If you’re among the 2.6 million active users of the popular telehealth apps Hims and Hers to obtain medication for erectile dysfunction, hair loss, and a cavalcade of other intimate issues, there’s probably a very short list of people you want to know about it — and Mark Zuckerberg probably isn’t one of them.

On Wednesday, the US Federal Trade Commission filed a major lawsuit against Hims and Hers, over allegations the firm was sharing user’s health information with third party companies, Gizmodo reported. Chief among those third-parties apps was Zuckerberg’s Meta, as well as Snap, two social media companies with horrible track records on protecting sensitive information.

Though Hims and Hers advertises its app-based health services as “100 percent online, private, and secure,” the FTC suit alleges “those assurances were false or misleading.”

“Instead of honoring its privacy promises,” the filing says, “Hims opted to grow the company and increase its revenue streams… with advertising platforms such as Meta and Snap.”

The suit doesn’t blame Meta directly, but argues that Hims and Hers used two “automated tracking technologies offered by Meta” to surveil users’ actions on the telehealth app. “These two tools automatically tracked and disclosed certain Events [user actions] to Meta,” the lawsuit reads.

Hims sells all kinds of men’s health meds, but most people know it for one thing: erectile dysfunction pills. While any leak of patient data would be an outrage, the thought that Hims could be sharing this particular kind of medical information is especially horrifying.

In a statement, Hims and Hers argued that the FTC’s case “is not enforcement grounded in consumer protection,” but rather “an effort to generate headlines at our expense.”

The lawsuit comes on the back of a three-year investigation by the FTC, and is currently in the very early stages — meaning it could be years before a final verdict is reached.

More on Meta: Meta’s Attempted Crackdown on AI Glasses Perverts Is Already Failing

The post FTC Concerned About Meta Surveillance of Users of Erectile Dysfunction Apps appeared first on Futurism.

Se colocou uma música menos conseguida num post antigo do Instagram ou se o áudio foi removido por direitos de autor, já não precisa de apagar a publicação. Saiba como trocar a banda sonora mantendo os gostos e os comentários.

The post Arrependeu-se da escolha da música numa publicação no Instagram? Saiba como trocar sem ter de a apagar appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Despite having almost nothing to show from his enormous spending on AI, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down.

Earlier this week, the social media company announced during its second quarter earnings call that it was raising capital expenditures from $125 billion to at least $130 billion, a clear sign that it’s not taking its foot off the pedal.

Yet amid renewed concerns that the tech industry may be nearing the edge of a cliff thanks to its obsession with building out enormously expensive data centers without a clear path to profitability, investors sent back a clear signal in return. Meta’s shares nosedived following its announcement, plummeting over 11 percent over the last five days alone.

According to Zuckerberg, all that extra AI spending was “accelerating every part of our core business.” He also claimed that some of the tech would be sold off to other businesses.

But whether the company will have anything compelling to offer them remains dubious at best. Meta has been burning through its funds at an alarming rate. Even strong revenue numbers — a 28 percent increase this latest quarter compared to the same period last year — couldn’t stem the bleeding, with free cash flow sinking to the lowest level in at least five years thanks to AI spending.

Despite committing well over $100 billion to the tech, Meta has been practically absent from the frontier AI model race. Its so-called Superintelligence Lab has turned into a “soul-crushing gulag” plagued with rock-bottom morale — and most importantly, it’s not getting results.

Its efforts to develop an in-house frontier model, dubbed Muse Spark, have been mired by setbacks, with Meta continuously shifting back the timeline of its release to developers. On July 11, the company released version 1.1 of its AI to little fanfare, with Axios noting that it’s still easily outdone in most tasks by competing models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

At the same time, Meta released an image-generation model called Muse Image, which felt like an afterthought and a too-little-too-late attempt to catch up with its competitors.

The latest news has given some analysts a feeling of déjà vu. Zuckerberg has garnered a reputation for making major strategic missteps since long before AI. Case in point was the company’s heavily criticized pivot to the “metaverse,” an ill-fated attempt to sell customers on the idea of spending their workday inside a hollow and cartoonish virtual reality world, which feels like the perfect precursor to Meta’s current pains.

“There’s a bit of similarity to Meta’s metaverse missteps in that Meta is once again spending ahead of proven product demand,” Forrester analyst Mike Proulx told the BBC.

