Tag: mark zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Calls on YouTube and TikTok to Match Its Teen Safeguards

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will pay $18 billion to settle a federal lawsuit accusing it of fueling a teen mental health crisis, but nearly a third of that sum depends on whether TikTok and YouTube agree to adopt the same safeguards. The social media giant is now directly calling on its largest competitors to follow Zuckerberg’s lead.

The settlement announced just days into a trial brought by a coalition of state attorneys general, resolves claims that Meta hooked children on its platforms and ignored the resulting harms, including anxiety, depression and suicide, to protect its profits. Meta will pay 70 percent of the total, about $12.7 billion, upfront. The remaining $5.3 billion only gets released if TikTok and Google’s YouTube together pay a matching $5.3 billion and adopt the same restrictions Meta is imposing on itself.

Those required changes include a one-hour daily usage limit for teens, a “night mode” that blocks access during bedtime hours, and age verification measures. Meta agreed to a two-hour daily limit for teens on Facebook and Instagram, which would drop to one hour if TikTok and YouTube fall in line. The night mode default would block teen access from midnight to 6:00 a.m. Most provisions in the settlement are set to last 10 years.

Meta is also banning filters for “cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup,” removing “Likes” and other reactions from teen posts by default, and strengthening parental oversight tools. The settlement leaves Meta’s recommendation algorithm, the system that decides what content teens see, untouched.

Meta published an open letter calling out its rivals directly, writing that “these protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers — TikTok and YouTube — to put the same measures in place.” As of Wednesday afternoon, neither company had responded, despite multiple requests for comment. TikTok recently settled a separate, unrelated case with the DOJ for $400 million over children’s privacy.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Agrees to $18 Billion Settlement with 29 States to End Teen Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta agreed to pay roughly $18 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children through addictive design.

NBC News reports that the settlement, which still needs a judge’s approval, came one day after Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified in a California courtroom. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had also been expected to take the stand before the deal was reached.

In a statement, Meta said “the agreement includes a payment of approximately $18 billion, which can be used to fund youth online safety initiatives, among other state priorities.” The company said the deal is part of a broader agreement with 52 attorneys general nationwide, extending well beyond the 29 states that sued in California.

Meta did not concede wrongdoing. A court filing states the company “denies the allegations against it and that it has any liability to the Plaintiffs.”

Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey and other states had accused Meta of designing addictive products that harmed children and of violating federal privacy and consumer protection laws. Meta pushed back, arguing the states were cherry-picking features while ignoring safety tools it already offers, including teen accounts that default to private, time-limit reminders, parental supervision options, and restrictions on who can contact minors and what content they see.

Under the settlement, Meta will build in daily limits and nighttime blocks for teenage users. The court filing says the company “commits to establishing daily limits and blocks on nighttime use for teenage users.” Teen accounts on Facebook and Instagram will default to a combined two-hour daily use limit, and teens will need parental permission to turn that limit off.

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Zuckerberg manifesto sketches out Meta’s ambitions for world-changing AI technology

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out a vision Monday of what he said artificial intelligence can do for the world, imagining a future where everyone has their own, all-knowing AI agent that strives to improve all aspects of their lives.

Zuckerberg detailed his ambitions for the technology in a 6,500-word essay published online where he also outlined why he favors open-source AI technology, in which developers make key components accessible for anyone to examine, modify and build upon.

In a document derided by critics as fantastical, Zuckerberg said his company is working toward an era where everyone will have the tools to create new businesses, receive Ph.D.-level tutoring and provide personalized lifestyle tips. His 8-year-old daughter, he wrote, can already code her ideas and quickly produce videos.

“Everyone will soon have invention superpowers,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Zuckerberg warned of risks if control of advanced AI is concentrated with a select few companies, institutions or governments. On Monday, Meta also announced the release a new open-source AI model, Muse Glimmer, which can run on a personal computer, and Zuckerberg said the company would also would provide a way for developers to access a more powerful AI model, Muse Spark 1.2.

Meta makes AI models, like several other tech companies, and uses them to power platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. The Menlo Park, California, company also makes them available to developers who can create their own apps and features.

Skeptics urge a slower pace of AI development
Critics said Zuckerberg was not reckoning fully with the risks inherent in AI’s rapid development.

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AI Price War Breaks Out: Meta Unveils Paid AI Model For First Time, Will Be “Among Most Affordable Options”

Shortly after a leaked Meta memo revealed the company was planning on putting an AI chip into production in September as it looks to double computing capacity to 14Gigawatts, the company also unveiled a version of its most advanced artificial intelligence model, Muse Spark 1.1, that includes a new paid tier for developers, marking the first time Meta has charged businesses for access to its models and providing a new revenue stream. It’ll be “among the most affordable options“ on the market, Zuckerberg said in a Bloomberg interview ahead of the release.

