's the person, like, you know, by singing it in this film, she's the one who propelled this song into kind of global fame. And I don't think it was that well-known that it was Dolly Parton who wrote it, but who the fuck cares? Because their Dolly Parton was pocketing all the money for, you know, how successful that song was. And I just, again, I also love with that, it showcases something more than just her, how smart she was in refusing to hand over half the rights to Elvis Presley but also the fact that she was able to create such incredible pieces of work but also have other people take them and use them but she remained the owner of them and by that I mean like it's easy to kind of I think especially if you're a creative you want to kind of hold on to your work and kind of be a bit territorial a bit but I love that she ended up also you know expanding her wealth by allowing other people to kind of rent her creative production?

10:53Emma: I think that's a really good point because if your time is money, so for example, if you're in a salary job or you're a freelancer, you get paid by the work that you do. The idea of investing and the reason that we all invest in, you know, whether it's property or stocks or anything, is because ideally you want to get to that like Coast Fire number or the Fire number where you can basically retire because you have enough invested that the passive income, the money that you're making on the money you have or your assets, means that you don't actually have to work for your time. And I think Dolly's example of what she built over her life is such a good picture of doing that really well.

11:34Emma: So she basically worked smarter, not harder, because every time a song plays. So for example, the millions of times that Jolene plays, whether it's like on the radio or Spotify, she gets a fee from that. And so a decision that she made in the 1960s continued to pay her dividends for her entire career. She was making between six and eight million in royalties every single year. It's just a really good thing to think about when it comes to you don't always want to be working for money that's coming in for the time you're spending.

12:07Soph: You're never going to to get rich trading your time for money because your time is finite. So you're always going to be capped on that trade. You want to be able to create these passive income streams where you're essentially making money when you sleep. This is what I've been indoctrinated by all the business podcasts I listen to, all the Cody Sanchez I have in my ear the entire time. So I feel like I have all these like phrases and this knowledge, but I'm like, okay, Emma, let's apply it. Let's create those passive income streams. But it's true. Didn't Justin Bieber also recently sell his entire back catalog well he was in a lot of debt he was not so he sold it for 200 million in january 2023 which i have to say i know it's a huge amount of money but it doesn't sound like that much for justin bieber given that he has so many streams to this day if it didn't feel like very dolly

12:52Emma: parkin sort of number well i think that he got himself in quite a pickle he was paid in advance for shows and then he couldn't do the shows so he had to pay back a lot of money and he was kind of in a bit of a bind where he was spending so much more than what was coming in with like this sort of guaranteed foresight and then he was sort of in a position where he had to sell it and exactly it's kind of like the opposite of what dolly did and she also diversified i mean she owned 50 of a theme park in tennessee where she was from which is crazy i didn't even know this existed it's called dollywood um and it was making nearly two billion in direct impact in like the area that she grew up in so she was like giving back it was 23 000 jobs it was giving it was like the biggest tourist attraction in tennessee and she bought 50 of it in 1986 and it was worth like like 165 million in 2021 so like the amount of money that she was then generating from that theme park was just like insane so she had her record like all of her music catalog she had Dollywood which was making an absolute shit ton of money she also co-founded a production

14:06Soph: company do you remember Buffy the vampire slayer yeah of course iconic show from what 90s noughties

14:13Emma: she just like she just didn't wait she was so okay yeah so like she had all of these production company yeah um and I just think that there's this perception that she just created Jolene and make all this money actually she made a complete fortune um and she's like that she was also such

14:35Soph: a good person like i think obviously what i've been drawn to with my literary um sensibility is she created the imagination library um which is kind of like the mainstay of her charity work so while she's making kind of you know making all this huge money for herself she was also always giving back to the community and always giving back to people and the imagination library has helped millions of children learn to read by sending out free books and i looked up earlier because I was curious as to just kind of what, how big did the Imagination Library actually get? And it now sends books to children across the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia.

15:07Soph: And according to its website, it's now sent more than 332.4 million books.

15:14Emma: I was looking at how much she donated for COVID as well because it was a million US that she donated for the research for the vaccine.

15:21Soph: Yeah. And then she got her vaccine done like publicly on live TV in a time in which people are becoming very sceptical about the vaccines. So she got hers done live on television.

15:32Emma: And also the production company she started for her publishing, she was 20 years old, and she made decisions from a young age that were clever, financially savvy, because she made the list of one of the wealthiest self-made women in America. And she publicly spoke about the fact that she's arranged a will so there's no kind of weird fallout. She's donating almost all of her fortune to charity. I'm just like, you are the picture of how we should all be approaching our careers. You can see even now, like with Taylor Swift, who's, you know, bought back the rights to her music. She's kind of using the Dolly Parton playbook.

