ALEX BRUMMER: The humiliation of the tech titans is here… and the financial consequences for us all could be unimaginable

Figure this out. On the same day that Instagram and Facebook owner Meta and YouTube parent Google were found guilty of harming young people’s mental health through the addictive design of their social media sites, chiefs of the same Silicon Valley giants were being crowned on both sides of the Atlantic.

Here, Google’s former European boss Matt Brittin has been announced as chief executive of the BBC, the world’s most trusted broadcaster.

In Washington, Meta boss and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has been appointed to President Trump’s new science and technology expert panel filled with tech pioneers.

It is a shame that world governments, political leaders like Trump and Keir Starmer and now the BBC have bowed to the strange power of social media barons.

Despite all their claims of innocence, California courts found social media giants guilty of manipulating their young customers into a state of addiction that was extremely harmful to their mental health and well-being.

Wednesday’s decision has cast a glimmer of hope that the tech giants that dominate many minds and global commerce may finally be reined in.

No one should underestimate the importance of the moment.

The verdict, handed down by a jury in Los Angeles, was based on the tremendous courage of a 20-year-old woman, known to the court as ‘Kaley’, who said she was driven to depression and then near suicide by social media.

Now Silicon Valley is facing similar legal cases that brought the tobacco industry to its knees last century. Kaley’s case represents just the tip of the legal iceberg.

Nearly 3,000 California plaintiffs and their families who believe they have been harmed by toxic material on social media platforms are taking action.

These challenges will spread beyond California to at least 20 American states, U.S. federal courts, and perhaps even Britain.

Other social media firms are also in the frame, including Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, and ByteDance, which owns TikTok. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against them in both state and federal courts in the United States.

The allegation against tech companies is that they deliberately design their platforms to trap young people and harm them in the process. Just yesterday, Snapchat was the subject of an EU investigation over its failure to block childcare.

Campaigners hope this week’s victory will deliver a meat cleaver to the tech giants’ financial, political and even social hegemony over many lives. There is no permanent victory in the bag.

Meta and Google announced that they would appeal the decision.

America’s complex legal system – decisions in state courts can be appealed in federal courts, even all the way to the Supreme Court in Washington – means super-rich corporations can keep justice at bay for years.

Zuckerberg appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court at the United States Courthouse last month after a 20-year-old woman filed a lawsuit against Meta and YouTube.

The combined fines of $6 million (£4.5 million) imposed on Meta and Google are only a small figure for companies valued by Wall Street at $1.5 trillion and $3.5 trillion respectively.

It is noteworthy that Apple continued to increase its revenues despite being fined $14.4 billion by the European Court of Justice last year for tax evasion.

Apple’s rapid growth, along with the rest of the Magnificent Seven (Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, Google owner Alphabet, and Meta), has helped bring great prosperity to the United States and bolstered a stuttering world economy reeling from geopolitical strife.

Meta and Google each spend $100 billion a year on new investments in areas such as data centers and artificial intelligence.

Only if the legal armor and political protection they have is truly pierced can open season begin on Big Tech.

The new findings against Meta and Google have been hailed as the ‘Big Tobacco moment’ by Big Tech critics.

Questions about the proven carcinogenic effects of cigarettes on health were first raised in 1954, but it was not until the beginning of this century that the full duplicity of tobacco companies (dishonesty that led to millions of deaths worldwide) was finally revealed.

It turned out that they deliberately designed cigarettes to become more addictive over the years, increasing the nicotine content and adding ammonia for faster brain absorption, changes that made it harder for smokers to quit, for example.

Kaley GM’s attorney, Mark Lanier, outside court after jury found Meta and Google liable in a lawsuit accusing Meta and Google’s YouTube of harming children’s mental health through addictive social media platforms

There now seem to be disturbing repercussions.

Evidence presented in the lawsuit filed against Meta and Google in California showed that social media companies used eye-catching design features such as ‘infinite scroll’ to lure young people into a cycle of addiction.

Internal documents disclosed in the lawsuit showed that Meta had reversed a temporary ban on features called ‘beauty filters’ that focused attention on young women’s appearance and body image despite the risk of harming young girls.

Zuckerberg argued in court that he did not want to limit their right to express themselves.

The stakes are not only high but stratospheric.

That’s why the Magnificent Seven, fearful of losing control over the lives of young people and the rest of us, are placing huge bets on artificial intelligence, arguing that our entire future depends on it.

Four of the seven companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta) announced that they will spend a total of $630 billion on data centers and AI chips this year alone.

But just how difficult it is to leverage AI and its socially disruptive power has been revealed by the recent failure of OpenAI’s experiment with its Sora app. This is the ‘brain rot’ or ‘collapse’ of internet knowledge.

Topping the popularity charts, Sora allowed users to create whimsical short videos featuring dogs driving cars, for example, or animated figures from the past, such as the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

But it soon spiraled out of control, allowing the creation of disgusting sexual content, terrorist propaganda, and material depicting self-harm. Moderating content turned out to be a nightmare, and six months later the app was quietly shut down.

It’s yet another indication that pouring so much money into a technology still in its infancy is a huge financial gamble, especially at a time when the ethics of the industry are being questioned.

If this week’s decision is upheld on appeal, I’m sure the floodgates will open and tech companies will be forced to allocate huge resources to compensate victims.

Governments around the world will feel empowered to challenge Silicon Valley’s monopoly power and its control of the internet, as well as the societal harms.

But there is a greater financial threat posed by our dependence on the future profits these companies promise.

Western investors have placed big bets on artificial intelligence, which could trigger a staggering loss of market value, power and influence if tech firms begin to collapse.

Anyone with savings or a pension is doomed to suffer; technology is so inextricably intertwined with the world’s financial markets.

Miniaturizing its tech siblings is vital but can be quite costly.