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Meta Will Soon Face Another High-stakes Trial in US

The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey allege Meta deliberately made Instagram and Facebook addictive for children. SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP/File
The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey allege Meta deliberately made Instagram and Facebook addictive for children. SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP/File
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Meta Will Soon Face Another High-stakes Trial in US

The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey allege Meta deliberately made Instagram and Facebook addictive for children. SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP/File
The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey allege Meta deliberately made Instagram and Facebook addictive for children. SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP/File

With two convictions and nearly $1 billion in damages already stacked up, Meta will face another trial starting this week about alleged harms to children in a case brought by four US states.

The federal trial, one of the most consequential among a myriad of legal proceedings targeting social networks in the United States, will begin Wednesday with jury selection at a federal court in Oakland, near San Francisco, said AFP.

Opening statements are expected to start next week on August 18, with the trial lasting for roughly six weeks, followed by a verdict in early October.

The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey allege the largest social media network in the world deliberately made Instagram and Facebook addictive for children.

And they are demanding a long list of restrictions on how Instagram and Facebook operate for minors, as well as up to $1.4 trillion in penalties -- nearly Meta's entire market cap which exceeded $1.5 trillion on Friday.

CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is among the star witnesses the prosecution plans to call to the stand; he also testified six months ago in a separate case that took place in a Los Angeles court.

While Zuckerberg has been known to spend an increasing amount of time living at his home in Hawaii, the company's headquarters in Menlo Park is about an hour's drive from the courthouse.

- 'Facebook Files' -

The Oakland trial is the culmination of a standoff that began in late 2021, when a former employee, Frances Haugen, leaked thousands of pages of internal research, dubbed the "Facebook Files," which showed that Meta had internally measured the potential harm Instagram was causing to some teenage girls, while publicly downplaying the impact.

The revelations triggered a joint investigation by dozens of states, which two years later resulted in a complaint filed by around 30 state attorneys general.

Four states will now attempt to prove their case together in Oakland.

TikTok, Snapchat and Google-owned YouTube have also been sued by thousands of families, school districts and prosecutors across the country in various local, state and federal lawsuits.

In a landmark trial that concluded in March, Meta and YouTube were convicted by a Los Angeles jury, which found both companies were responsible for a teenager's social media addiction.

That jury awarded the teenager $6 million.

On Thursday, a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to implement product changes and pay more than half a billion dollars in damages to the state to fund the treatment and prevention of harms caused by Facebook and Instagram.

A jury in New Mexico previously ordered Meta to pay $375 million after it found the company liable for endangering children by making them vulnerable to predators on its platforms, among other harms.

Meta has appealed, or intends to appeal, all of these decisions.

Meta is "confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts," Meta told AFP in a statement Thursday.

The company intends to argue that mental health is an industry-wide issue, and that some of the states' claims are protected by free speech laws.

In May, Snap, TikTok, YouTube and Meta settled with a school district in Kentucky for $27 million to avoid another trial that was expected to set a precedent for around 1,200 similar lawsuits.

- Immunity over content -

The four states in the Oakland trial accuse Meta of violating their consumer protection laws, in addition to a federal law that protects children's data, known as COPPA.

They allege that multiple features were designed to keep minors hooked, particularly infinite scrolling, excessive notifications and "like" counts.

It's a strategy that focuses on how apps are designed, not what is posted on them, essentially sidestepping the broad immunity internet sites enjoy in the US regarding content created by their users.

The staggering $1.4 trillion in alleged damages comes from estimating the number of affected users in the four states.

However, the jury will have only an advisory role and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers -- who oversaw major trials between Apple and Epic Games, and Elon Musk and OpenAI -- will decide on penalties, if Meta loses the case.

Parents of teenagers allegedly harmed by social networks might watch from inside the courtroom, as they did in Los Angeles, while the rest of the country can follow the proceedings from an audio-only livestream on YouTube.