16:05Emma: She didn't have them. Now she's brought them back. And there's all these women artists like Maggie Rogers, Olivia Rodrigo, who are now following that same playbook. I just think what a beautiful example and so nice to be able to celebrate her and everything that she has taught us.

16:19Soph: Dua Lipa also brought back the rights to her music publishing catalogue from her former partner Tap Music. And as you will know, I am the number one Dua Lipa stan. So the fact Dua Lipa is also following the Dolly Parton playbook gives me a huge sense of gratification. The reason I love her so much is that, you know, much like much of what we're discussing today with Dolly Parton, Dua Lipa's business empire is so impressive. She has diversified her portfolio in such an incredible way from obviously her music is she from 2023. She's bought back her own catalogue. So she owns the rights to her own music.

16:56Soph: She is a global star when she tours the World Watchers because she looks so phenomenal. But not only that, but she's created her own media company. So she's got a real hand in the kind of cultural milieu. She's in autumn this year. she's going to be posting and also curating Southbank Centre's literary festival because she runs Service 95, her own media platform, through which she commissions like really great journalism. She's put money behind it. We know journalism is so hard to fund in today's world. So when you have very rich benefactors like Dua Lipa putting their money into good journalism, covering issues that have brilliant issues from feminism, queer issues, I think the stuff that she commissions is fantastic.

17:34Soph: but it also is just her creating a very broad portfolio of work I mean you know alongside that the brand deals that she does I just think what she's building to me is so impressive yeah and then all the while being able to communicate this really aspirational and seemingly sort of accessible lifestyle online which just how she does it I do not know I'd be so nervous if I met her oh my god so am I although I've apparently she's like an absolute babe and just like drinks

18:01Emma: Actually, no people have partied with her and said she's just successful.

18:05Soph: Really fun. I know. Oh, what a babe.

18:08Emma: Anyway, coming up after the break, we're going to be talking about Meta. This stock and business has done insanely well over the last 5, 10 years, but they are coming out of a legal battle not looking so crash hot. They're going to have to pay$18 billion, which is 8 % of their annual revenue. What does this mean for the business and the future of social media?

18:29Soph: And we're also going to be discussing the economics of matchmaking, or more specifically, how much people are willing to pay to be paired up with a traditional wife.

18:40Emma: But first, we have a quick word from today's sponsor. KiwiSaver can feel a little bit confusing sometimes. For me, it took a while to rip my head around it, especially when every provider says that they're performing well. One thing you need to remember which really matters is consistency over time. So not just one good year. And that's why Generate stands out. Their focused growth KiwiSaver fund has consistently ranked near the top for long-term 10-year performance. So a big thank you to Generate for sponsoring this episode of The Curve Weekly. Check out their track record and disclosures using the link in the show notes.

19:16Emma: And remember, track records don't guarantee future returns.

19:20Soph: meta has recently settled a lawsuit that was brought around in 2023 and is set to pay 18 billion i was about to say million it's 18 billion dollars um to the states that brought this case now this is fascinating i mean the company you should just say for context the company is worth 1.47 trillion u.s dollars which puts 18 billion into perspective but it's still not nothing yeah And it feels like a really important moment in which these tech companies, particularly Meta, are finally getting their comeuppance for creating technology, which in some ways is amazing and connects the world, but also has incredibly damaging effects, particularly with regards to its impact on teens and children.

20:06Emma: I, you know, we've been talking about the story or keeping an eye on it because there's been a few cases that have been won by people basically suing Meta and other social media platforms for damaging mental health. Firstly, it's probably worth saying they haven't actually admitted that they purposefully did this. Basically, what they did, even though they haven't come out and said yes, we're guilty, is they research how to hook young brains onto this type of tech. And as you said, things like the infinite scrolling, all of that was, you know, purposefully trying to make their platforms addictive to young people.

20:44Soph: Not just the young people, but everyone. They want everyone to be on their platforms for as much time as possible because they run a generally ad, their business models kind of ad revenue. So the more time we spend on these platforms, the more money they make. So they've purposely designed their technology through things like the infinite scrolls, the idea that you never complete the scroll. there's always more it's designed to exploit our dopamine system in our brain i mean it is a dopamine playground i also think just on that though we should note that this yes this is kind of part of it feels like the tide is really turning this year but this is quite new because cases from brought against them the past few years and no one's really been successful we know that these platforms are addictive we know that you know the impact that they're having i was curious like how had they not been like called up on it successfully until this year i was like how is it

21:36Emma: possible that there's that like this is i honestly didn't have faith that any of these things would come to fruition or that they were like 18 billion is not nothing it's like a lot of money but so i

21:49Soph: looked into this and it's such an interesting reason so for almost two decades social media companies have avoided legal consequences for the negative effects of exposure to their products And this is in large part because of something called Section 230 of a very powerful law passed in the early days of the internet, which is called the Communications Decency Act of 1996. What this law dictated was that internet platforms cannot be held legally liable for third party content. So this has basically allowed platforms like Meta to argue that they aren't traditional publishers, but they're simply a third party site hosting other people's content.

