By KAITLYN HUAMANI and BARBARA ORTUTAY

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, testified Wednesday during a landmark social media trial in Los Angeles that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms.

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The question of addiction is a key pillar of the case, where plaintiffs seek to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose lawsuit could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies would play out. She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

Mosseri said it’s important to differentiate between clinical addiction and what he called problematic use. The plaintiff’s lawyer, however, presented quotes directly from Mosseri in a podcast interview a few years ago where he said the opposite, but he clarified that he was probably using the term “too casually,” as people tend to do.

Mosseri said he was not claiming to be a medical expert when questioned about his qualifications to comment on the legitimacy of social media addiction, but said someone “very close” to him has experienced serious clinical addiction, which is why he said he was “being careful with my words.”

Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, arrives in court to testify in a landmark social media case that seeks to hold tech companies responsible for harms to children, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

He said he and his colleagues use the term “problematic use” to refer to “someone spending more time on Instagram than they feel good about, and that definitely happens.”

It’s “not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people’s wellbeing,” Mosseri said.

Mosseri and the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth about cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance in a way that seemed to promote plastic surgery.

“We are trying to be as safe as possible but also censor as little as possible,” Mosseri said.

In the courtroom, bereaved parents of children who have had social media struggles seemed visibly upset during a discussion around body dysmorphia and cosmetic filters. Meta shut down all third-party augmented reality filters in January 2025. The judge made an announcement to members of the public on Wednesday after the displays of emotion, reminding them not to make any indication of agreement or disagreement with testimony, saying that it would be “improper to indicate some position.”

In recent years, Instagram has added a slew of features and tools it says have made the platform safer for young people. But this does not always work. A report last year, for instance, found that teen accounts researchers created were recommended age-inappropriate sexual content, including “graphic sexual descriptions, the use of cartoons to describe demeaning sexual acts, and brief displays of nudity.”

In addition, Instagram also recommended a “range of self-harm, self-injury, and body image content” on teen accounts that the report says “would be reasonably likely to result in adverse impacts for young people, including teenagers experiencing poor mental health, or self-harm and suicidal ideation and behaviors.” Meta called the report “misleading, dangerously speculative” and said it misrepresents its efforts on teen safety.

Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico that began this week.

By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) — The wife of Noam Chomsky is acknowledging “serious errors in judgment” in the wake of new revelations about the couple’s ties to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Valeria Chomsky also says she and her husband never witnessed any inappropriate behavior.

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“Noam and I recognize the gravity of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and the profound suffering of his victims,” Valeria Chomsky wrote in a statement she shared this week with The Associated Press. “Nothing in this statement is intended to minimize that suffering, and we express our unrestricted solidarity with the victims.”

The friendship between Epstein and Noam Chomsky, the influential activist and pioneering linguist, has been known for several years. But the latest release of documents by the Justice Department show a more extensive relationship than previously reported on and includes a memo suggesting that Chomsky was advising Epstein on how to rehabilitate his public image.

Admirers of Chomsky, a longtime critic of the U.S. political and media establishment, have expressed revulsion. Vijay Prashad, who has written books on Cuba and the Middle East with Chomsky, released a letter last week saying he was “disgusted by Epstein’s pedophilia, and so by Noam’s friendship with him.”

In her public statement, Valeria Chomsky notes that she was speaking for herself and for her husband, who is 97 and “confronting significant health challenges” since he suffered a stroke in 2023. She writes that they were naive and uninformed, and cites Noam Chomsky’s “overly trusting nature” as a reason for their “serious errors in judgment.”

According to Valeria Chomsky, the two first met Epstein in 2015, and were unaware at the time of his 2008 jail term for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. By 2015, the accusations against Epstein had been the subject of hundreds of news articles, many of which detailed allegations that he had paid dozens of underage girls for sex.

“When we were introduced to Epstein, he presented himself as a philanthropist supporting science and a financial expert,” she wrote. “By presenting himself this way, Epstein gained Noam’s attention, and they began corresponding. Unknowingly, we opened a door to a Trojan horse.”

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, photographed Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, shows a photo of Epstein on a inmate report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons . (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Valeria Chomsky goes on to recall that “Epstein began to encircle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas Noam has been working on extensively. We regret that we did not perceive this as a strategy to ensnare us and to try to undermine the causes Noam stands for.”

She writes that they visited Epstein once at his ranch in New Mexico, attended dinners at his Manhattan townhouse and stayed at his apartment a few times. The relationship was friendly, but entirely professional, with no “children or underage individuals present.”

In emails exchanged in 2019, months before Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges and killed himself in his jail cell, Epstein laments his “putrid” reputation. In response, Chomsky comments on the “horrible way” Epstein has been treated by the media and advises him to ignore it. Valeria Chomsky says her husband’s remarks should be “read in context.”

“Epstein had claimed to Noam that he (Epstein) was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media,” her statement reads in part. “Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in. It is now clear that it was all orchestrated, with at least one of Epstein’s intentions being to have someone like Noam help repair his reputation by association.”

By BETH HARRIS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Casey Wasserman’s job as chairman of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee is safe after the LA28 board’s executive committee met Wednesday to discuss his appearance in recently released government files on Jeffrey Epstein.

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Wasserman has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, but documents released by the Justice Department revealed that in 2003, he exchanged flirtatious emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, who, years later, would be accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse his victims.

LA28 says that with help from an outside legal firm, it conducted a review of Wasserman’s past interactions with Epstein and Maxwell, with Wasserman’s full cooperation.

“We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented,” the board’s executive committee said in a statement.

“The Executive Committee of the Board has determined that based on these facts, as well as the strong leadership he has exhibited over the past ten years, Mr. Wasserman should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful Games.”

Last week, the IOC declined to put any additional public pressure on Wasserman to step aside.

Wasserman issued an apology after the emails were disclosed. He said he regretted his correspondence with Maxwell, “which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”

Wasserman has said he flew on a humanitarian mission to Africa on Epstein’s private plane at the invitation of the Clinton Foundation in 2002. His then-wife Laura was with him.

“This was his single interaction with Epstein,” the executive committee said. “Shortly after, he traded the publicly-known emails with Maxwell.”

Among the exchanges included was Wasserman telling Maxwell, “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”

FILE – Casey Wasserman, LA28 chairperson and president, takes questions from the media during a news conference in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

Wasserman’s eponymous sports marketing and talent-management company continues to lose clients over his emails to Maxwell.

On Wednesday, retired U.S. women’s soccer star Abby Wambach posted on Instagram that she had left the Wasserman agency after reading his emails contained in the Epstein files.

“Casey should resign,” Wambach wrote. “He should leave, so more people like me don’t have to.”

Wambach joins Grammy-winning singer Chappell Roan in leaving Wasserman’s agency. Five other artists have either demanded that Wasserman step down from his agency or said they are planning to leave his representation.

Some members of the Los Angeles city council and county board of supervisors have called for Wasserman to step down from his Olympics post.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics