The worst days of the pandemic are long behind us, but the world is still reeling from its aftereffects. For some people, this has driven a dramatic reprioritizing of whats important in their lives, including where they work and the kind of energy theyre prepared to give to the company that employs them.
According to a new survey, one result of the pandemic aftershocks in the workforce is a sharp rise in how much people want to take time off to travel. Younger Americans are so keen to vacation, in fact, that theyre putting off big life decisions and even going into debt. Not only could this shift in priorities affect your business if youre trying to attract young customers, but it may change how you think about your own staffs working hours.
The data comes from a new survey of a thousand Americans by financial services company Empower, Fortune reports. Headline numbers from the report are that over 90 percent of people are planning domestic travel this year. Plus 33 percent have said theyre not going to wait until retirement to see the worldtheyre doing it now, instead. And when it comes to money, 47 percent of people said they would spend more on travel this year than last. Even more strikingly, one in five Millennial workers are postponing plans for big purchases, like a home, and will spend the money on travel instead.
While the vast majority of workers, 61 percent, said they plan to travel in the summer, 34 percent said they will travel in out-of-season time, and 24 percent said theyd travel for birthdaysthese last are both types of trip that are likely to impact their regular work schedule, since they dont revolve around typical vacation times. In particular, Gen-Z staff, at 28 percent, said they were more likely than older generations to travel for their birthdays, and a quarter of Gen-Z staff liked to plan their trips four weeks or less ahead of timemeaning theyre more likely to spontaneously ask for time off than older employees.
Fortune quotes Christie Hudson, head of public relations at online travel firm Expedia, who says that a significant share of respondents to a similar, recent Expedia survey plan to travel no matter what this year. In terms of attitude and valuing experiences over things, that whole mentality, people seem very aligned in the post-pandemic era, she said.
This news is playing out as many people continue to feel considerable economic stress thanks to inflation, and amid an epidemic of quiet vacationingremote workers just continuing to work as if theyre at home, but taking a trip without telling their employer, simply because they dont want to seem like theyre slacking, or cant afford to take time off.
More vacation time and more flexible vacation policy may be anathema to many more traditional U.S. employersthe kind rattling their sabers with strict back-to-office rules because they think staff labor is proved by their grinding away for long hours right where they can see them. But Empowers data shows more employeesof all agesare planning vacations. Younger workers (who already dislike the grind of the traditional workplace) arent shy about showing they want to travel more spontaneously and even postpone big life plans to do so. To attract and retain them, it might be worth reevaluating your companys PTO policy.
An Ernst & Young study shows why this could be a good idea: For each extra 10 hours of vacation time an employee took, their year-end performance jumped 8 percent. Another survey showed that if a staff member takes all their vacation time, theyre actually boosting their chances of getting a raise or promotion. Plus if you want to attract new younger workers, advertising your more generous vacation policyincluding, perhaps, relaxed summer work hoursmay actually help you recruit or retain Gen-Z staff.
Something to think about as you relax and watch the fireworks this upcoming long weekend.
Kit Eaton
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister site, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
OpenAI, the maker of the most popular AI chatbot, used to say it aimed to build artificial intelligence that safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return, mission statement. But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so safely.
While reviewing its latest IRS disclosure form, which was released in November 2025 and covers 2024, I noticed OpenAI had removed safely from its mission statement, among other changes. That change in wording coincided with its transformation from a nonprofit organization into a business increasingly focused on profits.
OpenAI currently faces several lawsuits related to its products safety, making this change newsworthy. Many of the plaintiffs suing the AI company allege psychological manipulation, wrongful death, and assisted suicide, while others have filed negligence claims.
As a scholar of nonprofit accountability and the governance of social enterprises, I see the deletion of the word safely from its mission statement as a significant shift that has largely gone unreported outside highly specialized outlets.
And I believe OpenAIs makeover is a test case for how we, as a society, oversee the work of organizations that have the potential to both provide enormous benefits and do catastrophic harm.
Tracing OpenAIs origins
OpenAI, which also makes the Sora video artificial intelligence app, was founded as a nonprofit scientific research lab in 2015. Its original purpose was to benefit society by making its findings public and royalty-free rather than to make money.
To raise the money that developing its AI models would require, OpenAI, under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019. Microsoft initially invested US$1 billion in this venture; by 2024 that sum had topped $13 billion.
In exchange, Microsoft was promised a portion of future profits, capped at 100 times its initial investment. But the software giant didnt get a seat on OpenAIs nonprofit board meaning it lacked the power to help steer the AI venture it was funding.
