2 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Meta

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.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Who needs CEOs when you’ve got AI?

If there’s one job people might actually be happy to see eliminated by AI, it’s the CEO. Especially if that CEO is Mark Zuckerberg (74 percent disapproval rate as of June 2025). Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, he might be training his AI agent replacement as we speak:

Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta Platforms, is building a CEO agent to help him do his job, according to a person familiar with the project. The agent, which is still in development, is currently helping Zuckerberg get information faster—for instance, by retrieving answers for him that he would typically have to go through layers of people to get, the person familiar with the project said.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
The Pope’s AI advisor has called Peter Thiel a heretic.

And the headline of the essay in which this happens asks if he should be burned at the stake. Father Paolo Benanti, the Papal AI advisor, doesn’t seem too pleased about Thiel’s Antichrist lectures, which Thiel has brazenly brought to Rome. “La Silicon Valley s’était lancée dans un coup d’État permanent.” I don’t think you need to know French to get the gist of that. one, but linked below is a summary of the essay. Make auto-da-fe great again??

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Meta says its AI moderation systems will replace contractors over the next few years.

Last year, content moderators who’ve risked consequences like PTSD working for Big Tech companies have started to organize for better treatment in the last several years. Now, Meta has announced a wide rollout of its AI support assistant for Facebook and Instagram, and that it will “reduce our reliance on third-party vendors” employing humans for content enforcement.

While we’ll still have people who review content, these systems will be able to take on work that’s better-suited to technology, like repetitive reviews of graphic content or areas where adversarial actors are constantly changing their tactics, such as with illicit drugs sales or scams.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Signal’s creator is working with Meta on encrypting its AI.

In a post on the website for his encrypted AI chatbot, Confer, Moxie Marlinspike says he’s working to “integrate Confer’s privacy technology so that it underpins Meta AI.”

Lina Khan was right

Khan’s FTC tried to expand the scope of antitrust law. Meta’s floundering VR ambitions shows why that mattered.

Victoria Song
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Meta’s NYC store is here to stay.

The Tardis-blue Meta Lab NYC store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is no longer a pop-up shop. Meta announced on Wednesday that the skateboarding-themed glasses store is now a “permanent flagship location,” where it will continue selling its AI smart glasses and Meta Quest headsets.

The interior of Meta’s NYC flagship store
The exterior of Meta’s NYC flagship store
1/2Image: Meta
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Meta is shutting down its VR metaverse on June 15th.

Meta announced last month it would be shifting its strategy to go “all-in on mobile” for Horizon Worlds, and today, the company shared exactly when the VR version of the app would be going away.

Update: Linked to Meta’s website about the changes.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Moltbook updates its rules about what you and your AI can do.

Just days after Meta acquired the “social” network for AI agents, the platform has updated its terms of service, stating that users must be 13 years of age or older to use the site and are “solely responsible” for actions taken by their AI agents, whether they “act autonomously or otherwise, and irrespective of whether such actions or omissions were intended.”

Robert Hart
Robert Hart
Meta’s Avocado AI needs more time to ripen.

The company postponed its next AI model, codenamed Avocado, from this month until at least May, the NYT reports. Performance apparently falls short of rivals like Google.

Meta’s spent billions trying to catch up, and Avocado will be its first major release since hiring Scale’s Alexandr Wang to revamp its efforts.

What it was like to watch grieving parents stare down Mark Zuckerberg in court

Parent advocates were determined to make their presence known to Meta’s CEO.

Lauren Feiner
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Meta’s AI chip family is growing.

The newly-launched Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) 300 chip is designed to train ranking and recommendations systems across Instagram and Facebook. And while the upcoming MTIA 400, 450, and 500 will be “capable of handling all workloads,” Meta says it will mainly use them for generative AI inference “in the near future and into 2027.”

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
The new AI mantra.

Mark Zuckerberg famously built Facebook, and the rest of Meta, on a “move fast and break things” philosophy, but one commenter has suggested that Grammarly’s new sloppelgangers could suggest a new approach for the industry.

tsmuse:

move fast and loot everything

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Meta says it will temporarily allow rival AI chatbots on WhatsApp in the EU.

The move is an effort to appease antitrust regulators from the European Commission, Reuters reports. Previously, competitors’ chatbots were being blocked on WhatsApp, but now Meta says that “for a fee” it will “support general purpose AI chatbots using ​the WhatsApp Business API in Europe” for the next 12 months.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Facebook was reportedly having some issues earlier.

At around 5:30PM ET, Downdetector showed a recent peak of more than 11,000 user reports of problems, but reports of issues have fallen dramatically. At 5:48PM ET, NetBlocks said the platform was experiencing “international outages.” A Meta status page was showing “high disruptions” for Facebook Ads Manager, including ads creation and delivery, but that has been “resolved.”

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Meta’s also got an AI shopping tool.

It’s being rolled out to testers in the US to rival similar offerings found in ChatGPT and Gemini, according to Bloomberg.

Meta’s new AI shopping tool.
Meta’s new AI shopping tool.
Image: Bloomberg
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Beat Saber is joining Meta’s Horizon Plus VR subscription.

If you don’t already own the game, which is still arguably one of the best VR games ever, you’ll be able to play it as part of the $7.99 per month subscription starting this month, Meta says.

Meta won’t let morality get in the way of a product launch

Anyone else notice that ICE isn’t worried about getting doxed by Meta?

Sarah Jeong
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
“DM me.”

As part of a test on Threads, when you type “DM me” or “message me” in a post or reply, those words will turn into a link that people can tap to start a DM conversation.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Instagram is coming to Google TV.

After launching on Amazon Fire TV in December, Instagram for TV is expanding to Google TV devices in the US starting Tuesday, as Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced in a post on Threads. The feature lets users view reels on their TV, arranged into “channels” for different topics and themes.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
AMD forges $100 billion deal with Meta for AI chips.

After buying millions of Nvidia’s AI chips last week, Meta has now also signed a multi-year agreement to buy six gigawatts worth of AMD processors for AI data centers. The deal could see Meta owning 10 percent of AMD’s stock, and follows a similar agreement between AMD and OpenAI.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Who keeps the safety researchers safe?

Look, it’s never nice to laugh at someone’s misfortune. But when a Meta AI safety researcher puts on a public demonstration of AI safety risks using their personal email as collateral, I think we should all take a moment to enjoy it.

Dkfkhfkwkdnc:

Hang this in the museum. An AI safety researcher pleading with a robot known for being unsafe to not delete her inbox. Sign of many wonderful things to come.

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

Does Big Tech actually care about fighting AI slop?

It’s harder to clean up a mess you’re still actively making.

Jess Weatherbed
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
WhatsApp helps you catch the group chat up.

It’s rolling out Group Message History, which lets group chat admins (and members, depending on permissions) share the most recent messages with new members of a chat. That should make it easier to catch people up without blasting old messages back to the whole group.

Promotional image showing features of WhatsApp Group Message HIstory
You can share up to 100 messages at once.
Image: WhatsApp