Apple is among three tech giants being investigated for failing to comply with the European Union’s new competition rules, in another blow to the embattled smartphone maker. Apple was the primary focus of an EU press conference on Monday morning. But authorities also opened formal investigations into Meta and Alphabet, …
Read More »Meta Kills a Crucial Transparency Tool At the Worst Possible Time
Earlier this month, Meta announced that it would be shutting down CrowdTangle, the social media monitoring and transparency tool that has allowed journalists and researchers to track the spread of mis- and disinformation. It will cease to function on August 14, 2024—just months before the US presidential election. Meta’s move …
Read More »There Are Dark Corners of the Internet. Then There's 764
WIRED collaborated with Der Spiegel, Recorder, and The Washington Post on this reporting. Each wrote separate stories that the news organizations agreed to publish in tandem. This story contains descriptions of abuse, self-harm, murder, and suicide. Reader discretion is advised. It sounds like a cheap true-crime conspiracy: An international network …
Read More »This Senator Wants to Know What Meta and TikTok Are Doing About Parent-Run Girl Influencer Accounts
In January, the CEOs of X, TikTok, Meta, Snap, and Discord testified in front of a congressional committee about child exploitation on their platforms. “Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Senator Lindsey …
Read More »No, 'Leave the World Behind' and 'Civil War' Aren’t Happening Before Your Eyes
Several people are typing, and they’re all saying Netflix’s Leave the World Behind is wildly prescient. The movie, directed by Sam Esmail, opens on a world where communication has been knocked out following a cyberattack. And earlier this week, when nearly all of Meta’s platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Threads—went down, people took …
Read More »Meta Abandons Hacking Victims, Draining Law Enforcement Resources, Officials Say
Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat. The coalition of top law enforcement officials, spearheaded by New York …
Read More »Europe Is Breaking Open the Empires of Big Tech
Citizens of the European Union live in an internet built and ruled by foreign powers. Most people in the EU use an American search engine, shop on an American ecommerce site, thumb American phones, and scroll through American social media feeds. That fact has triggered increasing alarm in the corridors …
Read More »Facebook, Instagram, and Threads Are Coming Back Online After a 2-Hour Outage
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to describe his company’s mission as “making the world more open and connected.” Tuesday it did the opposite, as nearly all of Meta’s social platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger, experienced widespread outages around the globe for around two hours. Some people found …
Read More »WhatsApp Chats Will Soon Work With Other Encrypted Messaging Apps
A frequent annoyance of contemporary life is having to shuffle through different messaging apps to reach the right person. Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal—they all exist in their own silos of group chats and contacts. Soon, though, WhatsApp will do the previously unthinkable for its 2 billion users: allow people to …
Read More »Meta Will Crack Down on AI-Generated Fakes—but Leave Plenty Undetected
Meta, like other leading tech companies, has spent the past year promising to speed up deployment of generative artificial intelligence. Today it acknowledged it must also respond to the technology’s hazards, announcing an expanded policy of tagging AI-generated images posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with warning labels to inform …
Read More »