Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rand Low, Associate Professor of Quantitative Finance, Bond University

Gold has long enjoyed a reputation as a financial “safe haven” during stormy times. But over the past few months of geopolitical chaos and market panic, the precious metal has moved more like a roller coaster than a steady ship at anchor.

In late January, the gold price surged to an all-time high near US$5,600 per ounce – effectively double what it was a year earlier. It’s lost about 20% since then, sliding sharply while major conflict broke out in the Middle East.

To be clear, gold is still at lofty heights by historical standards, up almost 300% over the past decade. Much of this surge has been driven by “financialisation”.

Put simply, more ways of investing in gold on paper – with complex financial products called derivatives and funds that track its price – have seen a boom in speculation by institutional and retail investors.

But this year’s wild swings in price should shatter any remaining illusion that gold is always a safe haven. To understand why, we need to look at how modern financial markets work – and in particular, why an oil shock is different to other crises.

Umbrellas and storm shelters

To protect their wealth, investors often seek assets that are either “hedges” or “safe havens”.

A hedge is an investment that generally moves in the opposite direction to the rest of the market on average over a normal, long-term period.

Think of a hedge like holding an umbrella above your head every single day. You’ll stay drier than everyone else when it rains, but you’ll also block out on some of the sunshine (potential gains) when it doesn’t.

A safe haven, on the other hand, is an investment that generally moves in the opposite direction to the rest of the market only during sudden periods of extreme stress or crashes.

It’s like a storm shelter you only run to during a hurricane.

Where does gold fit?

In a 2016 research study, colleagues and I found gold had some of the qualities of a safe haven, particularly for share markets in Australia, the United States, Germany and France.

During the 2008 global financial crisis, gold was the most stable commodity among the precious metals we studied. Its price did drop, but it avoided the catastrophic losses seen in other precious metals.

It had similar safe haven qualities in 2011, when ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the US’ AAA credit rating to AA+ for the first time in history and many global stock markets fell.

Importantly, those market shocks came out of the financial system itself (a banking system failure and a credit downgrade).

Today, the world faces something fundamentally different: a massive energy shock due to interrupted oil supplies and major damage to oil and gas facilities in the Middle East.

Why an oil shock is different

Traditional finance textbooks will tell you that when a war breaks out, inflation spikes or stock markets crash, investors typically engage in what’s called a “flight to quality” – fleeing riskier assets and moving their money somewhere seen to be safer (such as gold).

In a 2025 research paper, colleagues and I offer a more nuanced view. Crucially, we incorporated data from more recent periods of stock market turbulence, including the COVID pandemic, where gold’s safe haven properties were more muted.

We found gold is still a go-to choice for investors moving out of riskier investments. But it is not an untouchable storm shelter.

Instead of standing completely separate from the panic during a crisis, gold absorbs some of the volatility from both the stock market and energy markets, which can cause its price to fall.

Ripple effects

Why? For one, market chaos means some large investors may be forced to sell gold to cover other losses or meet financial obligations, such as margin calls (where a lender demands funds to cover the falling value of an asset).

For other large investors, the recent price rally may have created an opportunity to sell high and take profits, or rebalance their investment portfolios.

But there is also the fact gold does not have as much essential intrinsic value as something like oil. There is not much industrial demand for it compared to other commodities.

In a severe crisis, forced to chose between a commodity like oil and gold, what does global industry really need? Oil.

Rock, paper, gold

The different ways people are investing in gold is another important factor. Over several decades, gold has become increasingly “financialised”.

Now, it can be bought and sold with ease on “paper” via speculative, complex financial instruments called derivatives, or in increasingly popular exchange traded funds which track the price of gold.

With these funds, you aren’t buying gold itself. You’re buying an asset whose price is designed to track the price of gold in some way.

Today, a massive rise in speculative investment means that commodity prices depend on far more than real-world supply and demand.

Because global investors now hold gold derivatives and conventional stocks at the same time, the risk of exposure to common market shocks has drastically increased.

– ref. Gold is meant to be a ‘safe haven’ in uncertain times. Why is it crashing amid a war? – https://theconversation.com/gold-is-meant-to-be-a-safe-haven-in-uncertain-times-why-is-it-crashing-amid-a-war-279095

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine M. Robertson, PhD student, The University of Melbourne

Parks are vital public spaces. This is especially true if you’re a parent with energetic children, or an office worker searching for a peaceful lunch spot.

But parks are also ideal environments for infectious diseases to spread, particularly through critters who carry harmful pathogens. This is because, unlike other public spaces, they are designed to connect humans and nature.

There’s a long list of diseases that may be found in parks. They range from those caused by direct contact with infected animals to others spread by mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. Some of these diseases cause only mild symptoms, while others can have severe or life-long consequences.

Our new study looks at how we interact with parks and green spaces, and how this may increase our exposure to disease.

The good news is, there are ways we can reduce this risk.

What’s the link between parks and disease?

If you regularly visit parks, our research suggests there are several factors that may increase your exposure to disease. Here are three.