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Technology

Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
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Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)

Wheeling its way between dining booths at a neon-lit restaurant in Pakistan's Karachi megacity, a robot waitress drops off a fresh pizza to an awaiting family.

While global buzz is growing around agile humanoids made in the United States, China and elsewhere, robotic staff are a rare sight in the South Asian country.

"Welcome to Sicilian. My name is Robia," the waitress says in an electronic voice, looking down at diners through blinking red LED eyes.

Robia and her colleague Jojo are the DIY creations of Pakistani engineer Syed Osama Aziz, who is bringing a sci-fi reboot to Karachi's storied dining scene.

They have spherical white heads and dark visors, similar to a motorcycle helmet, and sport black shawls around their neck in the style of a dupatta worn by women in the region.

Aziz, who also established The Sicilian restaurant, developed the machines using mostly locally manufactured parts, designing their circuit boards and programming them in his own lab.

"The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them," he told AFP.

The duo were developed through his robotics company, Cobot, with help from friends and some electronic components imported from abroad.

In China and other East Asian countries especially, robots are an increasingly common sight, shuttling food to customers in chain restaurants and taking on other jobs from cleaning to greeting hotel guests.

But they remain a novelty in Pakistan, where Aziz's home-grown creations are attracting curious diners.

When they arrive at a table, the customers must either take the food off their serving tray themselves or wait for a human member of staff to assist them.

- Excited customers -

Aziz, whose workshop manufacturing the robots is located in Multan in Pakistan's central Punjab province, hopes to make his creations more sophisticated in the future.

"Our plans are to add camera-based processing and image-processing features," he said.

"That means the robot will also recognize you by looking at you, and it will remember what you ordered last time, and accordingly it will be able to give you better suggestions."

For now, the robots are proving a hit with families, who flock to the restaurant to watch the machines in action.

"The best thing about it is that it introduces itself," excited customer Ahmer Zameer told AFP, explaining the robot also "tells you what things you can order".

Children reach out to touch the robots while their parents snap photographs and selfies.

Young customer Sonia Dilosker said she was impressed by the androids' appearance and preferred their approach to serving customers, "because it is a machine and without any emotions".

Restaurant staff say the novelty has brought a surge in customers -- some travelling from across the sprawling port city to meet the robots.

"Our business has grown. People are coming from far away for this. They have seen a robot for the first time here," staff member Hellen told AFP.

"People are excited to see this."

Technology

‘Grand Theft Auto’ Set for Blockbuster Return After 13 Years

An advertisement for the video game "Grand Theft Auto VI" (GTA VI) is seen in Tokyo on November 4, 2026. (AFP)
An advertisement for the video game "Grand Theft Auto VI" (GTA VI) is seen in Tokyo on November 4, 2026. (AFP)
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‘Grand Theft Auto’ Set for Blockbuster Return After 13 Years

An advertisement for the video game "Grand Theft Auto VI" (GTA VI) is seen in Tokyo on November 4, 2026. (AFP)
An advertisement for the video game "Grand Theft Auto VI" (GTA VI) is seen in Tokyo on November 4, 2026. (AFP)

Fans of the violent "Grand Theft Auto" video game franchise are just two weeks away from getting their hands on the latest edition, which has taken almost a decade to make and has become the most expensive title in history.

The franchise allows players to act out gangster fantasies – shoot ups, crashing cars -- in fictional renderings of US cities where the soundtrack piped through in-game radio is almost as important as the cutting-edge visuals.

GTA VI, which comes 13 years after its predecessor, is expected to break sales records when it lands on November 19 thanks in part to a monumental marketing campaign that kicked off in late 2023 with the first official trailer.

"It is going to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time," Chris Dring of The Game Business outlet told AFP.

The previous edition, GTA V, is still the second-biggest selling game ever -- it took just three days to rack up $1 billion in sales, two days less than the movie "Avengers: Endgame".

The budget of GTA VI has reportedly ballooned to over $1 billion --- far higher than any other game or film -- and projections have it on track to make several billion in its first week, which would smash all records for any cultural product.

