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.
Joelle Pineau, who oversaw Meta’s fundamental AI research (FAIR) lab until she departed in April, wrote that the new executive role at the AI startup would be an “exciting new chapter.”
[X (formerly Twitter)]
The country’s communications regulator claims people use the messaging apps to “deceive and extort money,” as well as involve Russians in “terrorist activities,” the Associated Press reports. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on the creation of a state-backed messaging app as part of efforts to exercise more control over the internet.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed several “clippers,” or the people who dice up longer videos into short, grabby clips that get posted to accounts across Instagram and TikTok. One person, whose clipping business earns $20,000 to $30,000 per month, told the WSJ that “the only way to be famous in today’s internet world is with clips.”
[The Wall Street Journal]
The new Instagram Maps request to enable location services (feeding Meta valuable ad targeting data from your Android or iPhone) has spawned incredulous reactions, along with claims it’s on by default, despite Adam Mosseri’s denials.
Still, he says, “We’ll get out a few design improvements as quickly as possible.”
We’ve known WhatsApp is working on chats with other apps for some time, in order to comply with EU rules on interoperability, but Meta is also working on chats without any app at all.
WABetaInfo found evidence for “guest chats” in a beta build, which let users send a link for an online chat, no app or account required. It’ll be encrypted, but limited to text only — no voice calls, group chats, or even GIFs.
[wabetainfo.com]
The Verge’s Hayden Field and I chat about how AI researcher became the most lucrative tech job of all time.
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Verge Score
Great for outdoorsy folks. Everyone else, get the Ray-Bans.
The guy who renamed Facebook to Meta went long with a blog post this morning about a grandiose AGI-ish vision for artificial intelligence and why his company is so invested in it. It also might help explain why Meta is making huge offers to hire “post-money” AI experts who aren’t completely convinced Meta is the place to be.
We’re still churning through the whole thing, but you can start with Zuckerberg’s accompanying video right here.
The company plans on holding mock interviews where it will give coding candidates access to an AI assistant, according to a report from 404 Media.
“We’re obviously focused on using AI to help engineers with their day-to-day work, so it should be no surprise that we’re testing how to provide these tools to applicants during interviews,” a Meta spokesperson told 404 Media.
The company is making the change starting in October “in response to the EU’s incoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which introduces significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties,” according to a blog post.
Google announced in November that it would stop serving political ads in the EU due to the TTPA as well.
Meta’s hinted at this kind of wristband before, but The New York Times just published a deeper dive based on a research paper published in Nature. The neat thing is it can “predict” what you’re going to do based on electrical signals sent from your brain through your muscles. This isn’t a new concept. Third-party straps like the Mudra Band do similar things. But according to my colleague Alex Heath, this particular band will launch at Connect with Meta’s Hypernova glasses.
Adult-managed accounts that primarily post pictures of children will no longer be recommended to adult users “who have shown potentially suspicious behavior,” according to Meta, and vice versa — making them harder to find in Search. This was announced today alongside new features for teen accounts that make it easier to report and block unwanted contact in DMs.
[about.fb.com]
The changes include tools to compare post performance over time and see where people encounter your posts. You can read more about the changes in a blog post or on Threads.
Reportedly in testing since June, I’ve now been served three of these unskippable “Ad break” ads over the last two days. It’s jarring, and has accelerated my desire to quit the platform that’s increasingly less fun and flooded with AI slop.
Meta appears to be testing the option to sign up for its X rival with a Facebook account, as it slowly separates Threads from its Instagram origins, with a support page but no official announcement yet. It opens up a new audience for the app, which is closing in on X’s daily active user numbers.
[help.instagram.com]
Researchers Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung are said to be joining Meta’s superintelligence lab, the latest of several high-profile OpenAI researchers and developers to be plucked by the social media giant. That would make this the second big move in as many years for Wei and Won Chung, who left Google’s Brain research group to join OpenAI in 2023.
“We’re calling the first one Prometheus and it’s coming online in ‘26,” Zuckerberg says. “We’re also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years.”
He also pointed to a SemiAnalysis report that goes into detail about Meta’s AI “Superintelligence” strategy, including where the company has made some missteps and how it’s moving forward.
Zuckerberg is picking off top talent from across the industry, and OpenAI might be more vulnerable than most.
According to Similarweb data reported by TechCrunch, the Threads mobile app reached 115.1 million daily active users in June, compared to the 132 million daily actives for X and 4.1 million for Bluesky. But while X’s growth declined by 15.2 percent year-over-year on mobile, Threads has increased by 127.8 percent during the same period.
X only has to take Meta seriously on iOS and Android, however, given it’s still thrashing both Threads and Bluesky for web visits.
Bloomberg reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s latest high-priced AI hire is Apple’s foundation AI model leader, Ruoming Pang, based on an offer worth “tens of millions of dollars per year,” plus Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic.
Last week, former Apple AI lead Daniel Gross confirmed his departure from the startup Safe Superintelligence Inc., reportedly also to join Meta’s team. Bloomberg’s sources said Pang’s departure “...could be the start of a string of exits.”
[bloomberg.com]
The company doesn’t have any posts on the platform yet, but you can follow its profile now.
[threads.com]