Meanwhile, Meta’s platforms have descended into a practically unrecognizable ocean of clickbait and AI slop, something the company has yet to meaningfully address as user numbers and engagement continue to slide.

For his part, Zuckerberg remains infatuated by the concept of AI agents “that can work 24/7 on your behalf,” as he told investors this week, and growing its Muse Spark model into a “large business for large businesses.”

But considering Meta is entering a game with much bigger players who’ve seen far more success in attracting customers and growing AI revenue so far, the company’s long-term success is anything but guaranteed.

And investors who’ve already shaken their heads after both Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet announced major spikes in AI spending this month haven’t taken kindly to Zuckerberg’s lofty vision. Judging by how little the billionaire has to show, who can blame them?

More on Meta: Is Mark Zuckerberg Actually TRYING to Destroy Meta?

The post Mark Zuckerberg’s Pivot to AI Is Blowing Up in His Face Spectacularly appeared first on Futurism.

Meta Platforms revealed a dramatic acceleration in its infrastructure commitments, disclosing in a regulatory filing it has secured $279 billion in off-balance sheet lease obligations primarily dedicated to expanding its AI capabilities.

The future costs, which exist on top of its active leases, comprise short- and long-term agreements covering data centres, co-location facilities and certain network infrastructure.

The total for uncommenced lease commitments as of the quarter ended 30 June represents a 53% surge from the $183 billion reported in the previous period.

The social media giant is showing no signs of slowing its aggressive AI buildout, adding an extra $68 billion in commitments during July alone, with those leases slated to commence in 2027 and 2028.

The disclosure comes alongside mounting investor pressure on CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Meta’s stock fell today (30 July) following a disappointing Q3 revenue forecast yesterday which heightened investor scrutiny over the company’s massive capital expenditures on AI.

During the Q2 earnings call, Zuckerberg said Meta could sell compute directly to large enterprises but stated the social media giant believes there will be a “significantly higher margin on selling [super]intelligence rather than selling compute directly”.

The post Meta eyes $279B AI infrastructure expansion appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Meta knows its AI-powered camera equipped spectacles are widely seen as “pervert glasses.” And though it professes to be cracking down on creeps using them to record people without their consent, whatever measures it’s taking clearly aren’t working.

After Meta announced this month that it would ban users using the glasses to film themselves harassing strangers, a recent investigation by Oligarch Watch still found hundreds of these videos on its platforms. Many of them are from sleazy “pickup artists” who approach women in public, making sexual or degrading comments and recording their buttocks or breasts.

In one viral video on Instagram, a pick-up artist who goes by “_mypointofvue”  films himself approaching an underaged girl in a shopping mall.

“I’m 17,” the girl says, seemingly unaware that she’s being recorded, when he asks her age.

“That’s crazy. I can’t do nothing with you, baby,” he replies, grumbling that he “can’t believe that ho was 17.” He then pulls out his phone on camera to do an ad for a crypto-based online casino.

In another Instagram video, a man who goes by Justin uses his Meta glasses to zoom in on a woman’s buttocks as she orders coffee, before repeatedly asking for her contact information and being shut down each time. “Shawty had the gyat,” he wrote in the caption. The user, according to Oligarch Watch, has posted dozens of similar videos since Meta announced the crackdown.

Another popular pickup artist who goes by “moreno.rizz” recently shared a video of himself approaching a woman by saying, “Excuse me, have we f*cked before? I’m just kidding. I just thought you were really pretty.”

The harassment can sometimes be even more blatant. Another pick-up artist called “dkdanny” boasts over half a million followers, and in some of his most popular videos that rack up millions of views, he wears Meta glasses while insulting the weight of random women on the street.

“You don’t get to talk, OK,” he tells one woman. “You already look big enough. Don’t talk big, too.”

The clear privacy risks posed by Meta’s glasses have been a heated topic since the devices debuted. The company has used big-name celebrity endorsements and run heavy marketing campaigns to improve how they’re perceived, but it’s not winning everyone over. Earlier this month, Instagram head Adam Mosseri addressed the harassment being carried out using the smart glasses, vowing to crackdown on it “every way we can.”

Some of the accounts that Oligarch Watch referenced in its reporting seemed to have been taken down after it was published, but that’s only a drop in the ocean — and one of the world’s largest tech companies relying on random journalists to police abhorrent content on its platforms clearly isn’t a serious strategy.