A subsequent round of funding in late 2024, which raised $6.6 billion from multiple investors, came with a catch: that the funding would become debt unless OpenAI converted to a more traditional for-profit business in which investors could own shares, without any caps on profits, and possibly occupy board seats.
Establishing a new structure
In October 2025, OpenAI reached an agreement with the attorneys general of California and Delaware to become a more traditional for-profit company.
Under the new arrangement, OpenAI was split into two entities: a nonprofit foundation and a for-profit business.
The restructured nonprofit, the OpenAI Foundation, owns about one-fourth of the stock in a new for-profit public benefit corporation, the OpenAI Group. Both are headquartered in California but incorporated in Delaware.
A public benefit corporation is a business that must consider interests beyond shareholders, such as those of society and the environment, and it must issue an annual benefit report to its shareholders and the public. However, it is up to the board to decide how to weigh those interests and what to report in terms of the benefits and harms caused by the company.
The new structure is described in a signed in October 2025 by OpenAI and the California attorney general, and endorsed by the Delaware attorney general.
Many business media outlets heralded the move, predicting that it would usher in more investment. Two months later, SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, finalized a $41 billion investment in OpenAI.
Changing its mission statement
Most charities must file forms annually with the Internal Revenue Service with details about their missions, activities and financial status to show that they qualify for tax-exempt status. Because the IRS makes the forms public, they have become a way for nonprofits to signal their missions to the world.
In its forms for 2022, OpenAI said its mission was to build general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) that safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.
OpenAIs mission statement as of 2023 included the word safely. IRS via Candid
That mission statement has changed, as the company filed with the IRS in late 2025. It became to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
OpenAIs mission statement as of 2024 no longer included the word safely. IRS via Candid
OpenAI had dropped its commitment to safety from its mission statement along with a commitment to being unconstrained by a need to make money for investors. According to Platformer, a tech media outlet, it has also disbanded its mission alignment team.
In my view, these changes explicitly signal that OpenAI is making its profits a higher priority than the safety of its products.
To be sure, OpenAI continues to mention safety when it discusses its mission. We view this mission as the most important challenge of our time, it states on its website. It requires simultaneously advancing AIs capability, safety, and positive impact in the world.
Revising its legal governance structure
Nonprofit boards are responsible for key decisions and upholding their organizations mission.
Unlike private companies, board members of tax-exempt charitable nonprofits cannot personally enrich themselves by taking a share of earnings. In cases where a nonprofit owns a for-profit business, as OpenAI did with its previous structure, investors can take a cut of profits but they typically do not get a seat on the board or have an opportunity to elect board members, because that would be seen as a conflict of interest.
The OpenAI Foundation now has a 26% stake in OpenAI Group. In effect, that means that the nonprofit board has given up nearly three-quarters of its control over the company. Software giant Microsoft owns a slightly larger stake 27% of OpenAIs stock due to its $13.8 billion investment in the AI company to date. OpenAIs employees and its other investors own the rest of the shares.
Seeking more investment
The main goal of OpenAIs restructuring, which it called a recapitalization, was to attract more private investment in the race for AI dominance.
It has already succeeded on that front.
As of early February 2026, the company was in talks with SoftBank for an additional $30 billion and stands to get up to a total of $60 billion from Amazon, Nvidia and Microsoft combined.
OpenAI is now valued at over $500 billion, up from $300 billion in March 2025. The new structure also paves the way for an eventual initial public offering, which, if it happens, would not only help the company raise more capital through stock markets but would also increase the pressure to make money for its shareholders.
OpenAI says the foundations endowment is worth about $130 billion.
Those numbers are only estimates because OpenAI is a privately held company without publicly traded shares. That means these figures are based on market value estimates rather than any objective evidence, such as market capitalization.
When he announced the new structure, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, We secured concessions that ensure charitable assets are used for their intended purpose. He also predicted that safety will be prioritized and said the top priority is, and always will be, protecting our kids.
Steps that might help keep people safe
At the same time, several conditions in the OpenAI restructuring memo are designed to promote safety, including:
A safety and security committee on the OpenAI Foundation board has the authority to that could potentially include the halting of a release of new OpenAI products based on assessments of their risks.
The for-profit OpenAI Group has its own board, which must consider only OpenAIs mission rather than financial issues regarding safety and security issues.
The OpenAI Foundations nonprofit board gets to appoint all members of the OpenAI Groups for-profit board.
But given that neither the mission of the foundation nor of the OpenAI group explicitly alludes to safety, it will be hard to hold their boards accountable for it.
