Meta explored 60% team cuts in two waves before staff revolt forced a retreat
A hot potato: Meta set out to reorganize much of its workforce around AI at the beginning of this year, betting that agents could help the company move faster while reducing the need for larger teams. The company went ahead with 10% workforce cuts in May but ultimately dropped plans for a broader round of layoffs after its AI workplace "overhaul" ran into employee resistance and technical problems.
Two-hour daily caps, forced "pauses," and a midnight lockout are coming to teen accounts. Skeptics say it doesn't go far enough
Winners & losers: Meta has agreed to pay as much as $18 billion and overhaul how minors use Instagram and Facebook, settling a lawsuit that accused the company of designing its platforms to addict children. Court filings and a Meta blog post confirmed the deal this morning. The agreement ends a trial that began August 18 in Oakland, and was expected to run through early October. It also means Mark Zuckerberg won't have to take the stand as planned. Instagram head Adam Mosseri had already testified before the settlement landed.
Through the looking glass: Meta launched a new AI image-generation model called Muse Image this week, letting users create, edit, and blend photos using natural language prompts inside Meta AI, with the tool already live on Instagram and WhatsApp and expected on Facebook and Messenger soon. However, the new feature is already raising privacy concerns, as it allows anyone to generate AI images using other people's Instagram photos.
Tech leaders love predicting the future. Sometimes they nail it, sometimes they miss spectacularly, and sometimes they leave behind quotes that only get better with age.
Any lingering hope for affordable gaming GPUs just took another hit
Editor's take: AMD and Meta have joined the growing circus of reciprocal dealsBig Tech is using to bootstrap what it hopes will become a self-sustaining "AI economy." Under a new multi-year agreement, the two companies will closely align their technology roadmaps – though AMD's role comes with strings attached, including hitting specific performance targets in the stock market.
In a nutshell: Meta has faced several controversies over the years, including the misuse of private data for political profiling, failing to stop the spread of fake news and hate speech, and ignoring the impact of Facebook and Instagram on the mental well-being of young people. A new report now claims the company has also knowingly accepted fraudulent and scam ads originating in China.
A hot potato: In 2020, Meta launched an internal research effort called Project Mercury to examine the psychological effects of Facebook use. Working with market research firm Nielsen, the company ran a survey-based experiment that asked selected users to deactivate their Facebook accounts for a week. Newly unsealed discovery documents reveal that those who stepped away reported noticeably lower levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and negative social comparison.