An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The City of New York is reaching across the country to sue tech giants headquartered in California over allegations that their platforms have created a youth mental health crisis. The city, along with its school districts and health department, alleges that "gross negligence" on the part of Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance has gotten kids hooked on social media, which has created a "public nuisance" that is placing a strain on the city's resources. In a 327-page complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the city alleges that tech companies have designed their platforms in a way that seeks to "maximize the number of children" using them, and have built "algorithms that wield user data as a weapon against children and fuel the addiction machine." The city also alleges that these companies "know children and adolescents are in a developmental stage that leaves them particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of these features," but "target them anyway, in pursuit of additional profit." [...] It cites data from the New York City Police Department, for instance, that show at least 16 teens have died while "subway surfing" -- riding outside of a moving train -- a dangerous behavior which the lawsuit claims has been encouraged by social media trends. Two girls, ages 12 and 13, died earlier this month while subway surfing. It also cited survey data collected from New York high school students, which shows that 77.3% of the city's teens spend three or more hours per day on screens, which it claims has contributed to lost sleep and, in turn, absences from school -- corroborated by the city's school districts, which provided data to show that 36.2% of all public school students are considered chronically absent, missing at least 10% of the school year.

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DÉCRYPTAGE - Alors qu’Élisabeth Borne, ancienne première ministre, a ouvert la porte à une «suspension» de la réforme des retraites adoptée en 2023, le débat s’enflamme de nouveau autour de l’un des textes les plus controversés de la présidence d’Emmanuel Macron.

© Stephanie Lecocq / REUTERS

DÉCRYPTAGE - Dans les faits, si l’âge légal a été fixé par la dernière réforme à 64 ans pour les citoyens nés à partir du 1er janvier 1968, tous les Français ne partent évidemment pas à la retraite au même âge.

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The Danish government wants to introduce a ban on several social media platforms for children under the age of 15, as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced Tuesday. From a report: "Mobile phones and social media are stealing our children's childhood," she said in her opening speech to the Danish parliament, the Folketing. "We have unleashed a monster," Frederiksen said, noting that almost all Danish seventh graders, where pupils are typically 13 or 14 years old, own a cellphone. "I hope that you here in the chamber will help tighten the law so that we take better care of our children here in Denmark," she added. However, Frederiksen did not give further details on what such a ban would entail, nor does a bill on an age limit appear in the government's legislative program for the upcoming parliamentary year.

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CHRONIQUE - « C’était mieux avant », vieille ritournelle. Mieux avant la mondialisation, internet, l’IA, le réchauffement climatique ? Le paradoxe est que ce sont surtout les jeunes qui idéalisent un passé qu’ils n’ont pas vécu.

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Social media usage peaked in 2022 and has been on a steady decline since. An analysis of 250,000 adults across more than 50 countries by the digital audience insights company GWI found that adults aged 16 and older spent an average of two hours and 20 minutes per day on social platforms at the end of 2024. That figure is down almost 10% from 2022. The decline is most pronounced among teenagers and people in their twenties. Usage has traced a smooth curve upward and then downward over the past decade. This is not simply the unwinding of increased screen time during pandemic lockdowns. The data also captured a shift in how people use these platforms. The share of people who report using social media to stay in touch with friends, express themselves or meet new people has fallen by more than a quarter since 2014. Opening the apps reflexively to fill spare time has risen. North America is an exception to the global trend. Social media consumption there continues to climb. By 2024 it reached levels 15% higher than Europe. Meta and OpenAI recently announced new social platforms that will be filled with AI-generated short-form videos.

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«L’industrie chimique européenne continue de faire face à une demande faible persistante et à une compétitivité en baisse», justifie le PDG d’Arlanxeo Stephan van Santbrink.

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Cette mobilisation est en forte baisse par rapport à la précédente journée de grève, le 18 septembre, lors de laquelle 505.000 personnes avaient manifesté, selon le ministère de l’Intérieur.

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Autour du premier secrétaire et de représentants socialistes, dont Boris Vallaud, des individus ont lancé des slogans et invectives. «Tout ce pour quoi ils manifestent, c’est à nous qu’ils le doivent», a rétorqué le député.