Furthermore, since all but one board member currently serve on both boards, it is hard to see how they might oversee themselves. And doesnt indicate whether he was aware of the removal of any reference to safety from the mission statement.
Identifying other paths OpenAI could have taken
There are alternative models that I believe would serve the public interest better than this one.
When Health Net, a California nonprofit health maintenance organization, converted to a for-profit insurance company in 1992, regulators required that 80% of its equity be transferred to another nonprofit health foundation. Unlike with OpenAI, the foundation had majority control after the transformation.
A coalition of California nonprofits has argued that the attorney general should require OpenAI to transfer all of its assets to an independent nonprofit.
Another example is The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Pennsylvania newspaper became a for-profit public benefit corporation in 2016. It belongs to the Lenfest Institute, a nonprofit.
This structure allows Philadelphias biggest newspaper to attract investment without compromising its purpose journalism erving the needs of its local communities. Its become a model for potentially transforming the local news industry.
At this point, I believe that the public bears the burden of two governance failures. One is that OpenAIs board has apparently abandoned its mission of safety. And the other is that the attorneys general of California and Delaware have let that happen.
Alnoor Ebrahim is a professor of international business at The Fletcher School & Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Those in steady employment in 2026 might feel like they won the lottery, as the number of job openings dwindles at the same time as layoffs continue to hit.
This has caused some recruiters to shift their focus from employers to the unemployed: Instead of companies hiring recruiters to find and place talent, job seekers are now the ones enlisting recruiter services to help get a foot in the door, coughing up hefty fees (either a flat rate or a cut of the candidates first-year salary once they land a job).
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the trend which has come to be known as reverse recruitment.
One boutique agency the Journal spoke with, The Reverse Recruiting Agency, charges $1,500 per month, plus 10% of first-year salary upon job acceptance, at which time they will refund the first months fee. Their services include customized résumés (with zero AI-written slop), hiring manager outreach, LinkedIn profile and résumé optimization, and networking support. Their promise? Nine interviews in the first three months, or your money back.
Refer is another reverse recruitment agency that connects talent directly with hiring managers using an AI agent, Lia. Lia is currently making 20-plus introductions daily between candidates and hiring managers who have already expressed interest in their profiles. The cost of landing a job with Refer will set new hires back 20% of their first months paycheck.
As sites like LinkedIn are flooded with applications and employers rely on AI résumé screeners, applicants are increasingly seeking alternative ways to get their profiles in front of the right people.
Theres also those offering these services for less on gig platforms, like Fiverr. But for those with the means, or those desperate enough, spending a few thousand dollars to not have to suffer the indignities of the job hunt may seem like a fair deal. Looking for a job is a time-consuming and often ego-bruising taskespecially considering one in four unemployed people, or 1.8 million Americans, are still job hunting six months later.
A low-hire, low-fire environment means that, while the current unemployment rate isnt all that bad, for those out of work it’s incredibly difficult to land a job. Roughly one million more people are seeking work than there were available jobs as of December, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by Indeed.
Many job seekers employing the services of reverse recruiters may have been unemployed for monthsat which point theyve exhausted their 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits, which replace less than 40% of a persons previous income on average.
Here, pay-to-play hiring is a worrying trend and a sign of a bleak job market. When job seekers are made to shoulder the financial burden of their own recruitment, without guaranteed results, it shifts the risk from employers to the unemployed, many of whom will already be under immense strain and stress.
Lets call this what it is: predatory marketing wrapped in career coaching language, a résumé writer and former recruiter, Sarah Johnston, posted on LinkedIn.
This is a dark space, don’t do it, founding partner of executive search firm Cowen Partners, Shawn Cole also posted. ”Reverse-recruiter models” are not real or reputable recruiting firms. They are résumé spammers.
He added: Your résumé and livelihood shouldnt be treated like spam.
It’s hard to tell AI news from AI hype at the best of times, but the most recent surge around agents, triggered by many developers embracing Claude Code a couple of months ago, feels like something different. With the viral freakout over Moltbook, the agent social network, and the Super Bowl ad slap fight between OpenAI and Anthropic, AI has escalated to a new level of mainstream attention.
Everyone’s forgotten about the AI bubble and is instead dancing around the AI “inflection point,” when AI in general and agents in particular begin to take over huge swaths of knowledge work, with massive consequences for the economy and the workforce. The recent sell-off of SaaS stocks is an indication of how seriously the industry takes this.
