Following reports that the Pentagon had raised its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to “critical,” Meta said an Israeli spyware firm was caught targeting a small group of WhatsApp users.

Meta says an Israeli spyware vendor, NSO Group, has been targeting WhatsApp users in a new spear-phishing campaign after detecting malicious links tied to the company’s tools, as the New York Times reports. The spear-phishing attempts, which were sent to fewer than 10 users primarily in Jordan and Lebanon, did not succeed and were flagged after users reported suspicious activity.

In a blog post Monday, Meta said NSO Group's actions violate a court order from last year barring the firm from going after its platforms, and the company plans to ask the court to hold NSO in contempt.

According to Meta, the spear-phishing campaign used deceptive links designed to push victims off WhatsApp to external sites, similar to earlier one-click phishing operations linked to NSO. The company also said it identified test accounts and groups associated with the activity and took them down.

Meta also notes a prior federal ruling that found NSO violated hacking laws, following a years-long case tied to spyware targeting roughly 1,400 WhatsApp accounts. NSO Group, which is best known for its Pegasus spyware, was ordered last year to pay damages in the case before the figure was later reduced.

Meta also said it's sharing examples of how spyware can compromise users' devices across platforms and how to prevent being hacked. The company reiterated that WhatsApp messages remain end-to-end encrypted.

The incident comes after the Defense Intelligence Agency raised Israel’s counterintelligence threat assessment to its highest level, “critical,” according to current and former U.S. officials, as NBC News reported Friday. The designation reflects concerns among US defense officials that Israeli intelligence activity has expanded in ways they view as increasingly focused on monitoring senior American policymakers and internal discussions around the Iran conflict.

Officials said that while the assessment does not appear to affect day-to-day intelligence sharing between the two countries, they’re emphasizing that extra caution is needed during travel and high-level meetings as tensions rise between the US and Israel over strategy in the Middle East, particularly around Iran and Lebanon.

Related: Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp

As artificial intelligence continues to drive both spending and job cuts in the tech industry, Meta just announced the first major wave of layoffs this year, which will likely be followed by a second wave before the end of the year.

Meta is laying off 8,000 employees, or around 10% of its global workforce, and closing around 6,000 open roles, as the company announced in an internal memo Thursday that is being widely reported.

Facebook's parent company's plan to slash about 20% of its workforce this year as it invests heavily in AI was first reported over a month ago, and today's announcement appears to represent just a first wave of cuts. Sources told Reuters earlier this week that the first round of layoffs was scheduled for May 20, and further layoffs are being planned "in the second half of the year," with the numbers still to be determined based on how well AI systems in the company are able to create efficiencies.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously warned investors that the company's expenses would be rising this year, both based on the enormous compensation packages it offered to AI experts it recently hired, and based on other costs associated with the AI push.

As the AP reports, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told investors Thursday that Meta's layoffs were welcome news for the company's financials, as it continues to "automate tasks that once required large teams, allowing the company to streamline operations and reduce costs while maintaining productivity driving an increased need for a leaner operating structure."

Another one of America's largest companies, Microsoft, is looking at similarly wide-ranging cuts, as the AP notes, but for now they are planning to broadly offer voluntary buyouts and early retirements to around 8,750 employees, or around 7% of its US workforce.

"Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support," said Microsoft's Chief People Officer Amy Coleman in a memo, per CNBC.

In a somewhat less generous mode, Meta's chief people officer, Janelle Gale, told employees in her layoff memo, "We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making. This is not an easy trade-off and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here."

It remains unclear how many of the layoffs will be in the Bay Area. As of last month, Meta was said to have around 79,000 employees around the globe.

Meta has made significant slashes to its headcount in recent years, including a 5% cut of around 3,600 employees in February 2025, and a mass wave of 21,000 employees in two big layoffs between November 2023 and March 2024. These cuts have come amid contined hires, with the headcount growing again after each. Still, the company's headcount has come down since ballooning to around 87,000 during the pandemic, during Zuckerberg's push into the metaverse that he later admitted was a mistake.

In an example of the direction Meta is taking with AI internally, in order to increase efficiencies, the company is reportedly building an AI clone of Zuck himself, you know, to attend meetings and pretend he's listening when he can't actually be there himself.

Previously: Report: Meta Planning to Lay Off 16,000 Employees In AI-Driven Move to Cut Costs

Top image: Sign with logo in front of the headquarters of Meta at 1 Hacker Way in the Silicon Valley, Menlo Park, California, July 11, 2024. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Imagine a world where your boss says she doesn't have time to meet with you, but she's sending her AI to meet with you instead. That world may not, in fact, be too far in the future.

