A public reckoning has arrived for big tech with two US juries finding they were liable for products that inflict harm on young people. A jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375m in damages on Tuesday over claims that its products led to child sexual exploitation, among other harms. The following day, a jury in California ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $6m over claims that both companies deliberately designed addictive products to hook young users.
These cases were the first to go to court and soon will be followed by more trials from two coordinated groups of more than 2,000 plaintiffs, including families, school districts and state attorneys general, who have brought lawsuits against Meta, parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok and Snap and Google, owner of YouTube,
‘With two unprecedented trial defeats, big tech firms face crisis akin to that faced by cigarette makers in the 1990s.’
All of the relevant charts look to be facing major challenges ahead.
Meta, 28 October 2021, has a Scorpio Sun at 5 degrees square Saturn at 7 degrees which will be forced into a painful three year period of having to leave old practices behind with tr Pluto square the Sun this year and next; and then conjunct Saturn in 2027/28. 2028 also has a car-crash Solar Arc Mars conjunct Sun.
The Facebook IPO, 18 May 2012 11.31 am New York, looks seriously rattled now with tr Uranus conjunct the Sun and nerve-stretched from June onwards with tranches of unwanted publicity as tr Uranus starts to square the Neptune and then the opposition to Mars, running on for several years. The Solar Arc Saturn is opposition the Midheaven at the moment as it is pulled up short and tr Pluto will take up the cudgels through 2027/2028 forcing a change of direction. With a moving yod of the natal Mars sextile Solar Arc Saturn inconjunct Uranus – so paralysed at what will be a game-changing period.
Mark Zuckerburg, 14 May 1984 2.39 pm White Plains, New York, will feel as if he has been holed below the waterline with his Solar Arc Mars conjunct his 4th house Neptune later this year and through 2027, giving him an unaccustomed sense of panicky failure. 2027 looks high uncertain and consumed with anxiety as his SA Neptune squares his Saturn; and 2028 will seem him in a total upheaval as his SA Pluto is conjunct his Uranus.
Google, owner of Youtube, 4 September 1998, was facing an upset from the recent Aquarius Solar Eclipse opposing its Venus with Solar Arc Neptune approaching the opposition to its financial Venus as well within months. It will feel the cold winds of hardship and deprivation from tr Pluto square its Saturn, especially August to December this year; as well as a major upheaval from August on and off into 2027 from tr Uranus opposition its Pluto.
Youtube, 14 February 2005, is in no better shape with a panicky/high anxiety Solar Arc Neptune conjunct Uranus now; the recent Eclipse conjunct its late Aquarius Sun Mercury for a crisis and forced changes. 2027 will have the panicky-failure tr Neptune square its Mars with a jolting tr Uranus square Uranus – and a hugely uncertain 2029 with SA Saturn opposition Neptune.
My goodness, it is not often that all the related charts are so starkly clear that a watershed moment has arrived. The new era is finally beginning to make its mark.
Many top Silicon Valley executives have long sent their own children to the exclusive, expensive Waldorf School. It was founded originally by Rudolf Steiner in Germany, September 1919, with Uranus in late Aquarius square Moon’s Nodes in Scorpio/Taurus.
This school boasts that it has been ‘phone free’ since the beginning. The Silicon Valley executives knew perfectly well the damage and harm their ‘products’ could cause to children. Pluto in Aquarius may bring revelations and revolution, I very much hope. I’ve always noticed that adults, too, have been negatively over-influenced by social media addictions, although obviously their brains are already fully formed. “Move fast and break things” eh, Mark Zuckerberg?
“At WSP, phones stay cozily tucked away all day.
The result? Students who talk at lunch. Who make eye contact. Who aren’t comparing themselves to curated social media feeds. Who sleep better, focus deeper, and form genuine friendships.
No phones means no distraction, no social media anxiety, and no constant comparison. Just real childhood.” (waldodrfpeninsula.org)
Thank you, Marjorie. Remember when Pluto was in Scorpio, another fixed sign, and we began to wake up to the awful reality of CSA?
This is good news that the law is acknowledging the impact of social media on children and young people. Zuckerberg truly chills me. There’s a podcast called ‘Behind the Bastards’ which does an illuminating episode on him which I would recommend to anyone interested. When I look at his astrology, that Pluto/Saturn/Mars/Moon in Scorpio opposing his Taurean Venus and Sun conjunct Algol stands out and not in a good way. You would think he was Aquarian in that the sign can be cold and detached, but he has nothing there and his Uranus in Sagittarius is unaspected.