Domestic pets

Our study shows domestic animals, such as cats and dogs, are a substantial disease threat. One reason is when they poo in parks and public gardens, they often contaminate soil and water sources.

Domestic pets may also carry roundworms, a long tube-shaped parasite that infects an animal’s intestines. Research suggests we often find more roundworms in parks where cats and dogs are present.

This is particularly dangerous for children under four. These young children often eat dirt, a common practice known as geophagy, which increases their risk of ingesting infected eggs that are commonly found in soil.

Food waste

Food-related waste, such as uncovered rubbish bins, are another source of disease risk. If not properly discarded, food waste can attract rodents and foxes. This can turn our beloved BBQ and picnic areas into potential disease hotspots.

Food waste may also attract other animals, such as dingoes, which we don’t usually find in cities and suburbs. These animals carry different pathogens and may expose parkgoers to new diseases.

Insects and parasites that carry disease

Mosquitoes and ticks are common disease vectors, or living organisms which carry disease from one infected person or animal to another. In parks and green spaces, mosquitoes are the main concern. This is because they often breed in stagnant water, such as shallow ponds and lakes.

The role of humans

Animals, insects, and parasites aren’t the only source of disease in parks. Humans spread pathogens too.

We do this through common, but potentially harmful, behaviours. These include not picking up our pet’s poo and not properly disposing of food waste.

Of particular concern is the practice of feeding birds. Bird feeding increases contact between humans and high numbers of birds. And scientists are worried this may have implications for public health.

This, alongside the fact it can negatively impact bird health, is why authorities generally discourage bird feeding.

So, what can we do?

Parks are vital for our physical and mental health because they allow us to spend more time in nature. So we shouldn’t just avoid them, even if they may harbour disease.

Instead, we should design parks with features that reduce infectious disease risk.

Fencing is one example. Putting fences around playgrounds can limit children’s exposure to ticks. Fences help prevent tick exposure by keeping animals, which often carry ticks, separate from children. We can also construct more off-leash dog areas to keep dogs from contaminating the soil with their poo or urine. And putting mulch or rubber, instead of sand, underneath playgrounds means cats are less likely to treat them as litter boxes.

We can also place predatory fish, such as the Australian smelt and Pacific blue-eye, in water bodies. This will help control mosquito populations, as the fish eat mosquito eggs and larvae before they can mature. Planting more native flora may also be beneficial, with research suggesting invasive plants encourage mosquitoes to breed more.

To address problematic human behaviour, public education is key. We need clear messaging around the importance of not feeding wildlife. We must also urge pet owners to clean up after their pets, and parents to discourage their kids from eating dirt.

Putting parks in perspective

It’s unlikely the next pandemic will come from your local park or community garden. But there’s still the chance you’ll be exposed to diseases through your everyday interactions in these spaces.

For centuries, humans have carefully designed urban spaces to help manage infectious disease risk. The construction of sewage networks in 19th century London is just one example.

So while our research is new, the idea of designing more disease-resistant cities is not. It’s time to apply it to the parks we all know and love.

– ref. Parks are sanctuaries but can also harbour disease – here’s how to protect yourself – https://theconversation.com/parks-are-sanctuaries-but-can-also-harbour-disease-heres-how-to-protect-yourself-276283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolina Rossini, Professor of Practice and Director for Program, Public Interest Technology Initiative, UMass Amherst

The verdict in a Los Angeles courtroom on March 25, 2026, may become one of the most consequential legal challenges that Big Tech has ever faced.

This is an inflection point in the global debate over Big Tech liability: For the first time, an American jury had been asked to decide whether platform design itself can give rise to product liability – not because of what users post on them, but because of how they were built. The jury found that Meta and Google knew the design or operation of Instagram and YouTube was or was likely to be dangerous when used by a minor, and that the platforms failed to adequately warn of that danger.

As a technology policy and law scholar, I believe that the decision will likely generate a powerful domino effect in the United States and across jurisdictions worldwide.

The jury awarded the plaintiff US$3 million in damages and recommended to the court an additional $3 million in punitive damages. The jury split responsibility for the award between the companies: 70% from Meta and 30% from Google. A Meta spokesman stated that the company disagrees with the verdict and is evaluating its legal options.

Separately, a jury in New Mexico on March 24 found that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

The case

The plaintiff in the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old California woman identified by her initials, K.G.M. She said she began using YouTube around age 6 and created an Instagram account at age 9. Her lawsuit and testimony alleged that the platforms’ design features, which include likes, algorithmic recommendation engines, infinite scroll, autoplay and deliberately unpredictable rewards, got her addicted. The suit alleges that her addiction fueled depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia – when someone see themselves as ugly or disfigured when they aren’t – and suicidal thoughts.

TikTok and Snapchat settled with K.G.M. before trial for undisclosed sums, leaving Meta and Google as the remaining defendants. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the jury on Feb. 18.

