Topic: Meta
Meta removes 63,000 Instagram accounts associated with extortion schemes
Meta has removed a large number of Instagram accounts from Nigeria in an effort to combat sextortion scams. The accounts mainly focused on adult men in the US, but some also targeted minors, according to Meta. The removals are part of Meta’s larger effort to crack down on sextortion on its platform in recent months. Earlier this year, the company added a security feature to Instagram posts that automatically detects nudity and alerts users to potential extortion scams. The company also provides in-app resources and safety tips about such scams.…
Read More
Meta’s latest move in the AI competition is Llama 3.1
Meta revealed on Tuesday the launch of Llama 3.1, the newest iteration of its advanced language model that is said to be on par with competitors from OpenAI and Anthropic. This update follows the introduction of Llama 3 just three months ago, which was integrated into Meta AI, a chatbot present on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well as powering Meta’s smart glasses. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic have also unveiled updates to their AI models, indicating that the competition in Silicon Valley’s AI sector remains fierce. Meta said the…
Read More
Meta AI is now accessible in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and other languages.
In September 2023, Meta AI was introduced with the Llama 2 learning language model. Almost a year later, Meta has revealed a new set of capabilities for its AI assistant, along with a new LLM called Llama 3.1. These updates include an expansion of who can use Meta AI. With the addition of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Cameroon, Assistant is now available in 22 countries. It is also available in new languages: French, German, Hindi, Romanized Hindi, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. However, some of the new features…
Read More
EU officials suggest that Meta’s paid ‘ad-free’ plan could be breaching consumer laws.
The European Commission is displeased with Meta’s business model that allows users in the EU, European Economic Area, and Switzerland to choose between using Facebook and Instagram with targeted ads for free or paying for a monthly subscription for an ad-free experience. Officials from the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) network – a group of national authorities that oversee EU consumer protection laws – have suggested that Meta may be breaching consumer law on a ‘pay or consent’ basis. The Commission, which is the executive body of the European Union, coordinates…
Read More
Meta to refrain from sharing multimodal AI models with EU due to regulatory uncertainty
Meta has announced that it will not be making its upcoming multimodal AI model and future versions available to customers in the European Union due to a lack of clear guidance from European regulators. The models are intended to handle text, images, and audio, and are meant to enhance AI features on Meta platforms and Ray-Ban smart glasses. “We will launch the multimodal Llama model in the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment,” Meta said in a statement to…
Read More
Meta’s Oversight Board Lifts Ban on Arabic Word: Learn More
Meta’s supervisory board has asked the company to end its ban on the Arabic word “Shaheed,” which roughly translates to martyr in English. The commission’s extensive year-long review revealed that Meta’s current blanket ban on the word “shaheed,” which it had said could glorify or condone terrorism, “has led to widespread and unnecessary censorship that affects the free speech of millions of users.” “Meta should end the blanket ban on ‘shaheed’ because it has had a discriminatory and disproportionate impact on free speech and information sharing, which has heightened concerns…
Read More
EU Digital Markets Act Probes to be Launched Against Apple, Meta, and Google
BRUSSELS: Apple, Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google are to be investigated for failing to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. They said the European Commission would announce the investigations in the coming days and make decisions before EU cartel chief Margrethe Vestager’s term ends in November. DMA violations can cost companies up to 10 percent of their global annual revenue. A major EU technology rule requires companies to give users and competitors more choice to ensure a level playing field.…
Read More
Gmail and YouTube Experience Outage Following Restoration of Instagram and Facebook
Late Tuesday, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook and other services struggled with prolonged outages that affected a significant user base. Meta recognized the problems and successfully solved them. Meanwhile, Google, another tech giant, also faced brief disruptions. While Facebook users encountered error messages and unintentionally logged out and were unable to log back in, Instagram users found themselves stuck in their feeds and unable to update and access new content. Soon after the normalization of Instagram and Facebook, problems started to appear in Google’s services. According to outage tracking website Downdetector,…
Read More
Over 22 Million Pieces of Harmful Content Removed from Facebook and Instagram in India
Meta said it removed more than 17.8 million bad content from 13 Facebook policies and more than 4.8 million inappropriate content from 12 Instagram policies in India in January. In January, Facebook received 29,548 complaints through India’s complaint mechanism and said it provided tools for users to resolve issues in 21,060 cases. These include, for example, pre-defined channels for reporting content for certain violations, self-remediation streams where they can download their data, ways to resolve hacked accounts, etc., Meta said in its monthly report under IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital…
Read More
Meta to cease payment to news publishers in this country for content on Facebook
Meta Platforms announced it would stop paying Australian news publishers for their content on Facebook, launching a new battle with Canberra, which had pioneered a world law forcing internet giants to sign licensing deals. News publishers and governments like Australia have argued that big tech companies like Facebook and Google benefit unfairly when their platforms include links to news articles. Meta claims that links to news are only a fraction of user feeds, and publishers can still post news content to their own pages on Facebook. Meta announced on its…
Read More
Meta and LG collaborate to develop cutting-edge XR technologies.