22:28Soph: Now, in many ways, this law has allowed the internet to grow to be what it was, but it's meant that platforms like Meta have basically been able to avoid taking any responsibility for the impact of what is shown on their platforms. So that's why historically any cases brought against Meta that were trying to hold it to account for the material on their platform didn't really carry because they could just say, we're not responsible for that. That's third party. You know, we're not a publisher. We are merely a kind of a hosting site, even though the fact that they algorithmically organize their platform, they are their curators.

23:03Soph: They dictate kind of what we see and what we don't. So there was always a kind of flimsy argument there. But recently, the way that prosecutors have gone about seeking to get Meta to be accountable for these things is they've changed tack. So what they've ended up doing is prosecutors and plaintiffs have finally broken through Meta's legal defense by shifting the argument from harmful content to addictive design. so instead of stewing meta for what users posted lawsuits have began targeting the actual engineering choices made by the company which then has a more substantial it's like actually it's how you've designed your platform that's actually the problem rather than the content on it and this recent case which has led to this you know huge 18 billion dollar settlement which hasn't been finalized yet but you know seems to be in the works is a product of that shift in the approach the prosecutors have taken, which I think is fascinating and really opens the way for what could be like a number of cases like this now successfully going through, which could have a huge impact on how Meta runs.

24:09Emma: Yeah. And I was just looking through the way that the share price has been impacted. If you look at this year so far, so like basically from January, it was a share was 650 US. It's now only 578, which might not sound like a lot, but that's a huge drop. Then if you zoom out and you look at the last like five years there was a low in 2022 of it was like basically just over 100 us but then in its peak it was like god it's like nearly gets up to 800 us you know like it's it's just one of those classic examples of when you zoom out and out now you actually see that over a long period of time the share price has just climbed and climbed and climbed and when you then zoom in on the last month or week or whatever, you can see these massive like ups and downs.

24:59Emma: But yeah, I guess it just sort of comes back to the question of do we think social media is like the new tobacco where all this like regulation and tax and things are going to come out that are going to hinder its growth and hinder its success? Or is it if you look in the last five years, it's continuously, it's had so much stuff go wrong, right? But it does keep climbing and doing better and figure out its way around the system. Like it's just hard to know if what's happening right now is going to be a little blip that they find their way back to being you know a monster just going up and up and up in terms of share price and value or if these like lawsuits and the way they're being penalized is actually going to slow down social media or slow down the broader landscape of how these businesses make money these are like

25:45Soph: landmark cases and the prosecutors have finally found a way of getting this so getting companies like meta not to like necessarily admit responsibility because they seem they still seem quite sheepish in terms of actually admitting to have done anything wrong they're more just kind of like okay we'll settle without actually taking kind of full-on responsibility for the role they take in the damages they're being you know accused of but I do think if we see more and more of these cases go through successfully inevitably that's going to have an impact on the growth of the company and i think policymakers around the world i think have been so slow on regulating big tech and actually taking a kind of you know a proactive role in seeking to curb the like unrelenting growth of these companies despite the fact they obviously have damaging social effects as well and i think these cases suggest that lawmakers are kind of taking a bit more of an assertive step forward and I mean if you read that book Careless People by Sarah Wynne-Williams it is an amazing book that came out in 2025 and it's obviously like it keeps hitting the number one like the number one best seller charts obviously because it feels so timely with all these cases um but it was written it was written came out sorry came out in 2025 and it's by the former director of global public policy at Meta so she was in that role for seven years and it takes a really critical look at Facebook's internal cultural decision-making practices during the time in which the author was there, specifically how they responded to big socio-political events, including the Rohingya genocide, and also to child safety, not to mention the internal culture of sexism and harassment, which was, she reports, rampant.

27:27Soph: Facebook, it's important to note, has denied all allegations that have been brought forward in that book. And in the UK, every MP across the country was sent a copy of the book on behalf of the molly rose foundation which i thought was again quite a monumental move um so this was an organization that was set up by the family of molly russell who's a young girl who took her own life in 2017 at age 14 years old and that was after the algorithm on social media platforms exposed her to a vast stream of graphic self-harm depression and suicide content and it's so depressing a coroner concluded that the effects of online content that she viewed contributed to her death in a more than minimal way so if you have this charity sending this book to you know lawmakers across the country I mean this book has become you know one of the most talked about books I think in the last year so much so I mean Facebook obviously sought to have the book shut down it tried to block it from being published it's like from PR it's like a PR nightmare PR disaster also again all these things happen at once that's why I think it's interesting when we zoom out all these things happening at once you have these you know prosecutors taking a different role you have these legal cases now moving in a very different direction for Meta alongside this scintillating book that has exposed the behind the scenes of how Facebook really reneged on any responsibility to put child safeguarding really at the forefront of how it developed its um technology you kind of can't believe how much Sarah Wynne Williams reveals about the inner work of the company.