“Since this is not an open source model, this is I think the first time that we’re doing a real serious API,” Zuckerberg said, referring to the application programming interface used to access Meta’s AI. “And the pricing is going to be very aggressive and attractive” he added indicating that Meta hopes to capture market share by undercutting its competitors, offering the new model at 25% of the cost of top models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The new model’s biggest improvement is in its agentic capabilities, the Meta CEO told Bloomberg, and according to benchmarks the model does indeed appear to be in line with the competition.

He hopes to piggyback on the latest craze in AI development this year, which a month ago saw Goldman forecast that agentic AI use will lead to a massive 120 quadrillion monthly tokens being used by 2030.

Agents are the big theme of AI this year, with the label applied to systems that can complete multistep tasks on behalf of a user. Zuckerberg described Muse Spark 1.1 as having “state-of-the-art or very close to it” agentic reasoning and tool use. The model is also greatly improved when it comes to coding and Meta employees are using it internally to build products and features for various apps, he added. 

Meta will also introduce a new Meta Model API system, which will be used to collect fees from developers. Its API pricing is roughly 25% of the cost advertised by other top models from OpenAI and Anthropic, according to Bloomberg. Developers will be able to use Meta’s model for free, but only up to a point; they’ll be required to pay for access after reaching a certain token threshold, Zuckerberg said. 

Which means that legacy frontier models will now have to worry about domestic cheap alternatives, especially after xAI also released an agentic and coding model yesterday which will have to grab market share, in addition to much cheaper Chinese models.

“The pricing from some of the other labs is very extreme and has very high margins,” Zuckerberg said, underscoring that his strategy is to get Meta’s technology in front of as many people as possible. “We think that there’s a real ability to be able to offer frontier or very high-level intelligence at a much more affordable cost.”

Zuckerberg, 42, is spending aggressively to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Alphabet in a race to achieve what he calls superintelligence, or AI that can perform tasks better than humans. Meta has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to building the infrastructure necessary to develop superintelligence, including data centers and expensive AI chips. The company announced a new $10 billion data center investment in Canada as well as a new image-generation model just this week.

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Deadly bacteria found in major US city’s wastewater system tied to Mark Zuckerberg’s $800m data center

Meta‘s massive AI data center in Wyoming is facing scrutiny after an unexpected contamination incident emerged during construction.

The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company is developing a 715,000sq ft campus in Cheyenne that is set to go online next year, but its contractor has come under fire after city officials traced wastewater containing a rare bacterium to the project.

Known as Cupriavidus gilardii, the naturally occurring bacterium is typically found in soil and water. While harmless to most healthy people, it can cause severe pneumonia, bloodstream and lung infections, and, in rare cases, death among people with weakened immune systems. 

Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities (BOPU) said the bacterium was found in wastewater discharged by Goat Systems, a contractor working on Meta’s $800 million data center. 

According to the BOPU, the bacterium was first detected during routine wastewater sampling in late February, but was only announced last Thursday.

Meta said its general contractor, Fortis, began hauling industrial wastewater offsite and that independent testing found no trace of the substance to date.

Officials stressed that it did not contaminate the city’s drinking water, but said it disrupted the municipal reclaimed water system and required months of cleanup. 

However, the city permanently revoked Meta’s authorization to discharge wastewater from its fill-and-flush operations into Cheyenne’s treatment system, where the water is recycled and later used to irrigate parks and other public spaces. 

A Meta spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘When the board shared that it found a substance in the city’s wastewater – not public drinking water – Fortis immediately stopped discharging industrial wastewater and began hauling it offsite.

‘Fortis also began its own water testing with an independent environmental specialist, which has found no trace of the substance. 

‘Meta is committed to being a good neighbor in Cheyenne, including through the protection of local water resources, and will continue encouraging collaboration between Fortis and the board until this situation is resolved.’

It comes as AI data centers face mounting scrutiny across the US for their enormous demands on local water and power supplies. 

According to Data Center Map, there are nearly 4,500 data centers nationwide, with some facilities consuming as much as 300,000 gallons of water a day, roughly the same amount used by 1,000 households.

Goat Systems LLC is the corporate entity Meta uses for the construction of the center, dubbed Project Cosmo.

Officials said the contaminated wastewater was discharged during a fill-and-flush process used to prepare the data center’s cooling system before it goes online. 

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Zuckerberg to spend over $10B on “historic” Alberta AI data centre investment, sources say

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is behind a massive artificial intelligence data centre planned for Sturgeon County, Alberta, Juno News has confirmed.

This is according to several well-placed sources with direct knowledge of the investment, one that all sources agree will be “historic” in magnitude.

The project is expected to involve roughly $13 billion in total investment, though the final figure could still change as it is unclear if the final proposal has been approved and signed off by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s board.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta kicks off major bloodbath with 8,000 layoffs as AI roils tech giant

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta on Wednesday kicked off a major bloodbath with 8,000 layoffs — among the largest in the social media giant’s history — as a disruptive shift toward artificial intelligence continues to roil the tech giant. 