The stakes extend far beyond one plaintiff. K.G.M.’s case is a bellwether trial, meaning the court chose it as a representative test case to help determine verdicts across all connected cases. Those cases involve approximately 1,600 plaintiffs, including more than 350 families and over 250 school districts. Their claims have been consolidated in a California Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding, No. 5255. This means potential awards could run into the billions of dollars.

The California proceeding shares legal teams and evidence pool, including internal Meta documents, with a federal multidistrict litigation that is scheduled to advance in court later this year, bringing together thousands of federal lawsuits.

Legal innovation: Design as defect

For decades, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded technology companies from liability for content that their users post. Whenever people sued over harms linked to social media, companies invoked Section 230, and the cases typically died early.

The K.G.M. litigation used a different legal strategy: negligence-based product liability. The plaintiff argued that the harm arises not from third-party content but from the platforms’ own engineering and design decisions, the “informational architecture” and features that shape users’ experience of content. Infinite scrolling, autoplay, notifications calibrated to heighten anxiety and variable-reward systems operate on the same behavioral principles as slot machines.

These are conscious product design choices. The plaintiff contended – and the jury agreed – that the platforms should be subject to the same safety obligations as any other manufactured product, thereby holding their makers accountable for negligence, strict liability or breach of warranty of fitness.

Judge Carolyn Kuhl of the California Superior Court agreed that these claims warranted a jury trial. In her Nov. 5, 2025, ruling denying Meta’s motion for summary judgment, she distinguished between features related to content publishing, which Section 230 might protect, and features like notification timing, engagement loops and the absence of meaningful parental controls, which it might not.

Here, Kuhl established that the conduct-versus-content distinction – treating algorithmic design choices as the company’s own conduct rather than as the protected publication of third-party speech – was a viable legal theory for a jury to evaluate. This fine-grained approach, evaluating each design feature individually and recognizing the increased complexities of technology products’ design, represents a potential road map for courts nationwide.

What the companies knew

The product liability theory depends partly on what companies knew about the risks of their designs. The 2021 leak of internal Meta documents, widely known as the “Facebook Papers,” revealed that the company’s own researchers had flagged concerns about Instagram’s effects on adolescent body image and mental health.

Internal communications disclosed in the K.G.M. proceedings have included exchanges among Meta employees comparing the platform’s effects to pushing drugs and gambling. Whether this internal awareness constitutes the kind of corporate knowledge that supports liability is a central factual question for the jury to decide.

There is a clear analogy to tobacco litigation. In the 1990s, plaintiffs succeeded against tobacco companies by proving they had concealed evidence about the addictive and deadly nature of their products. In K.G.M., the plaintiff here is making the same core argument: Where there is corporate knowledge, deliberate targeting and public denial, liability follows.

K.G.M.’s lead trial attorney, Mark Lanier, is the same lawyer who won multibillion-dollar verdicts in the Johnson & Johnson baby powder litigation, signaling the scale of accountability they are pursuing.

The science: Contested but consequential

The scientific evidence on social media and youth mental health is real but genuinely complex. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) does not classify social media use as an addictive disorder. Researchers like Amy Orben have found that large-scale studies show small average associations between social media use and reduced well-being.

Yet Orben herself has cautioned that these averages might mask severe harms experienced by a subset of vulnerable young users, particularly girls ages 12 to 15. The legal question under the negligence theory is not whether social media harms everyone equally, but whether platform designers had an obligation to account for foreseeable interactions between their design features and the vulnerabilities of developing minds, especially when internal evidence suggested they were aware of the risks.

First, a manufacturer has a duty to exercise reasonable care in designing its product, and that duty extends to harms that are reasonably foreseeable. Second, the plaintiff must show that the type of injury suffered was a foreseeable consequence of the design choice. The manufacturer doesn’t need to have foreseen the exact injury to the exact plaintiff, but the general category of harm must have been within the range of what a reasonable designer would anticipate.

This is why the Facebook Papers and internal Meta research are so legally significant in K.G.M.’s case: They go directly to establishing that the company’s own researchers identified the specific categories of harm – depression, body dysmorphia, compulsive use patterns among adolescent girls – that the plaintiff alleges she suffered. If the company’s own data flagged these risks and leadership continued on the same design trajectory, that would considerably strengthen the foreseeability element.

Why it matters

Even if the science is unsettled, the legal and policy landscape is shifting fast. In 2025 alone, 20 states in the U.S. enacted new laws governing children’s social media use. And this wave is not only in the U.S.; countries such as the U.K., Australia, Denmark, France and Brazil are also moving forward with specific legislation, including mandates banning social media for those under 16.

The K.G.M. trial represents something more fundamental: the proposition that algorithmic design decisions are product decisions, carrying real obligations of safety and accountability. If this verdict causes that framework to take hold, every platform will need to reconsider not just what content appears, but why and how it is delivered.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 6, 2026. It was updated to include the jury’s verdict.

