By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — Meta executives testified in a Los Angeles courtroom earlier this month that while use of the company’s platforms could become problematic, it couldn’t be considered addiction. But inside the company, researchers have sought to study whether certain Facebook features could contribute to “addiction” or “addictive’-like” behaviors among users.

That’s according to new internal documents released in legal filings in another lawsuit against Meta.

The files, released on Friday, raise new questions about what Meta has known about the risks of its platforms, especially to young people — a question at the heart of the legal battle currently underway against the company. Some of the features the company’s researchers raised questions about, including autoplay and endlessly scrolling feeds, are among the same features that lawsuits now claim contribute to youth addiction and harm.

Employees at the company, then known as Facebook, proposed a public audit of design features that might contribute to compulsive use of the platform in the fall of 2018, citing growing public concern that tech companies were intentionally manipulating users, according to the documents.

They suggested working with outside researchers to lend expertise and credibility to the effort. One suggested expert was Tristan Harris, who at the time had recently left his job as an ethicist at Google to found the Center for Humane Technology to address concerns about social media and smartphone addiction. But the documents show employees expressing concerns that Harris might suggest changes to Facebook that the company’s product teams wouldn’t be willing to make.

The researchers hypothesized that certain features could “promote frequent, automatic, undesired behaviors” that build habits users may not want or intend.

“These may lead to feelings of being manipulated, feeling lack of control related to certain behaviors, and feelings of dependence on checking or going on Facebook that could be related to lower well-being — and could be fueling the subjective, colloquial experiences of feeling ‘addicted’ to Facebook,” they wrote.

The documents were released as evidence in a lawsuit brought by hundreds of school districts and attorneys general from across the United States against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube-parent Google in the Northern District Court of California. The case is set to go to trial later this year.

It will follow the conclusion of the social media addiction case against Meta and YouTube currently on trial in Los Angeles, the first of more than 1,500 lawsuits brought by individuals against the companies. Meta has denied the lawsuits’ claims.

Parents and safety advocates have for years raised concerns that social media platforms are designed to get users hooked and keep them scrolling for as long as possible to serve them more ads. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg objected to this claim in his testimony in the LA trial last week, saying the company was focused on maximizing “value” to users.

Meta never carried out the proposed audit, although Meta spokesperson Liza Crenshaw said it has conducted other research on the topic that informed design changes such as parental control tools and default teen safety settings that were introduced in recent years.

“We’ve intentionally designed automatic defaults like Sleep Mode that encourage teens to leave the app and pause notifications over night,” Cren

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Por Mia Fishman, CNN

Lindsey Vonn agradeció a su médico por haberle salvado la pierna de la amputación en un video de Instagram publicado el lunes, donde detalló la gravedad de la lesión que sufrió en su devastador accidente en los Juegos Olímpicos de Milán Cortina.

En el video, Vonn explicó los detalles de la lesión en la pierna que sufrió en el accidente del 8 de febrero durante la prueba de descenso femenino. Vonn esperaba subir al podio, a pesar de romperse el ligamento cruzado anterior (LCA) poco antes de los Juegos, pero sufrió un accidente dramático.

La semana pasada, Vonn se sometió a una cirugía reconstructiva para tratar múltiples fracturas en su pierna izquierda y experimentó complicaciones debido a un diagnóstico de síndrome compartimental. Publicó el video el lunes desde un hotel, diciendo que finalmente salió del hospital después de dos semanas.

Las fracturas de tibia se encuentran entre las causas más comunes de una complicación llamada síndrome compartimental. Los músculos de las piernas están organizados en secciones llamadas compartimentos, que están rodeadas de tejido tenso que no se estira mucho. Cuando se acumula sangrado o inflamación dentro de uno de estos compartimentos, la presión aumenta y comienza a comprimir los músculos, nervios y vasos sanguíneos.

Si la presión no se libera rápidamente, el síndrome compartimental puede provocar daños permanentes y, en casos graves, poner en peligro la vida o incluso perder una extremidad. Esta complicación se trata con incisiones en la pierna.

