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Mark Zuckerberg and opposing lawyers dueled in a Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday, where the Meta CEO answered questions about young peoples use of Instagram, his congressional testimony, and internal advice hes received about being authentic and not robotic. Zuckerberg’s testimony is part of an unprecedented social media trial that questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm children. Attorneys representing the plaintiff, a now 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, claim her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta Platforms and Googles YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled. Beginning his questioning, the plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier laid out three options of what people can do regarding vulnerable people: help them, ignore them, or prey upon them and use them for our own ends. Zuckerberg said he agrees the last option is not what a reasonable company should do, saying, I think a reasonable company should try to help the people that use its services. When he was asked about his compensation, Zuckerberg said he has pledged to give almost all of his money to charity, focusing on scientific research. Lanier asked him how much money he has pledged to victims impacted by social media, to which Zuckerberg replied, I disagree with the characterization of your question. Lanier also asked Zuckerberg about what he characterized as extensive media training, including for testimonies like the one he was giving in court. Lanier pointed to an internal document about feedback on Zuckerberg’s tone of voice on his own social media, imploring him to come off as authentic, direct, human, insightful and real, and instructing him to not try hard, fake, robotic, corporate or cheesy in his communication. Zuckerberg pushed back against the idea that hes been coached on how to respond to questions or present himself, saying those offering the advice were just giving feedback. Regarding his media appearances and public speaking, Zuckerberg said, I think Im actually well known to be sort of bad at this. The Meta CEO has long been mocked online for appearing robotic and, when he was younger, nervous when speaking publicly. In 2010, during an interview with renowned tech journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, he was sweating so profusely that Swisher asked him if he wanted to take off the hoodie that was his uniform at the time. Lanier spent a considerable stretch of his limited time with Zuckerberg asking about the companys age verification policies. I dont see why this is so complicated, Zuckerberg said after a lengthy back-and-forth, reiterating that the companys policy restricts users under the age of 13 and that they work to detect users who have lied about their ages to bypass restrictions. Zuckerberg mostly stuck to his talking points, referencing his goal of building a platform that is valuable to users and, on multiple occasions, saying he disagreed with Laniers characterization of his questions or of Zuckerbergs own comments. Zuckerberg has testified in other trials and answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms, and he apologized to families at that hearing whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were because of social media. This trial, though, marks the first time Zuckerberg will answer similar questions in front of a jury. And, again, bereaved parents are expected to be in the limited courtroom seats available to the public. The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies are likely to play out. A Meta spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit and said they are confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people. One of Meta’s attorneys, Paul Schmidt, said in his opening statement that the company is not disputing that KGM experienced mental health struggles, but rather disputing that Instagram played a substantial factor in those struggles. He pointed to medical records that showed a turbulent home life, and both he and an attorney representing YouTube argue she turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles. Zuckerberg’s testimony comes a week after that of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, who said in the courtroom that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms. Mosseri maintained that Instagram works hard to protect young people using the service, and said it’s not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for peoples well-being. Much of Mosseri’s questioning from the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, centered on cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed peoples appearance a topic that Lanier is sure to revisit with Zuckerberg. He is also expected to face questions about Instagrams algorithm, the infinite nature of Metas feeds and other features the plaintiffs argue are designed to get users hooked. Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico that began last week. Kaitlyn Huamani and Barbara Ortutay, AP technology writers
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E-Commerce
A new $7.25 billion settlement between Bayer and a group of cancer patients could wrap up a huge wave of lawsuits against the company over allegations that it didnt warn consumers about cancer risks associated with the weedkiller Roundup. Bayer faces more than 180,000 claims over Roundup, which contains the herbicide glyphosate the chemical at the center of the controversy. Most of those claims are from people who used the weedkiller, which is sold at any hardware or garden store, at home. The lawsuits have prompted Bayer to pull glyphosate out of many products under the Roundup brand, though glyphosate is still commonly used by farmers and in the agriculture business broadly. The science around glyphosate is controversial. