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Meta’s historic loss in court could cost a lot more than $375 million

2026-05-02T14:24:39-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez won a historic sum of $375 million in a landmark child safety case against Meta earlier this year. But the next stage of the fight could be even more consequential for Meta and the social media industry at large.

Beginning Monday, attorneys for Meta and New Mexico will return to a Santa Fe courthouse for a three-week public nuisance trial, where they'll argue over the changes the AG wants the judge to order Meta make to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Those changes include adding age verification for New Mexico users, prohibiting end-to-end encryption for users under 18 and capping their use to 90 …

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Meta threatens to pull its apps from New Mexico if forced to make ‘technologically impractical’ changes

2026-04-30T15:05:01-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Meta says it may be forced to pull Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from New Mexico if the attorney general gets his way. The state is demanding a host of changes that the company says are impossible to achieve.

After winning a $375 million jury award against Meta in a trial that argued the company misled users in the state about the safety of its products, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is asking the state court to order sweeping changes to the platforms. Among the asks are a prohibition on end-to-end encryption for minors, implementing age verification, and detecting 99 percent of new child sexual abuse material uploaded to its …

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Meta is running get-rich-quick ads for its AI tools

2026-04-30T12:48:13-04:00

Manus, an AI company Meta acquired for $2 billion last year is running ads promising quick, easy money with AI: Find local businesses without websites or with bad websites, have AI build them one, then call them up and sell it to them.

As part of the campaign, Manus was paying content creators to build out Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts that promote its AI product as an easy, lucrative gig. (The creators' TikTok accounts were taken down after The Verge inquired about them.) Some of these videos would also appear as official ads for Manus, but the posts on the paid creator accounts themselves often obscured their ties to the company …

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Instagram says it doesn’t want your tweet round ups

2026-04-29T22:14:51-04:00

The internet is full of copycat, stolen, reposted, and low-effort content - and Meta, at least publicly, has said it is working to cut off some of the reach.

Beginning in 2024, the company has made incremental announcements saying it would begin limiting "unoriginal" content from being recommended on Instagram. It meant that if you were downloading and reposting someone's Reels, or spamming the same clip over and over, your content wouldn't show up in recommendation feeds or places like the Explore tab. Similar rules were later announced for Facebook, where "unoriginal" accounts risk losing their ability to monetize content. The idea is tha …

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Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

2026-04-30T07:49:17-04:00

Meta is planning to pump billions more into AI investments this year, despite noting that millions of users have seemingly started to abandon its platforms. In an earning call on Wednesday, Meta reported that figures for "Family daily active people" - the term Meta has coined for all collective users of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger - declined by 20 million this quarter compared to the previous three months.

Meta attributes this fall to "internet disruptions in Iran, as well as a restriction on access to WhatsApp in Russia." It's up to you whether you take Meta on its word, given that by bundling the user stats together across …

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Meta isn’t doing enough to keep kids off Facebook and Instagram, rules EU

2026-04-29T07:15:18-04:00

Meta could face fines of up to $12 billion if it doesn’t remedy the DSA breaches. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Meta is breaching Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA) rules by failing to prevent children under 13 from using Facebook and Instagram, according to a preliminary decision issued by the European Commission.

The Commission announced the ruling on Wednesday after an almost two-year investigation, saying that Meta doesn't have adequate measures in place to stop under-13s from accessing its services, or to identify and remove those already on its social media platforms. A notable example is that minors can simply enter a false birth date when signing up for Facebook and Instagram to falsely declare they're over 13 years old - the minimum age ou …

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It’s primetime for conspiracy theorist video creators

2026-04-28T19:31:53-04:00

In the days since this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner was cut short when shots were fired at the event, there has been a boom of conspiracy theory videos created by people who insist that the entire situation was a false flag operation. These kinds of theories are nothing new, but the way they're spreading now is a reflection of how reaction video culture is reshaping our social media landscape. And even though the initial chaos around the shooting has started to die down, content creators are still posting about what "really" happened.

There is still much we do not know about Cole Allen, the 31-year-old suspected shooter who a …

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James Comey indicted over Instagram seashell photo that allegedly threatened Trump

2026-04-28T17:40:08-04:00

The US Department of Justice has once again indicted James Comey - this time, for an alleged threat the former FBI director made toward President Donald Trump on Instagram, as reported earlier by CNN. In its indictment, filed in a North Carolina federal court on Tuesday, the DOJ cites the now-deleted image Comey posted to Instagram last May, which showed a seashell arrangement making up the numbers "8647."

The DOJ claims "a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm." The phrase "eighty-six" can be used as slang that means to "get rid of" or "throw out," accord …

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Instagram has launched another Snapchat clone

2026-04-24T07:44:54-04:00

Instagram is testing a new dedicated app that's focused around Snapchat-like photo sharing features. The app, called "Instants," was launched in Italy and Spain yesterday, Business Insider reports, and allows users to send each other disappearing photos that are available for 24 hours and can be viewed only once during that window.

The app is currently available on both iOS and Android. Meta hasn't announced if a desktop version will follow, or whether Instants will be launched in other regions, including the US. It resembles the "Shots" instant photo sharing feature that is already baked into Instagram messages (and was later rebranded to …

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Meta is laying off 10 percent of its staff

2026-04-24T11:03:06-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg presenting at Meta Connect on September 17th, 2025. | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meta is planning to layoff around 10 percent of employees in May, according to a memo from the company's chief people officer, Janelle Gale, published by Bloomberg. That means approximately 8,000 people will see their jobs cut. Meta will also be closing around 6,000 open roles, according to Gale.

The cuts follow Meta's significant investments in AI, including spending huge sums to hire top talent and build data centers. The company forecast in January that it will spend $115 billion to $135 billion in capital expenditures in 2026 - a significant increase from its $72.22 billion in capital expenditures for 2025. The increase is to "support o …

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