Meta’s Open Source Llama 3 Is Already Nipping at OpenAI’s Heels

Jerome Pesenti has a few reasons to celebrate Meta’s decision last week to release Llama 3, a powerful open source large language model that anyone can download, run, and build on. Pesenti used to be vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta and says he often pushed the company to consider releasing its technology for … Read more

She Painted a Few Champagne Bottles. Then Came Meta’s Customer Support Hell

Holifield hired Eva to help get her account back. But Eva warned that the chances of success were impossible to predict. Eva herself had, for reasons unclear to her, lost access in late January to Meta’s Media Support Partner Portal, a channel to more dedicated support for public figures and organizations. Someone else with Portal … Read more

Meta Is Already Training a More Powerful Successor to Llama 3

Zuckerberg took to Instagram today to explain that Meta would incorporate the new Meta AI assistant, powered by Llama 3, into products that include Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. Meta said in its blog post announcing Llama 3 that it had focused heavily on improving the training data used to develop the model. It was … Read more

Federal authorities launching child sex exploitation awareness campaign

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is launching a national awareness campaign aimed at educating the public about the threat of child sex exploitation and preventing future crimes from occurring, the Biden administration announced Wednesday. The initiative, called Know 2Protect, is what DHS described as a “first-of-its-kind” campaign that brings together public and private sector … Read more

Civil advocacy groups press Big Tech on AI-fueled misinformation

More than 200 civil advocacy groups urged leading technology companies to increase efforts to combat misinformation fueled by artificial intelligence (AI) ahead of elections across the globe, in a letter published Tuesday. The groups wrote top executives for popular technology companies including Google, Meta, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube and X, requesting “swift action” to reinforce their … Read more

Majority of US voters hold unfavorable views of Bezos, Zuckerberg: Poll

A majority of U.S. voters hold unfavorable views of Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to a new survey from The Tech Oversight Project. Sixty-five percent of registered voters said they have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Zuckerberg, who runs the parent company of Facebook and … Read more

Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism

The tech giants have overthrown capitalism. That’s the argument of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who became famous trying to defend debt-laden Greece from its German creditors. Varoufakis has never quite regained the notoriety of 2015. But he has remained a prominent left-wing voice. After a failed campaign for a seat in the European … Read more

Meta asks judge to dismiss FTC antitrust case

Meta asked a federal judge on Friday to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust case against the social media giant, arguing that the agency failed to prove that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp harmed consumers.  “From the very beginning, the FTC has failed to state a plausible claim, and the agency has done … Read more

Warren, Sanders accuse Meta of blocking content related to Palestinians: ‘Deeply troubling’

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday accused Meta of suppressing Palestine-related content on its platforms, calling its actions “deeply troubling.” Their letter, addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a follow-up to a December one Warren sent that was also about Instagram and Facebook suppressing Palestinian content. The senators say Meta’s … 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 is just the latest example … Read more