For journalists, all this mainstream AI noise, coupled with the steady drumbeat of layoffs in the media industry, quickly turns into a familiar feeling: pressure to do more. As newsrooms shrink and AI tools get framed as productivity machines, its easy to assume the right response is higher output. But AI isnt just changing how stories get made. Its changing how stories get found. So the temptation to use AI to do “more with less,” which in many cases will be to tell the same kinds of stories, just more quickly and more often, is misguided.
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This is because of the contradiction in how AI systems surface information: While they look for sameness to reinforce the patterns they’re seeing, they don’t reward it. That’s the difference between being cited in an AI summary vs. being in the background. AI only needs one competent version of the commodity story; it goes looking for the one that looks authoritative and adds something new.
More isnt more
In practice, yes, you could use AI to accelerate news production, letting you cover more stories than you could before, and a few newsrooms are doing that. And on an individual level, that might even signal your value to your employer in the short term. But if it’s effectively the same story reported elsewhere, an AI engine has no reason to prioritize yours over another.
Instead, the more logical path is to invest in the parts of journalism that only humans can do: finding new and novel information through sourcing, research, interviews, and analysis. In other words, while the instinct to do more isn’t wrong, it should be aimed at going deeper, not wider.
AI can still be an accelerant here, speeding up ideation, research, and even things like reaching out to sources. A digital media researcher, Nick Hagar, recently showed what this looks like in practice, using coding agents to recreate a deep analysis from a human-authored journalistic investigation on Virginia police decertifications. The interesting thing about his case study is that, when used with very specific tools (such as Claude Code “skills,” which essentially turn certain research tasks into templates), he could quickly replicate the work, but ultimately his human judgment was required throughout. “Even with skills enforcing a structured workflow, I made dozens of judgment calls…. Skills make the workflow more systematic; they dont eliminate the need for human attention,” he wrote.
That points to the better way journalists should think about AI: The goal isn’t to create more stories, but to create stories that are so valuable and definitive that AI search engines can’t ignore them.
Authority over output
To succeed in this new environment, the No. 1 habit that journalists will need to break is the natural instinct to cover more. Very few reporters think they’ve got a full grip on all the stories on their beat, and as newsrooms shrink, they have less help than ever. It doesn’t mean you ignore all breaking news, but it does mean a mental shift from reaction to discernment. In many cases, that might mean narrowing a beat to a micro-beat (say, from “energy” to “nuclear power”).
A lot of what I’m describing is happening naturally as many reporters, either victims of layoffs or entrepreneurially minded, flock to platforms like Substack and Beehiiv to put out a shingle. It’s not just the best-worst optionthe system is pushing incentives in this direction, rewarding people who build authority via content that goes deep in a specific subject area and brings original insights and information to the table.
Certainly, you don’t have to strike out on your own to take this approach, though it does require discipline to put aside story FOMO and focus on where you can bring something original to the table. And the rewards go beyond simply having a better chance at surfacing in AI answers: you’ll have a stronger connection to your audience because they’ll be coming to you for information you can’t get anywhere else. The value of shaping narratives instead of chasing them is much greater than any short-term traffic spike.
That’s a hopeful idea, and paired with the changing incentives of the media ecosystem, it points to a key insight. AI’s ability to summarize and transform content has caused many to wonder what the “atomc unit” of journalism is. Some think it’s the unique facts, quotes, or insights that are woven into stories, but I think all this implies it’s something more abstract: editorial judgment. As AI systems absorb more of the mechanical labor of journalism, theyre inadvertently clarifying the thing they cant absorb: human judgment about what matters and why. If this is an inflection point, it isnt in the tools. Its in the work we choose to do.
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The Supreme Court has struck down President Donald Trumps far-reaching global tariffs, handing him a significant loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda.
The decision on Friday centers on tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law, including the sweeping reciprocal tariffs he levied on nearly every other country.
Its the first major piece of Trumps broad agenda to come squarely before the nations highest court, which he helped shape with the appointments of three conservative jurists in his first term.
The Republican president has been vocal about the case, calling it one of the most important in U.S. history and saying a ruling against him would be an economic body blow to the country.
But legal opposition crossed the political spectrum, including libertarian and pro-business groups that are typically aligned with the GOP. Polling has found tariffs arent broadly popular with the public, amid wider voter concern about affordability.
In a rapidly evolving financial landscape, technology is transforming how money movesmaking payments of tomorrow faster, smarter, and easier than ever before.
Consider this snapshot of the near future: Youre in a taxi on the other side of the world. You pay your driver with the same digital wallet you use at home, and he receives the money in his wallet linked to the local instant payments network. Hes set a rule in his bank appsend 30% of every payout to my family back homeand funds are converted immediately to a third currency and delivered to relatives in a country thousands of miles away.
