Meta
Facebook renamed itself Meta to reflect its focus on expanding the Metaverse, but its development of Facebook and Instagram, its biggest platforms, have become increasingly focused around AI. It has taken an open-source approach with its Llama large language model, while also continuing to try to unseat X with its still-new microblogging challenger Threads, and TechCrunch is covering all of its moves and updates across its many platforms.
Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. OpenAI announced this week that…
TechCrunch Minute: Meet Meta’s all white, all male AI advisory council
Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more) announced a new AI advisory council that’s supposed to help guide the company’s decision-making around AI…
Featured Article
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men
Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you share images directly to your Instagram Story
Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to…
Microsoft’s new ‘Volumetric Apps’ for Quest headsets extend Windows apps into the 3D space
Microsoft announced on Tuesday during its annual Build conference that it’s bringing “Windows Volumetric Apps” to Meta Quest headsets. The partnership will allow Microsoft to bring Windows 365 and local…
Data-labeling startup Scale AI raises $1B as valuation doubles to $13.8B
Scale AI has raised a $1 billion Series F round from a slew of big-name institutional and corporate investors including Amazon and Meta.
Meta, Match, Coinbase and others team up to fight online fraud and crypto scams
The new coalition, Tech Against Scams, will work together to find ways to fight back against the tools used by scammers and to better educate the public against financial scams.
Meta’s Oversight Board has now extended its scope to include the company’s newest platform, Instagram Threads, and has begun hearing cases from Threads.
Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which…
Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas
Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…
Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?
For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…
With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…
Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck
X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…
Meta’s newest social network, Threads, is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months.
Meta is shutting down Workplace, its enterprise communications business
Facebook once had big ambitions to be a major player in enterprise communication and productivity, but today the social network’s parent company Meta will be closing a very significant chapter…
Meta’s Oversight Board overturns takedown decision for Pakistan child abuse documentary
The Oversight Board has overturned Meta’s decision to take down a documentary revealing the identities of child abuse victims in Pakistan.
Over the weekend, Instagram announced that it is expanding its creator marketplace to 10 new countries — this marketplace connects brands with creators to foster collaboration. The new regions include…
Meta’s AI tools for advertisers can now create full new images, not just new backgrounds
Meta is rolling out an expanded set of generative AI tools for advertisers, after first announcing a set of AI features last October. Now, instead of only being able to…
Meta is encouraging more users to post to its X rival Threads. In its latest experiment, the company is providing an easy toggle for users to cross-post from Instagram to…
Bias in AI image generators is a well-studied and well-reported phenomenon, but consumer tools continue to exhibit glaring cultural biases. The latest culprit in this area is Meta’s AI chatbot,…
Threads users can now exert more control over who can quote their posts. This builds on a feature that already allows Threads users to limit who can reply to their…
Instagram now lets you post a secret Story that viewers can uncover with a DM
Instagram is adding a handful of new features for Stories to give users more creative ways to share content and engage with each other, the company announced on Friday. Most…
WhatsApp is introducing a new way for people to organize events in Communities, the company announced on Wednesday. The feature makes it easier to plan get-togethers and events directly in…
Meta’s approach to election security in the frame as EU probes Facebook, Instagram
The European Union said on Tuesday that it suspects Meta’s social networking platforms, Facebook and Instagram, of breaking the bloc’s rules for larger platforms in relation to election integrity. The…
Meta’s Threads social network passed the 150 million monthly users mark recently, but the company is not slowing down its growth engine. To increase engagement, the social media giant is…
Meta AI tested: Doesn’t quite justify its own existence, but free is free
Meta’s new large language model, Llama 3, powers the imaginatively named “Meta AI,” a newish chatbot that the social media and advertising company has installed in as many of its…
Why Meta is looking to the fediverse as the future for social media
Meta’s move into the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is puzzling. Does the Facebook owner see open protocols as the future? Will it embrace the fediverse only…
Threads launches custom mute filters, teases controls for quote posts
Threads and Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced today that Threads is launching a new feature that lets users filter out words and phrases from their feeds and mentions. The “Hidden…
Meta could face further squeeze on surveillance ads model in EU
Meta’s tracking ads business could be facing further legal blows in the European Union: An influential adviser to the bloc’s top court affirmed Thursday that the region’s privacy laws limit…
Threads, the Twitter/X rival from Meta, is growing at a stable pace. The social network now has more than 150 million monthly active users — up from 130 million in…