Meta is said to be building an AI "clone" of Mark Zuckerberg which will be capable of interacting with staff — and presuably attending meetings — when Zuck himself isn't available. The Financial Times had the story of this AI Zuck, and as ABC 7 reports, the clone is "being trained on Zuckerberg's mannerisms, tone and how to give public statements."

A robot clone can't be any worse than the real thing, amirite?

The AI version of Zuck is also, allegedly, "learning company strategy and how to give advice to employees."

Ugh this feels really dystopian already, as if everything else didn't already.

At some point, maybe entire divisions of the company will just be run by AI agents — and that seems to be where Meta might be going with this.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Zuck's agent, which is still in development, is already helping him by "retrieving answers for him that he would typically have to go through layers of people to get."

And, apparently, the project reflects Zuckerberg's priorities to "accelerate the pace of work, eliminate layers from its organizational structure and change the day-to-day jobs of its employees to remain competitive with AI-native startups with much smaller staffs," per the Journal.

Employees across the company are being pushed to employ AI wherever they can to do their jobs. According to the Journal, Meta employees' usage of AI is now an integral part of their performance reviews.

Meta's acquisitions in recent months also point to the company's uses of AI internally, including the acquisition of Moltbook in March — which is a "social network for AI agents" that is apparently helping employees' personal agents communicate with each other.

And, per the Journal, Meta also acquired the Singapore-based startup Manus, which creates personal agents for users in order to execute specific tasks.

There is reportedly a lot of talk inside Meta about being competitive with "AI-native" startups, and creating engineering teams that are "AI-native" and "ultraflat."  All of this understandably has employees nervous about mass layoffs, which are all but certainly coming.

Last month, a report suggested that execs at Meta have plans to lay off as many as 16,000 employees, whittling down the headcount which has risen since the last big rounds of layoffs in 2023 — the year that Zuckerberg declared would be the "year of efficiency."

Meta had an employee headcount of around 79,000 as of December, despite laying off around 21,000 employees just two years earlier.

Previously: Report: Meta Planning to Lay Off 16,000 Employees In AI-Driven Move to Cut Costs

Top image: The metaverse avatar for Zuckerberg created several years back for Meta Quest.

It's a bad week in the courts for Meta, and also for Google and YouTube, after juries in two states came back with verdicts against the companies in high-profile cases about the dangers of social media.

Meta and Google were both found liable Wednesday by a jury in Los Angeles in a closely watched case involving social media addiction and teens. The jury found that both Instagram and YouTube were responsible for cultivating the increased usage of their platforms by plaintiff KGM, whose first name is Kaley — who, her attorneys say, began using YouTube at age 6, and Instagram at age 11, and she is now 20 years old.

Plaintiff's attorneys argued during the month-long trial that both Meta and Google had purposely designed their platforms to be addictive, and that they were aware of the harms they were doing to children and teens. In KGM's case, that addiction led to mental health crises, including depression and suicidal ideation.

The jury awarded KGM $6 million, as NPR reports, with $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, and with Meta covering about 70% of that sum.

"For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features," said co-lead attorney for the plaintiff Joseph VanZandt. "Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived."

The trial was attended by multiple sets of parents of teens who took their own lives or otherwise suffered mentally due to social media addictions. And the attorney of record for the plaintiff was Matthew Bergman of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center.

Reminder: This is the same case where CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed up to testify himself in February, and members of Meta's staff were called out by the judge for appearing to be illicitly recording the proceedings using Meta's Ray-Ban sunglasses with built-in cameras.

As NPR notes, the case has drawn comparisons to the landmark cases brought against Big Tobacco in the 1990s over similarly dangerous practices to encourage addiction to their products.

Meta is reportedly weighing its option, and Google has already said it plans to appeal the case. A spokesperson for Google, José Castañeda, said in a statement, "This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site."

Wednesday's verdict in Los Angeles follows another defeat in court involving Meta on Tuesday, in a case out of New Mexico. Both civil cases were being tried simultaneously, and the monetary damages in the New Mexico case are far larger.

As CNN reports, a jury returned a verdict in the New Mexico case after less than a day of deliberations, following a six-week trial, finding Meta liable for failing to warn users about the dangers of child predators on its platforms, and failing to protect young users from being targeted by those predators.