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer in users if applied as directed, and does not require companies selling it to include a warning about links to cancer. The World Health Organizations cancer agency classified the chemical as a substance likely to cause cancer in humans more than a decade ago, though those findings faced scrutiny a few years later over reports that the published version differed from a draft. Just last month, a landmark study determining that glyphosate didnt pose a risk to human health was retracted, 25 years after its publication. The retraction, prompted by emails revealing Monsantos influence, undermines a longstanding regulatory foundation that has cited the key research for decades. A long battle The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments over Bayers effort to fend off an onslaught of cancer-related lawsuits over Roundup in April. While the new settlement proposal wont affect that case, it could help both Bayer and the plaintiffs hedge their bets if the Supreme Court doesnt side in their favor. Bayer, a German pharmaceutical and biotech giant, is best known for making the common pain reliever Aspirin. The company acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion, betting that owning a major player in the agriculture business would diversify its business and pay dividends down the road as farming supplies boomed. That hasnt come to pass, and Monsantos costly litigation has further dragged Bayers share price down from its highs around a decade ago. Today, Bayer is worth less than the price it once paid for Monsanto. Hundreds of thousands of lawsuits Out of the cases against Bayer over Roundup so far, only a sliver were decided by a jury, yielding 13 decisions favoring the pharmaceutical giant and 11 siding with plaintiffs. Last year, a jury in Georgia ordered Bayer to pay $2.1 billion in damages to a plaintiff who suffers from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer that begins in white blood cells. Some other cases have been resolved in separate settlements, but many remain unresolved. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, Bayer would make payments into a designated fund on a yearly basis for 21 years, which could total up to $7.25 billion, to resolve most of the outstanding Roundup lawsuits. That money would then be doled out to people based on their Roundup usage, age of cancer diagnosis and the severity of their disease. Under the settlements terms, agricultural and industrial workers who faced regular exposure to the products chemicals could receive an average of $165,000 if they were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma under the age of 60. Residential users, those diagnosed later in life, and those with less aggressive cancer could receive tens of thousands in compensation. Bayer has said that it could still cancel the settlement, which does not yet have court approval, if too many plaintiffs decide to opt out and reject its terms. Supreme Court poised to decide Last month, the Supreme Court said that it would hear a case on the issue in order to determine if federal laws protect Bayer, which complies with the Environmental Protection Agencys rules, from lawsuits filed in state courts. The EPA does not require products including glyphosate to be sold with a cancer warning. Bayer praised the Supreme Courts decision to take the case, arguing that farmers need regulatory clarity around the widely used product and calling the milestone an important part of its effort to significantly contain litigation around Roundup. It is time for the U.S. legal system to establish that companies should not be punished under state laws for complying with federal warning label requirements, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said.
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E-Commerce
JPMorganChase said Wednesday it plans to open more than 160 new bank branches in over three dozen statesand renovate nearly 600 moreas part of a nationwide, multibillion-dollar push for more affordable financial services. Those branches will include locations in rural and low-to-moderate income (LMI) communities in the Northeast, Southeast, America’s “Heartland” or Midwest, and Southwestincluding in North and South Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Tennessee this year. JPMorganChase tells Fast Company those will include branch locations in: “Greater Philadelphia, Greater Boston, the Tampa Bay area, MinneapolisSaint Paul metro area, RaleighCary metro area/The Triangle, and the Charlotte metro area.” According to The Brookings Institution, the affordability crisis has reached every corner of the country, hitting middle-and-lower income earners the hardest, resulting in a 29% cumulative price increase since 2019 for Americans. Along with opening the branches, Chase plans to invest in local businesses, affordable housing, and job training, help fuel economic growth, and build stronger communities. Every Chase branch is a reflection of its neighborhood, Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase consumer banking said in the release. Each branch represents our promise to stand alongside our customers as partners, helping them navigate and achieve their financial goals. The expansion is part of Chases 2024 strategy to open more than 500 new branches, renovate 1,700 locations, and hire 3,500 employees nationwide over a three year-period. JPMorganChase financials Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) were trading up 1.3% in midday trading on Wednesday at the time of this writing. The company reported strong fourth-quarter earnings last month with adjusted earnings per share (EPS) coming in at $5.23, exceeding estimates of $4.92, and better-than-expected revenue of $46.77 billion versus, $46.20 billion. At the time of this writing, it had a market capitalization of over $847 billion.
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E-Commerce
On February 2, wellness influencer Peter Attia stepped down from his role as chief science officer at the protein company David. On February 12, Goldman Sachs top lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler announced her resignation from the company. And on February 13, Hollywood agent Casey Wasserman revealed that he would sell his talent agency. All of these business execs worked in very different spheres, but their sudden departures can be traced back to the same point of origin: their names cropped up again and again in the Department of Justices (DOJ) latest trove of Epstein files, released in late January. Over the past few weeks, many prominent figures have stepped down from their high-profile positions amidst growing scrutiny over their relationships to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A new tool called Jwiki is dedicated to compiling all of that information in one placeon, as the name suggests, a webpage designed to mimic Wikipedia. [Screenshot: Jwiki] Its the latest interface from a team of developers who have spent the last several months converting the notoriously dense and convoluted Epstein files into easily searchable interfaces, condensing about 3.5 million pages of material spread across .txt files, zip files, and Google Drive folders into recognizable formats. With Jwiki, instead of sifting through all of the Epstein files for individual mentions of various public figures (a nearly impossible task for members of the public), users can simply search their name and receive a succinct summary of their involvement with Epstein. How two technologists build the “Jsuite” Jwiki comes courtesy