“El doctor Tom Hackett me salvó la pierna”, dijo Vonn. “Me salvó la pierna de la amputación”.

El descubrimiento del síndrome compartimental de Vonn la obligó a someterse a una cirugía de emergencia llamada fasciotomía, que duró seis horas. El tejido conectivo se “rellena”, como lo describió Vonn, para liberar la tensión y la presión sobre los músculos, vasos sanguíneos y nervios de la zona.

Si bien antes de la carrera inaugural del fin de semana Vonn se centraba en su ligamento cruzado anterior (LCA) desgarrado, atribuye a esa lesión de rodilla el haber evitado la amputación.

“Si no me hubiera desgarrado el LCA —que me habría desgarrado de todos modos con este accidente—, si no hubiera hecho eso, Tom no habría estado allí; no habría podido salvarme la pierna”, dijo Vonn. “Me siento muy afortunada y agradecida por él”.

Además de la rotura del LCA y varias fracturas de tibia y peroné, Vonn también se fracturó el tobillo derecho.

“Todo estaba hecho pedazos”, dijo Vonn.

Aunque actualmente está inmóvil y en silla de ruedas, espera poder usar muletas en unas semanas. Se espera que las fracturas óseas tarden un año en sanar, lo que le permitirá continuar con la reconstrucción del ligamento cruzado anterior (LCA).

“No puedo expresar lo doloroso que ha sido”, dijo Vonn, visiblemente emocionada. “Ha sido muy duro y definitivamente no fue la forma en que quería terminar mis Juegos Olímpicos, pero ha sido muy inspirador ver a mis compañeras de equipo”.

La pérdida de sangre durante la cirugía mantuvo a Vonn en el hospital “más tiempo del esperado”, lo que provocó una transfusión de sangre para combatir el dolor. Pero después de dos semanas en una cama de hospital, Vonn se ha mudado a un hotel por el momento.

“Será un largo camino, pero lo lograré”, dijo Vonn. “Prefiero caer luchando que no intentarlo en absoluto”.

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WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – Federal regulators are seeking public comment regarding plans to waive some safety requirements before restarting the use of dormant oil pipelines locally.

Monday's announcement of a 30-day public comment period begins a legally required review process before a special permit can be issued and oil production through the shuttered pipelines can restart.

"PHMSA [the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] has reviewed the draft conditions and preliminarily determined that the issuance of the special permit would not be inconsistent with pipeline safety," shared federal safety regulators when announcing the public comment period Monday. "PHMSA invites interested persons to review and submit comments in the docket on the special permit request, draft proposed special permit, and DEA [draft environmental assessment]. Please submit comments on any potential safety, environmental, and other relevant considerations implicated by the special permit request."

Public comments for Docket No. PHMSA-2026-0464 can be submitted in the following ways

• Online here
• Faxed to 1-202-493-2251
• Mailed to Docket Management System: U.S. Department of Transportation's Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington D.C. 20590
• Hand delivered to the address above between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except federal holidays

In December of last year, Sable Offshore informed investors that it had determined that pipelines connecting an onshore oil processing plant on the Gaviota Coast to Pentland Station in Kern County are technically interstate pipelines under the Pipeline Safety Act and requested that federal regulators take over its restart plans involving the pipelines.

The Department of Transportation agreed with Sable Offshore's assessment and promptly asserted its authority over restart plans in mid-December.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration argued that the restart plans were subject to emergency permitting based on a national energy emergency declared by President Trump last year which could bypass normal regulatory steps.

"Sable stated that expedited review of its application was warranted in light of the national energy emergency declared by the President under the National Emergencies Act in Executive Order 14156," announced the Department of Transportation when issuing the emergency permits to Sable Offshore. "This emergency special permit allows Sable to operate Lines CA-324 and CA-325 without being subject to the requirement to evaluate and remediate corrosion of or along a longitudinal seam weld within 180 days."

According to Read more

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