Meta told the publication in a statement that its glasses that it “built privacy into the camera for the glasses from the ground up,” including an LED that lights up when the glasses are recording. It did not, however, address the fact that there are many workarounds to this small deterrent.

More on Meta: This New Meta “Advertisement” Is Absolutely Brutal

The post Meta’s Attempted Crackdown on AI Glasses Perverts Is Already Failing appeared first on Futurism.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) outlined his high-stakes vision for AI across consumer and enterprise markets during a Q2 investor call, casting the technological transition as a massive commercial opportunity despite heavy infrastructure outlays and operational charges weighing on profitability.

Zuckerberg detailed three primary expansion pillars driving Meta’s long-term strategy. He noted AI investments are actively boosting performance across the main portfolio by improving user experiences, optimising return on investment for advertisers and enabling internal product teams to ship software faster.

Looking ahead, Zuckerberg stated that Meta is “developing new personal agents that will be the foundation for our next wave of products and revenue lines in the months and years ahead”.

Expanding beyond consumer applications, he highlighted a growing commercial footprint, pointing to “a large enterprise opportunity to sell to businesses, including APIs, business agents, potentially selling compute directly, and other services that we’re building for large customers”.

Q2 financial performance
Meta delivered strong Q2 top-line performance, driven by continuous gains across its AI-enhanced advertising suite, though rapid infrastructure spending and operational charges squeezed overall profitability below Wall Street expectations.

Meta generated $60.8 billion in revenue, representing a 28% increase compared to $47.5 billion in the same period last year. However, net income dropped 14% to $15.8 billion.

Advertising revenue accounted for $59.8 billion of total sales, up 28% year-over-year. This growth was supported by high adoption of AI automated ad features, with ad impressions growing 14% year-over-year across its Family of Apps and the average price per ad climbing 12%.

Family Daily Active People reached an average of 3.6 billion in June, reflecting a 3% increase year-over-year.

Total costs and expenses surged 55% to $42 billion, heavily weighed down by $2.4 billion in legal proceeding charges as well as $1.2 billion in severance expenses following restructuring in May.

Driven by the aggressive capex ramp and operational charges, free cash flow dropped 91% year-over-year to $784 million, compared to $8.5 billion in the prior-year period.

Capital expenditures jumped to $31 billion from $17 billion, including principal payments on finance leases, as Meta continued to scale its computing infrastructure, servers, and data centres to expand generative AI capabilities.

Looking ahead, the social media giant issued a Q3 revenue forecast of $61 billion to $64 billion.

For the full year, Meta maintained its capital expenditure guidance at $130 billion to $145 billion and anticipates total expenses between $165 billion and $169 billion, while reiterating full-year operating income is expected to exceed prior-year levels.

Highlighting engagement growth across its app suite, Zuckerberg noted Threads crossed 500 million monthly active users, “making it the fastest-growing conversation app ever,” while Facebook reached more than 2 billion daily active users a while ago.

“WhatsApp just hit an all-time messaging record, peaking at 30 million messages sent per second during the World Cup final,” he said.

Meta’s Reality Labs division, which houses the company’s VR and AR hardware efforts including Quest headsets and smart glasses, continued to weigh on overall profitability.

The unit posted an operating loss of $4.6 billion, widening slightly from a year earlier, on revenue of just $431 million, up from $370 million in the same period last year.

The post Meta eyes enterprise growth as AI spend surges appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Last week, we came across a cleverly subversive advertisement for Meta’s controversial smart glasses, which overlaid socialite Kylie Jenner’s face with one of the terrifying bug-eyed monsters from John Carpenter’s “They Live” and a bold type caption that reads “We’re always watching” when viewed from a specific angle.

The billboard, created by activist group Everyone Hates Elon, called attention to how Meta’s camera-adorned and AI-enabled spectacles have quickly turned into a privacy-invading nightmare. The optics of the problem is so bad that Meta is now trying to ban “manfluencers” and juvenile pranksters who use the glasses to record members of the public without their consent.

The public backlash has become so strong, even those who bought a pair of the “pervert glasses” are choosing to leave them at home.

Now, the activist group has come up with its next — and even more brutal — stunt. A new “advertisement” adorning a bus station in London, not far from Meta’s King’s Cross office, shows late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein wearing a pair of the specs while getting his picture taken for the New York sex offender registry.