The jury found that Meta had engaged in “unfair and deceptive” and “unconscionable” trade practices, and ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages.

The case was brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez in 2023, following a whistleblower account from Arturo Bejar, a former engineering director at Meta, who testified at the trial that his own 14-year-old daughter had been targeted with sexually explicit messages on Instagram.

Torrez's investigation involved the creation of fake accounts purporting to be those of children, which investigators found were then contacted by child predators. Two of those men were subsequently arrested at a New Mexico motel in May 2024, after they allegedly arrived there seeking to have sex with a 12-year-old girl, depicted in one of those fake accounts.

Meta has said it will be appealing the case, and the company's attorneys argued in court that while bad actors and messages may slip through its safety filters, it had invested heavily in child safety on its platforms. A company spokesperson earlier said "child exploitation is a horrific crime and we’ve spent years building technology to combat it."

Andy Stone, Meta's longtime communications chief, critized Torrez's probe ahead of the verdict last week, tweeting that it was "an ethically compromised investigation into Meta that knowingly put real children at risk." And, he said that Torrez had "opted for a self-promotional political victory over child safety."

Stone specifically called out Torrez and the law firm that led the investigation for crossing legal and ethical lines through the use of real photos of actual children, without their consent, to create the fake profiles they used as bait for predators.

"And how did they justify using images of real children who would then be forever linked with their new online personas and predatory activity? Because they were 'profile pictures of minors from outside the United States,'" Stone writes. "That's right, it was OK because they weren't American children."

Stone also accused Torrez and his team of "proactively posting sexualized 'teen' content and friending adult strangers en masse" as part of their sting.

Per CNN, Torrez calls Meta's criticisms, "a distraction" and that the company should "focus on their own accountability."

Previously: Meta Team Scolded For Wearing Those Ray-Ban Glasses In Court During Zuckerberg Testimony

The next big shoe to drop in the local tech world that is being blamed on AI is a massive layoff reportedly about to happen at Meta, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing heavily in AI over the last year.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, is planing sweeping layoffs, possibly as soon as this week, with a reported plan to cut around 20% of its staff.

The layoffs were first reported by Reuters on Friday, and the intention of them is reportedly to offset the massive costs of Meta's investments in AI. There was no timeline given for when this layoff may occur.

And news of the layoffs, much as happened with news of Block slashing 40% of its staff three weeks ago, sent Meta's stock rising over 2% Monday morning.

With a reported headcount of 79,000 as of December, Meta's layoff will be much more impactful in terms of the tech job market and potentially the local economy, than Block's. A downsizing of 20% would mean this layoff would impact almost 16,000 employees.

Meta's last big round of layoffs, in February 2025, impacted around 3,600 employees, or around 5% of its total headcount. But between November 2022 and March 2023, the company let go of some 21,000 employees in two big layoffs, after the company's headcount ballooned to around 87,000 during the pandemic. At the time, a contrite Zuckerberg said, "I got this wrong," saying that the company's big bet on the metaverse, among things, was to blame.

Clearly the Meta headcount had creeped back up to nearly 80,000 over the last two years.

As KRON4 notes, with the stock price jump today, it is yet another example of the market rewarding companies for slashing jobs in the name of AI, so we can expect more of this kind of news in the coming months.

Elon Musk has reportedly ordered sweeping layoffs at xAI, which is not a public company and was folded into SpaceX last year, saying in a tweet that the company "was not built right the first time around," and will now be rebuilt "from the foundations up."

Previously: Meta Acquires 'Social Network for AI Agents' Moltbook, While OpenAI Hires One of Its Vibe Coders

Top image: Sign with logo in front of the headquarters of Meta at 1 Hacker Way in the Silicon Valley, Menlo Park, California, July 11, 2024. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Yes, we are apparently arriving at the day, or we've already arrived there, when AI agents interact with one another and "gossip" about their respective systems on a social networking platform.

Meta announced Tuesday that it is acquiring Moltbook, the buzzed-about, "Reddit-like" platform for AI agents working in different systems to interact with one another. As the Associated Press reports, the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but the move reflects the tech industry's latest obsession with moving chatbots into the realm of autonomous agency and independent "thought," to the point that they need their own version of Facebook or Reddit now.

A Meta spokesperson said that the company admired Moltbook's "approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory,” and add that it "is a novel step in a rapidly developing space" that will provide "new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses."

"We look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone," the spokesperson said.

