Page 8 - Mark Zuckerberg

New Mexico judge approves Zuckerberg's removal from child safety lawsuit

A New Mexico judge on Thursday granted Mark Zuckerberg's request to be dropped from a lawsuit that alleges his company has failed to protect young users on its social media platforms from sexual exploitation. The case is one of many filed by states, school districts and parents against Meta and its platforms over concerns about child exploitation. Beyond courtrooms around the U.S., the issue has been a topic of congressional hearings as lawmakers and parents are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people's lives. In New Mexico, Attorney General Ral Torrez sued Meta and Zuckerberg late last year following an undercover online investigation. While granting Zuckerberg's request, Judge Bryan Biedscheid dismissed Meta's motion seeking to dismiss the state's claims, marking what Torrez described as a crucial step for the case to proceed against the social media giant. For decades, Meta Platforms have prevented nearly every legal challenge against the

How AI made Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg popular again in Silicon Valley

Many developers and technologists have embraced the Meta chief as their champion of 'open-source' artificial intelligence

Meta removes accounts in China, Israel pushing content likely made by AI

Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has seen threat actors rely on AI to produce fake images, videos and text in an effort to influence users on its sites

Soon, WhatsApp could let you lock, unlock chats even on linked devices

The chat lock feature has been available on WhatsApp since 2023. However, it has been limited to primary devices. Soon, the feature could be available even on linked devices such as WhatsApp for web

Facebook, Instagram face new scrutiny under EU's strict digital regulations

The European Union opened fresh investigations Thursday into Facebook and Instagram over suspicions that they're failing to protect children online, in violation of the bloc's strict digital regulations for social media platforms. It's the latest round of scrutiny for parent company Meta Platforms under the 27-nation EU's Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations that took effect last year with the goal of cleaning up online platforms and protecting internet users. The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, said it's concerned that the algorithmic systems used by Facebook and Instagram to recommend content like videos and posts could exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of children and stimulate addictive behaviour". It's worried that these systems could reinforce the so-called rabbit hole effect that leads users to increasingly disturbing content. The commission is also looking into Meta's use of age verification tools to prevent children from accessing Faceboo

At Zuckerberg's 40th birthday party, Bill Gates arrives in shorts: Pics

Mark Zuckerberg is the chairman and CEO of Meta, which he originally founded as Facebook in February 2004. He turned 40 on May 14

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg lead Magnificent Seven insider stock sales

The moves underscore how Silicon Valley insiders are monetizing their holdings after tech stocks rallied to fresh records, rebounding from a 2022 slump caused by accelerating inflation, rate hikes

WhatsApp set to release new audio call bar feature: Here's how it works

Users will be able to easily mute or end the call directly, removing the need to navigate back to the call screen

WhatsApp: Banned in China, Meta's messaging app now working for some users

Users of the Meta Platforms Inc. service in Beijing and Shanghai, who normally employ workarounds like a virtual private network to get on the service, are using it normally

AI's capacity to damage democracy, elections may be hard to detect

Meta's WhatsApp makes it possible to scale communication thanks to its 'Channels' feature, which can broadcast to thousands

Lawsuit asks if Facebook users can control their feeds using external tools

Do social media users have the right to control what they see or don't see on their feeds? A lawsuit filed against Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is arguing that a federal law often used to shield internet companies from liability also allows people to use external tools to take control of their feed even if that means shutting it off entirely. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Meta Platforms on behalf of an Amherst professor who wants to release a tool that enables users to unfollow all the content fed to them by Facebook's algorithm. The tool, called Unfollow Everything 2.0, is a browser extension that would let Facebook users unfollow friends, groups and pages and empty their newsfeed the stream of posts, photos and videos that can keep them scrolling endlessly. The idea is that without this constant, addicting stream of content, people might use it less. If the past is any indication, Meta will not be keen on t

Soon, Instagram to recommend more original content from creators: Details

Instagram is set to roll out its new ranking system algorithms in the coming months to push original content and content from creators with small followers base on the recommendations feed

Threads crosses 150 mn monthly active users, says Mark Zuckerberg

Meta CEO has said Threads is on way to become the next billion-user social network in company's portfolio of apps

Elon Musk once again richer than Mark Zuckerberg as fortunes reverse

The two billionaires switched ranks earlier this month, when Zuckerberg, 39, overtook Musk for the first time since 2020 following news that Tesla's vehicle deliveries fell in 3 months through March

Meta chief Zuckerberg asks for patience after AI push irks investors

After Meta revealed that it will spend billions of dollars more than expected this year - fueled by investments in artificial intelligence - the company's CEO did his best to soothe Wall Street

Apple removes WhatsApp, Threads from its China App Store on Beijing request

US politicians have cited national security concerns in their push to force the company to either sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the US market

OpenAI hires its first India employee, appoints government relations head

Misra previously headed public affairs at Stockholm-traded contact verification firm Truecaller, which counts India as a top market

Meta's new AI agents confuse users with made-up real world experiences

Facebook parent Meta Platforms unveiled a new set of artificial intelligence systems Thursday that are powering what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use. But as Zuckerberg's crew of amped-up Meta AI agents started venturing into social media this week to engage with real people, their bizarre exchanges exposed the ongoing limitations of even the best generative AI technology. One joined a Facebook moms' group to talk about its gifted child. Another tried to give away nonexistent items to confused members of a Buy Nothing forum. Meta, along with leading AI developers Google and OpenAI, and startups such as Anthropic, Cohere and France's Mistral, have been churning out new AI language models and hoping to persuade customers they've got the smartest, handiest or most efficient chatbots. While Meta is saving the most powerful of its AI models, called Llama 3, for later, on Thursday it publicly released two smaller versions of the same Lla

Mark Zuckerberg avoids personal liability in Meta addiction lawsuits

Rogers ruled that Zuckerberg was not required to disclose safety information absent a "special relationship" with the users of Meta's products, according to the order

Meta wants to bring VR headset into classrooms for students as young as 13

Meta's foray into education is the latest prong of the company's massive, expensive pivot to virtual and augmented reality