After backlash, Meta is updating its terms again to remove language that suggested it could scrape content from sites, including news sites, to train its AI. Specifically, the following language no longer appears on the commercial terms page:

… Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms.

Many, including Neiman Lab and James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell, interpreted it as an …

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Autonomous agents are the hottest thing in AI. OpenAI, Meta, Google, Instinct, and others promise their agents can scour the internet on your behalf, doing anything from booking a dinner reservation and cleaning out your inbox to buying new shoes. But what happens when the rest of the internet won't play nice?

In recent weeks, users of services like Meta's Muse, xAI's Grok, OpenAI's Dots, and Instinct have reported blocks preventing their AI agents from performing tasks across top websites. Yelp told TechCrunch that it only allows AI agents that pay for its data licensing program, while Delta Air Lines is preventing them from booking ticket …

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Meta's new terms appear to give it permission to crawl and scrape websites "associated" with the businesses that use its platforms - including online publishers, according to a report from Nieman Lab. The new terms, which go into effect on October 30th, say Meta can use this outside content to "develop, improve, research," and "train" its AI products.

While Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts says that the company is just "consolidating" its commercial and self-serve ad terms, legal experts tell Nieman Lab that this could allow Meta "to argue its commercial terms supersede other blocking instructions," like a site's robots.txt file. That could …

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Though movies about disruptive tech founders are nothing new, 2026 has been unusually stacked with features that take a much more critical look at how Silicon Valley is reshaping our reality. Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning frames Mark Zuckerberg as a robotic villain whose ambitions are destabilizing society. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything paints a damning picture of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes as she prepares for her ongoing stint in prison. After years of being widely celebrated as a visionary, you can see how the larger narrative around Elon Musk has shifted in projects like Alex Gibney's Musk docume …

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Meta announced the Muse Spark Open AI model today, claiming that it's the "most capable US open-weight model to date." But the company also says that it's the "the first model in its class" that can "run on your desktop using two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios with the latest MLX framework."

Meta and Apple, typically rivals, worked together on the launch and are publicly supporting each other.

"Muse Spark Open - weights releasing today - runs great on new Mac Studios thanks to work with @johnternus and Apple," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on X.

"Congrats to the team!" new Apple CEO John Ternus said in a reply. "Amazing to run a model of Muse …

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There's a growing trend in the consumer tech world: gadgets designed to spy on everything and everyone around you, regardless of whether or not anyone else actually consented to it. Now, with the advent of "AI personal assistants" like Meta's Muse, you're being cheerfully asked not just to give up your own data, but also the information of your friends, family, the person you went on a Hinge date with five years ago - and virtually anyone else you've ever come in contact with.

Since Muse was released last month, the agent has already been downloaded millions of times and hit No. 1 on Apple's App Store. With the help of its creepy virtual av …

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We knew that a number of big tech firms were helping to fund the construction of Trump's ballroom, but we didn't know just how much they were giving to the cause. Now the Washington Post published a list of all the major donors to the White House ballroom project, along with how much each contributed. In total, Silicon Valley and the crypto industry have reportedly delivered over $150 million for the effort.

Some of that money has come from individuals, some from charitable organizations tied to major firms or industry players, and some directly from the companies themselves. In Google's case, the $22 million was part of a controversial se …

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The other day I whizzed past several people while running in the park, my playlist blasting at full volume. The next morning, I smiled at a barista while ordering a caramel apple-flavored matcha latte. Afterward, I sat on a park bench reading a book, called up a pal to chat about her recent trip to Prague, and then asked my Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses what meetings were coming up on my calendar. The chipper AI voice said I hadn't connected my Google Calendar yet (I had) and asked if I would like help connecting. I sighed and then asked it to play an upbeat song. It picked Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us."

These past few days, dozens of people …

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Facebook's new "Your Algorithm" feature will let you directly add and manage topics you want to see in your feed and Facebook Reels. Meta says your recommendations "respond right away" after you make updates using the new feature by hitting "interested" or "not interested" for different topics. Your Algorithm previously launched on Instagram earlier this year, and Meta also launched a similar "Dear Algo" feature on Threads.

Facebook users will be able to access Your Algorithm or select "interested" or "not interested" from the three dots menu on individual posts. The "interested" and "not interested" buttons may also appear under posts, an …

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Earlier this month, news broke that actress Mia Goth had filed for divorce from actor and filmmaker Shia LaBeouf. An Instagram post from the account miagoth_ - marked with a blue verified checkmark - quickly spread.