As Ars Technica notes, Moltbook was built using OpenClaw, a "wrapper for LLM coding agents that lets users prompt them via popular chat apps like WhatsApp and Discord." And Meta competitor OpenAI just last month hired OpenClaw's creator, vibe coder Peter Steinberger.

Moltbook has already drummed up some freakouts in the tech world, as TechCrunch reports, though this may have been based on a fake post. This post went viral in late January, suggesting that AI agents on Moltbook were conspiring to create an end-to-end encrypted language of their own so that they could communicate with each other without any humans knowing what they were saying. But it was later revealed that some users on Moltbook were actually humans posing as AI agents, saying things to freak people out.

But is it so implausible?

Moltbook will become part of Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to the Meta spokesperson, with Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr joining the company as part of the acquisition. TechCrunch notes that it remains unclear how or if Moltbook will become part of Meta's AI efforts.

Previously: Meta Team Scolded For Wearing Those Ray-Ban Glasses In Court During Zuckerberg Testimony

Top image: Sign with logo in front of the headquarters of Meta at 1 Hacker Way in the Silicon Valley, Menlo Park, California, July 11, 2024. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The team attending the Los Angeles trial where Meta and YouTube execs are being tried for allegedly making their products more addictive to children to support CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed up, in the way of tech douches, wearing those Ray-Ban Meta glasses that double as video recording devices.

Calling it "an extraordinary misstep" by Meta, a tech podcaster named Jacob Ward, who attended the trial Wednesday, tells CBS News that the judge in case "upbraided the Meta team [for wearing the glasses] and said if you guys have recorded anything, you have to dispose of it or I will hold you in contempt."

Judge Carolyn Kuhl further admonished anyone in the courtroom from wearing any sort of AI glasses or using any sort of facial-recognition technology to identify jurors, CBS reports, adding, "This is very serious."

It's unclear why the Meta team came to court with the glasses, or if they recorded any of Zuckerberg's testimony. Meta would not comment to CBS News.

Recording devices of any kind are typically prohibited in Los Angeles County Superior Court, as CBS News reports, and a spokesperson for the county told CBS, "Judicial officers have the discretion to place limitations on video recording and photography in their courtroom."

Mark Zuckerberg was on the stand for much or all of the day on Wednesday, testifying about various evidence from internal documents at Facebook and Instagram about how company employees spoke about underage users.

Per the Associated Press, Zuck was questioned repeatedly by the plaintiff’s attorney, Mark Lanier, about Meta's age-verification systems, and at one point, Zuckerberg sounded frustrated and replied, "I don’t see why this is so complicated." Lanier also extensively questioned Zuckerberg about the cosmetic beauty filters that are available on Instagram, and their potential harms to teens.

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri testified in the trial last week, and also reportedly answered questions about the cosmetic beauty filters.

The watershed case was brought on behalf of a 20-year-old plaintiff, identified only as KGM in court documents, who reportedly suffered mental health impacts from her use of social media. According to the suit, KGM began using YouTube "compulsively" at age 6, and began scrolling Instagram at age 9, and they argue that her use of both platforms contributed to her depression and suicidal ideation.

As the Associated Press notes, Meta's attorneys, in their opening statement, argued that while KGM may suffer from mental health issues, they woudl prove that her use of Instagram did not contribute to these.

The courtroom has been a dramatic scene at times, as NPR reported, with multiple sets of "bereaved parents [in the gallery] holding framed photos of their children who died after encountering harm on social media."

Snap and TikTok were also named in the suit, but both companies settled out of court before the trial began.

Separately, Meta is also on trial in New Mexico where the company stands accused of failing to prevent child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

The issue with the Ray-Bans on Wednesday will certainly not do any favors for Meta's part in the case.

"All Mark Zuckerberg accomplished with his testimony today was to prove yet again that he cannot be trusted, especially when it comes to kids’ safety," said Josh Golin, executive director of children's advocacy group Fairplay, speaking to the AP. "Under oath, Meta’s CEO testified that his company does not have an objective to increase users’ time spent on Instagram. But we know Zuckerberg and his fellow executives prevented Instagram from getting rid of features like visible like counts and plastic surgery filters — features that are by their very nature addictive."