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Le président de la Société d’exploitation de la tour Eiffel (Sete), Jean-François Martins, a confirmé que le monument resterait «fermé aujourd’hui», dans le cadre du «mouvement interprofessionnel national».

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ENQUÊTE - Malgré les obligations de transparence instaurées depuis 2014, les financements publics indirects des syndicats restent largement opaques, jetant une ombre sur le vrai coût du dialogue social estimé à plusieurs centaines de millions d’euros.

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Ce jeudi, les taux de grévistes atteignent 6,95% dans les écoles, 7,38% dans les collèges et 4,95% dans les lycées d’enseignement général et technologique.

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Plus clairsemés qu’il y a quinze jours, les cortèges ont défilé ce jeudi partout en France à l’appel de l’intersyndicale, qui espère décrocher in extremis des mesures de «justice sociale» et décidera de la suite de la mobilisation au soir de la déclaration de politique générale par le premier ministre..

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«Ça fait des années que les petites entreprises on souffre. Est-ce qu’il y a eu une mobilisation du Medef envers les entreprises que parfois des grands groupes du Medef ont asphyxiées ?», a critiqué sur RTL le patron des petits patrons Michel Picon.

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Alongside its updated Sora 2 AI video generator, OpenAI has launched an iPhone-only social app called Sora that lets users consent to have friends create deepfake-style cameos of them. The invite-only app works a lot like TikTok with short remixable videos but enforces restrictions on public figures and explicit content. The Verge reports: In a briefing with reporters on Monday, employees called it the potential "ChatGPT moment for video generation." The Sora app is currently only available to US and Canada users, with other countries set to follow, and when someone receives access, they also get four additional invites to share with friends. There's no word on when an Android version might be released. Sora users can give their friends -- or, if they're feeling bold, everyone -- permission to create "cameos" with their own likeness using the new video model, which is dubbed Sora 2. The person whose likeness is being generated is a "co-owner" of that end result, OpenAI employees said, and they can delete it or revoke access to others at any time. Like TikTok, OpenAI's Sora app allows you to interact with other videos and trends using a "Remix" feature, but it only allows for the generation of 10-second videos for now.

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Alors que l’intersyndicale appelle à une nouvelle journée de mobilisation ce jeudi, les perturbations dans les transports devraient être plus limitées que lors de la précédente journée d’actions du 18 septembre dernier.

© Francois BOUCHON / Le Figaro

Déçus par les premières annonces de Sébastien Lecornu sur le budget 2026, les syndicats organisent ce jeudi leur seconde mobilisation en l’espace de deux semaines, après la journée d’actions du 18 septembre.

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Après la grève du 18 septembre, l’intersyndicale a appelé à une nouvelle journée de mobilisation le 2 octobre. Le Figaro fait le point sur les secteurs qui ont rejoint le mouvement et sur les perturbations à prévoir.

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Abu Dhabi's MGX (chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan) is set to take a 15% stake in TikTok's U.S. business after Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday night brokering a deal that puts the social media company under U.S. ownership. "Larry Ellison's Oracle, the private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi's MGX will control roughly 45% of TikTok US," adds The Guardian. "Overall, American companies are expected to control just over 65% of the company, with Trump also naming the personal computer pioneer Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch's Fox as other investors." From the report: "[TikTok US] will be majority-owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary," Trump said. "We have American investors taking it over, running it [who are] highly sophisticated, including Larry Ellison. Great investors, the biggest. They don't get bigger. This is going to be American-operated all the way." TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, will retain a 19.9% stake in the US operation. China has not publicly made clear whether it will approve the deal, although Trump said that he "had a good talk" with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who "gave us the go-ahead." JD Vance, the US vice-president, said the deal valued TikTok US at $14 billion. "There was some resistance on the Chinese side," Vance said. "But the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating but we wanted to make sure that protected Americans' data privacy as required by law." He added: "This deal really does mean that Americans can use TikTok, but actually use it with more confidence than in the past. Because their data is going to be secure and it's not going to be used as a propaganda weapon against our fellow citizens."

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Le premier ministre s’est opposé à la suspension de la réforme des retraites d’Élisabeth Borne, estimant qu’elle ne résoudrait ni la pénibilité au travail ni la situation des femmes.

© Stephanie Lecocq / REUTERS