29:00Emma: Well, I mean, she's fully annihilating any chance of working probably there again.

29:04Soph: She's basically like, I think, making herself unemployable to most tech companies. I mean, being a whistleblower is a poison chalice because I think, yeah, you're, I mean, she's currently under such a significant gag order by Meta. She appeared at Hay Literary Festival to promote her book and sat on stage with journalist Carol Cadwaller, who was the journalist who did the Cambridge Analytica scandal, reported on the scandal. And Sarah Wynne-Williams was forced to just sit there in silence. She couldn't even nod or move her head because she's basically been fined, she can be fined$50 ,000 for any supposed breach of the gag order that Facebook has on her because then there's an ongoing legal dispute.

29:43Soph: I mean, she's not working at Meta again, but I think for a lot of other tech companies, yeah, I think she becomes unemployable because you're going to be worried that someone like that, a very well-known whistleblower is going to go in and and you know I mean a lot of these tech companies are not totally running everything by you know above board in all respects so yeah I think it has a huge impact.

30:01Emma: Let's look at the numbers in terms of how much they've been fined for this lawsuit because I think it's important to note that there's going to be I mean there's so many more that will be coming to the forefront right like whether it's individuals businesses like even in New Zealand they've banned now social media for under 16s because there's so many mothers and people who are like this is terrible and so damaging we need to change this and you're seeing a change all over the world so I think let's talk about the numbers in terms of how much they've been fined and then let's talk about what that actually means what we're going to see changes in the space like what Demeter actually have to do so the 18 billion that they've been fined just so that you know how much money they've made so meta made six or just over 60 billion in net income for the full year in 2025 so this settlement is like around about 27 percent of one year's profit and about eight percent of their annual revenue so like that's a lot of money even though you think oh they're making so much money and like what is 18 billion going to do this is only one case if they have to pay this plus any other huge ones that come their way which no doubt they will it's kind of like what are these businesses gonna do it creates a

31:18Soph: landscape shift doesn't it because i think up until now they've been able to act with relative impunity like if you think of all the times that mark zuckerberg has appeared before congress and i mean remember that first trial he did when he appeared for congress and he they felt so out of step with they were asking questions of like how do you monetize what it was so it felt like such a like collision of like old school politicking and these new tech bastions who just like he didn't he didn't need to be answerable to politicians then is that what it felt like whereas now so for so many years they have been able to act with impunity which then creates a landscape in which other tech platforms are like if you're a new emerging tech company and you're seeking to compete with the big you know the tech giants why are you going to do implement better more stringent policies that potentially affect your bottom line if the biggest companies aren't

32:04Emma: being called up on on their wrongdoings we see the way that these businesses can operate and make money like um and like some of the basically that they're having to agree to do like clear prompts and notifications like every 15 minutes so that you're constantly reminded of like the fact that you're still on there and give reminders at like the 60 and 90 minute i think the most amazing thing is the fact that teenage users will have like a default of only being allowed to use two hours a day but I think the thing that's really interesting is parents up until this point have had so much responsibility on them to try and impact that these platforms are having on their kids it's like been so up to the the bum of the parents to to try and limit the impact these platforms have on their kids whereas now because the platforms have to take responsibility it's must be such a relief for parents all over the world that are all of a sudden like oh thank god okay great like now I don't have to be so stressed about how I regulate this for my kids or how I decide what's okay because there's like blanket rules for all young people I mean I still think there's so much crap on social media platforms that parents like I don't think the headache goes away necessarily

33:19Soph: but I think it definitely feels like it's at least acknowledging that kids like shouldn't be on their phones on social media platforms for hours and hours and hours and on end but like

33:30Emma: there's basically going to be a minimum of like anyone under 13 is like not able to get access

33:35Soph: curious like how do they implement this because i know you know the under 16 ban in australia apparently the kids have like left right and center have thwarted it like there's always ways around it so i think although the intentionality is good whether how effective it is actually curbing the times that people actually spend on the platform i'm always a little bit more skeptical but i guess you do have in the background the potential of these big legal like lawsuits and again it becoming more kind of risky for platforms to not be really tough on this stuff then that does change things somewhat i think it's interesting to also note just like how these platforms have changed because this younger generation and i kind of include us in this but really the generation below us are sort of the guinea pig generation for this i mean we grew up in the time in which we were you know got logged logging on to aol like the internet was kind of born in our lifetime and we've really seen the evolution of these social media platforms these tech companies and then the repercussions of them but we're all kind of guinea pigs in this like mass experiment of like well we don't know what happens with this technology because it's never it's newly created and so i think this also does feel like a kind of like finally like society catching up with the impact of the yeah of the growth of these of these companies and what they do to us I do feel now when I don't know about you but when I go on my social when I go on like Instagram it's not curated by me I it's like mainly adverts now like I don't see my friends