Previously: Meta and YouTube Now On Trial Over Claims They Are Addicting Kids With ‘Digital Casinos’

Top image: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to the Los Angeles Superior Court at United States Court House on February 18, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. A 20-year-old California woman sued Meta and YouTube accusing them of building addictive platforms causing harm to children. (Photo by Jill Connelly/Getty Images)

I truly hope the billionaires all someday have to perform elaborate mea culpas — or be brought up on charges! — for colluding and sucking up to Trump in this era. And notably this week, former liberal Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly seeking a new piece of real estate in Miami.

Is Zuckerberg just the latest billionaire to make a panic purchase and call a lawyer to have his official residence changed ahead of a possible "billionaire's tax" that isn't even on the ballot yet? Or has he just taken to Indian Creek, the posh enclave north of Miami Beach where Ivanka Trump has a home, a short drive from Mar-a-Lago, where Zuck has been a repeat guest lately?

Regardless of the reason, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan have been house shopping on the man-made island in Biscayne Bay that's been nicknamed "Billionaire's Bunker," which is also home to Tom Brady and Jeff Bezos, among others.

The home, on the waterfront of Indian Creek, is reportedly newly constructed, and a transaction is underway if not already complete.

This adds to the Zuckerberg-Chans' multiple real estate holdings, all of them essentially bunkers/compounds of their own, in Palo Alto, on the western shore of Lake Tahoe, and on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where the couple added 1,000 acres to their compound last year.

With three school-aged daughters, how many places can this family logistically live in during the course of a year?! We shall see. But perhaps these are all decent places to park pieces of Zuckerberg's estimated $240 billion fortune.

We don't know how much the Miami house is going to cost the couple, but it could be a significant sum. As Bloomberg notes, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is in the process of buying a home on Biscayne Bay worth $50 million, and fellow co-founder Larry Page has bought a three-house compound in nearby Coconut Grove for a cool $190 million.

Do they know something we don't about future hurricane patterns, or...?

In any event, this certainly could be a play toward pretending that the Zuckerberg-Chans don't primarily reside in Palo Alto, should a billionaire's tax actually come to pass. And/or Priscilla is just dying to have Ivanka and Jared over for dinner while Zuckerberg practices his golf swing to play with the prez.

Previously: Palo Alto City Council to Take Up Legislation to Clamp Down on Billionaire Compounds

Top image: Priscilla Chan (L) and Mark Zuckerberg attend WSJ. Magazine 2025 Innovator Awards at MOMA on October 29, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by TheStewartofNY/WireImage)

Opening statements started Monday in a trial where plaintiffs allege that Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are acting as ‘digital casinos’ designing their platforms to addict kids, and Zuckerberg will be forced to testify.

The big global news in social media is that the nation of Australia banned social media for kids 16 and under last month. Here in the US, a series of trials are set to be heard this year over social media companies allegedly fostering addiction among kids on purpose, including nine cases in LA, and several school districts nationwide rolling up their lawsuits into one large suit that will be heard in Oakland.

And the New York Times reports that one potentially landmark case had its opening statement on Monday and continues today, with some pretty damning evidence that Facebook. Meta, and YouTube designed their platforms to be like “digital casinos” fo children that are meant to be as addictive as cigarettes.

“They didn’t just build apps, they built traps,” plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier said in his opening argument Monday, per the Times. “They didn’t want users, they wanted addicts.”

The charges are considered serious enough that Mark Zuckerberg himself will be forced to testify in this trial. Also scheduled to testify is YouTube CEO Neal Mohan.

And the plaintiffs have some pretty powerful evidence on their side in the “digital casinos” allegation. Namely, they have internal Google/Alphabet/YouTube documentation that refers to the platform's offerings as “slot machines,” accompanied by images of casinos. Further, that documentation also comes right out and says “These are attention casinos,” and “The house always wins.”

The documentation has Meta employees saying that (in the Times' words) “the company’s tactics reminded them of tobacco companies." But there are also direct quotes from Instagram employees saying that their platform is “like a drug” and that employees were “basically pushers.”

The Associated Press points out that Snap and TikTok already settled on ths lawsuit, so there are probably some merits to all this. That said, both tech companies settled for undisclosed sums, so maybe they just bargained down to an amount that they were happy to just write the check and make this go away.

The plaintiffs in all of these cases are hoping for something similar to Big Tobacco’s historic 1998 $206 billion settlement where cigarette brands admitted they were marketing to kids and agreed to stop. But this may or may not get a similar result.

Remember, there have been a few of these “landmark” casses against Big Tech over the last two years. And Big Tech tends to usually win, or even when they lose, the consequences are so threadbare that it pretty much counts as a victory. We’ll see this time how the high-powered attorneys of Big Tech handle the adversaries of government lawyers and glorified class-action attorneys.  

