The penalty is in addition to $375m that Meta was ordered to pay in March as a result of a separate phase of the same court case.

Social media and tech giant Meta has been fined $567m by a court in the US state of New Mexico, with the money to be used to address harms caused to young people by its Instagram and Facebook platforms.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid of Santa Fe also ordered various changes to the way Meta’s platforms operate for children using them in New Mexico after ruling yesterday (6 August) that the ‌company had created a “public nuisance” in the state.

The $567m is to be paid into an “abatement fund” deemed by the court to be “necessary due to the wide-ranging impacts of the harm and the complex nature of the remedy”. The fund is broken into multiple categories, with $420m to go towards “treatment”, $90m to be spent on “screening and assessment”, and $33m allocated to “awareness and prevention”.

The fund is subject to a five-year lifespan as per the judge’s ruling.

The penalty is in addition to the $375m that Meta was ordered to pay in March as a result of a separate phase of the same court case in which a jury found that Meta endangered children by misleading users about the safety of its platforms.

Attorney general Raúl Torrez, in bringing the case, had accused Meta of designing products that were addictive to young users and failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms.

In this second phase of the case – which was a non-jury or ‘bench’ trial – the prosecutor had asked the court to impose changes on Meta regarding the operation of their platforms in New Mexico.

Following the judge’s ruling, Meta must now implement various youth-safety measures, including: monthly limits on Facebook and Instagram use by teenagers; app notification restrictions; stricter controls on adult contact with minors; safeguards for AI chatbots; improved age verification tools; collaboration with schools and other bodies to facilitate disclosure of platform use by young children; and enhanced ​reviews of child sexual abuse reports.

Meta must also report twice a year on its progress in implementing the court-ordered measures. Not all remedies sought by the state against Meta were granted by the judge in his ruling.

WhatsApp, the third Meta-owned platform under scrutiny in the case, was found by the court not to be a “contributing cause to the public nuisance” and therefore would not be subject to the same orders as Instagram and Facebook.

“We disagree with the ruling and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content,” a Meta spokesperson said.

“We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”

The public nuisance designation applies to issues of health and safety that have become so widespread as to negatively impact a general public population. The judge wrote in his findings that “the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden”.

Meta had disagreed with the designation at trial and also argued that the case singled out its platforms over other social media apps.

“This case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families and making sure that one of the world’s largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence,” said Torrez.

“Today’s decision is a victory for every parent who has worried about what social media is doing to their child and every child who deserves to grow up safer online.”

Thousands have filed lawsuits against social media companies over the alleged harm they pose to their users, including more than 40 US state attorney generals.

In April, the EU preliminarily found that Instagram and Facebook are in breach of its Digital Services Act for failing to “diligently” identify and mitigate risks that children under 13 face when using these platforms.

Meta’s recently published second-quarter financial report recorded a 55pc jump in costs and expenses from around $27bn in 2025 to more than $42bn this year due in part to a $2.4bn outlay on charges around various legal proceedings. Meta’s revenue for the period ending 30 June came to $60.8bn.

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Vogue World is coming to San Francisco next year — perhaps another indication that tech billionaires have become leaders in the fashion zeitgeist.

Of course, the announcement of the enormous fashion/art/music event doesn’t say that. Instead, Anna Wintour wrote that Vogue believes in celebrating cities and “San Francisco is a city like none other.” 

“It’s a place of diverse communities living side by side, a place that loves the arts, loves creativity, and isn’t afraid of change.” She also noted the city’s history of rebelliousness and innovation.

“I love that San Francisco has always stood up for values and the things it believes in,” Wintour wrote. “Vogue World will support San Francisco’s creative minds and strengthen the entire ecosystem — and it will offer another opportunity to show San Francisco is on the rise.”

There were rumors that Vogue World would head to San Francisco after Winter was seen having meetings with the city’s mayor, Daniel Lurie.

Plus, in the past year, Wintour has cozied up to the most powerful names in tech, culminating in this year’s Met Gala, which saw Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, serve as lead sponsors for the event. Google’s Sergey Brin and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg were also spotted at the event (the latter’s first, that is). In fact, OpenAI bought a table, as did Meta and Snap (for $350,000 a pop). It’s true that TikTok, Apple, and Instagram previously sponsored the event, but the presence of the tech crowd was so considerable that the Met Gala this year was dubbed the “tech gala” in some places.

Last year, Vogue put Lauren Sanchez on the cover of the magazine after her wedding to the Amazon founder. To the fashion world, this was Wintour’s stamp of approval — not just for Sanchez’s ascent into the fashion world, but that tech and its leaders were worthy of cultural recognition.