Nobody needs to download a new app or think about payment methods. AI-powered agents handle currency conversion and smart routing automatically and invisiblyat a fraction of yesterdays international payment costs.
Here’s another scenario: A global marketplace pays out to 10,000 sellers daily. Instead of selecting a payout route, the finance department sets a rulepay as efficiently as possible, in line with terms and conditions. The platform dynamically routes each payment based on geography, cost, and liquiditychoosing from rails that might include account-to-account, tokenized card networks, or stablecoins on public blockchains.
In each of these examples, the user experience is simplicity itself, yet it relies on a complex, underlying technical, regulatory and strategic architecture. In recent years the introduction of new payment rails, infrastructure and digital currencies has created choice but has yet to deliver seamless interoperability.
Thats why efforts are increasingly focused on convergencestitching together todays patchwork of innovation into an intelligent network of networks. Were not there yet, but were closer than you might think.
AN EXPLOSION OF CHOICE
In recent years, theres been a diversification in digital currencies. Stablecoins are moving into mainstream use, combining the stability of traditional money with the advantages of blockchainspeed, programmability, and global reach. Tokenized deposits bring those same benefits while retaining the full regulatory and trust framework of the banking system. Meanwhile, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are pivoting from retail-focused ambitions to wholesale use cases like interbank settlements, cross-border payments, and securities transactions.
New payment rails are proliferating as well. Some, like PIX in Brazil and UPI in India, are public infrastructures, embodying the principle that payments should function as a public good, like highways or utilities. Others, such as the permissioned ledgers deployed by banks like JPMorgan Chase, represent commercial bank money as digital tokens on private blockchains, enabling clients to move funds 24/7 with near-instant finality, rich data, and full regulatory compliance.
Card networks are essentialparticularly for consumer payments that require strong identity assurance and dispute protection. Features like tokenization, push-to-account transfers, and established chargeback procedures make them a trust-and-compliance layer that enables connectivity across the payments landscape.
THE IMPERATIVE OF INTEROPERABILITY
Convergence is the process by which this expanding array of currencies and rails can coalesce into a global system for value transfer. Importantly, this isnt a zero-sum competition among players. The diverse systems need to connect to a layered, interoperable framework that fulfills a long-standing aspiration: seamless value movement across borders and platforms.
Ease, security, and cost-efficiency will define this new system. Consumers and businesses will increasingly move money across networks with settlement and reconciliation handled invisibly in the background. They will expect security to be end-to-end, traveling with the payment throughout the ecosystem. Benchmark standards for resolving disputes and assigning liabilitypioneered by card networkswill extend to other rails, from instant payments to blockchain and beyond. Agentic payment routing will minimize fees by selecting the most efficient path, whether thats a domestic instant scheme, a cross-border blockchain transfer, or a card network.
Many players are driving this convergence. For example, Project Nexus, an initiative of the Bank for International Settlements, aims to connect instant payment systems across multiple countries through a single interface. Bridges like Circles Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) are being built to link disparate blockchain networks, while PayPal is expanding its cross-border capabilities via wallets. Card networks like Mastercard are enabling interoperability across rails. And much more is underway.
Crucially, agentic AI will increasingly serve as the connective tissue of this systemorchestrating real-time operations and knitting together the constellation of networks.
THE RACE TO CONNECT
The next two to five years will be a critical transition period. During this time, legacy infrastructure and digital-native systems will operate in parallel as regulations evolve, pilots mature into production, and new instruments move from experimentation to everyday use. Adoption will unfold in stages as technologies mature at different speeds and market incentives align.
As foundational rails converge, the focus will shift from connectivity to orchestration. AI, rather than human choice, will increasingly route and optimize payments. Once that tipping point arrives, the acceleration will be dramatic.
There are interoperability challenges. As nations seek greater financial autonomy, some are building parallel payment infrastructures or accelerating the development of sovereign digital currencies to reduce reliance on dominant currenciesparticularly the U.S. dollaras crypto and tokenized value scales. This risks the creation of new silos just as technology is making interoperability more achievable. Instead of a unified global framework, the world could see fragmented networks defined by strategic alliances and competing standards, complicating crossborder settlement and slowing the very convergence that would enable money to move seamlessly.
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
Its important to consider the kind of financial world we want to build. Are we creating a system that provides choice and empowers individuals, businesses, and communities, or one that puts control in the hands of a few key players?
How do we ensure that innovation fosters trust, transparency, and opportunity, instead of creating more complexity and uncertainty? While the road ahead is under construction, its destination should be clear: a world where money moves as effortlessly as information, making life simpler, easier, and more rewarding for all.