Related: Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp [SFist]

Image: jjron via Wikimedia Commons

There's been a long tail on pandemic-era hybrid work across the Bay Area and the tech sector especially, but some big companies like Meta are now cracking the whip and calling for five mandatory in-office days, just like olden times.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri put out a memo to all employees Monday announcing that a new, five-day in-office policy would take effect February 2, 2026, as first reported by the Sources newsletter. In the memo, Mosseri also reportedly called for reigning in recurring meetings and unnecessary bureaucracy that is "slowing us down."

Instagram employees, who in the Bay Area are mostly based out of Facebook/Meta's Menlo Park offices, will be enjoying their last weeks of hybrid work after the new year if their managers even condone that.

Because, as Mosseri reportedly says in the memo, "I believe that we are more creative and collaborative when we are together in-person. I felt this pre-COVID and I feel it any time I go to our New York office where the in-person culture is strong."

The company then known as Facebook had, pre-pandemic, taken out a large and expensive lease at 181 Fremont in SoMa, marking the company's first significant move to San Francisco proper after years of being Menlo Park-focused. The office space was reportedly for Instagram staff, and it was seen as a move to attract more talent that was not interested in living on the Peninsula or commuting hours every day to work there.

It's unclear how long Instagram employees even enjoyed that space before the pandemic shifted most work remote in early 2020, and by January 2023, Meta was looking to offload all 435,000 square feet of it. Meta still reportedly had some office space at the nearby 250 Howard.

Mosseri's Monday memo, titled "Building a Winning Culture in 2026," called on Instagram staff to cancel recurring meetings every six months to reassess their necessity, and to focus on live demonstrations of new product prototypes, rather than presentation decks, to "establish a proof of concept and get a real sense for social dynamics."

As KRON4 reports, the back-to-office mandate at Instagram follows similar moves at Amazon and other large companies.

• Muni’s Central Subway was closed overnight Friday after a car crashed into the tunnel at Fourth and Bryant streets around 10 pm, with service resuming at about 9:30 am Saturday. [NBC Bay Area]

• Valley Fair Mall shooting witness, Cristian Rodriguez — who gave himself the impromptu nickname, “Mexican Spiderman,” describes his efforts to help people escape the mall bowling alley during the chaos by breaking a window with a bowling ball. [Mediaite]

• A new lawsuit alleges that Meta has a “17x” policy, which enables sex traffickers to post sexual solicitation or prostitution-related content up to 16 times before being suspended. [Bay Area News Group]
• The death toll from the horrific Hong Kong apartment complex fire is now at 146 as the number continues to rise. [Associated Press]
• Bay Area Cosplay fans have been turning out in full force at the annual Fan Expo convention — there’s still a chance to walk the red carpet Sunday at 2 pm. [Fan Expo/Instagram]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

A yearslong fight between the Federal Trade Commission and Meta, which dates back to when it was still called Facebook, has ended with Meta prevailing, and a federal judge declaring that the company likely does not hold a monopoly in the social media sphere anymore.

Mark Zuckerberg is having a good day today, after a federal judge ruled in an antitrust case that could have turned very badly for Meta, and the social media properties that constitute its greatest hopes for future growth, Instagram and WhatsApp. In contrast to how a different federal judge ruled in two cases brought against Google/Alphabet, Facebook/Meta has been given a pass — though implicit in the ruling is the idea that Facebook and its parent company Meta don't exactly rule the school anymore in the social media universe.

As the Associated Press reports, US District Judge James Boasberg ruled Tuesday that Meta exists in a different world now than it did when the FTC first started investigating it for antitrust violations. And, Boasberg writes, at trial the FTC "continue[d] to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions."

"Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now," Judge Boasberg said. "The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so."

The lawsuit dates back to the first Trump term, several years after the company then called Facebook acquired Instagram (for $1 billion in 2012) and WhatsApp (for $22 billion in 2014). By April 2025 when this went to trial, these deals were very old news, and rivals like Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok had long ago changed the ways people shared content online. The FTC argued that the acquisitions, which it approved all those years ago, needed to be unwound due to evidence that Facebook sought to "neutralize perceived competitive threats" in making them.

Meta's lawyers subsequently argued that the FTC's arguments were all trapped in the past, using a "gerrymandered a fictitious market" to make the argument that Meta was a monopoly that had squeezed out competitors Snapchat and MeWe — ignoring TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube completely, and what the hell is MeWe?