- 'Top creators' -

"GTA VI" has two main protagonists, former drug-runner Jason and newly released ex-con Lucia, who try to survive in Vice City, a reimagining of Miami.

Lucia is the first playable woman character in a main edition of the almost 30-year history of a franchise.

During the 1990s and 2000s the game's graphic depictions of violence and misogyny became notorious -- tabloid media outrage boosting the title's notoriety and helping sales to skyrocket.

Rockstar Games has spent eight years developing the sixth edition, a process beset by difficulties including the leak of development footage and code for the game online in 2022.

But expectations are sky-high.

"They've spent a long time on this game, but they are probably the top game entertainment creators in the world," said Dring.

Analysts expect the game to have an impact on the entire video game sector, including on console sales and accessories.

Several other studios delayed the release of new games to avoid being caught in the hype cycle around GTA VI.

Analysis firm Sensor Tower said the game had already generated around $750 million from pre-sales.

Surveys suggested almost one-third of the 49 million people who use PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in the United States intended to buy the game.

"The purchase intent that we're seeing on 'Grand Theft Auto' is far away above any other game we've ever tracked," said Mat Piscatella of consultancy Circana.

"For me, it's the game of the decade," Jocelin Lebeau, 39, a gamer who works for the French military, told AFP at a recent event in Paris. "I'm ready to buy it sight unseen."

Technology

North Korea’s Army of World-Class Hackers Is Secret Weapon That Took Down Binance

A TV screen showing a reporting about the hack at Binance, is seen during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. (AP)
A TV screen showing a reporting about the hack at Binance, is seen during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. (AP)
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North Korea’s Army of World-Class Hackers Is Secret Weapon That Took Down Binance

A TV screen showing a reporting about the hack at Binance, is seen during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. (AP)
A TV screen showing a reporting about the hack at Binance, is seen during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. (AP)

North Korea rewards its top hackers, tasked with heists like the Binance crypto hack that netted a cool $6.3 billion, with perks such as a spacious apartment in the capital of Pyongyang and huge hard currency awards, despite grueling hours of work.

Leader Kim Jong Un has assembled an army of world-class hackers using such incentives in a program more than a decade old that picks 200 of the smartest middle school students each year to study computer engineering, defectors and analysts say.

A fraction eventually become hackers in an investment that has paid off dramatically, as the group has evolved from the early days when it ran illegal gambling websites to pulling off the world's biggest cyber heist last month.

"They are actually one of Kim Jong Un's secret weapons," said Kim Heung-kwang, a North Korean defector who trained hackers of behalf of the state before fleeing to South Korea in 2004.

"There is no other country grooming hackers like this, systematically searching for the smartest children, solely to turn them into operatives," he added. "Whether they want to be a hacker or not does not matter."

The FBI and Binance have said North Korea was responsible for the Binance hack, but Pyongyang has denied that. Blockchain investigation firms have attributed it to a North Korean group known as "TraderTraitor".

The denial is part of a pattern in which the North dismisses such blame over the years as fabricated political provocations.

SYSTEMIC SELECTION

North Korea set up a cyber unit in 1998 but elevated its status after Kim came to power and declared in 2013 that cyber warfare was, along with nuclear weapons and missiles, an "all purpose sword" crucial to the country's ‌strike capability.

Candidate selection begins ‌in middle school as early as 11 or 12 years of age, with authorities picking about 150 to 200 children a year ‌to study ⁠computer science, said ⁠Kim Heung-kwang, the former trainer, and two defectors who worked in IT.

At 17, the top performers are sent to North Korea's best universities and undergo further screening before a chosen few finally enter the military's cyber unit as hackers, they added.

They are trained in areas such as cryptocurrency protocols and reverse-engineering foreign hardware devices in addition to more conventional topics such as advanced mathematics and foreign languages, one of them said.

Those who do not become hackers are trained to turn out software or apps for Western firms via remote jobs.