Ken Moore is the chief innovation officer at Mastercard.
For years, social media companies have disputed allegations that they harm children’s mental health through deliberate design choices that addict kids to their platforms and fail to protect them from sexual predators and dangerous content. Now, these tech giants are getting a chance to make their case in courtrooms around the country, including before a jury for the first time.Some of the biggest players from Meta to TikTok are facing federal and state trials that seek to hold them responsible for harming children’s mental health. The lawsuits have come from school districts, local, state and the federal government as well as thousands of families.Two trials are now underway in Los Angeles and in New Mexico, with more to come. The courtroom showdowns are the culmination of years of scrutiny of the platforms over child safety, and whether deliberate design choices make them addictive and serve up content that leads to depression, eating disorders or suicide.Experts see the reckoning as reminiscent of cases against tobacco and opioid markets, and the plaintiffs hope that social media platforms will see similar outcomes as cigarette makers and drug companies, pharmacies and distributors.The outcomes could challenge the companies’ First Amendment shield and Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from liability for material posted on their platforms. They could also be costly in the form of legal fees and settlements. And they could force the companies to change how they operate, potentially losing users and advertising dollars.Here’s a look at the major social media harms cases in the United States.
The Los Angeles case centers on addiction
Jurors in a landmark social media case that seeks to hold tech companies responsible for harms to children got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterized by dueling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remaining defendants, Meta and YouTube.At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose case could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits will play out. KGM and the cases of two other plaintiffs have been selected to be bellwether trials essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.“This is a monumental inflection point in social media,” said Matthew Bergman of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center, which represents more than 1,000 plaintiffs in lawsuits against social media companies. “When we started doing this four years ago no one said we’d ever get to trial. And here we are trying our case in front of a fair and impartial jury.”On Wednesday Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified, mostly sticking to past talking points, including a lengthy back-and-forth about age verification where he said “I don’t see why this is so complicated,” reiterating that the company’s policy restricts users under the age of 13 and that it works to detect users who have lied about their ages to bypass restrictions.At one point, the plaintiff’s attorney, Mark Lanier, asked Zuckerberg if people tend to use something more if it’s addictive.“I’m not sure what to say to that,” Zuckerberg said. “I don’t think that applies here.”
New Mexico goes after Meta over sexual exploitation
A team led by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who sued Meta in 2023, built their case by posing as children on social media, then documenting sexual solicitations they received as well as Meta’s response.Torrez wants Meta to implement more effective age verification and do more to remove bad actors from its platform.He also is seeking changes to algorithms that can serve up harmful material, and has criticized the end-to-end encryption that can prevent the monitoring of communications with children for safety. Meta has noted that encrypted messaging is encouraged in general as a privacy and security measure by some state and federal authorities.The trial kicked off in early February. In his opening statement, prosecuting attorney Donald Migliori said Meta has misrepresented the safety of its platforms, choosing to engineer its algorithms to keep young people online while knowing that children are at risk of sexual exploitation.“Meta clearly knew that youth safety was not its corporate priority that youth safety was less important than growth and engagement,” Migliori told the jury.Meta attorney Kevin Huff pushed back on those assertions in his opening statement, highlighting an array of efforts by the company to weed out harmful content from its platforms while warning users that some dangerous content still gets past its safety net.
School districts head to trial
A trial scheduled for this summer pits school districts against social media companies before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California. Called a multidistrict litigation, it names six public school districts from around the country as the bellwethers.Jayne Conroy, a lawyer on plaintiffs’ trial team, was also an attorney for plaintiffs seeking to hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid epidemic. She said the cornerstone of both cases is the same: addiction.“With the social media case, we’re focused primarily on children and their developing brains and how addiction is such a threat to their well-being and the harms that are caused to children how much they’re watching and what kind of targeting is being done,” she said.The medical science, she added, “is not really all that different, surprisingly, from an opioid or a heroin addiction. We are all talking about the dopamine reaction.”Both the social media and the opioid cases claim negligence on the part of the defendants.“What we were able to prove in the opioid cases is the manufacturers, the distributors, the pharmacies, they knew about the risks, they downplayed them, they oversupplied, and people died,” Conroy said. “Here, it is very much the same thing. These companies knew about the risks, they have disregarded the risks, they doubled down to get profits from advertisers over the safety of kids. And kids were harmed and kids died.”