Amid intensifying competition for global headsets, Meta and LG announced a partnership on Tuesday to redouble their efforts in augmented reality (XR) projects. It’s worth noting that Meta has a rich history of producing both VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed-reality) products in its Meta Quest line of products, with recent successes such as the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Through this strategic partnership, both companies plan to leverage and integrate their strengths across multiple products, services and platforms. This announcement follows a recent meeting between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, LG…
Read More
Report: Meta to Launch New AI Language Model Llama 3 in July
(Reuters) – Meta Platforms plans to release the latest version of Llama 3, a major language model for artificial intelligence, in July that would provide better answers to controversial questions posed by users, The Information reported on Wednesday. Metascientists try to “loosen” the model so that it can at least provide context for what they consider a controversial query. The effort, which would increase the utility of Meta’s new LLM, comes as rival Google discontinued the image-making feature of its Gemini AI after it produced historical images that were sometimes…
Read More
Meta’s Threads is now offering the option to save posts on a wider scale. Here’s a guide on how to use this feature.
Do you like saving posts on Instagram or bookmarking on Twitter? Well, Meta’s Threads lacked this functionality upon release. Now the X competitor has started to spread the feature more widely to its users. This follows Threads’ own previous testing, which began this month and offered a “save messages” option for some users. This allowed them to return to certain messages later. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the update: “Starting today, we’re rolling out Save on Threads more widely so you can bookmark your favorite posts for later,” he said.…
Read More
Meta’s Strategy to Combat Disinformation and AI Misuse in Europe
BRUSSELS: Facebook owner Meta is setting up a group to combat disinformation and the misuse of generative artificial intelligence in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections, amid concerns about election tampering and misleading content created by artificial intelligence. The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence, which can create text, images and videos in seconds in response to prompts, has sparked fears that the new technology could be used to disrupt major elections around the world this year. The European Parliament elections will be held on the 6th-9th. June. Its…
Read More
Mark Zuckerberg Explains the Reasons Behind the Surge in Tech Layoffs Over the Past 2-3 Years
Tech companies have been laying off from 2021 until 2023, and early signs this year suggest it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. The likes of Google, Amazon and even Meta have pulled the plug on several projects, cut product teams and rethought their plans for the future. So what are the main reasons for these layoffs and when will it end? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has shared his views on this matter in a recent interview, where he also walks us through the strategy of tech companies in recent…
Read More
Tech Giants including OpenAI and Meta Join Forces to Combat AI Election Interference
(Reuters) – A group of 20 technology companies said on Friday they have agreed to work together to prevent fraudulent artificial intelligence content from interfering with elections around the world this year. The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can create text, images and videos in seconds in response to prompts, has fueled fears that the new technology could be used to influence this year’s major elections, as more than half the world’s population heads to the polls. Signatories to the technical agreement announced at the Munich Security…
Read More
Tech Companies Require Employees to Return to the Office
The pandemic is indeed over. Companies that have resorted to remote and hybrid work setups are slowly moving back to the old habits of having people come into the office every week. The technology industry is in the biggest hurry to get employees back to work so they don’t log in their diaries from a mountain station or a beach. These companies aren’t just based in India, we’re talking about some of the biggest names in tech that are making people change the way they work or face serious consequences.…
Read MoreMeta’s Facebook and Instagram took action against more than 100 million pieces of ‘Child Endangerment’ content in 2023.
In 2023, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, rejected more than a million content related to child endangerment caused by nudity, physical abuse and sexual abuse. According to Meta India’s monthly reports, the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, from January 2023 to December 2023 targeted 1,21,80,300 million such content. The company said: “We measure the number of pieces of content (such as posts, photos, videos or comments) and take action to ensure that they are against our standards. This metric shows the…
Read MoreMeta’s Threads to Introduce ‘Today’s Topics’ Feature, Unveiling Current Trends
When Meta’s Threads debuted last year to compete with X (formerly known as Twitter), the user experience was very simple. It lacked tags, a web-based interface, and the ability to independently delete a Threads profile, requiring users to delete their entire Instagram profile. However, Meta has been responsive to user feedback and has gradually introduced various features to the app thanks to its growing user base. Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads is testing a new feature that will allow users to view trending topics on the platform.…
Read More