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New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that his administration has filed a lawsuit against the parent companies of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube, alleging that their services are damaging to the mental health of young adults and children in the largest U.S. city.

The city of New York along with plaintiffs including the school district and health organizations filed the lawsuit in the Los Angeles county branch of the California Superior Court because of the companies’ ties to the area, attorneys wrote in the filing.

The suit alleges that Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Google (whose parent company is Alphabet) knowingly “designed, developed, produced, operated, promoted, distributed, and marketed their platforms to attract, capture, and addict youth, with minimal parental oversight.”

The plaintiffs allege that the tech companies violated several city laws related to public nuisance and gross negligence through the design and marketing of their addictive products. They claim that New York’s school districts and various health and social services have been severely impacted by children who have suffered negative mental health consequences stemming from their use of popular social media apps.

“Over the past decade, we have seen just how addictive and overwhelming the online world can be, exposing our children to a non-stop stream of harmful content and fueling our national youth mental health crisis,” Adams said in a statement. “Today, we’re taking bold action on behalf of millions of New Yorkers to hold these companies accountable for their role in this crisis, and we’re building on our work to address this public health hazard. This lawsuit and action plan are part of a larger reckoning that will shape the lives of our young people, our city, and our society for years to come.”

A TikTok spokesperson said in an statement that the company has “industry-leading safeguards” for teens, including parental controls and features for age restrictions.

“We regularly partner with experts to understand emerging best practices, and will continue to work to keep our community safe by tackling industry-wide challenges,” the spokesperson said.

A Google representative said the allegations are “simply not true.”

“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience online has always been core to our work,” Google said. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we’ve built services and policies to give young people age-appropriate experiences, and parents robust controls.”

Meta said it’s “spent a decade working on these issues” and wants “teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we have over 30 tools and features to support them and their parents.”

A Snap spokesperson said that “Snapchat was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media,” focusing on facilitating conversations with close friends.

“Snapchat opens directly to a camera – rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling – and has no traditional public likes or comments,” the Snap spokesperson said. “While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”

New York’s lawsuit echoes similar allegations made against Meta, Snap, TikTok and Alphabet in litigation filed in 2022 in the Northern District of California. Multiple school districts and individuals claim the companies’ products “are defective because they are designed to maximize screen time” and that they have resulted in various emotional and physical harms, including death.”

Social media companies have come under fire from lawmakers who are pushing multiple bills like the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, as part of a broader appeal for regulation. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel attended a Senate Judiciary hearing in late January and faced tough questions from a bipartisan group of lawmakers about their alleged negligence in protecting kids.

Meanwhile, a coalition of over 40 attorneys general filed a joint federal lawsuit against Meta alleging that its products are addictive and harm mental health.

WATCH: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologizes to parents at online child safety Senate hearing

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

Dado Ruvic | Array

Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

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YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement

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YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.

The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter from Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.

“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.

YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.

Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.

This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”

In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.

Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.

In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”

YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.

YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.

Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.

YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.

In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.

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