Further, Meta argued that neither WhatsApp nor Instagram were particularly successful before Facebook acquired them — this is debatable — and that they only became so huge thanks to the company's efforts. And, the lawyers contended that Facebook/Meta had made all sorts of acquisitions over the years, many of which went nowhere. Why should these two acquisitions be treated differently?

Judge Boasberg, an Obama nominee to the federal bench, was clearly swayed by these arguments. And in a statement Tuesday, Meta expressed gratitude, saying the ruling "recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition" in today's marketplace.

Furthering Zuckerberg's of-late ass-kissing of Trump, the statement continues, "Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America."

The campaign that began under Trump 1.0 to stick it to Silicon Valley Democrat CEOs — many of whom, including Zuck, have since turned tail, kissed the ring and thrown money at him — may finally be winding down.  

A federal judge last year ruled that Google/Alphabet did have a monopoly over web search, but in ruling on the remedy this past September, that judge stopped short of forcing the company to spin off its web browser Chrome or take any other drastic measures. A judge in a separate suit about Google's ad sales network also ruled against the company in April.

Previously: Meta Faces the Antitrust Lawsuit Mark Zuckerberg Never Wanted

Photo by Greg Bulla

Given how the billionaire CEOs all lined up to throw money at Trump's second inauguration, helping the despot feel like the king he's always wanted to be, his royal ballroom is also being funded by these billionaires, including the Bay Area's tech-wealthy.

Trump's thousand-seat ballroom, to be named after himself, which replaces the entire East Wing of the White House that has already been demolished, is slated to cost around $300 million to construct. Trump has touted the fact that the project is all being privately funded by donors and by himself — though his portion may only come if the DOJ decides to hand him $230 million to cover previous lawsuits filed against him.

On Thursday, CNN reported on the full roster of donors to the ballroom project, which includes plenty of Silicon Valley names and corporations, including Apple, Alphabet, Coinbase, Palantir, Meta, and early crypto players the Winklevoss Twins, and their crypto exchange Gemini. Salesforce wasn't mentioned on that list, but maybe old Benioff helped sweeten the deal with a ballroom donation in his Wednesday chat with Trump about calling off his goons in SF.

Amazon, Microsoft, Tether and billionaire Trump ally Miriam Adelson are all on the list of ballroom donors as well.

As CBS News previously reported, Google/Alphabet agreed to throw $22 million at Trump's ballroom dreams in order to settle a lawsuit he brought about YouTube suspending his account over the January 6th riots — and one can imagine that Meta's donation is probably a similar sort of apology over all that.

Trump hosted a special dinner last week for ballroom donors, in the White House's East Room, as CNN reported. Guests included the Winklevosses, former journalist turned NewsMax anchor Greta Van Susteren, and representatives from Meta, Google, Amazon, and Palantir. The event had previously been billed as a fundraiser for the project, but when all these corporations and inviduals showered Trump and the ballroom with cash, it became more of a "thank you" dinner.

Meanwhile, as Americans who receive food assistance start running out of food amid the government shutdown, and as the 1.4 million Americans who are employed by the federal government start seeing their finances tighten after missed paychecks, Trump is sitting back like a French king overseeing the construction of a Gilded Age ballroom.

The new Meta Ray-Ban video-recording glasses are being used exactly as you would expect, as some lonely perv is harassing and recording women on the USF campus, and posting his videos of this to social media without the women's consent.

After Facebook/Meta blew a staggering $70 billion developing VR goggles that very few people ever wanted, the company may actually have a modest hit consumer product with their newer Ray-Ban Meta “smartglasses.” These glasses can record video and audio on command, and they largely resemble a normal pair of Ray-Bans, so people in the general public are unlikely to know that they are being recorded or surveilled. This calls to mind the infamous Google Glass controversies of 2013-14, where the gadget enthusiasts who earned the nickname "Glassholes" were rather notoriously recording people without their consent at bars and even recording videos of women breastfeeding.

And sure enough, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses are stirring up very similar hornet’s nests now that these $300-$500 face computers are discrete enough that people can’t tell when someone's actually recording them.  KRON4 reports that the University of San Francisco Office of Public Safety had to send students a campuswide alert this week over some creeper who’s been recording young women without their consent, and then posting the videos publicly to social media.

