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 only donates tens of thousands of pairs of smart glasses to blind veterans when it’s in extreme distress.
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Oof the PR crisis must be bad
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On Sunday, the rich and powerful gathered to watch men choke each other out on the White House lawn. Welcome to peak idiocracy.
Smart glasses, like the Ray-Ban Meta, have become a resource for people with disabilities. Meta says the company and its partners will provide hands-on training for all the veterans who receive a free pair of AI glasses through the Blinded Veterans Association or TechSoup.
According to The New York Times:
Still, Meta decided not to make major changes to its A.I. plans after the Instagram hacks, according to the internal documents. “We agreed to leave all products on and to pause one ongoing experiment (IG Forgot Password Chat),” the documents said. “All other entrypoints will remain available.”
[The New York Times]
Despite last year’s $167 million verdict against NSO Group for its Pegasus software hacking some 1,400 WhatsApp users, Meta says it has detected new spear phishing attacks on its platform from the spyware maker, in violation of the court’s permanent injunction:
We successfully disrupted NSO-linked social engineering attempts, after investigating user reports. They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp, similar to previously reported 1-click phishing campaigns linked to NSO. We also caught them creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp, which we took down.
Internal documents, which were disclosed as part of a wave of child safety lawsuits filed by school districts across the US, showed:
Snapchat sent phone alerts to adolescents during school hours, urging them to share what was going on in their classrooms.
Meta paid “teen ambassadors” to promote Instagram and hand out swag to their friends at school.
TikTok gave the National PTA millions of dollars, in part to throw school events about online safety and provide favorable comments to journalists.
The company’s new agentic developer tools are giving the discontinued smart displays a second life as a smart home controller, family message board, art display, or anything you can dream up. The move comes shortly after Microsoft announced Project Solara. Meta says the tools are hardware-agnostic and work with many existing devices. Still, anything that breathes new life into a defunct gadget is a good thing.
So says Meta spokesperson Che’von Lewis. Senior was previously Meta’s Product Lead for its Studio and New Vertical portfolios. You can read more about Supernatural’s forthcoming era here, and catch up on the buff ladies who worked so hard to save it here.
The $3.99-per-month subscription adds features like letting you keep a story up for 48 hours and the ability to customize your bio’s font. You can see the whole list of features on Instagram’s website.
The previous boss, Gabriel Aul, announced his retirement in February with Saxs Persson, once the EVP of the Fortnite ecosystem at Epic, taking over, Business Insider reports.
[Business Insider]
The EU’s General Court said the European Commission’s decision to designate Facebook Marketplace as a gatekeeper service under Digital Markets Act rules “lacks sufficient reasoning,” and that it should be exempt from the regulation. Meta also tried to appeal Messenger’s designation, but that decision stands firm.
The “Model Capability Initiative” that records staff’s computing activity for AI training is being updated following backlash. Now, Meta employees can pause MCI for up to 30 minutes, and staff who handle sensitive content, work remotely, or have concerns regarding bandwidth or device battery can be exempt from using it.
[The Information]
The platform is testing a way to limit teens from seeing too many posts related to topics like nutrition, weightlifting, or anxiety management. It sounds similar to the “nudge” notifications Instagram launched in 2022, though this one will apply across home, explore, and reels feeds.
Meta also announced that its 13-plus setting is expanding globally to Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.
The @obamawhitehouse account briefly showed images of Iranian propaganda, which have since been taken down, as spotted earlier by TMZ. The account belonging to the US Space Force Chief Master Sergeant was also hijacked.
New FCC filings hint at the imminent launch of four new devices, which appear to magnetically dock to a mysterious “debug tool.”
After reducing funding for the board earlier this year and reportedly planning additional cuts in 2027 and 2028, Platformer reports that Meta has committed $13 million in “top-up” money. That will keep the board operating through 2028, but doesn’t necessarily change plans to cut it off after that.
Paxton alleges that Meta can access WhatsApp messages despite Meta’s claims that they are end-to-end encrypted. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone says that WhatsApp “cannot access people’s encrypted communications and any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
It’s been a busy couple days for Paxton; my colleague Lauren Feiner just posted about a lawsuit he filed against Discord.
The app, available on iOS, lets you browse groups that you’re a part of, make posts to groups, and ask questions to a chatbot to get information sourced from groups. Saw this one thanks to Matt Navarra.
Wired reports that the Zuckerberg empire is prepared to hire a “Beach water person” who will serve as a lifeguard, among other things. We found the relevant job listing here, but are relying on Wired for the Zuckerberg family connection. In any event, this is certainly a job title that now exists — probably for the first time. The whole job listing smells AI-generated. Please let us know if you get a callback after applying for this position.
The New York Times and Reuters report that a memo was sent to Meta employees on Monday reassigning 7,000 of them, and said that “As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures.”
The memo told employees to work remotely on Wednesday, when it will lay off about 10 percent of its workforce, roughly 8,000 people, with emails sent at 4AM local time.
