Instagram users saw a flood of violent and sexually explicit contents in their Reels before the company responded to complaints …
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At least nine US states are considering legislation that would make app store owners like Apple and Google responsible for age verification before giving access to apps with minimum age requirements. Currently the legal responsibility lies with developers.
The issue is most applicable to social media apps, which typically have a minimum age of 13, and is an approach advocated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg …
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Meta community notes are expected to launch within the next couple of months, after the social network announced it would be ending its own fact-checking program because facts are so 2015. You can now apply to be a contributor to these, signing up on one of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Meantime, X owner Elon Musk appears to be threatening the impartiality of his platform’s community notes, announcing plans to “fix” the feature …
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A new report suggests that Apple and Meta could end up competing in the humanoid robots field. The social media company is said to be making “significant investment” in this product category, with a focus on household chores.
But if Apple does proceed with its own reported domestic robot plans, the Cupertino company could have a huge advantage …
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WhatsApp on Thursday announced another update coming for its users. Starting today, WhatsApp will provide multiple chat theme options for both iOS and Android users, so that they can make chats unique with “colorful chat bubbles and new wallpapers.”
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Meta has been exploring a new feature in WhatsApp that will soon let users link their social media accounts to their profile in the messaging app. While a similar feature is already available for business accounts, this option under development is aimed at regular accounts.
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Meta last year introduced significant enhancements to the Threads timeline, as users gained the option to create custom feeds and choose which feed they want to see by default. Now Meta is announcing another new feature for Threads: the ability to share custom feeds with others.
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A Meta policy document describes the company’s fears that it could accidentally develop an AI model which would lead to “catastrophic outcomes.” It describes its plans to prevent the release of such models, but admits that it may not be able to do so.
Among the capabilities the company most fears are an AI system that could break through the security of even the best-protected corporate or government computer network without human assistance …
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WhatsApp currently offers a feature that helps users plan events from group chats. Soon, this feature will be expanded to private chats as well, giving WhatsApp users more flexibility to create and manage their appointments.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently isn’t very happy about employees leaking things he says during internal company-wide meetings. The company issued a memo threatening to fire people for leaking internal comms – and that memo was of course immediately leaked …
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Yesterday Meta reported its quarterly earnings, and amid sharing updates on Threads, Instagram, and yes, the metaverse, CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined an interesting new priority for this year: getting back to ‘OG Facebook.’
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Scheduled Threads posts are now available to all, after the company first began rolling it out to a small number of users last month. Additionally, users in a few countries can now highlight and annotate parts of other people’s posts when sharing them …
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If Ray-Ban Meta glasses are not your style, the company is expected to launch a pair of Oakley smart glasses later this year. These will likely mirror the functionality of Meta’s existing AI glasses, but with very different styling.
The Oakley glasses are reportedly based on the Sphaera model, which is primarily aimed at cyclists and other athletes …
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Today, Meta is announcing Edits: a new mobile video editing platform. This comes just hours after TikTok (and as a result, CapCut) were banned in the US – though TikTok is currently being restored, at least temporarily.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently shared a video in which he announced a series of changes coming to the company’s platform policies such as Instagram and Threads. Among them, the executive revealed that it will switch from fact-checking to a Community Notes model – and it seems that this is already being implemented in the Threads app.
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A new day, a new controversy around artificial intelligence. This time, Meta has been accused of using pirated content from torrents to train its large language model (LLM) Llama, which powers Meta AI. The case was one of the first copyright lawsuits filed against a tech company for training AI.
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A recent software update resulted in a significant number of bricked Meta Quest headsets, with Meta initially shrugging and saying that for out-of-warranty Quest 2/3/3S models it wouldn’t be fixing the problem …
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Ray-Ban Meta have been the most successful smart glasses to date, offering an appealing mix of features in a form factor which is visually indistinguishable from normal sunglasses.
So far, all of the AI functionality, notifications, and messaging features have relied on the glasses reading things to you through integrated speakers, but a new report says a future model will get a display, and that it could launch as early as next year …
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As we reported in August, Meta has confirmed that it will discontinue Spark, Instagram’s AR filters, in January 2025. At the time, the company didn’t give many details except to say that it would prioritize its efforts on other products. Now we know what’s coming next: realistic AI-based filters.
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AI video editing based on text prompts is coming to Instagram next year, with the company’s head showing off the ability to do things like change your clothing and video background, as well as some funkier stuff like adding animated characters.
The company had earlier shown a demo video (below) of completely AI-generated video, stating that it was just a research project, but it seems the first practical application of the tech is arriving sooner than expected …
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Meta has been working on a lot of new features for Threads, its microblogging platform, and there’s another one coming soon. The company has now teased a long-awaited option that will let users schedule posts for a later time.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has for the first time revealed the daily number of Threads users, stating that there are now more than 100 million daily active users. It’s also been suggested that the current trajectory means that the app could catch up with the social network formerly known as Twitter.
Zuckerberg is likely aiming to fight back against the growing popularity of Bluesky, also citing a new milestone in monthly active users …
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Deep fakes are arguably the most dangerous aspect of AI. It’s now relatively trivial to create fake photos, audio, and even video. See below for deep fakes of Morgan Freeman and Tom Cruise, for example.
But while social media has so far been used as a mechanism for distributing deep fakes, Instagram head Adam Mosseri thinks it can actually play a key role in debunking them …
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It’s been a while since WhatsApp introduced the ability to make audio and video calls in the app. To make this process even easier, Meta has been experimenting with a new call dialer built into WhatsApp for iPhone that will let users call people who aren’t in their contacts.
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