Meta Platforms on Wednesday pressed its argument that the Federal Trade Commission’s structure, including the way it conducts in-house enforcement actions, is unconstitutional. “The commission’s dual role as prosecutor and judge … is flatly inconsistent with fundamental principles of due process,” Meta argues in papers filed with U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss in Washington. The company is seeking an injunction to halt an in-house proceeding that could result in an FTC order banning Meta from monetizing minors’ data.
In both cases, Meta ended up reinstating the posts — one showing Palestinian casualties and the other, an Israeli hostage — on its own, although it added warning screens to both due to violent content. This means the company isn’t obligated to do anything about the board’s decision.
Parents Television and Media Council (PTC) has revealed that Meta and HBO have made its annual Naughty List for targeting children with harmful content, while AppleTV+ and Bentkey were chosen for its […]
The social media company has stepped up enforcement, but its algorithms continue to promote problematic content.
Exclusives
Meta Platforms on Wednesday escalated its battle with the Federal Trade Commission by claiming in a new lawsuit that the agency’s structure, including its ability to conduct in-house hearings, is unconstitutional. The lawsuit — which comes as Meta and the FTC are battling over teens’ data — includes a request to prevent the agency from moving forward with a hearing that could result in an order prohibiting Meta from using teens’ data for ad targeting or algorithms.
Meta “routinely documented” children under 13 on Instagram and collected their data, according to a newly unsealed complaint.
A federal magistrate judge on Tuesday recommended that Meta Platforms be awarded a $36 million default judgment against four residents of Hanoi, Vietnam, who hijacked the accounts of advertising and marketing agency employees in order to perpetrate an ad fraud scheme.
Meta Platforms will let political ads on Facebook and Instagram question the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, one of several changes the social-media company and other platforms have made to loosen constraints on campaign advertising for 2024. Meta made the change last year, but it hasn’t gained wide attention. The company decided to allow political advertisers to say past elections were “rigged” or “stolen” but prevented them from questioning the legitimacy of ongoing and coming elections.
Amazon has spread its network into another platform, partnering with Meta to allow Facebook and Instagram users to purchase from their feeds the products being sold across the ecommerce giant’s network of sellers. The partnership comes with a built-in data-sharing clause for customers if the platforms are linked.
One month after rolling out various generative artificial intelligence tools to advertisers, Meta is restricting political campaigns and advertisers in other regulated industries from using these very products — due to concerns that these tools could be used to intensify the spread of election misinformation.
Meta was sued by more than three dozen states on Tuesday for knowingly using features on Instagram and Facebook to hook children to its platforms, even as the company said its social media sites were safe for young people. Colorado and Tennessee led a joint lawsuit filed by 33 states in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of California.
Her exit indicates how Meta’s priorities around news and its relationships with media companies have changed.
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and others discussed artificial intelligence with lawmakers, as tech companies strive to influence potential regulations.
The parent of Facebook and Instagram wants an artificial-intelligence system to be as capable as OpenAI’s most advanced model.
Siding with Meta Platforms, a federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit alleging that the company wrongly banned ads on Facebook for the Holocaust-related movie Beautiful Blue Eyes.
A nonprofit watchdog group has found that the right-wing group PragerU has pushed out more than 100 political ads on Facebook and Instagram, flouting Meta’s policies.
The subscription plan is a response to European Union policies and court rulings to restrict Meta’s data-collection practices.
Meta’s decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians’ usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday accused Facebook of putting profits over people’s safety during the emergencies created by Canada’s record wildfire season. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced earlier this summer it would keep its promise to block news content from Canada on its platforms because of a new law that requires tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.
Meta is facing severe criticism for its policy of blocking news content in Canada while wildfires rage in British Columbia. “Right now, while wildfires are causing evacuations in the NWT and endangering lives, Meta is blocking news about them on Facebook and Instagram,” tweeted Chris Bittle, Liberal MP for St. Catharines, Ontario. “They did this in Australia, and it made dangerous situations worse. Meta’s actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible.”
Facebook is shunning the news business in the U.S. The Meta-owned company has quietly made changes in recent months that have dramatically reduced referral traffic to media outlets, more than half a dozen publishers say. The move has put considerable dents in the daily traffic publishers see, with the damage appearing to be more pronounced among those who publish more hard news-oriented content. “If you’re a major publisher, you’ve gotten nicked,” said an executive at a major media company, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Among other remarks, the organizations’ joint statement said: “Meta – a nearly trillion-dollar company – repeatedly chooses to restrict news content for its users to avoid compensating news producers for the value it gains on their vital journalism. These retaliatory tactics demonstrate Meta’s monopolistic dominance over the advertising marketplace and its ability to dictate how radio and TV broadcasters, newspapers and others can reach audiences online.”
Meta has begun the process to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada, the company said on Tuesday. The move comes in response to legislation in the country requiring internet giants to pay news publishers. Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, said the changes will roll out in the coming weeks.
Meta Pulls Off A Strong 2Q With $32 Billion In Revenue
The company beat Wall Street’s $30.9 billion sales estimate by a hefty margin while launching Twitter rival Threads.
The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee may vote this week to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt, a committee spokesperson said Monday, a move that would further escalate House Republicans’ attack on the social media giant. Republicans on the Judiciary panel have accused the company of failing to cooperate with its probe of the tech giant’s content moderation practices. A committee spokesperson confirmed the panel is eyeing a Thursday vote.
Amazon, Google and Meta are among the companies that announced the new commitments on Friday as they race to outdo each other with versions of artificial intelligence.
Tech giant Meta’s large language model will be available for free commercial and research use, rivaling OpenAI’s GPT-4 that powers the popular ChatGPT tool, the social media company said Tuesday. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is releasing its open source Llama 2 large language model, which can power artificial intelligence tools, in partnership with Microsoft.
In a letter Wednesday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app. The move ramps up the tensions between the social media giants after Threads debuted Wednesday, targeting those who are seeking out alternatives to Twitter amid unpopular changes Musk has made to the platform since buying it last year for $44 billion.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, teased a new app called Threads that is set to take on Twitter for real-time digital conversations.