Resolution could take years amid dueling narratives
Social media companies have disputed that their products are addictive. During questioning Wednesday by the plaintiff’s lawyer during the Los Angeles trial, Zuckerberg said he still agrees with a previous statement he made that the existing body of scientific work has not proven that social media causes mental health harms.Some researchers do indeed question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media. Socil media addiction is not recognized as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the authority within the psychiatric community.But the companies face increasing pushback on the issue of social media’s effects on children’s mental health, not only among academics but also parents, schools and lawmakers.“While Meta has doubled down in this area to address mounting concerns by rolling out safety features, several recent reports suggest that the company continues to aggressively prioritize teens as a user base and doesn’t always adhere to its own rules,” said Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley.With appeals and any settlement discussions, the cases against social media companies could take years to resolve. And unlike in Europe and Australia, tech regulation in the U.S. is moving at a glacial pace.“Parents, education, and other stakeholders are increasingly hoping lawmakers will do more,” Smiley said. “While there is momentum at the state and federal level, Big Tech lobbying, enforcement challenges, and lawmaker disagreements over how to best regular social media have slowed meaningful progress.”AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this story.
Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer
This year has been volatile for brands. With tariffs taking effect, the job market slowing, and consumer spending barely keeping pace with inflation, its no surprise that ad spend has slowed in tandem.
Amidst economic uncertainty and an onslaught of unanswered questions, brands are increasingly looking for demonstrable ROI in their marketing and design budgets. Some may choose to invest in a costly new campaign or commit to a new brand identity, while others will default to slashing their budgets altogether.
Cutting marketing dollars is more of a short-term band-aid than a long-term solution. Research by Analytic Partners following the 2008 financial crisis found that 60% of brands that increased their marketing investment during that period generated a positive ROI. While AI disruption, political polarization, and evolving consumer behaviors are contributing to todays economic challenges, the core lesson still holds: Even in uncertain times, stepping off the marketing gas is rarely the answer.
This undeniable power of attraction is hard to come by. But its not impossible when considering a series of five crucialand measurablefactors that, once met, can be part of a strategy to increase an overriding choice decision that sometimes can be determined spontaneously or irrationally.
1. Resonance. You must find ways to resonate with your consumers. The companies that resonate the most are the ones that go out of their way to tell emotive stories and bring them to life through every aspect of their brand expression.
They develop heartfelt narratives that forge emotional connections with their audiences. These connections increase brand love and go the distance in fostering a consumers relationship with a brand. Brands like Dove set the standard here. By tapping into a deep human need for self-acceptance and belonging, Dove created an emotional connection that went far beyond functional benefits.
2. Relevance. Never underestimate the importance of staying relevant. While resonating with customers requires tapping into their emotional center, relevance speaks more to a clear sense of utility.
Does your brand matter to consumers by being both useful and timely? We know that when inflation rises, wages stagnate, and purchasing power fades, consumers spend only on what they deem most important. For Olipop, the unmet need was gut health and soda enjoyment. Using nostalgic yet modern design and uplifting brand world, it gave consumers permission to reintroduce soda into their daily lives.
3. Differentiation. Most marketers would consider this their professional reason for being but outlining a distinct market position and effectively executing it are two inherently different things. Its important to be both unique and recognizable, but if you dont express it with clarity and confidence, you will get lost in the mix. Oatly didnt just market oat milk as another dairy alternativeit defined a cultural position: irreverent, planet-positive, and anti-establishment.
4. Unification. Brands must build a comprehensive toolkit of assets that are united across every touchpoint and channel through which a consumer might interact. But that doesnt mean being rigid or inflexible. For example, McDonalds maintains global consistency in its core messaging, design, and product offerings while adapting locally and offering country or culture-specific menu options.
5. Authenticity. Authenticity should always be top of mind when connecting with consumers. Its not just about defining a clear set of values or beliefs. Its about ensuring each message your brand shares are as close to those beliefs as possible.
More than two-thirds (70%) of consumers spend more with authentic brands. From press releases to tweets to Super Bowl spots to new logos, consumers know when theyre being sold a lineand they respond in kind. Brands like Patagonia and Ben & Jerrysliteral poster children for principle-led brandscontinue to lead their categories by acting on their values in visible, credible ways.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What will separate the winners from the losers over the next year is knowing how to precisely focus marketing investment on places where a company needs that added push the most. This requires a company to harness the ability to magnetize their brand, fostering deep emotional attraction, and turning consumers into loyal advocates by making their company the one consumers want above all others.
Jonathan Ford is the founding partner and group chief creative officer of Pearlfisher.
Behind its glittery facade, Claire’s is a financial mess. The tween retail icon behind millions of ear piercings and Y2K accessories filed for bankruptcy in August 2025, closing hundreds of stores and selling its North American business for just $104 million. So how does a brand with $1.4 billion in global sales end up with more than $500 million in debt?