"While South Korea's best students may pursue medicine or other prestigious careers, North Korea channels top talent into nuclear and cyber programs and essentially guarantees their future," said Lim Jongin, professor emeritus at the school of cybersecurity at Korea University.

Other privileges on tap for the hackers are travel abroad to allied countries, such as China, where they can more freely access the internet.

Successful exploits can earn as much as 30% of the heist's profits in US dollars for the hackers' military unit, and they can even receive a flat in the capital where their ⁠parents can also stay, Kim said.

"There are accounts that successful cyber personnel are given apartments in Pyongyang," Lim said, adding that the flats could ‌range to as much as 132 sq m (1,420 sq ft).

Such performers are also eligible for membership of the ruling party and high-status ‌marriages into elite families, said one of the defectors.

But it is a small group. The North's cyberwarfare operations employ about 8,400 people, South Korea's National Intelligence Service estimated in 2024.

North Korean state media do not publicly ‌celebrate such hackers' achievements, but they regularly highlight students who show talent for programming.

In 2015, North Korea opened the Mirae Scientists Street in the capital, in the construction of which Kim Jong Un ‌had been closely involved, state media said.

Hackers' formal designation in the North was "scientist" or "researcher", said one of the defectors.

STATE ADVANTAGE

Other hacking groups associated with North Korea include the Lazarus Group, also known as APT38, which the US accused in 2022 of having stolen hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from the Ronin blockchain network. The FBI has said TraderTraitor is affiliated to Lazarus.

State backing makes the North's hackers more dangerous and harder to repulse, as they face no consequences for hack after hack, enabling them to perfect their strategies, analysts said.

"In the world of cyber crime, often, if you make a mistake ... that is all law enforcement needs to ‌get you," said Alec Zebrick, senior manager for Asia-Pacific global services at Chainalysis.

But North Korea's hackers "are doing this for the regime, so they're going to continue, even after successes," he added.

"Even after failures, they'll continue, because it's very hard for the international community to take action ⁠against them."

Other groups that have engaged with North Korea ⁠IT workers who earn funds for the Kim regime by landing remote technology jobs at Western companies describe them as highly organized, polite in their interactions and avid users of AI.

"There clearly was a structure you would see in military. Strict times, cleaning boots, very orderly," said YouTuber Deeveeaar, who has claimed to have hacked into cameras watching North Korean IT workers at their jobs.

"To say they 'use a lot of AI' is an understatement. AI is the very backbone of their operation," he said, citing use of paid ChatGPT accounts, Claude Code and Cursor, among many AI tools.

"They write code with it, alter their resumes and help make new ones. And even forge documents and identities."

Binance said the hackers used a bogus job interview and software hidden in an advertisement to compromise staffers' computers before using an internal AI tool to seize control of systems.

In 2025, a sanctions monitoring team drawn from 11 United Nations members said TraderTraitor had obtained both ChatGPT and DeepSeek accounts.

TOUGH WORKING CONDITIONS

Yet the lifestyle of a hacker or elite technology worker for North Korea is grueling, particularly when given a mission or sent abroad, say former IT workers and human rights groups.

Living in cramped spaces, often working stretches longer than 10 hours a day, constant surveillance and strict targets are among the downsides, said former IT workers interviewed for a report last year by advocacy group PSCORE.

"There is always pressure to keep earning money," said the group's executive director, Nam Bada. "The stress is extreme, and because of the psychological strain people develop health problems they didn't have before."

IT workers must meet a monthly target in dollars, or face humiliation and other punishments, he said.

Still, the hackers' success is likely to embolden the North Korean leader as they get better and grow more ambitious, analysts say.

"We see more and more them leaning towards what we call 'big game hunting'," said Zebrick.

"So they're targeting some of these larger organizations, potentially have larger vaults of funds, that they could potentially get. These are harder targets," he added.

"However, as we can see with the Binance case, the payout certainly can make it worth their time."