“Glasses for people who don’t do consent,” the caption reads.

Epstein Meta AI Glasses advert on Carnegie Street
byu/Physical_Echo_9372 inlondon

It’s a clear reference to the late criminal’s sex trafficking operation, which recruited dozens of girls, many underage. Grisly documents details how his victims were convinced to go to his beachfront mansion and even bring friends. According to some of their depositions, they were coerced into taking off their clothes without their consent.

Epstein has also been accused of secretly filming one of his victims. Witnesses also claim he kept “sex tapes” involving prominent people.

Email correspondences from 2014 also detail how the sex criminal directed his aide to install hidden video cameras across his home in Palm Beach, Florida, including one installed inside a Kleenex box.

While Epstein died in 2019, years before roughly two years before Meta launched the first generation of its smart glasses, the billboard sends a grim message.

Critics argue that glasses that can be used to film strangers without their consent shouldn’t be legal.

“If regulators actually did their damn jobs for once, glasses such as these would be illegal,” one Reddit user argued.

“Pervert glasses have no place in our society,” another wrote.

More on Meta’s glasses: Meta Desperately Trying to Ban Creeps Misusing Its AI “Pervert Glasses”

The post This New Meta “Advertisement” Is Absolutely Brutal appeared first on Futurism.

Back in the mid-2000s, Mark Zuckerberg had a pretty awesome product: a site called Facebook, which was still widely loved and not polluted with endless ads and scams.

The interceding years have been hard on Zuckerberg’s empire. From a disastrous, multibillion-dollar foray into a pandemic-era virtual reality world nobody wanted to step a foot into to effectively abandoning content moderation and allowing demented AI slop to flood its social media platforms, Meta now feels more like a dilapidated strip mall than a hot tech property.

Lately, it almost feels like Zuckerberg is trying to destroy his own company. He’s burning through mountains of cash in a desperate attempt to keep up in the AI race. Yet despite the untold billions it’s spent so far, it’s being destroyed by OpenAI and Anthropic. Its employees have even resorted to using AI models made by its competitors, a humiliating reality check for how far behind Zuckerberg’s efforts have fallen.

It’s also a financial nightmare. Capital expenditures have risen dramatically, erasing any appetite for Meta on Wall Street. Its stock price “has been dead money for more than a year,” as Yahoo Finance notes, as investors continue to debate whether Zuckerberg is chasing the AI industry as it careens off a cliff — or edging ever closer to an AI-fueled industrial revolution.

This week’s second quarter earnings, in particular, will serve as one of the biggest tests in Meta’s recent history. Another major hike in AI spending — which is looking likely, given Zuckerberg’s recent doubling down and soaring AI data center costs — could send its already flagging shares sinking even further.

It’s a precarious moment for the industry as concerns over a massive AI bubble once again grip shareholders. The news comes after Alphabet shocked skeptical investors by raising its spending forecast past the $200 billion mark last week, indicating that Zuckerberg may try something similar.

“Prior to Alphabet recently raising FY26 capex guide, we think there were limited expectations for Meta to increase its current 2026 guidance of $125-$145 billion,” Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black wrote in a note. “However, now, it is likely investors fear an increase in FY26 outlook likely may be coming.”

The debt keeps piling up as companies eye even bigger AI data center build-outs. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Meta executives told bankers and fund managers that it’s looking to raise even more cash — in the “hundreds of billions of dollars” — to support the plans.

Meanwhile, spiking demand and steady interest rates have caused construction costs to soar, making these funding rounds an even bigger ask for tech execs.

Despite the massive AI spending, Zuckerberg appears to be painfully aware he’s likely steering the company in the wrong direction. Earlier this month, he conceded to staff during a town hall that the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected.”

Meta has also been struggling with rock-bottom morale. Despite earmarking over $100 billion on AI infrastructure, the company has been laying off thousands of workers in an apparent effort to replace them with the tech.

During the town hall, Zuckerberg admitted that the major culling were not “clean,” adding that bets on restructuring “haven’t come to fruition yet.”

The company was also forced to halt a highly controversial plan to record everything workers do on their assigned computers to gather data for AI after leaking sensitive employee information.

More on Mark Zuckerberg: Meta Is Letting Fake AI-Generated Doctors Sell Quack Cures on Its Platforms

The post Is Mark Zuckerberg Actually TRYING to Destroy Meta? appeared first on Futurism.