Employees were told in April that a 10% reduction of the workforce was coming on May 20, and earlier this week, they were reportedly informed that another 7,000 staffers would be reassigned to AI-focused positions.

Meta’s offices are set to be mostly deserted Wednesday after human resources chief Janelle Gale told North American employees to work from home in an email this week, according to an internal document earlier reported by Reuters.

The companywide purge is taking place in three massive waves, as employees across the world are notified in emails at 4 a.m. local time in their respective regions.

Singapore staffers were the first to receive the doomsday emails.

Meta did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

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Meta Buys Robot Brain Startup As Zuck Wants Humanoids In Homes

After the Oculus and Metaverse bets turned into costly disappointments for Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms, the tech giant’s pivot to real-world humanoid robotics appears to be gaining momentum, with news Friday afternoon that it is acquiring Assured Robot Intelligence.

Bloomberg reports that Meta has closed the acquisition of the humanoid robotics startup, which develops AI models to help robots understand, predict, and adapt to human behavior in complex environments.

What Meta has acquired appears to be a “robot brain” designed to give Zuckerberg’s humanoid robots better control, self-learning capabilities, and whole-body movement, enabling them to operate around people and perform physical tasks. Eventually, Zuckerberg wants these bots in your home.

Under the deal, co-founders Lerrel Pinto and Xiaolong Wang will join Meta Superintelligence Labs and work with the Meta Robotics Studio.

There is no information about the robot brains on ARI’s website. Using the commercial risk intelligence firm Sayari, we can see the founders and directors of the startup.

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Trump Appoints Big Tech Elites to New Advisory Board

President Donald Trump has formally populated his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a body created by executive order just days into his second term. The names now attached to it represent a tightly interconnected network of global tech power long associated with the most nefarious elements of the globalist agenda, technocratic thinking, transhumanist ambitions, disdain for constitutional norms, and having extensive ties to the Deep State and entities such as the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The council will be advising the president on everything from the economy and education to national security.

The public reaction was immediate. “Is Bill Gates next for being rewarded?” is one of the most widely shared reactions, capturing the outrage surrounding the appointments.

The Council

Trump signed the order establishing PCAST early in his second term. The document framed technological dominance as a national-security imperative.

It states that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and biotechnology “have the potential to reshape the global balance of power.” It calls for “unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”

The order warns that science has been corrupted by “ideological dogmas” and calls for restoring a “pursuit of truth.” That mandate, apparently, will be carried out by a council drawn heavily from the same corporate and technological structures that already shape public reality, and whose leading figures openly promote their own ideological dogmas rooted in the technocratic model of governance by “experts.” In practice, this concentrates decision-making power among a small oligarchic group controlling the digital systems that organize modern life and, by extension, the behavior of the masses. (The ideology is also referred to as “Dark Enlightenment.”)

The structure of the council mirrors the corporate model. The assistant to the president for science and technology (APST) and the special advisor for AI and crypto serve as members and co-chairs. If also serving as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the APST may designate the U.S. chief technology officer (CTO) as a member. The remaining members are appointed by the president from outside the federal government and are described as “distinguished individuals” from industry, academia, and related sectors.

The new technocratic board can include up to 24 members. The scope of their “advice” is broad:

The PCAST shall advise the President on matters involving science, technology, education, and innovation policy.  The Council shall also provide the President with scientific and technical information that is needed to inform public policy relating to the American economy, the American worker, national and homeland security, and other topics.

The concept of PCAST is not new. Presidents have convened similar advisory bodies for decades. The structure dates back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Science Advisory Board in 1933.

The List

The list of “the Nation’s foremost luminaries in science and technology” who will be advising the president includes:

  • Marc Andreessen
  • Sergey Brin
  • Safra Catz
  • Michael Dell
  • Jacob DeWitte
  • Fred Ehrsam
  • Larry Ellison
  • David Friedberg
  • Jensen Huang
  • John Martinis
  • Bob Mumgaard
  • Lisa Su
  • Mark Zuckerberg

Each has played a defining role in building the digital systems that now underpin communication, commerce, and governance.

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Zuckerberg’s “Fix” for Child Safety Could End Anonymous Internet Access for Everyone

Mark Zuckerberg spent more than five hours on the stand in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, testifying before a jury for the first time about claims that Meta deliberately designed Instagram to addict children.

The headline from most coverage was the spectacle: an annotated paper trail of internal emails, a 35-foot collage of the plaintiff’s Instagram posts unspooled across the courtroom, a CEO growing visibly agitated under cross-examination.

The more important story is what Wednesday’s proceedings are being used to build.

The trial is framed as a child safety case. What it is actually doing, especially through Zuckerberg’s own testimony, is laying the political and legal groundwork for mandatory identity verification across the internet.

And Zuckerberg, rather than pushing back on that outcome, offered the court his preferred implementation plan.

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