Lily Jamali

Sure.

Lily Jamali with BBC News.

Nice to see everybody.

On the billionaire tax proposal, I just wondered if you have actually engaged with any of the billionaires who have threatened or have left.

And what have those conversations been like?

Kiitos. Kiitos. Kiitos. Kiitos. Kiitos.

In the electric vehicle space, it wasn't long ago, just a couple weeks ago, that we saw that China's BYD has surpassed Tesla as the biggest EV maker in the world. And we've also seen a bit of a backlash, to say the least, against Elon Musk, the boss at Tesla, for his involvement in right-wing politics and the role that he played therein.

the Trump administration for the first couple of months last year. So what we're seeing now is a pivot away from EVs. Elon Musk even said that they are actually going to be phasing out the Model S and the Model X, two vehicles that were blockbusters at various points in this company's history. It was there when the Model X was released 10 years ago.

The company seemed like it was at the top of the world back then, but they're moving towards robotics, moving towards AI, capping that with this $2 billion investment by Tesla in Musk's private artificial intelligence venture, XAI.

This is a case brought by a 19-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM. She had been alleging that the algorithmic design, the way these platforms actually design what dictates the stuff that we all see, left her addicted and affected her mental health. So she was suing not just Snapchat, but also TikTok and those other companies that you mentioned, YouTube and Meta.

In this case, what we saw today was a settlement announced at a hearing today with Snap, but those other three cases remain active. So those other three defendants will still have to defend themselves in court starting next week at trial, where we will see Mark Zuckerberg, the boss over at Meta, take the stand unless his company ends up following Snap and settling as well.

I mean, do we know what Mark Zuckerberg or other tech CEOs are expected to argue? Well, we have a sense from some of the statements that they have made, for example, at congressional hearings. Generally, they're very careful not to take responsibility or admit that they were aware of some of the addictive nature of these platforms.

You know, some of the congressional hearings have been, I would call them fireworks, for lack of a better term. They've been incendiary because you have lawmakers in the U.S. Senate, for example, demanding that people like Mark Zuckerberg apologize in front of parents who are at these hearings.

I don't think we're going to see that kind of showmanship. This is a trial that is really meant to get down to brass tacks to adjudicate the main legal argument, which really hinges on this legal provision from back in 1996.

The tech companies have long said that that provision protects them from what users post to their platforms. You know, they're the public square, not responsible for what people say there. But this case and a couple of other ones that we're following really will put that legal provision to the test. Because what they are saying is it's not about what users say, it's about the way that the...

Ja vain lyhyesti, what's at stake here? What could be the ramifications if the tech companies lose?

I think the biggest thing is that legal provision potentially no longer having the same power that it once gave to the companies. It's been a legal shield. It has kept so many cases out of court. When you move from saying that it's the user's fault to saying it's the company's fault and their design choices,

That could really change the legal game for these companies, so they're very concerned. And frankly, I think a lot of observers wouldn't be surprised if some other companies follow suit and make settlements like what we saw today. Lili Jamali in San Francisco. To Syria now. The government there has announced a fresh ceasefire with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the SDF.

We have some details that come from a memo which I have viewed that was shared by TikTok CEO Shou Chu with employees today.

So what we know is that it will be, the U.S.