Apple’s long-rumored smart glasses face a steep uphill battle that has little to do with hardware specs or AI capabilities. The real obstacle is the privacy stigma attached to the entire category — one largely created by Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, which critics have derisively labeled “pervert glasses.”

According to Bloomberg News’ Mark Gurman in the Power On newsletter, Apple is now targeting a public debut for its first smart glasses at WWDC in June 2027, with a consumer launch expected later that year. Internally codenamed N50, the device had previously been eyed for a late-2026 introduction and early-2027 release. The delay stems in significant part from Apple’s deliberate effort to refine both the product and its privacy messaging.

Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta glasses have sold millions of pairs and demonstrated commercial viability for camera-equipped eyewear that can capture photos and video, play music, handle calls, and leverage AI. But that success has come with heavy baggage. Reports of users discreetly recording people without consent, online hacks that disable or hide the recording indicator light, and investigations revealing that contractors reviewed intimate footage (including bathroom visits and sexual activity) for AI training have fueled public distrust. Protests have occurred, some jurisdictions have restricted the devices, and the “pervert glasses” nickname has stuck in online discourse.

Apple, which has spent more than a decade positioning privacy as a core brand pillar, is acutely aware of the risk. Simply entering the same product category threatens to undermine that carefully cultivated reputation, regardless of how differently the company approaches the technology. Teams in Apple’s Vision hardware group and elsewhere treat privacy as “priority No. 1,” Gurman reports.

The company has explored multiple approaches to cameras. One option under debate would include full camera hardware, but disable photo and video recording entirely, limiting the sensors to feeding visual data into on-device AI for object recognition, navigation, or environmental awareness. Another prototype eliminates cameras altogether while retaining audio features, Siri access, music playback, and calls. The most likely path, however, appears to retain conventional cameras paired with substantially stronger privacy protections than those offered by Meta.

Expected safeguards include heavy reliance on on-device processing, avoidance of facial recognition, rejection of continuous “super-sensing” modes that analyze surroundings without clear indicators, and a firm policy against using customer recordings to train AI models or sending footage to third-party contractors for review. Hardware indicators are also expected to be more prominent and harder to defeat than Meta’s small LED. Price is anticipated in the $200–$500 range, with multiple frame styles, oval-shaped cameras, and no in-lens AR display in the first generation. The glasses would primarily serve as an iPhone companion for hands-free Siri, Visual Intelligence features, and media.

Apple’s strategy is clear: lean hard into privacy differentiation. Whether that will be enough to overcome bystander discomfort remains an open question. Even users who trust Apple more than Meta may still feel uneasy around anyone wearing outward-facing cameras. Success will depend not only on technical features but on convincing the public that these glasses respect the privacy of everyone in view—not just the wearer.

MacDailyNews Take: Disabling photo and video recording entirely would be a deal-breaker. No sale.

However, if Apple gets this right, privacy could become the product’s strongest selling point. If not, the company may discover that even its brand equity cannot fully erase the cultural resistance Meta’s glasses helped create. The delayed timeline gives Apple time to get the balance right before the world puts its smart glasses to the ultimate test.

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The post After Meta Ray-Bans ‘Pervert Glasses,’ Apple’s smart glasses must focus on privacy appeared first on MacDailyNews.

Fake AI-generated doctors and health gurus have taken over Facebook and Instagram, sharing unproven medical advice and peddling dubious supplements.

A recent New York Times investigation into the phenomenon reviewed hundreds of these ads, finding that they tend to follow a loose formula to draw people in.

The AI videos usually feature AI avatars that present themselves as credible figures like doctors or Eastern medical gurus. Many prominently feature American flags or are set in familiar suburban settings. 

Some of the AI avatars are made to look like average people who’re really enthusiastic about the supplement they’re taking, filming themselves in a parking lot, bedroom, or grocery store — not unlike human influencers. The doctor avatars, meanwhile, might be in an office, where their fake diplomas are clearly on display. (One bears the incredible text “University of Degree” in a video identified by the NYT.)

“In Chinese medicine, we have known exactly how to bring this down for generations,” says one AI-generated Asian grandma dressed in a labcoat highlighted in the investigation.

Many of the claims these videos make are misleading and outright dangerous. One advertising a product called “Sculptique” asserts that taking its herbal supplement treats kidney disease better than medication. The company claims it gave 100 people with stage three kidney disease its supplement, showing an AI-generated video of these fake recipients raising their supplement bottles together in a warehouse.

