Google won’t say if UK secretly demanded a backdoor for user data
Google said it has “never built a backdoor” for its services, but refused to rule out that it had received a secret U.K. surveillance order demanding access to encrypted data.
Meta
Meta names Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist of AI superintelligence unit
Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher, will round out the leadership team at Meta’s new AI lab.
Google gets its swag back
This week, I take a look at the surprisingly strong state of Google, Meta gets a new chief AI researcher, and more. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out this week’s Decoder episode about deepfakes and where they are headed. Also, do you use an AI coding tool like Cursor or GitHub Copilot? […]
Facebook ranks worst for online harassment, according to a global activist survey
Activists around the world are calling attention to harassment they’ve faced on Meta’s platforms. More than 90 percent of land and environmental defenders surveyed by Global Witness, a nonprofit organization that also tracks the murders of environmental advocates, reported experiencing some kind of online abuse or harassment connected to their work. Facebook was the most-cited […]
Meta to stop selling political ads in the EU from October
In response to the European Union’s incoming regulation of political advertising, Meta said on Friday that it would stop selling and showing political ads in the EU from October 2025.
AI slop and fake reports are exhausting some security bug bounties
“We’re getting a lot of stuff that looks like gold, but it’s actually just crap,” said the founder of one security testing firm. AI-generated security vulnerability reports are already having an effect on bug hunting, for better and worse.
Instagram changes its algorithm after being accused of steering predators to children
Instagram accounts that primarily feature images of children, but are run by adult users, will no longer be recommended to “potentially suspicious adults.” The update was announced in a blog post detailing the latest expansion of Meta’s child safety features, which includes new blocking and reporting capabilities for teenagers and additional protections for adult-managed accounts […]
Meta researchers are developing a gesture-controlled wristband that can interact with a computer
The goal of this wristband is to provide less invasive tools to interact with computers for people with motor disabilities.
Instagram adds new protections for accounts that primarily feature children
The update will impact the accounts of family vloggers/creators and parents running accounts for “kidfluencers,” both of which have faced criticism for the risks associated with sharing children’s lives on social media.
