If Facebook customer support isn’t responding to your repeated complaints about local Buy Nothing group beef, it’s because they’re a little preoccupied. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, was slapped with lawsuits from a bipartisan group of 42 state attorneys general yesterday that allege the social media giant knowingly harmed teens and kids.

A majority of the states, including Colorado, South Carolina, and Minnesota, filed a federal lawsuit accusing Meta of targeting young people with addictive algorithms on Facebook and Instagram—and then publicly downplaying the psychological damage its apps can cause.

• AGs in the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and five other states filed separate but similar state lawsuits against Meta.
• Florida filed its own federal suit because it likes doing its own thing.

Meta isn’t mad, it’s just disappointed. A spokesperson for the company said it shares the “attorneys generals’ commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online” but argued lawsuits are not a productive route to solve the issue.

This might finally force Meta to create guardrails

Constant scrolling on apps like Instagram could be hurting young people’s mental health, according to several reports and warnings that have surfaced in the last few years. Leaked slides from an internal Meta study revealed that teen girls felt Instagram was damaging their body image. In May, the US Surgeon General issued a public advisory that social media adds significant risk to kids’ health.

Big picture: Though teens are undoubtedly facing a rising mental health crisis, experts are still divided on the relationship between social media use and well-being.

Meta’s not the only target. AGs from some of the states involved in the Meta lawsuits are also investigating TikTok for the same issue. Earlier this month, Utah followed Arkansas’s and Indiana’s lead in suing the company, citing concerns for childrens’ mental health.—MM

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UN will halt aid to Gaza today if it doesn’t get more fuel. Hospitals are overwhelmed and ceasing to function, the World Health Organization said, as the besieged territory runs out of fuel for generators. Doctors say they have been forced to operate by the light of mobile phones and without anesthesia due to supply shortages and overcrowding, which is exacerbated by thousands of uninjured people using the hospitals as shelter. Israel has permitted most forms of aid into Gaza but said it won’t allow fuel because it believes Hamas will steal it to power its rockets and tunnels. UN Secretary-General António Guterres added that the agency has seen “clear violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza without mentioning Israel or Hamas by name.

Emmer, picked as GOP’s latest speaker nominee, drops out hours later. The third time is very much not the charm. After a closed-door, secret-ballot vote yesterday, Republicans chose House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota to be the party’s new House speaker nominee—its third after Reps. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan failed in their attempts to replace ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy. Emmer took himself out of the running about four hours later when it became clear he wouldn’t have the votes on the House floor. His candidacy was torpedoed from afar by former President Trump, who called Emmer a “Globalist RINO” and said voting for him would be a “tragic mistake!”

Google and Microsoft posted earnings wins. The two tech giants reported big jumps in revenue, another sign that Big Tech’s growth has rebounded following last year’s downturn. Google parent Alphabet reported 11% revenue growth to about $77 billion for the third quarter, thanks mainly to increased advertising sales. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s revenue jumped 13% to $56.5 billion as AI created more demand for its products. Still, it wasn’t all rosy: Alphabet shares fell in extended trading after it missed on revenue estimates for its cloud division. Meta reports its third-quarter earnings today, and Amazon posts tomorrow.

Bitcoin is rallying harder than the boys in Sigma Alpha Epsilon before a noon kickoff.

The cryptocurrency briefly surged above $35,000 Tuesday for the first time since May 2022, and it’s now more than doubled for the year. Beaten-down crypto investors are foaming at the mouth at the possibility of a long-awaited bitcoin ETF hitting mainstream brokerages soon.

• A federal appeals court officially told the SEC that the logic it used to reject Grayscale Investments’s bid to set up its bitcoin ETF was flawed.
• The presumed ticker for a BlackRock spot bitcoin ETF briefly appeared on the website for a financial clearing house.

The ETFs could fuel demand for bitcoin by allowing investors to gain direct exposure to the cryptocurrency without having to own it.

Turning the corner on winter

What began as an industry downturn last year turned into a Category 5 storm of setbacks: Exchanges are facing regulatory lawsuits, the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and the arrest of its founder last May sent tremors throughout the sector, and the industry is accused of enabling the financing of terrorism—all against the backdrop of SBF’s fraud trial over mishandling customer funds at his imploded crypto exchange, FTX.

Big picture: In an ironic twist, bitcoin’s recent rise is being attributed to the mainstream financial sector’s warming up to crypto, which it was originally designed to skirt.—SK

Just weeks after the Sphere opened to a roaring Vegas success, the company behind the $2.3 billion immersive entertainment venue will debut in a different way tonight in Madison Square Garden.

Madison Square Garden Sports, the parent company of the New York Knicks, announced yesterday that Sphere Entertainment (another MSG Sports subsidiary) will be the NBA team’s jersey sponsor for the 2023–2024 season. For James Dolan, that’s tantamount to free advertising—he owns all three entities.

The business of patches is lucrative: The top three patch sponsorship deals—for the Golden State Warriors, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Brooklyn Nets—raked in $100 million last year. Eight years into the patch program, teams are experimenting with unconventional sponsors.

• The Charlotte Hornets partnered with Feastables, MrBeast’s snack company, in the first NBA jersey partnership with a social media influencer.
• The Washington Wizards, which had been without a jersey sponsor since 2021, announced an agreement with stock-trading app Robinhood, one of the league’s many links to the finance sector.
• The Miami Heat will be sponsored by owner Micky Arison’s Carnival Cruise Line.

Still…a handful of teams—the Memphis Grizzlies, Atlanta Hawks, and Portland Trail Blazers—are without a patch sponsor. Your move, PewDiePie.—CC

Quote: “This belongs to the category of absurd information hoaxes that a whole series of media discuss with enviable tenacity. This evokes nothing but a smile.”

The Kremlin would like to make it very clear that Vladimir Putin is totally fine and definitely not using body doubles. Addressing a report from a Russian Telegram channel that claimed Putin regularly uses a double and recently had a heart attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the Russian leader couldn’t be better. The health of Putin, who’s concocted a “tough guy” image with many a shirtless horseback photo, has been the subject of rumors for years.

Stat: After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, anti-abortion advocates expected the ruling would lead to fewer abortions. Turns out the opposite happened. While the number of procedures performed in the 16 states that ban many or most abortions has unsurprisingly plummeted, the number performed in states that still allow them has skyrocketed—more than enough to offset declines elsewhere, according to figures released by the Society of Family Planning. Those states performed 116,790 more abortions than expected in the year since the ruling. Across the US, there were 183 more abortions per month on average in the year after Dobbs than in the 12 months before it.

Read: The world’s most popular painter sent his followers after me because he didn’t like a review of his work. Here’s what I learned. (Artnet)

Read: Data journalist Walt Hickey’s book, You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything, is out today and filled with fascinating factoids, like how Jaws led to a decrease in shark populations.

Innovate: Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2023 include a graphene radiator, a personal helicopter, and lots of AI gizmos.

Watch: The trailer for Netflix’s Leave the World Behind, an Obamas-produced thriller featuring an all-star cast of Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, and more.

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