X Global Affairs Head Nick Pickles Resigns 

The "X" logo is seen on the top of the headquarters of the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, California, US, July 30, 2023. (Reuters)
The "X" logo is seen on the top of the headquarters of the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, California, US, July 30, 2023. (Reuters)
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X Global Affairs Head Nick Pickles Resigns 

The "X" logo is seen on the top of the headquarters of the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, California, US, July 30, 2023. (Reuters)
The "X" logo is seen on the top of the headquarters of the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, California, US, July 30, 2023. (Reuters)

X's global affairs head Nick Pickles said on Thursday he is quitting after a decade with the social media company formerly called Twitter.

Pickles, who joined the company in 2014, said he had decided to leave X several months ago and was working with the Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino through the transition.

"After more than ten years, tomorrow will be my last day at X. It's been an incredible journey," he said.

It was not immediately clear what his next plans were, or why he made the decision to quit.

Elon Musk-owned X and Nick Pickles did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment outside of regular business hours.

In June, X's head of business operations, Joe Benarroch left the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Pickles had started at X as a senior manager in their London office and was appointed the Vice President of Global Affairs for X in 2023 after serving in multiple roles, his LinkedIn profile showed.

The Financial Times reported that he was the company's spokesperson in battles with multiple governments, including in Brazil, which said last week it was suspending access to the social network in the country.

The popular social media platform missed a court-imposed deadline to name a legal representative in Brazil, triggering the suspension.

Musk has argued that Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes was trying to enforce unjustified censorship, while the judge has insisted that X needs hate speech regulations.



YouTube, Snap and TikTok Settle School District’s Social Media Addiction Claims

The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)
The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)
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YouTube, Snap and TikTok Settle School District’s Social Media Addiction Claims

The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)
The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. (AFP)

Alphabet's YouTube, Snap and TikTok have reached settlements in the first case set for trial in litigation seeking to force social media platforms to cover the costs school districts incur to combat a youth mental health crisis they say the companies fueled.

The settlements were detailed in court filings on Friday in federal court in Oakland, California, and resolve claims by a Kentucky school district that is still due to take Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms to trial on June 15.

Terms of the settlements with ‌Breathitt County School District ‌in rural Eastern Kentucky were not disclosed.

"This ‌matter ⁠has been amicably resolved ⁠and our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise," a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement.

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, said it resolved the case amicably. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 3,300 lawsuits involving addiction claims are pending in California state court against the social media companies. ⁠Another 2,400 cases brought by individuals, municipalities, states and ‌school districts have been centralized in California ‌federal court.

In a landmark trial, a Los Angeles jury on March ‌25 found Meta and Alphabet's Google negligent for designing social media platforms that ‌are harmful to young people. It awarded a combined $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child.

The companies have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep ‌teens and young users safe on their platforms.

Breathitt is one of about 1,200 school districts suing the social ⁠media companies ⁠over claims they caused a mental health crisis among students and then saddled schools with the fallout.

The school district has been seeking over $60 million to cover the costs of counteracting social media's impact on students’ mental health and to fund a 15-year mental health program to abate the problem.

It also seeks a court order requiring the companies to modify their platforms to reduce addictive features.

Its case is a bellwether, or test case, for over a thousand similar school districts' lawsuits.

Judges and attorneys often use bellwether verdicts to assess the potential value of remaining claims and guide settlement talks. Typically, several bellwether cases are tried before reaching a broader resolution.


Foxconn Logs Quarterly Net Profit Jump on AI Demand

FILE PHOTO: A signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
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Foxconn Logs Quarterly Net Profit Jump on AI Demand

FILE PHOTO: A signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo

Taiwanese tech hardware giant Foxconn on Thursday announced a 19-percent jump in quarterly net profit as the booming market for artificial intelligence servers drives growth, despite geopolitical uncertainty.

Foxconn, whose official name is Hon Hai Precision Industry, has gone beyond assembling low-margin iPhones to making AI servers for Nvidia, along with electric vehicles and robots.

Soaring global demand for generative AI tools is boosting business for Foxconn, even as the war in the Middle East has threatened supply chain volatility.

On Thursday the company said net profit for January-March came to NT$49.9 billion (US$1.6 billion), up from NT$42.1 billion in the same period the previous year.

The figure beat estimates of $48.4 billion in a Bloomberg survey of analysts, AFP reported.

Foxconn said it expects "strong demand for AI servers" to continue this year, forecasting "high double-digit quarter-on-quarter growth" for AI rack shipments in the second quarter.

When the company reported its annual results in March, chairman Young Liu had shrugged off concerns that market volatility caused by global conflict would dent profits.

Taiwanese contract chipmaker TSMC has also said it does not expect geopolitics to impact its supply of key materials such as helium and hydrogen in the near term.

On Wednesday, some of Foxconn's factories in North America suffered a cyberattack, according to a company statement.

"The affected factories are currently resuming normal production," after a response from the cybersecurity team, said the statement dated Wednesday afternoon in Taiwan.

TechCrunch and other media outlets reported that ransomware gang Nitrogen had claimed responsibility for the hack on the dark web.


Meta Launches WhatsApp ‘Incognito’ Mode to Address Privacy Concerns for AI Chats

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
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Meta Launches WhatsApp ‘Incognito’ Mode to Address Privacy Concerns for AI Chats

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)

Meta Platforms said Wednesday it is rolling out an “incognito” mode for WhatsApp users to have private conversations with its AI chatbot, a move intended to ease privacy concerns about sensitive information that users share in chats.

The social media company said in a blog post that incognito chat mode provides a way to have private, temporary conversations with Meta AI, its artificial intelligence assistant that's been available on WhatsApp for a few years.

Messages will be processed in a “secure environment" that even Meta can't access, won't be saved by default and will disappear when exiting a session, Meta said.

Generative AI systems have been dogged by privacy concerns because the large language models that underpin these systems are trained on vast troves of data, sometimes including personal information provided by users themselves in their conversations with AI chatbots.

Rival chatbot makers already have some privacy features. Google's Gemini chatbot has the option to disable chat history and opt out of allowing one's data to be used in training its AI models. ChatGPT has similar controls.

Meta says it's rolling out incognito chats because users often ask chatbots sensitive questions or include private financial, personal, health or work data in their questions.

“We’re starting ask a lot of meaningful questions about our lives with AI systems, and it doesn’t always feel like you should have to share the information behind those questions with the companies that run those AI systems,” Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, told reporters.

Incognito chat mode has safety features to prevent the chatbot from answering questions about harmful topics, Cathcart said.

It will “steer the user towards helpful information if it can and then refuse (to answer) and eventually even just stop interacting with the user completely,” Cathcart said.

Users will only be able to type in questions and get text responses; they won't be able to upload or generate images. They'll also have to confirm their age because Meta doesn't allow users under 13 on its platforms.