35:00Emma: content at all I just see adverts like to the point where I want to create like a tiny like almost 30 person Instagram so that I can only see what my friends are doing yeah but you know

35:12Soph: that's not gonna work because I was I I thought the same thing but Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged last year just 10 percent of content on instagram now comes from friends the rush is from external recommended content you can create a finster and you're still going to 90 of what you're served is still going to be algorithmically targeted ads which kind of undermines the whole notion of a social media platform which was intended you know supposedly to be about social connection but what

35:40Emma: i would say is that that kind of is the bigger piece of this conversation if you think about the business model and the future success of how they're going to survive with these types of regulations because Meta generates almost 100 % of its revenue through digital ads. And teen engagement and kids is driving a huge amount of that revenue. So if there's not going to be future hooked kids and teenagers, that's future customers that they can't make money out of. and like Meta's valuation so like how its share price or like the business is basically valued at the moment is around 24 times like the forward projection of their earnings so that's how that like there's lots of different ways you can value businesses but that's at the moment how their growth is like being projected or the value of their business is around 24 times x their value of the earnings so if you think about that and you're pulling away all these potential future people to make money on basically it's kind of like if you were a coffee business and all of a sudden it was illegal to drink coffee until you were 18 or 30 or whatever like your customer base is shrinking and getting smaller so what is that going to mean in terms of the future value of that business basically when meta reported its results it does like you do quarterly earnings so like when it came out with its earnings in the second quarter of this year, it reported just over$60 billion in revenue, which was a 28 % increase from that time last year.

37:18Emma: It'll be so interesting to see if all these people are being pulled off platforms and they make all their revenue from marketing to people. Do you think that they're all going to start to head backwards or maybe not be that valuable? It'll be so interesting to see.

37:34Soph: You made the comparison earlier, which is being touted around quite a lot around the comparison to the big tobacco companies and how if you think of like the last I wonder like the last like what decade or more than a decade in which there's been tighter regulation on the big tobacco companies the impact that's had on the size of these companies is huge I mean I mean there's been a kind of cultural move away from like the normalization of smoking so now we have you know you're not allowed to smoke inside it's wild to think that growing up you could smoke inside like i'm going to clubs and people were just like it would be like thick with with smoke because it was totally permissible you know you go back in the kind of the height of smoking i think like the latter half the 20th century when tobacco industries again operated with impunity there were times which people you know they it was they were allowed to advertise being good for your health um presumably because the amount of tax they were able to contribute seemingly at that point outweighed the cost to the health service that then became, you know, huge.

38:32Soph: But I just looked up the data and if you think smoking prevalence in the UK fell by a quarter between 2019 and 2024. So that's actually, that's quite recent. But the total number of people who smoke is about half of what it was in 2010. So that's in the past, like, you know, in 16 years, the number of people that smoked has halved, which is a lot. And tax paid by tobacco clearances have cut in half since 2019. Sorry, there's a bit of a mix of dates here, but all which is to say the amount of tax that the tobacco industries contribute is obviously reflective of how much they're making. And that amount has dropped significantly as there's been a big kind of cultural shift away and tighter regulation.

39:10Emma: It's so funny you look up the percentage drop because I did the exact same thing. So like when I was born in 1991, so if we took it just from 1990, so around about 35, 36 years ago, 26 % of the adult population in the US was smoking cigarettes. and today that's nine percent and I think that the really interesting thing when you look at that is for sure that started with taxing regulations basically making it harder for those businesses to make a profit and to make a large profit because when you're regulated or you're being taxed on things like look at the packaging now of tobacco like there's like blanket rules on a lot of investors just won't straight up won't invest in tobacco companies I mean you could say perhaps in 30 years or five years or 10 years, that it'll be a similar feeling around social media because they consider it, you know, they want a blanket rule.

40:04Emma: I mean, who knows? It'll be really interesting to see what happens. But it starts with people starting to realize it's having a negative impact on society. And how can we stop these businesses from like booming, booming, booming? And so it'll just be interesting to see if now there's this regulation coming into place with tech companies will it be more and more difficult to make money in this space and and what will then the flow on cultural shifts be because i think the difference in tobacco is you know you have to pay to get access to it you don't have to pay to use a social media platform so the barrier to entry is different it's not like a direct person true and as someone in a

40:41Soph: shop who's like no you're too young you can't buy this cigarette yeah a little bit more of a kind of friction whereas if every kid is on their phone the whole time anyway you're right there's less of that immediate friction that might be a deterrent we should do another episode on this

40:56Emma: though and actually like get the ethical investing experts onto this one because i do think that looking at whether or not investing in social media like i kind of up until recently never really thought about it as something that i didn't want to invest in as a blanket rule because i kind of love tech and like thinking about as innovative and exciting and fun as this like growth space but actually it's you know when you when you see and hear all these like outrageous negative impact this happening is like a byproduct um it just it does make you rethink like is that something actually is ethical

41:38Soph: okay so the next piece I thought be interesting for us to dive into because I really want to know your thoughts about this actually so something's been on my mind for a while so the other day in the times there was a piece titled generation wed the gen z women who are really having it all the title alone pissed me off no end so in the article the writer goes a new breed of influencer is cutting through. Women who have married and had children early on by the standards of modern Britain, where the average first time mother is 30 and birth rates have fallen to a 50 year low. But the article says, do not call them trad wives.