A 71-year-old named Pamela Wundrow told the NYT that she bought a supplement called moringa to treat her symptoms related to autoimmune disease after seeing ads for it on Facebook from a company called Rosabella. 

Months after she started taking the pills daily, federal regulators announced a recall for Rosabella’s moringa supplement because some of its contaminated pills were sickening people with salmonella.

Wundrow said she didn’t experience salmonella symptoms, but claims her health got worse as she took the supplement.

“They’re targeting us people that have health issues,” Wundrow told the paper.

These ads don’t come from nowhere. One Chinese company uses AI videos to help brands sell their products on TikTok — another wasteland of AI slop — designing their ads to look American as possible.

“Watch and learn bro,” says an AI-generated guy kitted out in tactical gear after yanking a fish out of water in a video by the company. He then whips out a gadget that doubles as a flashlight.

The company, which the NYT doesn’t identify, claims to churn out 1,200 AI videos every day, with each costing just $10 to make. Its head of AI marketing, Vivi Yi, admitted that advertising health products required more caution; “weight management” is used instead of claiming to “lose weight,” she said.

As the NYT notes, these ads would be illegal if broadcasted on American TV. But on social media, the rules are looser and harder to enforce. TikTok told the NYT that it’s been banning accounts that make misleading health claims, and Meta says it labels AI-generated content. But the NYT found some clearly AI generated health videos that were still on the platform, which were later removed. 

That leaves the older people these AI videos target left to use their own judgment — and many can’t tell what’s real anymore.

“I have seen others where you can tell it’s AI,” Wundrow said while watching the video of an elderly woman claiming that their supplement is backed by Chinese medicine. “To me this does not look like an AI.”

More on AI: Spotify Doubles Down on AI Slop As It’s Being Flooded With It

The post Meta Is Letting Fake AI-Generated Doctors Sell Quack Cures on Its Platforms appeared first on Futurism.

Meta’s camera-equipped AI glasses have quickly turned into a massively controversial accessory.

They’ve been used by all kinds of charlatans and brutes to harass strangers, from pickup artist “manfluencers” filming themselves approaching strangers to juvenile pranksters recording members of the public without their consent.

Consequently, the backlash to Meta’s “pervert glasses” has reached a fever pitch, with owners choosing to leave them at home to avoid embarrassment.

Sensing a threat to its bottom line, Meta has slowly started treating the issue with some degree of seriousness. Now it’s vowing to crack down on creeps misusing its allegedly “privacy-first” glasses, as Business Insider reports: in an Instagram story, the platform’s head Adam Mosseri said the company would ban any user uploading videos showing them harassing others.

“If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” he said. “We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we’re trying to fight that every way we can.”

According to BI, two large pickup artist accounts on Instagram have been deactivated. A spokesperson later confirmed that the accounts were banned for posting harassing content filmed with the glasses.

Take it all together, and it’s one of the clearest indications yet that Meta is struggling to control the narrative about how its flashy glasses are being used by the public. The eyewear’s concealed cameras, in particular, have sparked a thorny debate over privacy and consent. It remains trivially easy to record somebody in public with them without their knowledge.

On its website, Meta advises users to “turn off your glasses in sensitive spaces like the doctor’s office, locker room, public bathroom, school or place of worship.”

“Obey the law,” the website reads. “Don’t use your glasses to engage in harmful activities like harassment, infringing on privacy rights, or capturing sensitive information like pin codes.”

Yet Meta has yet to elaborate on how exactly it will address the issue of harassment beyond Mosseri’s promises to “take the content down.” The company didn’t respond to BI‘s inquiries on how the new policy will be enforced.

Chances are that the tech giant will be forced to continue defending its gadget. Last month, Wired also found that Meta had quietly infused unreleased facial recognition tech into the glasses, sparking a major controversy. While company executives vehemently denied the existence of a the feature, chief technology officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth later discussed the feature at length during a subsequent interview.

In short, it’s no wonder Meta trying to regain the public’s confidence. Even some highly prominent names in the entertainment industry are now calling foul.

“You don’t know if someone’s wearing sunglasses, or if they’re wearing those f***ed-up f***ing…” singer Ella “Lorde” O’Connor told her audience during a concert earlier this month. “Can I just say, for the record, f*** the glasses! Don’t get the glasses — not sexy.”

