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.
FROM CJ
1) Elon Musk’s Grok AI has now been banned in Germany and being fined 100k euros daily due to his digital sex abuse imagery he allows on X. I’m sure Musk can afford that, however, it’s setting up a precedent in the EU of countries turning and hinting at what is to come.
2) Disneyland has just cancelled their billion dollar deal with Sam Altman’s Open AI, and have now shut down Sora and people are beginning to wonder if the AI bubble is looming.
Also, after Open AI’s deal with the pentagon, it has reportedly lost around 1.5 million users.
3) France, Germany and Denmark are leading the way by ditching Bill Gate’s Microsoft for Linux operating systems due to concerns of privacy and data harvesting.
4) Peter Thiel and Alex Karp’s company, Palantir, is under deep scrutiny and being investigated by officials reviewing a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) deal and looking at it’s dealings with the NHS.
The Green Party’s Zack Polansky has also been loud about removing Palantir out of our infrastructure and NHS.
ADD ON: Larry Ellison, 17 August 1944, current chairman of Oracle, in contrast looks upbeat now with his Solar Arc Jupiter square his Sun this year; and tr Uranus moving to square his Jupiter from the middle of this year into 2027. He does admittedly have his Solar Arc Mars opposition his Uranus across this year which suggests a shock; and minor career setbacks now and on and off till late 2027 plus a calamitous midpoint this May but he will be buffered by positive aspects. Where his chart shows more obvious strain is in 2028/29 with tr Neptune square his Saturn but even then he has a Jupiterian boost to compensate. 2031 has his Solar Arc Saturn conjunct his Neptune which will be problematic.
Oracle, 16 June 1977, is showing more signs of stress – with tr Pluto starting to hard aspect its Fixed T square of Mars Venus opposition Uranus square Saturn picking up in 2027 and running through till 2031/32. That suggests massive pressures to change causing hardship and frustration as well as turbulence. There may also be a jolt in 2027 from SA Mars conjunct the Sun.
Social media companies are, in a sense, Aquarian twice over. Their business model is about groups of people communicating online. And they are of course all companies, which is groups of shareholders, and which have groups of employees. So, in a way, the effect of Pluto-in-Aquarius will fall in a harsher way than on other companies.
I was going to add trade unions to this list, as they are also groups of people. But then I looked up Pluto’s time in other signs. And Pluto’s time in Libra (1971-83) lines up almost precisely with the rise and fall of the trade union movement in the UK, from Heath’s appeal to the country in 1973 (“Who governs Britain?”) to the rise of Margaret Thatcher and her defeat of the trade unions in 1984-86.
It is interesting to see just how rapid the rise of trade union power was in the 1970s and also how rapid the fall of its power was as Pluto exited that sign. Again, this is from a British point of view. Other histories are available (a joke that other Brits and people who watch British TV programmes may get).
Re. Oracle: They have expanded too much with their media shopping spree, according to a tech analyst I trust the most. The core business of Oracle still is their SaaS ERP/CRM branch, which will continue to be hit by AI. Most of the cleanup will likely fall to David, January 9th, 1983.
To add to the bit about Oracle, something I learnt only recently.
A while ago, Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, the owners of the Java programming language and the designer of the software that implements it. It has been freely available till now and was used by many without much thought about licensing it even in corporate environments.
But it seems that Oracle has now decided that the licensing of its implementation of Java will be chargeable on the basis of the total number of employees of any organisation, even non-commercial organisations/charities, even if a few or even only one employee is using the software. We are auditing all the systems in my workplace to make sure that not a single copy of that software is found, because even if one user is found with that software, it will be billed as if each and every one of us is using that software.
Ellison is slashing about 10,000 jobs across the job spectrum to purportedly fund AI. I agree that it’s really more about his shopping spree.
Having worked in the software business for decades, including an all-too-nice competitor of Oracle, I’ve known about his bad reputation since the 90s. Alas, he and Oracle were successful into hooking clients into paying ongoing fees for maintaining and using their software via Oracle ‘consultants’.
It’s disconcerting to see that more often than not, esp in business, the bad, ruthless guys win.
It’s just been announced that America is banning all new foreign made routers due to so-called cyber security risks. People can still use their old routers but how long before they phase it out and it becomes obsolete tech?