42:14Soph: They are not trad wives. They're not the social media homemakers who do the chores and childcare for a huge brood while the male providers go out to work, nor are they churning butter, although some have chickens. But there are smart, educated women who are happy to swap a life of youthful partying for one of family and hosting called them generation wed now i read this piece and i thought god this is such an interesting article to come out now because i feel like we're going through a period in which we're sort of seeing an attempt at sanitizing the trad wife trend as it were because since the publication of yesterday that's caro claire burks i'm reading it at the

42:54Emma: moment so good right I'm halfway through I've been away this weekend and all I've I sat in the bath for two hours reading this book and went pruney and cold and just kept people watched the rest of the family watched a whole film while I was just like devouring this book I'm really finding it so fun and like good and I know there's been so many different opinions on it but I'm loving it

43:19Soph: I think it's the popularity that's made it so divisive I think what's sold like 1.5 million copying I think now I just think as soon as someone gets something that's that much publicity

43:27Emma: well it's kind of like if someone says oh you should watch this film what's the best film I've ever watched you go in with the highest expectations and then you come you're like oh it's not that good

43:35Soph: but it's such a fun book you know it's such a smart I don't say kind of critical appraisal of the trad wife um model the trad wife kind of trend that we've seen uh grow on social media and I feel like since that book it's stoked such a broad sweeping conversation around the limitations interpretations of the trad wife motif and we've seen the kind of quintessential trad wives the likes of nara smith actively kind of push back on this moniker and say no i don't even know what a trad wife is in her recent interview with alex cooper she was like i don't even know what a trad wife is like i'm not a trad wife like i'm a hard-working woman we you know split things in the household at 50 50 and there's this real kind of pushback on people who've you know been associated with this trend and so when i saw this times piece i just thought god there's a really interesting thing that's happening now whereby I feel like we're seeking to like sanitize this more this like push towards more like traditional values and traditional roles for women specifically because the notion of trad wife has become really um kind of like a dirty word because in the in the fallout of yes year are you feeling that I think the the thing that fascinates me the most

44:45Emma: about this is what's kind of evolving off the back of it in terms of I mean have you seen some of the matchmaking businesses now where there's this huge rise in men going because people are sick of using dating apps they've been going to matchmaking services to be you know you're paying a lot of money to be put in touch with someone that fits what you're looking for and like the rise of what people are describing as I want sort of this sort of trad wife there's all these really wealthy kind of almost from afar progressive successful men who are paying upwards of like 25 000 us dollars to be matched with that type of relationship i don't really know where it's all gonna land to be honest and i feel fascinated by it and i'm loving this book for me it's kind

45:37Soph: of two things come up i think on the one hand i think the whole trad wife aesthetic has created a kind of glamorized version of domesticity in a way that kind of re-entrenches a bygone ideal of what womanhood should look like feels jarring when we've come so far from that notion of like a woman's role is in the kitchen. And although I know that like people like Nara Smith are performing this role because it works well online, it's kind of like a soft rage baiting aesthetic really. Idealistic for some, but also rage baiting for others. Nonetheless, less it's driven you know huge amounts of views she makes tons of money on brand deals so like you know it's not as if she's actually in the kitchen just churning butter and that's it she's obviously making huge money out of it for a conversation another day there's also quite a lot of research in that there's a link between the alt-right and this kind of trad wife um trend in that it's put it's very much like linked to this growth of the far right since the 2016 general election in the u.s which obviously propagates a very traditional view of a man versus a woman's role in the household which then i do think becomes you know we get into a very kind of problematic terrain but what i thought was really interesting and then there's a lead into um what you were talking about the matchmaking services is there was i was interested to know kind of what is it that is compelling young women to look to these to like why do people who have a kind of trad wife aesthetic end up gaining such big followings on social media and there was a really interesting research um research paper done by the global institute for women's leadership which surveyed a thousand women in the UK aged between 18 to 34 and found that what attracts them to trad wife content isn't the prospect of a return to traditional domestic duties.