Fast Company staff writer Elizabeth Segran has been covering the company’s ups and downs for years. In this episode of FC Explains, she breaks down the full Claire’s story, from its mall-era dominance and surprising pandemic comeback to its failed IPO, crushing debt load, tariff difficulties, and the rise of sleeker competitors like Lovisa, Studs, and Rowan.
The National Governors Association is pulling out of an annual meeting at the White House after President Donald Trump declined to invite two Democratic governors, undercutting one of Washington’s few remaining bipartisan gatherings.Trump is still expected to meet with governors at the White House on Friday but the event will not be facilitated by an organization founded more than a century ago to help state leaders from both parties advocate for their interests in Washington. The Republican president had refused to include Democratic Govs. Jared Polis of Colorado and Wes Moore of Maryland and recently blasted them on social media as “not worthy of being there.”In a brief interview Thursday, Polis said he does not have “any ability to get in (Trump’s) head.” Polis said he was nonetheless meeting with governors from both parties while he is in the nation’s capital.“I’ve spent quality time with my colleagues this morning and really learning from one another and taking best practices that Republican or Democratic governors have launched in their state,” he said. “It’s really what these meetings are about.”The episode underscores the confrontational approach Trump has taken during his second term toward state leaders he does not like. He has at times threatened to withhold federal money or send in troops over the objections of local leaders. Now, even a ceremonial White House dinner has become a flashpoint and fellow Republicans openly acknowledge that Trump’s aim as president is not to unify the country.“He’s not putting his mind to it,” Gov. Spencer Cox, R-Utah, said at an event sponsored by Politico. “He’s said very clearly that that’s not who he is.”In an interview Wednesday, Moore said he has “no desire to have beef with the president of the United States.”“I didn’t run for governor like, man, I can’t wait so me and the president can go toe to toe,” said Moore, the NGA’s vice chair. “But the fact that he is waking up in the middle of the night and tweeting about me, I just, I pray for him and I just feel bad for him because that has just got to be a really, really hard existence.”
Governors try to stay above the partisan fighting
The dynamics are a far cry from the air of bipartisanship that Moore and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who chairs the NGA, sought to portray as governors began to assemble in Washington. Moore and Stitt shared a stage several times this week swapping jokes and praise.“I have gotten, through the National Governors Association, a really good chance to know the heart of this man and how much he is a great American, loves his country, loves his citizens and is just trying to do the best he can for Maryland,” Stitt said Thursday at the Politico event.After Stitt tried to resolve the standoff between the White House and the Democratic governors last week, Trump blasted him as a “RINO,” short for Republican In Name Only, and accused him of misrepresenting his position. Stitt struck a conciliatory tone Thursday, noting he would participate in White House events.“Politics has a way of just beating you down over time so I can’t imagine being president of the United States,” Stitt said. “He’s got a tough job to do.”Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who occasionally disagreed with Trump, said it was a “mistake” for the White House not to include all governors.“There never was a huge amount of real work that got accomplished but it was a nice thing annually to bring all the governors Republicans and Democrats together,” he said in an interview. “I know there’s a lot of friction but it just seems in everybody’s best interest even if you passionately disagree and you don’t like the other person or you’re mad about whatever, it can’t hurt to be in the same room together.”Beyond the White House meeting, some governors also shared pointed criticisms of the administration’s ever-expanding power. They bemoaned the unwillingness of the Republican-controlled Congress to limit Trump’s ambitions and they cast themselves as counterweights to the executive.“Presidents aren’t supposed to do this stuff,” Cox said. “Congress needs to get their act together. And stop performing for TikTok and actually start doing stuff. That’s the flaw we’re dealing with right now.”Cox added that “it is up to the states to hold the line.”
Presidential buzz runs alongside the conference
As governors cycled through panels and interviews, one question hovered: Who among them might seek the presidency in 2028?Moore and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania were among the potential Democratic presidential contenders in Washington this week. Other Democrats, including Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois, were not in town.Stitt and Moore, during a panel discussion, both declined to rule out a future bid and emphasized their focus on their home states.Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., took a more open approach. He arrived in Washington days after announcing he would release a book this fall and fielded questions at a Center for American Progress event about how he might campaign for president if he enters the race.Asked afterward about his timeline for a decision, Beshear said his focus this year remains on Kentucky and “then after that, I’ll sit down with my family and we’ll consider it.”
Joey Cappelletti and Steven Sloan, Associated Press