Thank god Pluto in Aquarius is emerging clearly. I’m hoping this is the start of big tech losing massively in the long run. I’m horrified at their dystopian overreach to the point they want us to all lose our privacy and rights. If this happens, it would be a digital gulag we would find very difficult to get out of. I’m all for protecting children but not at the expense that adults have to lose privacy and human rights.
Leaders of the world are working with so many big tech companies and pushing everyone to use digital ID even though the vast majority are screaming no. Biometric surveillance is already here in the UK. They’re even talking now that no id, no internet access for anybody. We’ve come from ‘never give sensitive information out to anybody online to oh forget that, give it to us, or you cannot access sites and services.’
They’re trying to force decentralised operating system Linux and its distro’s to use age verification, which is crazy! Big tech is literally snooping in our computers, clouds, emails, phones, operating systems, etc. It’s literally breaking GDPR laws. I find the whole thing disturbing. Especially since how much of this tech is Israel linked and the predatory classes pushing it are the ones we need to be on high alert from (we can thank the Epstein files showing us the alleged depravity that lot get up to behind closed doors).
I’m really looking forward to your prediction, Marjorie, that around 2030-32, is when the Big 6 are going to seriously come undone. What I am seeing with this creepy stalking from the tech companies to lock humanity down is its forcing so many people towards decentralised platforms and are wanting a decentralised internet. I see people trying to start a movement of moving away from big corporations and their greed to being more localised in the consumer chain too and being mindful of our access to food (the oil crisis is emphasising this at the moment). That is beautifully Pluto in Aquarius.
I wonder when the tech app betting companies will have class action suits for addicting vulnerable people, draining people dry. If you watch any sports on TV in the US the ads are all for Draft Kings and FanDual, getting people to bet on the smallest moves. I believe there are other tech companies that have apps for betting on other than sports. While the TV ads and apparently the apps have warnings about addiction I’m not sure it’s enough.
Pluto is definitely bringing change to social media and all this search engines, this is forceful transformation. Honestly, all this search engines and social media applications are not safe at all for children, kids are exposed to all kinds of harmful and sensitive content. With Artificial Intelligence things are different, AI is safe for all ages to use, if you look at your Chat GPT’s, Anthropic, Perplexity and others, this models have been properly trained not to provide/produce harmful content like pornography, offensive language, sensitive information like hatred and more. AI is much safer for children, and obviously this is the transition we are finding ourselves in. I am talking from experience as I am one of the trainers of this different chatbots.
In astrology I would say this is long overdue, as Pluto is moving deeper and deeper into Aquarius, more changes are still coming even socially and politically.
Pluto in Aquarius doing what the U.S. government would not, forcing responsibility onto these tech bro companies who act like spoiled children.
This is happening on state levels because our Congress wouldn’t pass appropriate legislation to rein in big tech and now we have a White House beholden to big tech. Biden’s FTC was going after big tech, which is why Lina Khan (British and American legal scholar) was fired as soon as Trump took office as she was leading an antitrust crackdown on Big Tech giants, including Amazon, Meta, Google, and Apple.
The cases against musk are also interesting, he’s being sued, e.g., over DOGE and over xAI image abuse.
It never ceases to amaze me how this cycle repeats and the people at the top continue to be felled by their own hubris, hoisted on their own petard. they don’t learn from history or the tech companies before them (MySpace, Digg, etc). I wonder about their Neptunes possibly blinding them to reality.
Adding: Sag placements are of interest to me, I’ve noticed that Jupiter’s expansion can sometimes lead to Sag moon’s, e.g., being prone to believing their own spin. It seems as if the entire Big Tech industry is prone to this.
Elon Musk has Neptune in Sagittarius. Expansion of delusion, confusion, deception. (Not saying this is true for everyone with this placement, obviously impacted by entire chart and life experience.)
see also Tesla’s stock price in contrast to the actual value being called a “meme stock” valued by intense retail investor sentiment rather than performance.
It is kind of interesting to look at Facebook from its rise in 2008 when MySpace peaked and then fall. I still remembered what Majorie wrote a few years back, “It will feel like 2007 but it is not 2007.” But one can’t help feeling deja vu.
If anyone remembered Marjorie’s post please help me? Thanks. (keywords Saturn Neptune, Pluto in Aquarius, Pluto in Capricorn)