– ref. Jury finds Instagram and YouTube addictive in lawsuit poised to reshape social media – platform design meets product liability – https://theconversation.com/jury-finds-instagram-and-youtube-addictive-in-lawsuit-poised-to-reshape-social-media-platform-design-meets-product-liability-277066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kimberley Reis, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University, Griffith University

Most of our food travels many thousands of kilometres across Australia to reach our kitchens. We are highly dependent on a vast web of long-haul trucks to move food between growers, massive food distribution hubs and large supermarkets.

Of course, trucks need fuel – and lots of it. As war in the Middle East leads to diesel price spikes in Australia, food prices will rise too. Already, the National Farmers’ Federation has said it expects food prices will rise “within weeks”.

And as the COVID pandemic showed – where supermarket shelves were emptied after widespread panic buying – it’s not just war that can reveal weaknesses in a system too heavily reliant on available diesel and long supply chains. These problems are also laid bare when natural disasters strike, roads are cut off and trucks can’t get food to supermarkets.

Meanwhile, Australia’s current strategy of releasing fuel reserves may only end up delaying food price hikes, as the war in the Middle East plays out in unknown ways.

This shock to our food system is not the first, and it won’t be the last.

Focusing on band-aid solutions that prop up the current system undermines our long-term capacities for resilience. We need a plan B for when plan A – the current system – isn’t working.

We need a place-based approach

A place-based approach to food systems asks the question: what could work for our own local (or regional) area?

This approach normalises access to locally or regionally grown food, and acknowledges that what works in one area might not work in another.

Access to shorter food supply chains can include things such as policies to promote:

• smaller, regional produce processing and distribution hubs
• local abattoirs
• local canneries
• cultivation and protection of regional food bowls, rather than building housing on them
• direct food sales from cooperatives
• promoting school and home gardens.

Allowing people to participate in the system – or even co-produce food – helps build community resilience to economic shocks and access food beyond just supermarket shelves.

This could include things such as:

• joining a community-supported agriculture group, in which a community of people pledge money to buy produce from a farm before it’s harvested and offers certainty to local farmers
• buying what you can from farmer’s cooperatives and markets
• participating in a community food garden
• buying locally grown produce online, which has become easier in the wake of the pandemic
• participating in fruit and veggie box collectives.

A place-based approach also means focusing on what’s in season in your region and acknowledging that this means you might not, for instance, be able to get mangoes in autumn in southern Victoria.

Having a back-up plan

Governments need to encourage people to have a contingency for tough times, when the long supply chain supermarket system is disrupted.

For communities, this can mean asking yourself what’s your plan if you can’t get food from the supermarket. It might mean taking time to work out where the local suppliers are, what food is in season in your area, and how you can support local farming co-operatives.

Being able to access food reliably from local and regional places is common sense; it means we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.

For businesses, a more strategic approach to local procurement – by preferencing the purchase of locally produced food – means your business can stay open when the food supply chain system is under pressure.

Governments need a plan to shorten food supply chains

Shorter food supply chains means ensuring people can get food within, for example, a 400-kilometre radius. Federal, state and local governments have a role to play in finding policies to support this. This can include promoting and supporting things such as:

• farm gate sales and shops
• pick-your-own produce on farm sites
• community, school and home gardens, and
• purchasing groups.

One example, which I was involved in, was a local farm co-run by students with the Mini Farm Project, on school grounds at Loganlea State High School in Queensland. The students farmed food, donated food to local charities, and learned about self-sufficiency.

Governments obviously have a range of competing priorities. But smart policy-making means embedding access to place-based food initiatives across multiple policy areas, such as climate change, education, urban development and community-building projects.

A system that can withstand shocks

Sudden shocks – such as war, pandemics and severe weather events – reveal the folly of having a food supply chain so absolutely reliant on the price of crude oil.

A major part of our vulnerability to these shocks is our unquestioned and ongoing dependence on government to come in and prop up the system.

The federal government recently announced it would undertake national assessment of Australia’s food supply chains, which will “focus on diesel supply chains, and will then expand to other critical agricultural inputs, including crop protection products and fertilisers”.

This is a start but it fails to solve the problems sustainably.

Place-based approaches to food systems offers opportunities to change the dynamics around how we relate to our food.

– ref. Time to buy local: war fuel price shocks reveal the folly of a long food supply chain – https://theconversation.com/time-to-buy-local-war-fuel-price-shocks-reveal-the-folly-of-a-long-food-supply-chain-278786

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda George, Assistant Professor (Psychology), University of Canberra

Deaths on Australian roads have increased every year since 2020. This is despite the Australian government’s commitment to Vision Zero – having zero deaths or serious injuries on our roads by 2050.

Unfortunately, 1,317 road deaths were recorded in 2025, a 1.9% increase from 2024. Land transport accidents also remain a leading cause of death for children and young adults, and the third leading cause of injury hospitalisations.

To bring these stats down, we need to look at the entire system of road use – including the parts that don’t get benchmarked but perhaps should.