of a team led by technologists Riley Walz and Luke Igel. Walz has previously built several viral websites, including San Franciscos Tech Jester and a tool to track the citys parking cops. In November 2025, Igel, whos the CEO of an AI company called Kino, requested Walzs help with a tool to demystify Epsteins emails. They built the first iteration in just one night. That initial tool, called Jmail, allows users to wade through Epsteins seemingly endless email correspondence in a Gmail-style interface. To build it, Walz and Igel used Googles Gemini AI to run optical character recognition (OCR) on the individual emails and map it onto a simulation of Epsteins actual inbox. [Screenshot: Jwiki] Since then, Walz and Igel have relied heavily on vibe coding to expand the Jsuite into other apps like Jamazon; which tracks Epsteins Amazon orders through receipts; Jflights, which converts his flight data into a searchable map; and Jphotos, which compiles the files thousands of photos into one massive folder. In an interview with the publication Arena on February 12, Walz and Igel said that the Jsuite is receiving an average of 10,000 visitors daily, with a peak of well over a million visitors in a single day. How to use Jwiki According to a post from the official Jmail account on X, Walz and Igels team built Jwiki using their existing Jmail data. Upon first opening the site, users are greeted with a homepage that includes sections for a daily featured article, top articles by email volume, and top articles by viewership. The wiki includes entries on people, places, and events referenced in the files. [Screenshot: Jwiki] Users can either click on one of these displayed entries or look into their own areas of interest via a search bar. Clicking on Lesley Groff, Epsteins longtime executive assistant, for example, leads to a Wikipedia-style summary that includes a breakdown of her background, correpondence with Epstein (a whopping 224,747 emails), personal connections, and visits to Epsteins properties. It also includes a concluding section called Criminal Exposure Assessment,” which, according to Jmails post on X, cites U.S. codes that people may have been breaking as seen in the Jmail record. [Screenshot: Jwiki] We believe that the US government has a responsibility to fully investigate the people implicated by these files, the X post reads. Each Jwiki entry comes with the important caveat that its contents were generated by AI, meaning it’s fairly likely the resource is peppered with some inaccuracies and potential hallucinations. To address that concern, the Jmail team announced on X on February 18 that theyd opened the site for public contributions. Users can now sign in, propose edits to articles, and view the full revision history of every change. The edits are then reviewed and either approved or denied by a team of admins. Ultimately, the team says, its goal is Wikipedia-style open editing, where the articles self-correct. As the Epstein files slowly begin to bring powerful business leaders to account (albeit not in a court of law), Jwiki is one of the best tools available to the public so far to understand exactly what the rich and powerful were up to behind closed doors.
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E-Commerce
Emerald Fennells Wuthering Heights is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of filmand for the most part, critics are falling in the hate it camp. The new adaptation of Emily Brontės classic novel is catching flak as critics say it oversimplifies a complex story of generational trauma and racial tension into a straightforward romance laced with Fennells signature shock value (shes also the director behind Promising Young Woman and Saltburninfamous bathtub scene and all). But a recent comment from star and producer Margot Robbie takes criticism out of the equation, instead saying that as an artist, critics opinions never cross her mind. At a recent panel for Vogue Australia, Robbiegiven her dual role as producer and leading actresswas asked how much she thinks about her audience while making a movie, as opposed to immersing herself in the story. I consider audience always. Ive never, ever been on set and thought, What are the critics going to think of this?’ Robbie replied. Im like, Whats an audience going to feel right now? Whats their emotional response going to be? “I just believe you should make movies for the people who are going to buy tickets to see the movies,” Robbie added. “Its kind of as simple as that. Margot Robbie (left) and Emerald Fennell on the set of Wuthering Heights. [Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.] Robbie has produced all three of Fennells films, but Wuthering Heights is the first she appears in. I love working with Emerald [Fennell] because she always prioritizes an emotional experience over a heady idea, Robbie said. Shell let a cool idea fall by the wayside to offer the option that is going to be most exciting for an audience.” Robbies take was immediately divisive online. Some fellow filmmakers, including Cobra Kai writer and director Jon Hurwitz, echoed Robbies sentiment. This is the way. Audience first. Always, Hurwitz wrote in a post on X. This is the way. Audience first. Always. https://t.co/oX8hRlVH7M— Jon Hurwitz (@jonhurwitz) February 18, 2026 But others took issue with Robbies reading, noting that it frames films more as commercial products than as works of artnot to mention that critics are audience members themselves. Critic and editor-in-chief of AwardsWatch Erik Anderson pointed out that actors and directors never say this when their films get good reviews in his own response to Robbies statement. Why do actors and directors never say this when their films get good reviews https://t.co/PLl1LhFHhl— Erik Anderson (@AwardsWatchErik) February 18, 2026 On Rotten Tomatoes, Wuthering Heights is currently labeled rotten, with a critic score of 59%. In his review, The New Yorkers Justin Chang deemed the adaptation extravagantly superficial. For The Guardian, Adrian Horton dubbed it a big movie with a very small mind. And in a take that went viral, Vultures Allison Willmore called the film Fennells dumbest movie, while also praising it as her best to date. That appeal to the lowest common denominator is working for Wuthering Heights, at least on a commercial level. The film made $83 million globally over the Presidents Day holiday weekend, debuting as the number-one movie in North America. Robbies audience-first philosophy clearly gets butts in seatsbut if every creative ditches their heady ideas in favor of broad appeal, the future of film as an art form doesnt look quite as promising.
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E-Commerce
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