Though Bezos and Sanchez reportedly live in Florida (and Amazon is, of course, headquartered in the Seattle area), there is no city more associated with tech than San Francisco. By locating Vogue World there, this is another indication of Wintour’s approval.

Vogue, as a media publication, is always following the money, and as a cultural bible, is always looking for ways to stay relevant. Turning toward the worldwide headquarters of AI, good or bad, is brilliant for business (and Wintour is nothing if not brilliant). 

But Vogue World was previously held in New York, London, Paris, and this year, Milan. Maybe because I live in an East Coast bubble, but I’ve not heard anyone in recent years refer to San Francisco as a beacon of style to rank alongside these other cities.  

While the city has a reputation as the land of the free-spirited bohemian, tech and its workers have a reputation for hoodies, Patagonia vests, and expensive athletic shoes, if they even dress up that much.

For instance, billionaire Alexandr Wang, who is now running Meta’s all-important Superintelligence Labs, just did an interview with Y Combinator’s Garry Tan in front of a packed stadium wearing a faded Nintendo T-shirt and what looked like a pair of Crocs. Comfy? Yes. High fashion? Decidedly no.

But maybe that’s changing. Wang’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who once always appeared in a plain gray T-shirt and jeans, has made efforts in recent years to become more fashionable. Zuck and his wife Priscilla Chan were spotted front row at a Prada show this season. The new campaign for Meta Glasses has a slew of celeb ambassadors and looks like it could be a Saint Laurent or Balenciaga ad.

OpenAI and Palantir have recently released merch collabs, playing on the minimalist style of tech workers (the merch line of the latter, I would argue, looks inspired by Virgil Abloh’s Off-White).

I concede that creatively there is much to be done with the understated, Northern California style. Surrounded by beautiful nature and cooler temperatures, plenty of fashion designers could be motivated by San Francisco’s tech industry. I look forward to seeing Claude-inspired terra cotta-colored gowns and Vogue-emblazoned quarter-zips soon.

Most of us keep one of those adjustable wrenches around even when we know better. It sits in the toolbox because it covers a range of sizes without forcing a full set of fixed wrenches onto the job. Then the jaws shift just enough during use, the head of the bolt loses its sharp edges, and a five-minute task stretches into a longer recovery session. Someone Should Make That decided enough was enough. He walks through the exact problem that turns ordinary fasteners into rounded messes and the method he used to solve it on a small CNC mill.

The difficulty stems from the interaction between the moving jaw and its adjustment screw. When you apply some force to the wrench to get things started, the flexibility in the jaw allows it to flex, and the contact transfers from the flat sides of the hex to the corners. Try to get a good grasp on the bolt with the wrench, and it’ll be a coin flip whether it’s snug or loose again. Eventually, many people simply push their thumb against the adjustment wheel to keep things from slipping, which typically works until it doesn’t.

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He tested his first idea, preloading the moving jaw with a spring to keep the threads engaged at all times. He created a few plastic prototypes to test it out, but it only underlined the problem. As the jaws closed, the spring compressed harder, giving the sensation of struggling against a brick wall when attempting to make exact adjustments. A softer spring was only a temporary remedy, not a permanent solution.

The better approach comes from machines that would later be used to cut metal parts, namely anti-backlash nuts found in CNC mills and 3D printers. These nuts use a spring to keep the driving threads under constant strain, preventing free play. He tried the same technique with his wrench, splitting the adjustment screw in half and attaching a spring between them. One half of the screw threads are forced into the moving jaw, while the other half is pushed into the bushing by the jaw. As a result, the preload remains constant regardless of the jaw opening size.

A second plastic prototype of his design proved that it functioned. Then he built a steel version with a DMC2 micro mill. After a lot of fixture work, tool path changes, and probing adjustments, he successfully removed the housing, screw halves, and moving jaw from the machine. His early runs were troubled by uneven height readings using conductive pucks, so he moved to an optical tool setter and built bespoke Mach3 procedures to handle offsets. He had to be careful with material removal when the threads were too tight, and a lathe attempt on the thumb screw failed miserably, so he settled on a 3D printed plastic version.

When all of the components were finally put together, they fit perfectly without any filing. Once adjusted, the spring holds the jaws firmly attached to the bolt, removing any play. You no longer need to press your thumb on the adjustment wheel to keep everything in line, and the fastener’s flats take the load rather than the corners. The plastic screw still has some flex, but it holds up well under daily use.
[Source]

Every four years, football’s best players are tested on the world’s biggest stage.

Less visible is the test taking place behind the scenes.