The ‘safe system’ principle

Part of Vision Zero is a stronger commitment to the Safe System approach. This means all parts of the road transport system work together to keep us safe. These include road users, vehicles, road quality and design, planning and speed.

But what exactly are “good roads”, “good vehicles” or “good drivers”? For some parts of the system, there are clear answers.

Vehicle quality and safety is benchmarked via the Australian New Car Assessment Program, ANCAP. Road safety is benchmarked via the Australian Road Assessment Program, AusRAP.

However, there’s no clear mechanism to benchmark human performance as road users. Sure, if we drive or ride a motorcycle, we must demonstrate certain competencies to be granted a licence. But afterwards, we don’t receive objective feedback on our performance as road users.

Our own judgements aren’t good enough. Many of us suffer to some degree from illusory superiority, and we have the general tendency to assess our own competencies on a task as “above average”. In one US study, 673 out of 909 participants (74%) thought they were better-than-average drivers.

Logically, most of us can’t be better than average at driving. This is where an assessment program for road users could come into play.

Towards a road user assessment program

Recent research from the Australasian College of Road Safety examined the novel proposal of a road user assessment program.

They suggested benchmarking – having a standard they can be measured against – should be available for road users as part of a safe system approach, just as it is for vehicles and roads.

Through interviews with road-safety experts (including two of us) and a forum of road safety researchers, professionals and advocates, the authors of the report identified five areas for feedback to road users:

• the road user’s skills and knowledge
• pre-trip preparation
• risk management (such as road positioning, speed, distraction, hazard perception and compliance)
• self-maintenance and monitoring, and
• what happens after an incident (that is, how we learn from crashes or near misses).

Do we need a separate program for this?

As drivers, we do already receive feedback from multiple sources. And several active safety systems exist in modern cars. Some of them, such as lane-keeping assistance, actively manipulate what the car does while we drive.

Such technologies are known as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These can provide us with warnings on the road, or can automate some aspects of driving. Evidence shows ADAS can reduce the frequency of crashes. Moreover, autonomous emergency braking is now compulsory in new cars sold in Australia.

But many of us drive vehicles without these features. This strengthens the argument for a uniform and easy-to-use feedback mechanism available to all road users, to improve road safety.

However, such a benchmark would be complex to develop and put into place. Who would implement this system? Should modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), play a role? If the program was voluntary, how would we encourage people to take part?

For now, these big questions might seem insurmountable, but we have some recommendations.

So what might the program look like?

Guided by the five recommended areas for feedback to road users, we envision a benchmark program for typical car drivers could use advances in AI and telematics.

AI tools which can monitor driver behaviours already exist. Telematics uses information from sensors, GPS and other diagnostics, and can provide information on driving performance, such as speed and braking.

Indeed, the use of telematics is rapidly expanding in Australia for freight vehicles. While more data is needed to evaluate the impact of telematics on driving performance, the potential is there, especially in combination with other sources of feedback.

Using this data could allow for better trip preparation, also incorporating users’ driving history (such as driving skills, habits, knowledge and preferences), as well as traffic information and weather conditions. Telematics is achieved via a device placed in the driver’s vehicle. Perhaps a similar approach could be used here.

Noting the complexity in giving feedback to drivers, we also propose a shift from calling it a road user assessment to a road user “assistant” program. This would reflect that any such system is designed to support the road user. If feasible, it could be potentially adapted to other road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians.

The development of past benchmarking systems for roads and vehicles has increased safety on Australian roads. However, these only go so far.

The missing factor that will benefit from benchmarking is us as road users. Perhaps then we can get closer to the ambition of Vision Zero.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge collaboration with Roderick Katz of the Australasian College of Road Safety.

– ref. More people are dying on Australian roads. This program could make drivers safer – https://theconversation.com/more-people-are-dying-on-australian-roads-this-program-could-make-drivers-safer-276970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Nicholls, Senior Research Associate in Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Social media platforms Instagram and YouTube have a design defect which means they are addictive, a jury in the United States has ruled.

The Los Angeles jury took nearly nine days to reach its verdict in the landmark case brought by a woman known as KGM against social media platforms. It awarded US$3 million (A$4.3 million) in damages, with Meta (owner of Instagram) being 70% responsible and Google (owner of YouTube) 30%. The jury later awarded a further US$3 million in punitive damages.

Both TikTok and Snap settled on confidential terms before the six-week trial commenced.

This is Meta’s second big loss in the US courts this week, with a New Mexico jury finding the company guilty on March 24 of concealing information about the risks of child sexual exploitation and the harmful effects of its platforms on children’s mental health.

KGM’s case is the first of its kind, but won’t be the last: it is one of more than 20 “bellwether” trials due to go to court soon. These are essentially test cases used to gauge juries’ reactions and set a legal precedent.

As such, the verdict is set to have far reaching ripple effects. It could be big tech’s big tobacco moment, with thousands more similar cases waiting in the wings.

Machines designed to addict

KGM – now 20 years old – said she began using YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine, and allegedly developed compulsive use patterns, including up to 16 hours in a single day on Instagram. The platforms’ design features, she argued, contributed to her anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation.

