Boland's testimony came a day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in a case over whether Meta and YouTube are liable for allegedly harming a young woman's mental health. Zuckerberg framed Meta's mission as balancing safety with free expression, not revenue. Boland's role was to counter this by explaining how Meta makes money, and how that shaped its platforms' design.
According to The New York Times, Meta is set to spend $65 million this year backing politicians who are sympathetic to its cause. This is driven by concerns that its AI ambitions might be hampered by regulations intended to keep people safe, plus growing opposition from communities to giant data campuses popping up in their local area. Meta is starting up two new super PACs (Political Action Committees - organizations to influence election outcomes),
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify on Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court as part of a landmark trial about social media and safety that's being likened to the industry's "Big Tobacco" moment. The trial, which began in late January, centers on a young woman who alleged that she became addicted to social media and video streaming apps like Instagram and YouTube.
An internal research study at Meta dubbed "Project MYST" created in partnership with the University of Chicago, found that parental supervision and controls - such as time limits and restricted access - had little impact on kids' compulsive use of social media. The study also found that kids who experienced stressful life events were more likely to lack the ability to moderate their social media use appropriately.
The tech giant was granted a patent in December that would allow it to simulate a user via artificial intelligence when he or she is absent from the social network for extended periods, including, "for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased."
But Meta has confirmed that it is internally experimenting with a new, separate app called Instants, which would enable users to share quick snaps with their connections. As displayed in this listing, which was shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, among Meta's display of other apps (accessed via Instagram), there's a mention of Instants, which is not released publicly as yet.
Meta has been going all in on AI, whether people want it or not, and now it's bringing more features in that vein to Facebook. The network's latest move is to let people use Meta AI to animate their profile photos. Because what better way to express your individuality than to use a pre-canned AI-generated animation on your own face?
At the center of a consequential case about social media liability is a key question: did Meta lie or mislead the public about the safety of its platform, while knowing something very different? The state of New Mexico opened its case Monday arguing that public statements by Meta's top executives regularly contradicted its own internal discussions and research about the harm Facebook and Instagram posed to teens.
Arguments to begin in landmark social media addiction trial set in Los Angeles TikTok has agreed to settle in a landmark social media addiction lawsuit just before the trial kicked off, the plaintiff's attorneys confirmed. Read More Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) Read More
According to half a dozen people affiliated with companies working on or around the Meta site, the land purchase paves the way for a Phase 2 expansion of the Hyperion project, which has been widely discussed, including by President Donald Trump, as one of the nation's largest AI data centers in the works. Fortune observed active work underway on the newly acquired land, which several sources say was purchased from local landowners George B. Franklin & Sons roughly three to four months ago.
