Business & Tech Instagram Ordering Everyone Back to the Office Five Days a Week 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.
SF News Sunday Links: Muni’s Central Subway Closes Overnight After Car Crashes Into Tunnel Amidst the Valley Fair Mall shooting chaos, “Mexican Spiderman” emerged, helping fellow mall bowling alley patrons escape; Artists, submit your work to be projected atop Salesforce Tower; and a car crashed into Muni’s Central Subway tunnel.
Business & Tech Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp A yearslong fight between the FTC and Meta 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.
Business & Tech Guess Who's Helping Pay For Trump's Ballroom? Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Palantir 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.
Business & Tech Here Come the Creeps: Meta Ray-Ban Glasses Dudebro Stalking Women at USF, Posting Videos to Social Media 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.
Business & Tech Meta’s Policy Allowing Bots to Engage in ‘Romantic or Sensual’ Talk With Kids Prompts Senate Investigation 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.
Business & Tech Turns Out, Meta's AI Data Centers Use Up a Lot of Water In Addition to Electricity Something that hasn't gotten enough attention is whether the entire AI enterprise is even sustainable, given how the computing power currently required, scaled upwards, uses incredible amounts of energy and water.
Business & Tech Meta's AI Efforts Include Huge Privacy Flub; Sam Altman Says Meta's Been Trying to Poach OpenAI Staff It looks like we're back to "move fast and break things" at Meta, with Meta.ai appearing to be off to a troubled start, exposing users' very private search queries in a bizarre public feed. And the company has reportedly been offering $100 million signing bonuses to OpenAI staff?!
Business & Tech Instagram Users Complain of Mass Suspensions of Accounts, Likely By AI Something appears to be up in the Instagram universe, with many users turning to other platforms like Reddit and Xitter to lodge complaints about their accounts getting falsely flagged and suspended.
Business & Tech Facebook Suspends, and Then Reinstates, Author Rebecca Solnit’s Account Over LA Protest Post, In an Apparent AI Flub SF author Rebecca Solnit had her Facebook account suspended after she posted an essay about the LA protests, but Facebook undid the suspension about 24 hours later, and this all likely happened because of the slapdash AI that Facebook uses for content moderation.
SF News Day Around the Bay: SF’s Booksmith Drops JK Rowling Titles Over Anti-Trans Fund Meta was found to be hosting ads promoting AI-powered “nudify” deep-fake tools; mid-2000s fave Digg is trying to make a comeback; and SF’s Booksmith is no longer carrying JK Rowling’s books due to the author’s ongoing attack on transgender rights.
Business & Tech That $1B Pledge to Build Housing That Facebook Made Six Years Ago? It's Basically Dead Back in his philanthropy era, Mark Zuckerberg made a grand pledge to put $1 billion toward building new housing, to combat the affordability crisis in California that companies like his had contributed to. But that project has quietly been jettisoned.
Business & Tech Mark Zuckerberg Gets Roasted for Saying the Average American Has 'Fewer Than Three Friends’ While Pushing AI Chatbots Is Mark Zuckerberg okay? The internet is certainly questioning his grip on reality over his comment on a new podcast, while he was hyping Facebook’s AI chatbots, when he said that the average American has “fewer than three friends.”
Business & Tech Meta Launches Standalone AI App, Hopes It Will Compete With ChatGPT If the Meta brand weren't so tarnished, one could see its standalone AI app doing fairly well. But will anyone actually care or use this thing?
Business & Tech Meta Faces the Antitrust Lawsuit Mark Zuckerberg Never Wanted The FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta, focusing on Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago, kicked off in federal court Monday morning, and Mark Zuckerberg is testifying.
Business & Tech Meta Playing Hardball to Prevent Sales of Ex-Employee’s Tell-All Book Well well well, Mark Zuckerberg suddenly wants less free speech and more content moderation when it comes to a former Facebook employee who’s written a book exposing what it was like to work there, and they’ve hauled the publisher to court.
Business & Tech Meta Bringing the Axe Down With an Estimated 4,000 Layoffs Worldwide Today The Super Bowl hangover day is particularly rough at Facebook’s parent company Meta, as nearly 4,000 employees are learning that they’ve been pink-slipped today, though it’s unknown how many Menlo Park employees are getting the boot.
SF News Day Around the Bay: A's Single-Game Tickets Go On Sale Next Week A's single-game tickets go on sale next week; Apple to revamp AI efforts; and Meta to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.
Arts & Entertainment Is Aaron Sorkin Plotting a Sequel to 'The Social Network,' About the Moral Downfall of Mark Zuckerberg? In an interview with Jesse Eisenberg on 'Fresh Air' this week he talks about his changing view of a man he portrayed over a decade ago, Mark Zuckerberg. And, apparently, a sequel or follow-up to 'The Social Network' may be in the works.
Business & Tech Conspiracy Theories Fly as Meta Users Find Themselves Suddenly Following Trump and JD Vance Millions of Facebook and Instagram users were shocked to find that they were suddenly following Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Melania Trump, but the company insists it was just the normal switching of official accounts that happens for every presidential transition.
Business & Tech Meta to Lay Off Around 3,600 More Employees as It Faces 'Intense Year,' Zuckerberg Says Fast on the heels of Meta's announcement that it is curtailing a significant subset of its social media operations — namely content moderation — the company says it is also going to trim its workforce by 5%.
Business & Tech Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies In a shift akin to what Elon Musk has done with the platform we still call Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will soon be more of a free-for-all when it comes to misinformation, with "community notes" inserted when facts are questioned.
Business & Tech Meta Continues Its Trump Turn, Adds UFC President Dana White to Its Board of Directors Facebook and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg continues his mixed martial arts fascination, and his increasing kowtowing to Donald Trump, with the curious addition of UFC president Dana White to Meta’s expanding board of directors.
Business & Tech Yes, Instagram Is Down, and So Are Other Meta Apps The Luigi Mangione memes have officially broken the internet. Meta was experiencing some sort of major "disruptions" Wednesday morning, which were causing outages on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger.
Business & Tech Supreme Court Denies Facebook’s Appeal to Halt Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit From Jilted Investors A multi-billion lawsuit investors brought against Facebook for the Cambridge Analytica data breach can proceed, as the Supreme Court just shot down Facebook’s appeal in a one-sentence ruling.