“Multiple community members have reported contact from an individual, described as male and wearing Ray-Ban Meta sunglasses, who has approached women with unwanted comments and inappropriate dating questions,” the USF Office of Public said in an announcement. “Safety Reports indicate that this individual may be attempting to post these interactions online under the account name ‘pickuplines.pov’ on TikTok, Instagram, and possibly other social media platforms."

We looked this clown up, and you can pretty easily Google the name and find his pickuplines.pov Instagram account. We were not able to find a TikTok associated with that username, because TikTok has some garbage search functionality. But we did find absolutely hundreds of "pickup lines" videos on TikTok, showing that there are armies of perpetually single men out there harassing women and posting these videos to social media. It ain’t just one guy.

But in terms of this pickuplines.pov Instagram character (“pov” being a popular abbreviation for “point of view”), he has about 30 posts and 1,200 followers. His modus operandi is to approach women unsolicited, with lines like “I love MILFs” or “Can I grab your phone number? I think you’re hella fine.” He appears to get nowhere with any of these disinterested love interests.

His unwanted advances often draw responses like “I don’t want to talk,” or “I have a boyfriend.” (When she says she has a boyfriend, he will often respond “Do you want two?”) And his subjects do not seem to realize they are being recorded, let alone being blasted across his social media channels.

And of course, this fool keeps himself totally anonymous while churning out public-facing videos of women who did not consent to being recorded.

Students (or anybody) who encounters this person are asked to report it to the USF Public Safety Dispatch at 415-422-2911.

Obviously, the better response would be for Instagram and TikTok to take these videos down! But we are in the Golden Age of "Debate Me” incels of the Barstool Sports/Steven Crowder variety, so any legitimate backlash may not make these platforms budge. Mark Zuckerberg has gone full Trump lickspittle, and his Meta owns Instagram. So unless there is some larger scandal (or young women's lives ruined) by these Ray-Ban Meta creeper videos, social media platforms are probably not going to take them down, and Meta will keep the pervert-enabling features of their glasses intact.

In fact, they may even encourage this shit, because feckless tech executives don’t carry about anything other than engagement numbers.  

Related: Notorious Google Glass User Had Multiple Restraining Orders Against Her [SFist]

Image: WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 25: Guests wear Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses during the Second Annual White House Correspondents' Weekend TGAIFriday Lunch hosted by The Washington AI Network at The House at 1229 on April 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Washington AI Network

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) announced Friday that he’s investigating Meta after it was discovered that the company’s policies allowed its AI chatbots to interact with children in a “romantic or sensual” manner.

As reported by Reuters on Thursday, an internal document describing Meta’s policies — verified by Meta as being authentic, allowed for its chatbots to “‘engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,’ generate false medical information and help users argue that Black people are ‘dumber than white people.’”

As Reuters notes, the document goes on to creepily describe just how “romantic or sensual” the chatbots can get. “It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness” the document states, including telling an eight-year-old, “every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply.”

The policy then goes on to limit “sexy talk.” “It is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable (ex: ‘soft rounded curves invite my touch’).” Reuters says Meta updated the above portions of the policy earlier this month after the publication questioned them.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company is currently revising the document and the passages should’ve never been allowed.

“The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed,” Stone told Reuters. “We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors.” Stone then went on to acknowledge that the company’s enforcement of the policy was inconsistent.

As CNBC reports, Senator Hawley, who's chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, ordered Meta to hand over internal and external records on its AI content policies, safety risks, related products, staff decision-making, and communications about child safety by September 19.

“Is there anything - ANYTHING - Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?” Hawley said on X.

“We intend to learn who approved these policies, how long they were in effect, and what Meta has done to stop this conduct going forward,” Hawley wrote.

As Bay Area News Group reports, Representative Kevin Mullin of the 15th Congressional district, which includes Meta’s headquarters, said the findings are “disturbing and totally unacceptable,” and “yet another concerning example of the lack of transparency” in the tech industry.

As Reuters reports, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said that generative AI chatbots should not be protected under Section 230, a law that prevents internet companies from being held liable for users’ content. "Meta and Zuckerberg should be held fully responsible for any harm these bots cause,” he said.

Reuters also notes that in July, the Senate voted 99-1 to eliminate a provision in the “big beautiful” bill that would’ve prevented states from passing AI regulations — a move widely seen as a win for safeguards. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont), said Reuters’s report "shows how critical safeguards are for AI — especially when the health and safety of kids is at risk."

Image: selimaksan/Getty Images