47:16Soph: Actually the researchers found that young women continue to hold more progressive attitudes than previous generations with many expecting fathers to share responsibility for care and domestic work but rather the aesthetic of simplicity, leisure and escape from the pressures of increasingly demanding get insecure work so it's kind of the trad way the idea was kind of just a bit of like escapism from the the feeling today that you kind of have to do it all and be it all even when we live in an economic moment that feels increasingly impossible to do any of it because cost of living is so high wages are depressed yeah because like if i think about the idea of like if i was to

47:54Emma: live here in the country full time and i was i mean the dream would be to be able to work for myself making really good money and feeling mentally challenged in my work. But if I had the time to make really beautiful meals, to grow my own vegetables, to be mostly organic, to spend heaps of time in nature, I mean, that is a beautiful life. It is also something to look at and be like, God, what a privilege to be able to go down to the beach or go into the forest for a walk or eat food you've grown like that's amazing um it's just that you also can't really do that in big cities where often that's where you make money because there's not that many generally work opportunities in places where you can live a more slower kind of domestic lifestyle so it is quite binary where people have to choose either I live in the thick of a city where I can make money and be in this sort of career rat race you make it sound so negative i mean that's obviously what i'm addicted to but then um the sort of juxtaposition of that or the total opposite would be moving into a more traditional role where you're living in the country and i mean god it would be amazing if you could do both i personally would love to have a middle ground i actually also

49:12Soph: think a lot of the like try to i think it's about aesthetics which is which is what social media like thrives on isn't it is the aesthetic of like wealth and this is what the times piece says i I mean, one of the women, the Jen Wedder, whatever they're called, she returns to us. She's just like, she has this like really glossy, glamorous life. And I mean, ultimately, that's wealth. We've always glamorized wealth. Yes, of course, I'd love to have a four story house and travel and like beautiful places and have a gorgeous car. Like that kind of gets wrapped up into the kind of trad wife aesthetic.

49:45Soph: But actually, really, it's just a wealthy aesthetic. And we've always kind of glamorized that. Just to go back to what you mentioned before, because you mentioned something I thought was really interesting about the growth in matchmaking sites. So Wired Magazine published a story in which it said that professional matchmakers are being paid$25 ,000 to find trad wives.

49:59Emma: If I had enough money to pay someone, to find someone that actually would be really well suited to me, I would probably consider it. I know it's kind of, not icky, but it almost has this reputation, I think, really similarly to when dating apps first became a thing or like plenty of fish and all those websites started to become a thing. People were like, gross, you're like trying to find love online? Creepy. And then it's so normalized now. So many people I know have found and met their husbands, wives through dating apps. I do think, although it's so for the elite in terms of the amount you have to pay.

50:34Emma: and when I first heard a friend of mine who's a business owner and was saying he was going to go to a matchmaker and pay I my immediate reaction was icky don't like it but if you can if someone if you can be really honest about the type of person that you're going to really relate to and fall in love with them you can line up on so many things that often it can be really hard to find when you're looking sifting through like online apps makes sense like I if you had the money and you could get someone that was really looking for what you were looking for on your behalf

51:04Soph: half kind of cool like i totally dating's hard thing worth noting with just a few finished trad wife piece is that i felt irked by this article in that this one woman that they interview this matchmaker called blaine anderson who works exclusively with men and she's the one who charges between 30 000 and 50 000 for her services we should start a new company and we should be getting on what's that i would be like right who what gorgeous women can i introduce these men to but she was saying that increasingly she's seen men who themselves aren't like traditionally like from a religious conservative background who aren't even religious actively say to her they're looking for a good christian woman they're looking for someone who's like fits this trad wife um role and that to me feels like you know part a bit of a sign of the times of that even if like women aren't glamour like aren't idolizing a trad wife role they're just looking at like the aesthetics but the ripple effect nonetheless and or maybe this is kind of symbiotic relationship is that there is this kind of growth in men wanting this type of more placid domestic woman

52:10Emma: i i know that there are lots of people like that in the world i'm not trying to go and be like toxically positive about this but if i think about the guys in my life friends family friends people i know people i've met in business i just i know there's always going to be a portion of society that probably will lean more into this, but I really have faith that this is not necessarily going to be what everyone is looking for. Like the relationship that I'm in and like there's a lot of people around me where I look at the men that really are so proud of their partners that are out doing cool things and being really ambitious, like, and they're genuinely proud of their partners for doing that.

52:53Emma: I like your optimism.

52:54Soph: The research doesn't back you up. Although I think there's a problem. There was a survey done earlier this year by King's College, which found that Gen Z men are twice as likely as their boomer counterparts to want a more traditional partner.

53:07Emma: I actually can't. I'm so devastated by those stats. And I actually...