More on the glasses: New “Advertisement” for Kylie Jenner’s Meta Perv Glasses Shows Something Extremely Funny If You Look at It From the Wrong Angle

The post Meta Desperately Trying to Ban Creeps Misusing Its AI “Pervert Glasses” appeared first on Futurism.

Tech workers are increasingly unionizing, trading Silicon Valley’s myth of exceptionalism for collective bargaining to contest the corporate deployment of artificial intelligence

For decades, the technology industry was a fortress that labor unions couldn’t breach. Tech workers already had cushy compensation packages, dream benefits like unlimited vacation and free lunch, and a flat corporate hierarchy that made engineers feel as powerful as their bosses, all of whom dressed down in sneakers and hoodies. So why unionize?

Now, that fortress is cracking from the inside. Unions have become increasingly popular for tech employees. After months of mass layoffs tied to artificial intelligence and mounting anxieties about how it’s being deployed, some tech workers say they’ve been saddled with higher workloads while facing the threat of job loss caused by the very products they’re building. Workers from Google DeepMind and Meta in the UK are also objecting to how their companies’ AI products are being used, such as for military purposes or to monitor employee productivity. Those same workers are now attempting to unionize.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

© Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

© Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

Meta is testing an app that uses AI to automate bedtime stories for children. The future is here, folks — and boy, is it depressing.

The app, first caught by 9to5Mac, is called “StoryKit.” (It’s not yet available in the US; Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s currently testing StoryKit in pilot countries.) Per a webpage for the app, parents pick a character either by creating one or taking a “photo of their favorite toy or person to bring them to life,” then describe a setting or world for the story to take place in. They can also ask the story to include a specific lesson or moral, which the app says will allow it to “weave in values like kindness, courage, or empathy without it feeling like a lecture.”

The resulting story can be read aloud by a human — or, of course, an AI voice can narrate instead. According to Meta, this is a lifeline for exhausted parents.

“Tired after a long day but want to give your kids a special bedtime story?” reads the app’s webpage. “StoryKit uses Al to help you create personalized bedtime stories in seconds. No more guilt about screen time. Just beautiful, unique stories made with love.”

Let’s be real: this app is amazingly sad. There are a lot of busy and exhausted parents, but outsourcing the emotional and creative labor of bedtime stories to machines is a wildly bleak proposition. Meta claims that this app will help parents feel less guilty about their kids’ screen time, but is having an AI voice read an AI-generated bedtime story to your kids that much different from plopping them in front of an iPad?

There are also countless human-written children’s books out there to choose from, if parents don’t enjoy coming up with stories with their kids on the spot. If you’re feeling guilty about screens, perhaps the answer is paper-bound books, not robots.

All in all: kids’ bedtime stories — bonding moments between parents and their children, in which parents can foster creativity and impart what they believe to be important lessons — aren’t exactly spaces begging for tech disruption. In fact, this is an area where we probably need less tech, not more.

More on kids and AI: The Proliferation of Deepfakes Is Profoundly Changing the Way Teenagers Use the Internet

The post Meta Working on Crushingly Sad AI App That Tells Bedtime Stories to Children, for “Tired” Parents appeared first on Futurism.

The company has comitted to 10 natural gas plants since last year.

Remember when Meta was planning to charge a $20 monthly subscription fee for the smart glasses feature that lets people hear each other more clearly - even though that feature runs locally on your glasses and doesn't require the cloud? Meta has paused those plans, spokesperson Tyler Yee confirms to The Verge.

The company is not giving up on the idea of a subscription fee for certain features - that's still moving forward. Yee confirms that "some premium features will be subscription-based over time."

But Conversation Focus, the accessibility feature, "will remain available for free through our Early Access Program for early testers while w …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta's smart glasses have been a PR headache for the company. Public backlash has been swift, and fierce; people are concerned about the erosion of privacy and expansion of surveillance. Some especially bad actors are using the glasses to film themselves "pranking" random strangers. Women have become unsuspecting social media content for men filming themselves hitting on them without their knowledge. When your product is being referred to as "pervert glasses," you have a problem on your hands.

On Thursday, Business Insider reported that Meta was taking the fairly extraordinary step of banning some content filmed with Meta glasses from the c …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta introduced a standalone app for sellers on its Facebook Marketplace platform, adding AI tools and sales management features to enable merchants to manage listings, reach buyers, and grow their business.

