Hi! And the Oscars go to… The Academy yesterday announced that its prestigious awards are leaving Hollywood, moving from the Dolby Theatre after more than two decades — to a downtown LA location just 9 miles away. Today we're exploring: |
- Overfeed: A landmark social media trial ruled that Meta and Alphabet designed addictive apps.
- Peptide wave: The gray-market supplement might soon make its way into the mainstream.
- Money money money: The average Wall Street bonus reached new heights in 2025.
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Wait, just how addicted to Facebook and YouTube are Americans today? |
In what some are posing as the possible beginning of a "Big Tobacco" moment for Big Tech, a Los Angeles jury has found social media titans Meta and YouTube liable for designing addictive products. On Wednesday, jurors in a first-of-its-kind trial ruled that both companies deliberately engineered social media platforms with addictive features — like infinitely scrollable feeds and video autoplay — and failed to provide adequate warnings about their potential danger to young people using the apps. |
The case's 20-year-old plaintiff was awarded $6 million in damages, with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, ordered to pay 70% of the total, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, to fork out the rest. The ruling also came just one day after Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in New Mexico for its social media conduct. While the penalties are peanuts compared to the companies' multibillion-dollar revenues, they could mark the start of a wave of litigation that leads to tighter regulations — and ultimately dents user engagement, the lifeblood of ad-powered social media apps. Data from Pew Research Center, however, suggests a portion of US adults might already be using Facebook and YouTube less frequently. |
Looking at Pew's social media survey results, the share of Americans who report using the apps every day has shrunk, with daily Facebook users down from 71% in 2021 to just 52% in 2025. Even with roughly half of respondents saying they logged on to both apps daily, the recent slump perhaps indicates that peak engagement for older Americans has already passed — though the share of adults that say they ever use each platform remains strong. Still, as signified by the landmark trial, "addictive" social media features are considered to have a greater impact on younger people, with the same survey finding that a whopping 95% of 18- to 29-year-olds reported ever using YouTube. |
How impending deregulation could supercharge the peptide industry |
Peptides, once confined to the tech elite, are bursting into the mainstream. The experimental, often injectable supplements are compounds consisting of chains of amino acids that are said to help melt fat, build muscle, clear up skin, and improve cognitive function. Despite many variants not having been thoroughly researched, their popularity is now growing outside of San Francisco, where a "Chinese Peptide Rave" took place in December. Search interest in the US for "peptides" has skyrocketed, this month surpassing that for "Ozempic" — by far the buzziest name in the GLP-1 arena until very recently. |
This spike in interest comes against the backdrop of a significant regulatory shift in the US: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly poised to take action that would allow compounding pharmacies to dispense certain peptides that are currently restricted by the Food and Drug Administration. Until now, biohackers have been bypassing the FDA by buying vials of peptides labeled "for research use only" and then conducting that research on themselves. The regulatory change could mean they will soon be able to ditch their Chinese peptide dealer for an array of consumer health startups, no doubt eager to start shifting the supplements as soon as they're allowed. |
Indeed, startups like Superpower and the Peter Thiel-backed Enhanced Games are getting ready to roll out their peptide offerings, as the category starts to become commercialized, pushing it further from the wellness underground and into the mainstream. "There is a rush right now," said Zak David, managing partner of Pirsek Technologies, which runs a research peptide supplier, in an interview. "We know that there's an increasing number of companies that are gearing up to move out of the gray and into the legal market." |
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Balancing Pursuit of Income with Equity Exposure |
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Wall Street bonuses hit a new record last year, edging toward $250,000 average |
2025 was a pretty good year for US stocks... and new data suggests it was an even better one for workers on Wall Street itself. In a year that saw pre-tax profits on the Street rise more than 30% to a record $65 billion, dealmakers, traders, and wealth managers raked in ~$246,900 in bonuses on average — an all-time high — per a new report from New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, published on Thursday. |
According to DiNapoli, last year's record $49.2 billion bonus pool (estimated using income tax data without including stock options or other deferred compensation) reflects Wall Street's "strong performance for much of last year, despite all of the ongoing domestic and international upheavals." High trading activity, underwriting, and asset management fees were all influential drivers behind the unprecedented gains — which trickled down to a smaller number of bankers, since the securities industry's headcount fell to 198,200 last year from the 30-year high of 201,500 seen in 2024. |
The latest bonus figures are expected to generate $199 million in additional state income tax revenue, and $91 million more for the city compared with 2024. As the WSJ and the NYT both noted, however, the rise in this year's bonuses fell short of the 15% jump that city officials had planned for. Bonuses accounted for ~42% of the New York securities industry's $503,677 average annual salary in 2024, the report outlined — Wall Street's second-highest salary on record. For context, this is nearly 5x the average annual wage of other private sector workers in New York City, and 7x the average wage for private sector workers nationwide. |
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- President Trump is giving Iran another 10 days to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, delaying threatened strikes on Iranian energy facilities until April 6.
- Are you still paying? Netflix is raising its subscription prices across all plans, with its cheapest ad-supported tier going up by $1 to $8.99 per month — its fourth price bump since 2022.
- Robotaxis are popping up everywhere... but mostly in the US, which accounts for 40% of active global deployments, according to a new Bank of America Institute report.
- New Census Bureau data shows US population growth slowed last year, adding ~1.8 million people between July 2024 and July 2025, down from around 3.2 million a year earlier.
- Cart-addition intelligence: Macy's says online customers using its AI shopping assistant spend about 4.75x more than those who don't.
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The Global X IncomeEdge℠ suite offers two ETFs with an actively managed income strategy, that target annualized distribution rates – 9% for EDGX and 13% for EDGQ. Explore the IncomeEdge. |
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- Scroll through this to-scale timeline of the last 252 million years, where 1 pixel is 10,000 years.
- For what Jibbitz' worth… How the colorful $5 charms added over $260 million to Crocs' sales last year.
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Off the charts: Which app is seeing a surge in downloads as TSA staffing shortages push airport wait times to historic highs across the US? [Answer below]. |
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