53:11Soph: That's the nuance to it. And I actually think the way this was reported was problematic. So they basically did a survey of 23 ,000 people worldwide and found that nearly 31 % of young men agreed that a wife should obey her husband and trust him to make important household decisions. that precipitated a flurry of social media posts and articles basically saying that we are moving back and that there is this kind of resurgence of a much more kind of traditional understanding of gender roles in a household i think the nuance in this is that this survey was a worldwide survey which immediately is like you have so many cultural religious differences that are going to be influencing this data which are being kind of elided in this kind of like top line stat because I do think there's nuances and we're seeing the rise of the alt-right we're seeing the rise of far more extreme right-wing politics which tends to lean into more like hardline traditional gender

54:02Emma: roles yeah and I also think you know we've done quite a bit of research lately with the curve community on like lab ground versus natural diamonds or and by the way thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast and gave us feedback on the way that we're doing these curve weeklies with Emma because there's been so many people that have shared insights which has been amazing so thank you as a side note but then we've done all sorts of research on yet the lab grombus natural diamonds we've asked our community like what do you think and we did it with weddings how much did you spend what do you think and i'm really proud of this community and the thinking and the open-mindedness and i as much as it can be so scary and sad to hear those stats i almost would put like money on it that if we put some kind of survey out within our curve community and they sent it to their guy friends all the men that they knew we would get way more positive like different insights than what you you get globally you know like your your boyfriend's amazing he's

54:59Soph: so cool and awesome i know i and i totally agree i think we we also you know we're in you know such amazing pockets being in a kind of metropolitan city that we're exposed we live in like super diverse areas and like a diversity of thought um culture ethnicity all the all the fabulous things but I still think like the kind of the cult the sorry the political temperature that we are experiencing um I think particularly now obviously the UK we have a leftist government but from the US and the worldwide does raise a ton of issues I think we have to like really kind of keep quite abreast of and it doesn't have to be necessarily super negative but I just think yeah we live in a pocket of privilege especially being in in London but that's not the reality for a lot of women around the world and for a lot of people around the world and so I think it's that whole thing of like the feminist fight continues to rage on until all women are free like ultimately um

55:48Emma: education and talking about it like this is what can change the narrative and help women not just

55:54Soph: in our little echo oh my god we need more women to be wealthy and to be able to decide like how they spend their money that's like the biggest thing if you have more wealth in the hands of women and women therefore making big financial decisions on a domestic level yes but at a kind of bigger like you know global level that shifts the dial massively so yeah 100 these conversations can have such a massive ripple effect.

56:13Emma: As much as I would love to talk about the fact that there is 16 % of workers that are turning down bonuses or promotions at the moment, which is really, really scary and something we should definitely talk about. Maybe we could talk about it on social media because people are like kind of worried about the amount of tax they're going to pay. And I would just like to say, we've probably run out of time to talk about this, but if you're in a position where you're being offered a pay rise and you're either avoiding it or refusing it because you think that it's not the best financial decision. Definitely research that more.

56:45Emma: It's like worrying me how many people are turning down pay rises. And also maybe we can touch on this. I might make sure we put some content out on our sub stack or social. So if you don't follow us on social media, it's at the Curve platform basically everywhere. And subscribe to our sub stack. I'll make sure we put some details about that out because off the back of the conversation we just had, the last thing we need is people turning down their packages and what they're earning from employers being turned down. It's kind of scary. I've really enjoyed this episode. It was a bit different for us, like covering a few different topics and news stories.

57:17Emma: Yeah, thanks again to everyone who's given us feedback on this episode. As everyone knows, Vic is now basically investing on behalf of the audience. If you would like to invest in the Cove Fund, it's very exciting. And yeah, there's lots of things going on at the Cove. So wherever you'd like to consume information, whether it's social media or Substack, we'd love for you to follow along. But yes, I hope everyone has a great week. And thanks so much for listening. And Emma, do you have any final parting words?

57:43Soph: Oh, what are my final parting words? Women get rich so we can have all the power. And that's the big feminist fight to be had. Get more money in women's hands so that we can make the big financial decisions that end up shifting the dial on how we exist globally. In this podcast, all your friends.

57:58Emma: All your friends. Yes, love that. Okay, have a great week, everyone. And we'll see you next time. Have an amazing week, everyone. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to The Curve Weekly. make sure you hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening so you're always up to date with the latest finance and investing news and feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought about this episode because we would love your feedback we've got new curve weekly episodes for you to listen to every monday but until then listen to a raising the curve these are our in-depth podcast episodes where we chat about all things money we're also around all week

58:25Soph: on socials if you're hungry for more curve content and all the links are in this podcast show notes we hope you have a great week and we'll catch you for the next episode of the curve weekly on monday

58:42Emma: Okay, quickly, the Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors. Our platform exists for educational purposes only,

58:50Soph: and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision.

58:57Emma: And always remember to do your own research before making any investment or financial decision. We're here for any knowledge and support you need, but the final call is always yours. And thanks for being here. You got this. Yeah, we know you got this.