Sellers, the dedicated app, brings together listing management, buyer communications, inventory tracking and sales insights, while syncing with existing Marketplace accounts so users can carry over listings, messages and sales history.

The new app includes AI-powered listing creation, allowing sellers to upload photos and have Meta AI generate details including titles, descriptions, suggested pricing and categories. It also provides a unified inbox for buyer conversations and analytics covering views, clicks, messages and completed sales.

Meta said its original platform Marketplace, which launched a decade ago integrated directly in Facebook, now handles 430 million item listings each month globally. The existing Marketplace platform will remain available through Facebook, with a web version being tested for Seller app users. Android testing is also underway.

Seller is available through the App Store for US users aged 18 and over.

The launch comes as Meta seeks to expand Marketplace’s capabilities and compete more directly with established e-commerce platforms including eBay. The company has previously focused on improving commerce and community features across its platform, including the release of a dedicated Facebook groups app called Forum in May.

The post Meta launches dedicated Sellers app appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Meta today announced Facebook Verified, a free badge designed to confirm that a Facebook profile belongs to a real person rather than an AI-generated fake.


The feature uses a selfie-based verification process: users record a short video selfie, which ‌Meta‌ checks against their existing profile photos to confirm a match. ‌Meta‌ says the process is free and typically takes just a few minutes to complete, though accounts must meet the company's trust and safety standards to qualify.

Facebook Verified is limited to users 18 and older who are in good standing with ‌Meta‌'s Community Standards around fraud, scams, and deceptive practices, and who show no evidence of inauthentic behavior. The badge is not available for Pages or ProMode accounts, positioning it squarely as a personal-profile feature rather than one aimed at creators or businesses.

Once verified, the badge will appear on Marketplace, Dating, Groups, and Profile, with ‌Meta‌ planning to extend it to Feed posts over time. There is no subscription fee for the feature, and the badge carries across the platform once a user has completed the one-time verification process.

The launch is separate from ‌Meta‌ Verified, the company's existing paid subscription that bundles a verified badge with extras like impersonation protection and direct account support. Facebook Verified is free and narrower in scope, aimed specifically at signaling humanity rather than offering premium account features.

Facebook Verified is rolling out in phases, starting in select markets, with ‌Meta‌ planning to expand availability globally over time.
This article, "Meta Launches Free 'Facebook Verified' Badge to Confirm Real Users" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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WhatsApp’s latest feature drop brings account sign-ups to the iPad, a major CarPlay upgrade and music sharing through Status.

(via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are quickly earning a far less flattering nickname: “pervert glasses.”

A new investigation has exposed how highly personal videos captured by users — including people undressing or using the bathroom — are being sent to contractors in Kenya for AI training, often without the subjects’ knowledge. The revelations have sparked widespread outrage online, with many accusing the devices of turning everyday wearers into unwitting voyeurs and reigniting deep concerns about privacy in the age of always-on AI surveillance.

Victor Tangermann for Futurism:
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Automated systems designed to blur faces often failed, the contractors claimed, effectively giving them a front row seat of somebody’s most intimate moments.

“I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording,” one contractor said.

Many have quickly embraced a term for the devices that’s presumably sending Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg into paroxysms of fury: “pervert glasses.”

“Glad people are settling on the term ‘pervert glasses,’” another agreed. “Bonus points if you also say it while posting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg or call them Mark Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses.”

“Not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses,” wrote yet another. “I would prefer technology to make it more difficult to skeez, creep or perv on the world. I would like tech to protect me from creeps, not smooth the runway for them.”

The threat of simple smart glasses being used for surveillance isn’t some dystopian vision of a far future. Researchers have already shown that Meta’s smart glasses can be used to instantly reveal the identities of strangers in public — tech that Meta has reportedly been working on itself.

All told, smart glasses are a product category rife with uncomfortable connotations, especially when worn in the presence of others who may not know they may be recorded.

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MacDailyNews Take: Unless their goal was to trash their reputation as quickly as possible, we bet Ray-Ban is rethinking its poor decision to tie up with an outfit like Meta.

Meta is to privacy as Chernobyl is to nuclear power. – MacDailyNews, December 19, 2024

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The post Meta Ray-Bans are being called ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s Pervert Glasses’ appeared first on MacDailyNews.