Meta’s new setting shadow bans politics on Instagram and Threads

Meta’s executives have been saying for a while that they don’t want to boost posts about politics in their apps. Now, an opt-out setting that limits recommendations of “political content” has been added to Instagram and Threads. You can find it under your “Content preferences” account settings in Instagram. From there, “Limit political content from … Read more

Scrap coercive ‘privacy fee’, MEPs urge Meta’s Nick Clegg in open letter

“[N]o such fee is needed to fund your services,” they argue. “‘Pay or okay’ suggests a false choice between purchasing an ads-free experience or consenting to pervasive tracking of our online lives followed by surveillance-based advertising. There is a third possibility of presenting contextual advertising that does not require personalised tracking and surveillance. Studies suggest … Read more

Meta’s Quest 3 will also get ‘lying down mode’ – here’s why it’s taking longer

June Wan/ZDNET The Meta v63 update released last week delivered the ability to comfortably use the Meta Quest 2 and Pro headsets while lying down. However, the absence of the Meta Quest 3 in the release notes was notable, leaving Quest 3 users to wonder why Meta’s latest virtual reality headset wasn’t included.  Also: Meta’s Ray-Ban … Read more

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses can identify landmarks now and tell you about them

June Wan/ZDNET Heading out of town? Starting this week, Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses will be your virtual tour guide of sorts thanks to a new feature. The feature, which is currently in beta, would allow a user to simply look at a landmark to learn what it is. The built-in Meta AI not only identifies … Read more

Meta’s Zuckerberg woos big tech in Asia to double down on AI chips

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is touring Asia countries this week, said in a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday that Meta wants to beef up its cooperation with Samsung Electronics for AI chips to offset geopolitical risk issue in Taiwan, where TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chip manufacturer, is headquartered. … Read more

Cybercriminals are using Meta’s Llama 2 AI, according to CrowdStrike

Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images Cybercrime outfits have taken fledgling steps to use generative AI to stage attacks, including Meta’s Llama 2 large language model, according to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in its annual Global Threat Report, published Wednesday. The group Scattered Spider made use of Meta’s large language model to generate scripts for Microsoft’s PowerShell task automation program, reports … Read more

Meta’s not happy with its bill for enforcing the EU’s tough new DSA

Meta is challenging a fee it must pay EU regulators tasked with enforcing tough new content moderation rules required by the Digital Services Act (DSA), Reuters reports. Although the fee is capped at 0.05 percent of a company’s profits, Meta isn’t happy that loss-making companies won’t have to pay while it’s on the hook for … Read more

What Meta’s Fediverse Plans Mean for Threads Users

Rachel Lambert, a product manager at Meta, started her company’s journey towards interoperability by breaking Adam Mosseri’s Threads account. In December, Meta activated a test where users could follow the head of Instagram’s Threads feed on an open-source social media platform, Mastodon. But when users tried to view Mosseri’s posts over on Mastodon, nothing showed … Read more

Meta’s Quest headsets add spatial video and pinch controls to compete with Vision Pro

The Meta Quest 3 will soon give wearers the ability to easily view spatial videos as well as use new pinching gestures for control, features that are similar to what you’ll find in Apple’s much more expensive Vision Pro headset that launches this week. Both changes are starting to roll out gradually as part of … Read more