This is H.
reporter who's watched with a lot of alarm as our profession has shrunk in recent years. Normally, this is why I'd ask you to subscribe to The Times. But today, I'm encouraging you to support any news organization that's dedicated to original reporting. Whether that's
“your local newspaper, a national paper, or The New York Times, what matters most is that”
you subscribe to a real news organization doing firsthand fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you. From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Thursday, March 26th,
here's what we're covering.
This is Ryan Mack with The New York Times. I'm actually sitting outside on the steps of a Los Angeles courthouse, where a trial just wrapped up, essentially looking at the addictive nature of social media apps. In a landmark case yesterday, meta and YouTube were found to be negligent in how they built the platforms that had become a huge part of modern life.
The jury found that meta, the parent company of Instagram and YouTube were essentially
“liable for the mental health distress caused to a plaintiff because of the design of their”
apps. The case was brought by a woman who testified that she started using social media almost constantly around age six, and that it led to anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self-harm. She said features like infinite scroll and constant new recommendations from algorithms, kept her hooked. I just felt like I wanted to be on it all the time. If I wasn't on it,
I was going to miss out on something. The jury agreed. Essentially validating a novel legal theory that social media can be addictive, and as harmful as products like cigarettes would sit out for me today, including arguments, was essentially this idea of how do you hold these trillion dollar companies, you know, meta is worth one and a half trillion dollars off of that the parent company
“of YouTube is worth three and a half trillion dollars. How do you hold them accountable?”
Ryan says that the damages the woman was ultimately awarded, six million dollars, are obviously
just a drop in the bucket for the companies involved. But the moment is bigger than that. This is just one of thousands of lawsuits filed by teenagers, school districts, and states against social media platforms, and it could pave the way for more verdicts, potentially exposing the internet giants to more financial damages and even forcing them to change their products. This is basically being called social media's big tobacco moment, a call back
to when giants like Philip Morris were accused of hiding information about the harms of cigarettes. Those companies ultimately reached a 200 plus billion dollar settlement, strict tobacco regulations went into place, and a decline in smoking followed. In Iran, the Israeli military is in an all-out race to strike as many targets as it possibly can, as part of a 48-hour blitz ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According
to senior Israeli officials, Netanyahu ordered the strikes after these really government got a copy of President Trump's draft proposal to end the war. The idea of the U.S. potentially moving to wrap up the conflict alarmed Netanyahu and other top advisors who feel they haven't fully accomplished their goals yet. That includes making sure Iran can't build a nuclear weapon and stopping it from being able to fire ballistic missiles.
Some Israeli security officials told the times the country still has an extensive list of sites it could go after in Iran. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill yesterday, Pentagon officials gave classified briefings to members of Congress. But, according to people familiar with the sessions, the officials declined to answer many questions about the war, including about its objectives, its costs and whether ground troops will be deployed. And while
Republicans have largely backed the President's campaign in Iran, several GOP lawmakers came out of those meetings criticizing the lack of information. Representative Mike Rogers, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said quote, "We want to know more about what's going on. We're just not getting enough answers." Another Republican, representative Nancy Mace, said there's been a deeply troubling gap between how the administration has just
to fight the war to the American public and what officials are saying behind closed doors. A few other quick updates now on the Trump administration from Airport Chaos to dramatic new numbers
from the Census Bureau. First, the times is confirmed that at several airports across the country,
ICE agents are now checking travelers' IDs and performing other screening duties.
The Trump administration deployed about 150 agents earlier this week, but unt...
they largely been doing things like guarding exits. It's not clear if their deployment has
“had any effect on wait times for passengers, which have shot up to hours in some places,”
as 50,000 TSA officers go unpaid because of congressional deadlock over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Some are sleeping in their cars, selling their blood and plasma,
and taking on jobs, second jobs to make ends meet. Speaking to lawmakers yesterday,
the top TSA official warned that if funding isn't restored, wait times could get even longer, and some small airports could be forced to close. Now multiple major airports are experiencing days where 40 to 50% of their staff are calling out because they simply cannot afford to report torque. Also, the criminals, what they do to our country, the decisions that they hand down and heard our country. President Trump took his attacks on judges to a new level yesterday,
“calling on Republicans in Congress to put together a crime bill that, quote, "cracks down"”
on what he claims are rogue members of the judicial branch. Trump, along with Vice President JD Vance and Top White House Aides, have been escalating their rhetoric against judges. In particular, since the Supreme Court struck down the President's sweeping tariffs earlier this year. After that ruling, Trump labelled the justices who ruled against him, fools, lap dogs, and slime balls. In response to questions from the times,
the White House didn't provide any specifics about what would be in the bill that Trump is pushing, or what a crackdown on judges would look like in practice. And last update. New data released by the Census Bureau this morning shows how Trump's immigration policies
“are helping reshape the demographics of the U.S. In 75% of all counties last year,”
overall population growth slowed or turned negative. Large urban areas and counties along the border saw the biggest drop-offs in population as immigration rates dipped. Overall,
though the population of the U.S. increased by 1.8 million people, that's one of the slowest
growth rates in history because of a combination of low birth rates and fewer people entering the country. And finally, the man who helped supercharge the online porn industry building the site only fans into a global juggernaut has died at 43. Leonid Ravinsky bought a stake in the site a little less than a decade ago. At that point, it was making about $2 million a year, connecting adult content creators with subscribers. By last year, thanks to some of his innovations,
only fans was earning $7 billion a year. A few things he tweaked included adding the tipping function, not strengthen the bond between subscribers and their favorite performers. He also encouraged creators to post content on Instagram and other platforms to boost their visibility and draw people in. Antie invited celebrities to open accounts. The pop singer Lily Allen said at one point she was making more money from selling photos of her feet on the site than from her music.
Ravinsky was a very private person. Only a few photos of him appeared to exist and details about his life are thin. He was born in Odessa Ukraine when the country was still part of the Soviet Union and he emigrated with his family to Illinois when he was about six. By high school, he'd already started a business that sold adult oriented domain names. He was so young that his mom signed the incorporation documents. Over his career, he faced repeated accusations of business
misconduct, including money laundering and bribery, though none of the allegations were approved and most lawsuits against him were dropped. Only fans, interestingly, has had a complicated relationship with the very thing it's become known for. It has at some points banned explicit content, including for all of six days in 2021 before it gave that up. Still, the site has insisted that it offers a wide range of content, including cooking and dirt bike racing.
Red Vinsky, who died of cancer, had been looking to sell only fans over the last year,
which has been valued at $8 billion.
Those are the headlines. Today on the daily, more about the chaos that America's airports and what Congress might do about it. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday news quiz.