Her case argued that Meta and YouTube made deliberate design choices – for example, “infinite scroll” – to make their platforms more addictive to children in order to boost profits. It alleged the companies borrowed heavily from the behavioural and neurobiological techniques used by poker machines and exploited by the cigarette industry to maximise youth engagement and drive advertising revenue.

KGM’s lawyer Mark Lanier told the jurors:

These companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children, and they did it on purpose.

Lanier cited an internal Meta study called “Project Myst”. This allegedly found that children who had experienced “adverse effects” were most likely to get addicted to Instagram, and that parents were powerless to stop the addiction.

He said:

The moment [KGM] was locked into the machine, her mom was locked out.

The jury heard that Meta’s internal communications compared the platform’s effects to pushing drugs and gambling. The jury found this internal awareness was the kind of corporate knowledge that supports liability.

In addition, a YouTube memo reportedly described “viewer addiction” as a goal, and an Instagram employee wrote the company was staffed by “basically pushers”.

Mark Lanier drew a direct parallel to tobacco litigation, arguing that where there is corporate knowledge, deliberate targeting, and public denial, liability follows.

Pointing the finger at the family

Meta argued KGM faced significant challenges before she ever used social media, and that the evidence did not support reducing a lifetime of hardship to a single factor.

Meta’s lawyer highlighted KGM’s family dynamics as responsible for her mental health struggles, and argued social media may have actually provided a healthy outlet for her when she faced difficulties at home.

Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg gave evidence for the defence:

I’m not trying to maximise the amount of time people spend every month.

On safety tools Meta added in recent years Zuckerberg said:

I always wish we could have gotten there sooner.

In closing arguments, YouTube’s lawyer argued there was not a single mention of an addiction to YouTube in KGM’s medical records.

The companies centred part of their defence on Section 230 protections, arguing they cannot be held liable for content posted on their platforms.

However, the judge instructed the jury that the way content is delivered is a separate consideration to what the content is. This limited Meta and Google’s ability to rely on Section 230 protections.

Read more: What is Section 230? An expert on internet law and regulation explains the legislation that paved the way for Facebook, Google and Twitter

Challenging a legal protection

This was one of the first cases against big tech which was a jury trial – something companies have previously been keen to avoid.

For example, in June 2024, a few months ahead of a scheduled jury trial in the Department of Justice’s challenge to Google’s advertising technology monopoly, Google paid more than US$2 million (A$2.8 million) to the Department of Justice.

Read more: Google loses online ad monopoly case. But it’s just one of many antitrust battles against big tech

This was treble the damages claimed, plus interest.

In the US, a jury trial is only required when monetary damages are at stake. By paying the full damages amount upfront in that case, Google eliminated the damages claim and with it, the right to a jury.

Until now, US courts have largely denied motions that focused on design.

This includes infinite scroll and notification systems. The distinction between “platform design” and “content curation” has been central to how courts have analysed First Amendment arguments in this litigation.

The effect of the jury’s verdict in KGM’s case is to demonstrate the limitations of the Section 230 protection.

The first – but not the last

This is the first big tech case, on a global basis, that has examined addiction as a cause of damage. Other cases have focused on breaches of law.

For example, in the case in New Mexico against Meta, the jury concluded the company made false or misleading statements and engaged in “unconscionable” trade practices that exploited children’s vulnerability and inexperience. It identified thousands of individual violations, resulting in a total penalty of US$375 million (A$539 million).

KGM’s case paves the way for the many other actions seeking damages from social media platforms for the effects of addiction.

There is logic for these cases to be heard concurrently in a class action in the US. The verdict could also be used as the basis for both class actions and individual actions on a global basis.

Meta and Google have said separately they plan to appeal the verdict.

– ref. Meta and Google just lost a landmark social media addiction case. A tech law expert explains the fallout – https://theconversation.com/meta-and-google-just-lost-a-landmark-social-media-addiction-case-a-tech-law-expert-explains-the-fallout-278409

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bamo Nouri, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

The language of power often reveals more than it intends. In a rare moment of candour on March 7, the US president, Donald Trump, described the confrontation with Iran as “a big chess game at a very high level … I’m dealing with very smart players … high-level intellect. High, very high-IQ people.”

If Iran is, by Trump’s own admission, a “high-level” opponent, then the sudden revival of a 15-point plan previously rejected by Iran a year ago suggests a disconnect between how the adversary is understood and how it is being approached. It’s a plan already examined in negotiation by Iran and dismissed as unrealistic and coercive. Despite this, the Trump administration is once again framing the “roadmap” as a pathway to de-escalation. Tehran has once again dismissed the gambit as Washington “negotiating with itself – reinforcing the perception that the US is attempting to impose terms rather than negotiate them.

The US president is right about one thing – Iran is not an opponent that can be easily dismissed or overwhelmed. Trump’s own description is a tacit acknowledgement that this is a far more capable and complex adversary than those the US has faced in past Middle Eastern wars, such as Iraq. And that is why the odds are increasingly stacked against the United States and Israel.

