Meta has agreed to a $18 billion (£13.3 billion) settlement with multiple US states to resolve their claims that Facebook and Instagram endangers children. The social media giant was accused of knowingly and deliberately designing features that could get children addicted to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Many commentators are describing the settlement as social media’s “tobacco moment”, said Sky News.

What happened?
Meta has agreed to implement new safeguarding features for teenage Instagram and Facebook users, while denying any wrongdoing. The settlement “came as a surprise”, said the BBC’s technology editor Zoe Kleinman. “I was expecting weeks of courtroom drama.”

What will change?
The ruling just applies to children in the US but the changes could have an impact on children all over the world as other countries ask for them, too. It should “fundamentally change the social media experience for young people”, said The Guardian.

The “biggest alteration” is that Meta must now “make many of its safety limitations the default setting” for accounts created by under-18s, a “pivot from its previous opt-in approach”. There will be a two-hour time limit on Instagram and Facebook for known teen users (direct messaging will not count towards the daily use limit), and notifications will be muted between midnight and 6am, and between 8am and 3pm on school days. ‘Likes’ will be hidden on posts from teenagers.

Meta will also enhance measures ‌to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content, although David Greene, legal counsel at digital privacy firm Electronic Frontier Foundation, said collecting the relevant identifying data poses significant privacy risks. 

What about other social media companies?
YouTube and TikTok owner ByteDance, as well as other social media companies, are facing thousands of US lawsuits brought by states, school districts and individuals who claim the companies also intentionally designed their platforms to keep young users hooked.

Meta has called on them to follow its lead, and even said it would limit teen accounts to only one hour a day if they bring in similar time restrictions, too. Should the other tech giants fall in line, social media “might indeed start to look more like tobacco”, said The Telegraph: “still a regular part of life, but heavily regulated and restricted, and widely understood to be bad for you”.

The sight of cloudy white plane trails, “set against a bright blue sky, creates a romantic image of aviation”, said Aerospace Global News. But their very existence “also represents the darker side of flying”.

These innocuous-looking white streams “are one of the most urgent yet solvable climate challenges facing aviation today”, said Google. It is about to take part in Operation Blue Skies, a UK government trial that could provide a plane-diverting solution.

Heat trappers
The white streams are known as “condensation trails” or “contrails”. They form when an aircraft’s engine emissions encounter extremely cold air at high altitudes, causing tiny ice particles to develop. They often fade soon after they appear, but very cold and moist atmospheric conditions can allow them to linger and spread. Over time, these lingering contrails can contribute to cloud formation that traps heat that would otherwise radiate away from the Earth.

In 2019, there were about 40 million scheduled passenger flights; more than 40% of them left contrails behind them for at least part of the journey, said The Economist. Many were “ephemeral” but, in more than 5% of the total distance flown – “comfortably enough for 10 round trips a day to the Moon” – they developed into cirrus clouds. “In doing so, they warm the planet.”

Changing course
Operation Blue Skies is based on the theory that, if scientists can use artificial intelligence to predict the areas of the atmosphere where contrails are most likely to form, jets could be directed to avoid them.

The trial will focus on the Shanwick air-traffic control area, in the eastern half of the North Atlantic corridor, which accounts for around 5% of global contrail warming. Using satellite images and flight data to identify where planes have previously produced contrails, and combining these with weather patterns, Google will predict when and where new contrails are most likely to occur. Air-traffic controllers will then direct pilots to avoid those areas.

Passengers are unlikely to notice the re-route, as a diverted aircraft’s altitude will only change by around 2,000ft – a minor adjustment similar to those taken already to “avoid turbulence and bad weather”, said the BBC.

A defaced mural in Belgrade depicts Ratko Mladić, the “Butcher of Bosnia”. Commander of the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s, he was convicted of war crimes and genocide, and died in prison in The Hague yesterday, at the age of 84.

Andrej Isakovic / AFP / Getty Images

Somerset: Nettlebridge, Oakhill
Handsome Bath-stone villa designed in a period style but built in the 1950s. The property includes a two-bed self-contained lodge. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, orangery, garden, gym, garage. £1.15 million; Hamptons.

Perthshire: Walled Garden Villa, Blairgowrie
A striking, architect-designed contemporary house set within a former walled garden, with easy access to Blairgowrie Golf Club. 2 suites, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, open-plan living-dining room, garden, garage, workshop. OIEO £895,000; Strutt & Parker.

Norfolk: Riverside Barn, South Creake
An exceptional Victorian barn conversion on the banks of the River Burn in an idyllic rural location with fine views. 3 beds, 3 baths, study, kitchen-dining room, recep, garden, parking. £825,000; Sowerbys. 

Cornwall: Down End Cottage, Talland Bay
A lovely rural cottage perched in a spectacular coastal setting with views across the Atlantic Ocean. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen-breakfast room, recep, garden room, garden, garage. OIEO £1.5 million; John Bray Estates.

West Sussex: Three Oaks Farm, Ifold
Impressive, modernist, architect-designed home in over six acres of rewilded grounds. 3 suites, kitchen-dining room, 2 receps, self-contained detached suite-office, garden, parking. £3.4 million; Strutt & Parker.

The real scrutiny of Burnham begins now
Eva Barboni in City A.M.
“Lucky” Andy Burnham is “heading into the autumn” with positive “economic winds at his back”, writes Enterprise Britain’s Eva Barboni. The outlook is “rosy” but there’s still the “critical” issue of “improving livelihoods”. Entrepreneurs want “strong signals” that Burnham will encourage “scale-ups”, ensure stability, and be “a vocal ally” of thriving businesses that “drive job creation”. When Parliament returns from its summer recess, he must “deliver policies that will put Britain on a path towards shared prosperity”.

It’s none of Prue Leith’s business what I feed my kids
Julie Cook in The i Paper
“I’m here to defend the Great British Lunchbox” from Prue Leith, writes Julie Cook. She’s appointed herself “guardian of the school lunch table” and wants lunchboxes “banned” because she says parents fill them with unhealthy treats. That’s “rather patronising”. We can put together a healthy meal “just as well in a plastic tub as a school dinner lady can on a warm plate”. As a parent, you can’t “control” much about what happens in school but “you can have a say over what your child eats”.

This dystopian saga in Middlesbrough has much to teach us
The Telegraph’s editorial board
“Every now and again, a single event exposes the crises that define modern Britain,” says The Telegraph. The latest is the crash that killed two policemen and five youths in Middlesbrough. That town is “beset by brazen criminality”, with residents “too scared to report” the “balaclava-clad gangs of joyriding youths”. Their “repeat offending typifies Britain’s broken justice system”. And then there’s upbringing: how many come from “stable families that give children the best chance of avoiding a life of crime and poverty”?