Meta Had a Week.

On Tuesday, August 11, the Ninth Circuit rejected Meta’s appeal in the consolidated social media addiction case. Result: Meta, ByteDance, Google, and Snap must face over 3,000 individual lawsuits. Combined exposure: hundreds of billions.

That was Meta’s third bad ruling in five days.

Thursday: A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million for harming children on its platforms — bringing that state’s total judgment to $942 million. The ruling found Meta’s conduct constitutes a “public nuisance” in New Mexico, one the company is now required to abate.

Monday: Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word open letter about how Meta’s unrestricted innovation “spreads American values worldwide.”

Same week: CTO Andrew Bosworth told staff to stop asking for vacation days — the question was “very dumb” — because AI-saved time should be poured back into building products.

Sonny reads the Meta week: a manifesto on Monday about spreading American values, a “public nuisance” ruling on Thursday, three thousand addiction plaintiffs cleared for court on Tuesday.

Bosworth wants employees to build cooler stuff with the AI-freed hours. Sonny suggests: kid-safety filters would be a reasonable place to start.