Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, counts more than 3 billion monthly users across its family of apps. Now, it’s trying to build the next generation of services in virtual reality and the metaverse through Meta Quest headsets and Horizon Worlds — all while dealing with antitrust pressures, privacy concerns, and younger users shifting to other platforms.
Meta and Anthropic defended AI training as fair use, but with major caveats.
A Meta exec calls Sam Altman “dishonest,” my conversation with the startup CEO who is suing OpenAI, and AI is coming for games.
YouTube is a hit on TVs, and Meta and TikTok are looking to get in on that battleground, The Information reports. What will launch first: Instagram for TV or Instagram for iPad?
[theinformation.com]
Kyle Chayka, who wrote for this website about the “airspace” aesthetic created by social media, is now looking into how LLM models affect creativity. He suggests that if Silicon Valley once homogenized decor — and, to some degree, created beige influencers — it may now be making LLM users less original, too.
[newyorker.com]
The recently-launched CapCut clone is also adding more text effects and will let you apply voice enhancement to voiceovers. Check out all of the new updates in a post from Instagram’s Creators account.
The original source of the report, Cybernews, says that since the start of the year, its researchers have “discovered 30 exposed datasets containing from tens of millions to over 3.5 billion records each. In total, the researchers uncovered an unimaginable 16 billion records.”
This isn’t a breach of one company or another’s systems, but compiled records, with some believed to be from “infostealer” malware, as well as previous leaks. As Bleeping Computer points out, what you should be doing hasn’t changed -- using unique passwords with a password manager, enabling two-factor authentication, and adding other forms of security like passkeys and security keys that can replace passwords altogether.
[bleepingcomputer.com]
The US District Court in Washington, DC, was the home of two of the most important tech trials in decades — plus so much more.
While Meta said ads will be globally introduced to WhatsApp’s updates tab “slowly over the next several months,” the company has now clarified to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DCP) that they won’t arrive in the European Union market until 2026. That gives EU privacy regulators time to discuss data-sharing concerns about the ad model.
[politico.eu]
to readers of Katherine Losse’s The Boy Kings. The Financial Times makes a compelling case that loser-bro Zuck is who he has always been. Also, his feelings were very hurt when we all had a good laugh about Meta’s avatars (“Legs coming soon!”). No wonder he wants AI friends, who’ll never mock him like that.
WhatsApp announced yesterday that it will now show ads from businesses through its Stories-like feature, months after adding an unnecessary floating AI button to the main chat interface. In response, Signal president Meredith Whittaker has promised “no AI clutter, no surveillance ads — whatever the rest of the industry does” for the independent nonprofit messaging app.
“The next evolution is coming on June 20,” reads the caption to a teaser video republished by Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth. The Oakley x Meta tie-up was first reported back in January as the sporty alternative to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, meant to appeal to cyclists and other outdoor athletes.
The platform began working on reposts in 2022, and now some users are seeing a new “repost” button that will let them share other content that they see on the platform, as spotted earlier by TechCrunch.
Instagram spokesperson Cullen Heaney confirmed to The Verge that the platform is testing the feature, but didn’t share any additional details about the rollout.
[techcrunch.com]
In the coming weeks, Instagram will show creators weekly and monthly reports with stats about post views and their follower count. It’s also launching shareable “celebrations” notifications that appear when creators reach certain milestones, such as hitting 10,000 followers.
On Thursday, the Oversight Board overturned Meta’s decision to leave up a Facebook post showing an AI deepfake of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo Nazário in an ad for a gambling app. The ad was viewed more than 600,000 times and received more than 50 reports.
The Oversight Board points to a larger problem at Meta, saying it is “likely allowing significant amounts of scam content on its platforms” and that reviewers aren’t “empowered” to enforce the platform’s policy against deepfake scams.
