Meta

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Plaintiff attorney Rachel Lanier told Judge Carolyn Kuhl this morning that after she’d admonished against using smart glasses in the courthouse, they learned that one person was still wearing them in the hallway where jurors were present. After alerting Meta’s counsel, Lanier said they were told the glasses weren’t recording.

Amid reports that Meta is preparing to release a smartwatch later this year, one Verge commenter has already figured out what the social media giant is going to do with all that new data.

Charles Porch, who helped land Instagram’s biggest partnerships — including the launch of Beyoncé’s self-titled album on the social network — will now serve as OpenAI’s first VP of global creative partnerships.

The funding will go toward Meta’s pro-AI super PACs, including two new ones: Republican-focused “Forge the Future Project” and Democrat-focused “Making Our Tomorrow,” the New York Times reports. The PACs will back politicians who are friendly to AI and push back against legislation that could limit the growth of Meta’s AI business.

The Meta CEO walked through the public entrance of the LA Superior Court and past parent advocates and media waiting to learn if they’d get a seat to hear his testimony.

Just after we entered the courtroom, we learned that a juror has been hospitalized. The parties decided to postpone today’s testimony from former Meta employees to see if the juror can return. Regardless, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify tomorrow — either before the original juror, or an alternate.

Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta have received “hundreds” of subpoenas from the DHS in recent months, according to a report from The New York Times. The agency is reportedly asking the platforms for the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other information associated with accounts that “track or criticize” ICE.

Remember when EssilorLuxottica said it sold 2 million and would hit 10 million a year by 2027? 10M seems well within reach. “In 2025, we sold more than 7 million units of AI glasses, posting exponential growth,” said CEO Francesco Milleri. Prices may stay high in the short term, though, they hinted on the earnings call.

“Trying to isolate over 100mn people from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” WhatsApp says a statement to the Financial Times.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is suing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for their alleged roles urging Meta and Apple to remove a Facebook group and app documenting ICE agents. FIRE claims they unconstitutionally coerced companies to censor speech. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused FIRE of spinning “this correct decision for Apple to remove these apps as them caving to pressure instead of helping prevent further harm to federal officers.”

Support for voice and video calls between individual chats is now available to some beta testers, allowing web users to place and receive calls without giving Meta so much personal data via the WhatsApp desktop app. It’ll roll out to more users “over the coming weeks,” according to WABetainfo.