There is only one corporation who do make US based routers in which home grown Americans will be forced to buy from in future, and that is (goes to check notes), yes, that would be Starlink, Elon Musk’s company. I’m am utterly sick to the back teeth of these people even existing in our world.
Some more good news on the tech bro’s;
1) Elon Musk’s Grok AI has now been banned in Germany and being fined 100k euros daily due to his digital sex abuse imagery he allows on X. I’m sure Musk can afford that, however, it’s setting up a precedent in the EU of countries turning and hinting at what is to come.
2) Disneyland has just cancelled their billion dollar deal with Sam Altman’s Open AI, and have now shut down Sora and people are beginning to wonder if the AI bubble is looming.
Also, after Open AI’s deal with the pentagon, it has reportedly lost around 1.5 million users.
3) France, Germany and Denmark are leading the way by ditching Bill Gate’s Microsoft for Linux operating systems due to concerns of privacy and data harvesting.
4) Peter Thiel and Alex Karp’s company, Palantir, is under deep scrutiny and being investigated by officials reviewing a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) deal and looking at it’s dealings with the NHS.
The Green Party’s Zack Polansky has also been loud about removing Palantir out of our infrastructure and NHS.
The one tech oligarch who always seemingly slithers under the radar is Larry Ellison who has stated he wants the entire world under global surveillance because we ‘will be under our best behaviour.’ This is the man who helps fund the IDF and who is close friends with Netanyahu. If social media and interviews are anything to go by, the world has seen the IDF’s ‘best behaviour,’ in dehumanising an entire population and parading it proudly. Something Ellison has no problem with. Alarming to say the least.
The sooner the super rich are capped from ever becoming billionaires, the better the world will be. Oligarchs have been harassing humanity since the days of Aristotle who said something along the lines of when oligarchy reach powerful positions in society it indicates a collapsing of the political system and when revolutions are likely to arise.
As part of his world plan, Larry Ellison funds the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) which promotes the use of AI in governance via his company Oracle. So far his pledge/donation of £257 million (amongst others) has enabled TBI to expand its operations to 45 countries. TBI operates ‘by embedding staff directly into government offices to support policy delivery’. (google AI)
I would hazard to say that it is not the technology that is at fault, but that these companies have gone beyond concentrating on making profits for their shareholders, to become behemoths that are intent on empire building and little else. In their naked pursuit of power and domination they risk bankrupting themselves to the distress of their shareholders, many of whom are relying on their 401s to provide a retirement income. A clear example of this are the rumours circling around Oracle.
It is not merely big tech that suffers from this disease. I worked for a nationalised industry, which suffered from the same malaise. In the end the executive chairman was retired and a proper businessman was employed to run it.
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)
Also, worth mentioning “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams, released here in paperback in the UK by PanMacmillan on 26th February, when tr Mars in Aquarius was crossing the 28 Aquarius degree of the Solar Eclipse, and square Uranus in Taurus. Quite explosive? Anyway, here’s a bit of the blurb from the publisher’s website:
“Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook believing the company could change things for the better. Instead, what she encountered over seven years was so shocking that Meta obtained a legal order to silence her.
Now you can read her award-winning story. Candid and entertaining, Wynn-Williams’ account pulls back the curtain on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the global elite. She exposes the true cost of Silicon Valley’s ambition, from outrageous schemes cooked up on private jets to the alarming consequences of Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of global dominance.
Careless People is an ordinary woman’s gripping and darkly funny memoir that will forever change how you view the technology that runs our lives – and the unchecked power of those who control it.” panmacmillan.com
Exactly what Keynes pointed out in his 1930’s critique of capitalism.
Oops! This was supposed to reply to patritius above on companies and institutions
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.
Being a long term user of Linux, I am unaware of any age verification checks being required to use the use Linux or its distros.
I can assure you that if any big tech firm did try to muscle in on Linux and its distros, there would be an explosion of outrage from the community
A lot of Linux distro users are rightfully angry. It shouldn’t be allowed. It screams of control and snooping.
The irony that the predatory class are demanding it to protect the children is insane. If I had kids, I’d be concerned that the powers that be would know, via the tech they can now access, where exactly my kids are.
Here’s an article on Linux now being ordered to put age verification checks into their systems. One of the people being loud about this is the ever smarmy and lobby bought Gareth Newsome:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/one-penguin-that-isnt-suitable-for-kids-linux-will-now-carry-out-age-verification-checks
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)