This conflict reflects a familiar but flawed imperial assumption: that overwhelming military force can compensate for strategic misunderstanding. The US and Israel appear to have misjudged not only Iran’s capabilities, but the political, economic and historical terrain on which this war is being fought.

Unlike Iraq, Iran is a deeply embedded and adaptable regional power. It has resilient institutions, networks of influence, and the capacity to impose asymmetric costs across multiple theatres. It knows how to manage maximum pressure.

The most immediate problem is lack of legitimacy. This war has authorisation from neither the United Nations or, in the case of America, the US Congress. Further, US intelligence assessments indicate Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear programme following earlier strikes – contradicting one of Washington’s justifications for war. The resignation of Joe Kent as head of the National Counterterrorism Center on March 17, was even more revealing. In his resignation letter Kent insisted that Iran posed no imminent threat.

This effectively collapses one of the original narratives underpinning the US decision to start the war – a further blow to legitimacy.

Read more: Iran war lacks strategy, goals, legitimacy and support – in the US and around the world

A majority of Americans oppose the war, reflecting deep fatigue after Iraq and Afghanistan – hardly ideal conditions for what increasingly looks like another “forever war” in the Middle East. Current polling shows Trump’s Republicans trailing the Democrats ahead of the all-important midterm elections in November.

The war is both militarily uncertain and politically unsustainable. International allied support is also eroding. The United Kingdom — often trumpeted as Washington’s closest partner — has limited itself to defensive coordination, while Germany and France have distanced themselves from offensive operations. European allies also declined a US request to deploy naval forces to secure the strait of Hormuz. This reflects not just disagreement, but a deeper loss of trust in US leadership and strategic judgement.

US influence has long depended on legitimacy as much as force. That reservoir is now rapidly draining. Global confidence is falling, while images of civilian casualties — including over 160 schoolchildren killed in an airstrike on the first day of the war – have shocked international onlookers. Rather than reinforcing leadership, this war is accelerating its erosion.

Israel faces a parallel crisis of legitimacy – one that began in Gaza and has now deepened. The war in Gaza severely damaged its global standing, with sustained civilian casualties and humanitarian devastation drawing unprecedented criticism, even among traditional allies. This confrontation with Iran compounds that decline.

Striking Iran during active negotiations — for the second time — reinforces the perception that escalation is preferred over diplomacy. The issue is no longer just conduct, but credibility.

Strategic failure, narrative defeat

The conduct of the war compounds the problem. The assassinations of Iranian leaders, framed as tactical victories, are strategic failures. They have unified rather than destabilised Iran. Mass pro-regime demonstrations illustrate how external aggression can consolidate internal legitimacy.

The issue is no longer just the conduct of the war, but the credibility of the conflict itself. Regardless of how impressive the US and Israeli military are, it doesn’t compensate for reputational collapse. When building support for a conflict like this – domestically and internationally – legitimacy is a strategic asset. Once eroded across multiple conflicts, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

Rather than stabilising the system, US actions are fragmenting it. Allies are distancing themselves, adversaries are adapting, and neutral states are hedging.

The most decisive factor may be economic. The war is already destabilising global markets – driving up oil prices, inflation, and volatility at levels that combine the effects of 1970s and Ukraine war oil shocks.

This is a war that cannot be contained geographically nor economically. The deployment of 2,500 US marines to the Middle East (and reports that up to another 3,000 paratroopers will also be sent), reportedly with plans to secure Kharg Island – and with it Iran’s most important oil infrastructure – would be a dangerous escalation.

For Gulf states, the assumption that the US can guarantee security is increasingly questioned. Some states are reportedly now looking to diversify their partnerships and turning toward China and Russia, mirroring post-Iraq shifts, when US failure opened space for alternative powers.

Iran holds the cards

Wars are not won by destroying capabilities alone, but by securing sustainable and legitimate political outcomes. On both counts, the US and Israel are falling short.

Iran, by contrast, does not need military victory. It only needs to endure, impose costs, and outlast its adversaries. This is the logic of asymmetric conflict: the weaker power wins by not losing, while the stronger one loses when the costs of continuing become unsustainable.

This dynamic is already visible. Having escalated rapidly, Trump now appears to be searching for an off-ramp — reviving proposals and signalling openness to negotiation. But he is doing so from a position of diminishing leverage. In contrast, Iran’s ability to threaten energy flows, absorb pressure, and shape the tempo of escalation means it increasingly holds key strategic cards. The longer the war continues, the more that balance tilts.

Empires rarely recognise when they begin to lose. They escalate, double down, and insist victory is near. But by the time the costs become undeniable – economic crisis, political fragmentation, global isolation – it is already too late. The US and Israel may win battles. But they may be losing the war that matters: legitimacy, stability and long-term influence.

And, as history suggests, that loss may not only define the limits of their power, but mark a broader shift in how power itself is judged, constrained, and resisted.