The post shows Goth in a T-shirt that reads "MY EX IS MY BIGGEST FAN" in bold black letters. The Beyoncé song "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" had been added to the Instagram post. Hundreds of thousands of people - including some in the entertainment industry - liked the image, and entertainment outlets like OK! and even People wrote about it as if it were authentic. Soon, screenshots of the post were shared widely on other s …

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As important as some of the messages in The Social Reckoning are, the movie has been drastically underperforming at the box office. Per Variety, Aaron's Sorkin's follow up to The Social Network only grossed a measly $5.5 million this past weekend against a budget that's somewhere within the $30-42 million range. That would make it a certifiable flop that's costing Columbia Pictures (and Sony) quite a bit of money - especially when you compare it to The Social Network's $22 million opening.

This isn't entirely surprising given how middling reviews for the film have been. It's currently got a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has widely been …

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Meta is making up for lost time in the AI race. After launching Muse Spark, the first model from its revamped Superintelligence Labs division, and buzzy AI agent Muse, it's now launching two new models it claims can go toe-to-toe with the industry's best.

The new models, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, are available for Muse Code subscribers starting today. Wonder can also be accessed through the Meta Model API, Meta said.

Meta says it eventually plans to power its Muse AI agent with Wonder, starting with subscribers, and will develop specialized models it "can bring to everyone using Muse." It hasn't shared specifics or provided a tim …

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At this year's OpenAI DevDay, CEO Sam Altman unveiled the company's new AI agent Dots - and told the crowd that the company wants to "set a new standard for privacy in frontier AI." OpenAI would spend the day taking veiled shots at Meta's Muse, its primary competitor, for failing to keep users' data safe. Yet Muse itself, a couple of months earlier, had launched as a supposedly safer alternative to predecessor OpenClaw - with CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising it was "built from the ground up for privacy and security."

In an age when companies hoard customers' personal data and cyberattacks are a dime a dozen, AI labs are trying to convince user …

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was mostly unfazed watching Oscar-winning actress Mikey Madison play a character named after her in The Social Reckoning, except for one thing: the wrist warmers.

In Aaron Sorkin's new thriller, the fictional Haugen - who, like her nonfictional counterpart, leaks thousands of documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz - habitually dons the accessories. It's a character quirk that reflects real life, where they're a way to deal with the effects of a vasoconstrictive disorder. "I've figured out lots of ways to minimize how much of an obstruction this is," she tells The Verge in an interview. …

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YouTube, Twitch, Meta, and X aren't saying whether they'll allow the US government to livestream an execution on their platforms. The four companies didn't respond to The Verge's requests for comment after an unnamed Pentagon official said yesterday that the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of a mass shooting at a Texas military base in 2009, will be livestreamed.

Two platforms responded to The Verge's inquiries. Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok's US operations, pointed to the platform's policies banning "shocking and graphic content," including "the moment of someone's death." Kick, a platform known for taking a hands-of …

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Meta has banned ads from TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance across the US and several other countries as the rivalry between the major social media operators heats up, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The ban, which went into effect on Thursday, restricts ads and paid marketing messages from ByteDance, along with third-party ads that link to TikTok.

"We don't have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps," Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro said in a statement to The Verge. "Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries. We will continue to compete on pr …

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Since TikTok burst into mainstream consciousness, many things have been called a "TikTok clone": YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight, Netflix's Clips, LinkedIn's vertical video feed, and countless other, less recognizable names like Triller, Zynn, and Byte.

For years now, Facebook and Instagram have pumped users' feeds with video as Meta chases TikTok's runaway success. But if tests running abroad are any indication, the TikTok-ification of social media might finally be reaching its fullest form.

TechCrunch reports that some users in India are getting a Facebook test that, upon opening the app, drops them directly into a …

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Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning has its fair share of cinematic flair, but many details in the story hew closely to real life. The movie tells the story of how Frances Haugen, a Facebook civic integrity product manager, came to leak a large trove of internal documents to Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, in what would later become a 2021 series called "The Facebook Files." In both real life and in the film, Haugen's leaks lead her to testify as a congressional whistleblower. The final frames of the movie describe the impact she had even after that closing scene, speaking before governments around the world and bols …

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Google DeepMind, Meta, and AI drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million into Biohub, the nonprofit biomedical research organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, as reported by Reuters. The funding is part of a $1.8 billion initiative to build AI datasets that could allow researchers to "ask, predict, and answer biological questions digitally," helping find new ways to prevent and manage diseases.

Founded in 2016, Biohub aims to combat diseases through the creation of a "virtual cell" that researchers can use to carry out simulations. To support this effort, the US Department of Ene …

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When David Fincher's The Social Network premiered in 2010, many people still thought of Mark Zuckerberg as a genius who had revolutionized the world by creating Facebook. Writer Aaron Sorkin's script was critical of Zuckerberg's character and his ruthless approach to doing business, but it also helped mythologize the co-founder at a time when the general public was much more enchanted by Silicon Valley. When Zuckerberg said in 2014 that he'd been hurt by the film's depiction of him, Fincher said he was "sorry that it did" and admitted that he "wouldn't want a movie made about the things I did when I was 19 years old," either. Fincher's apolo …

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