Some of the biggest players in tech are on trial in Los Angeles over allegations their platforms intentionally addict young users. The trial marks the first time tech giants Meta and YouTube will answer to a jury over the allegations—Snapchat and TikTok reached a settlement with the plaintiffs last month. The six-to-eight-week trial will likely feature testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Legal experts have drawn parallels to the landmark tobacco litigation of the 1990s.

Opening statements kicked off in Los Angeles on Monday, with the plaintiffs' attorney Mark Lanier claiming that the two companies had purposely built "machines designed to addict the brains of children."

Lanier argued that his client, identified by the initials K.G.M., developed mental health problems due to a social media addiction. Meta's defense countered that the plaintiff's struggles stemmed from family difficulties rather than platform design, emphasizing the ongoing scientific debate about whether social media addiction exists.

"This case is about two of the richest corporations in history who have engineered addiction in children's brains," Lanier told the jury. "I'm going to show you the addiction machine that they built, the internal documents that people normally don't get to see, and emails from Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube executives." Meanwhile, Meta is facing another landmark trial that also kicked off on Monday. This one, in New Mexico, accuses the platform of failing to protect children from sexual predators.—Beatrice Nolan

Amazon is planning to launch a marketplace where publishers can sell their content to AI companies, according to The Information. The internet company, which develops its own LLMs and offers other companies' models through its AWS cloud service, has mentioned the future content marketplace in slides, according to the report. 

The move comes as publishers and AI firms clash over how content should be licensed and paid for amid publisher concerns that AI-driven search and chat tools are eroding traffic and ad revenue. Cloudflare and Akamai launched a similar marketplace effort last year. Microsoft piloted its own version and last week rolled it out more widely. But so far, it’s not clear how many AI companies are buying on these marketplaces and at what volumes. Some large publishers have struck bespoke deals worth millions of dollars per year with OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.—Jeremy Kahn