– ref. Donald Trump’s ‘new’ 15-point plan is the biggest sign yet that Washington fears it is losing this war – https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-new-15-point-plan-is-the-biggest-sign-yet-that-washington-fears-it-is-losing-this-war-279001

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Smith, Honorary Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge

It is impossible to capture seven decades of formidable intellect, wrapped into some 14,000 books and articles, in less than a thousand words. Yet German philosopher Jürgen Habermas staked his career on the power of dialogue and deliberation, so it is worth chiming in.

Habermas, who died on March 14 at the age of 96, was among the greatest thinkers of our time. He was unshakeable in his conviction that people have minds of their own, can hope for a better future, and have the capability, collectively and democratically, to bring that future to life.

Born in Düsseldorf in 1929, he escaped conscription to the Wehrmacht by a whisker. His later realisation that, as a child, he had been enveloped by “a politically criminal system” propelled him into a lifelong scholarly, political and personal campaign to rescue democracy and restore the future.

It was an uphill struggle of breathtaking proportions. If the best was still to come, the journey towards enlightenment would require “nothing less than a comprehensive theory of modern society and its underlying dynamics”.

That was the scholarly project, and few 20th century theorists could tackle it. Habermas led the way with sweeping interdisciplinary reach: historical understanding, geographical imagination, sociological insight, grasp of legal theory, sustained engagement with ethics, aesthetics, psychology, epistemology, theology and more. Any one of these approaches would have moved the dial, but in Habermas they came together with a powerful political message.

Variously described as a socialist, democrat, internationalist, and above all humanitarian, his philosophy – practical, perhaps pragmatic – was his politics. Its centrepiece was the formation, functioning and fragility of a public sphere – Öffentlichkeit – mediating between states and civil societies, promising an alternative to the authoritarian, totalitarian regimes he eschewed.

Bookended by two landmark works, Habermas’s lifelong conviction was that the formation of public opinion through rational, reasoned conversation was vital for the conduct and survival of parliamentary democracy. Both works are cautionary tales concerned equally with the forces stifling deliberative democracy and with the conditions in which it might flourish.

The first, the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) finds the scope for informed, inclusive, critical debate compromised by the intrusion of calculative, commercial and bureaucratic interests. Six decades later, A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics (2022) takes on the algorithms driving social media. These, he argued – by accident, design or vested interests – fragment the public sphere, undermining the possibility for collective action against environmental change, excessive inequality and more.

Meanwhile, anchored on the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action (1981), Habermas mounted a sustained effort to make the public sphere work.

What scholar in the humanities and social sciences in the last half century is untouched by this project? My own reckoning, for example, was his prequel on Knowledge and Human Interests (1968). Once you realise that knowledge is not a thing to be discovered but a practice constituted by competing interests, there is no going back.

We were all critical theorists then, on a self-reflective pilgrimage to more rational, fairer futures. Habermas stayed with us every step of the way, not least because he did not confine himself to scholarly books and articles. His journalistic output and other public interventions were equally prodigious. Consider, for example, some 12 volumes of talks, speeches and commentary gathered in his Kleine Politische Schriften.

There is, it must be said, a well-developed feminist critique – and re-visioning – of Habermas’ core ideas. Those very public spaces in which deliberative democracy thrives (if it does) have traditionally been occupied by men, and are generally exclusionary in other ways. Not that such challenges fazed Habermas, who regularly exchanged views with a wide range of public intellectuals. These debates were how he expected the future to unfold.

Hope for the future

For Habermas, hope has not always triumphed over experience. Early in his career he underestimated how tame “conversation” might seem to his students. In the middle years, he probably oversold the potential of intellectuals to steer public debate.

More recently, a trend towards democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism might suggest that he fell into a classic “democracy trap”. Was it futile to hope that the mandate for fully enfranchised populations to choose their governments through regular free and fair elections would spread?

Habermas was, in fact, acutely aware that the capacity for deliberative democracy can never be taken for granted. However, he never gave up on its promise. On this, he wrote actively to the end, sometimes controversially.

Not everyone liked his style: one obituary describes him as “brilliant, influential and stupefyingly tedious”. But the more telling view is that his work “has given us a vocabulary in which the promises of dignity, autonomy, and emancipation are kept alive and true”.

All in all, Habermas’ achievements are a valorisation of everything that populism is not. He held fast to his conviction that deep knowledge and cogent arguments can win the day, that even the smallest gesture towards a better world is worth the effort.

That is why a recent reviewer could describe his final three-volume project – Also a History of Philosophy – as “a work of willed optimism”. And it is why, in his last work, a collection of biographical conversations – Things Needed to Get Better – Habermas still pins his hopes on critical dialogue and reasoned debate.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

– ref. Jürgen Habermas: a philosopher whose hopes for a better future are more important than ever – https://theconversation.com/jurgen-habermas-a-philosopher-whose-hopes-for-a-better-future-are-more-important-than-ever-279020