Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.

Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages. Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy roll-out. In response to backlash, Meta's spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab's initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts' concerns:

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Social media amplify the worst excesses of what passes for public discourse, while some media outlets foment polarisation

If the increasingly vituperative tenor of our public discourse, online and verbal, has fully trailed America’s into the murky dungeon of political violence with the appalling alleged attack on Helen Haines, Australia’s political class has only itself to blame.

Amid outpourings of concern from across the political spectrum (including from people who have fostered considerable vicious personal animus online and in the parliament) for the gravely injured and much-respected member for Indi, it is blindingly evident that the political square has long been utterly incapable of self-regulation.

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© Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

© Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

© Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

I’d become obsessed with appealing to my invisible audience. But since I ditched the app a year ago, my quieter moments have taken on brilliant new meaning

I first downloaded Instagram when I was 17 and became hooked on it the way most people fall in love: slowly, and then all at once. For a long time, I never considered myself a social media addict. I self-righteously refused to download TikTok, declared Snapchat to be for “children”, and posted less regularly on Instagram than half of the people I followed.

As I went through my university years, however, certain changes crept up on me. I began to swap reading – or essay-writing – for hours spent curating new posts. On my way home from lectures (or later, from my work as a journalist), I would spend ages trying to take the artsiest, most perfect picture of that evening’s sunset for my story – as if the people who followed me were eagerly awaiting yet another photo of one of the Earth’s rotations. What usually followed was a night of reloading my feed to see how many people had reacted to my post – or worse, hadn’t reacted at all.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Georgina McNamara

© Photograph: Courtesy of Georgina McNamara

© Photograph: Courtesy of Georgina McNamara

Backlash against content creators includes restricted hours for filming and even outright bans

Stand in any vaguely photogenic spot these days on holiday and the chances are you will come across people posing with raised phones and even ring lights. Some may be influencers with huge audiences on social media, others just overkeen Instagram users. With hotels and beauty spots now so overrun, however, bans on photography are coming into place.

The five-star Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, known for its glamorous clientele, views of the Côte d’Azur and a stunning infinity pool, has brought in rules against photoshoots: no longer allowed without prior permission.

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© Photograph: imageBROKER.com/PR

© Photograph: imageBROKER.com/PR

© Photograph: imageBROKER.com/PR

Family post emotional statements to Instagram a month after their son and brother died at a rehab facility

Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber have said they are “beyond heartbroken” in a tribute to their “sweet beautiful” son, Presley.

Their eldest child died aged 27 at a rehab facility on 20 September, according to Los Angeles county medical examiner records. The cause of his death has not been disclosed.

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© Photograph: Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage

© Photograph: Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage

© Photograph: Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage

The company outlined a $65 million budget last year when it embarked on an effort to elect state politicians friendly to the A.I. industry.

© Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

My Instagram page started as something to amuse my friends, but it took off – and led to me meeting Sophie, who is now my wife

The idea came to me in summer 2019, when I finished studying at Swansea University. One day I went walking with friends around the beautiful Penllergare Valley woods. As they played Poohsticks, I sat on a bench and took in the view.

I noticed that someone had left flowers on the bench. I wondered who had put them there, who they were for, and why they’d chosen this location. By the time we reached the next bench along the route, I was deep in thought about all the people who had sat there before me.

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© Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

© Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

© Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

Video posted online shows men entering home through unlocked door and claiming to be looking for paperwork

A Home Office accommodation provider has launched an investigation after “English nationalist” content creators posing as contractors filmed themselves entering a property housing asylum seekers.

The video, titled “HMO Hunting in Leicestershire”, was posted to the Truthhurts101UK YouTube account, which describes itself as being run by an “English nationalist citizen journalist” and claims to cover “immigration, demographic change, policing and stories others overlook”. The footage was also posted to the associated TH101UK’s X account, where is has been viewed more than 300,000 times.

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© Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

© Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

© Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

Jean-Noël Barrot criticises X owner in speech attacking foreign efforts to destabilise France before 2027 election

France’s foreign minister has accused Elon Musk of using his social media platform to orchestrate “massive online harassment campaigns” against European leaders as he took aim at foreign efforts to destabilise the country before next year’s presidential election.

Speaking at an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development conference on Tuesday, Jean-Noël Barrot pointed to the role that social media had come to play in the global battle over democracy. “The forces seeking to undermine democracy now dominate the information landscape, where they employ tactics designed to polarise public debate,” he said.

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© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Gavin Guffey was 17 when he was targeted by a ‘sextortionist’ on Instagram. His father Brandon has spent four years fighting for justice, and for social media companies to do more to safeguard young users

What were the last words Brandon Guffey said to his son Gavin? Four years on, he still struggles with this question. “That last exchange, it bothers me constantly,” he says. “I think I said, ‘Goodnight, buddy. I love you,’ and he said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ I sincerely hope that’s what I said. The truth is, I’ll never know for certain.”

The exchange happened in 2022, on a hot July in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where, just weeks before, Guffey had won the Republican ticket to stand for the state’s House of Representatives. The election was three months away, Guffey’s head was buzzing with politics, and he’d spent that evening at a local event.

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© Photograph: Mike Belleme

© Photograph: Mike Belleme

© Photograph: Mike Belleme

Rights groups warn of Tehran regime’s increasing use of executions to suppress dissent, with at least 600 this year

Human rights groups have raised the alarm over the growing number of death sentences and executions in Iran, after reports that a 23-year-old woman, Najmeh Amini, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy over a social-media post.

Amini, an accounting student, is being held in Vakilabad prison in the north-east city of Mashhad. She has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and death in separate cases heard by a revolutionary and a criminal court.

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© Photograph: Handout

© Photograph: Handout

© Photograph: Handout

I was seduced by creators hawking passive income hustles. Like the language used in MLMs, it seemed too good to be true

A very specific kind of content began taking over my social media feeds at the end of last year.

I had just finished a short-term contract and returned, with some reluctance, to the financial masochism of freelancing. As I mourned the end of steady paychecks and paid days off – as well as finally having enough money for regular haircuts – I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the glow of the screen.

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© Illustration: Raúl Soria/The Guardian

© Illustration: Raúl Soria/The Guardian

© Illustration: Raúl Soria/The Guardian

Amid worries about children’s relationship to tech, the solution is often spending more time talking openly with each other

We have become obsessed with the idea that screens are destroying human connection.

The evidence seems to be everywhere. Each week headlines warn of teenagers addicted to phones, a loneliness epidemic and the dangers of AI. The release of The Social Reckoning leads us to ask, “How bad were those guys at Meta?” and then ultimately wonder, “How bad am I if I still use Instagram?” In our day-to-day, we observe workers eating lunch alone while scrolling and friends choosing online games over offline gatherings.

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© Photograph: Grant Rooney/Alamy

© Photograph: Grant Rooney/Alamy

© Photograph: Grant Rooney/Alamy

Aaron Sorkin’s attempt to return to the success of The Social Network is a strangely dated and incomplete look at a world that needs a sharper eye

In retrospect, David Fincher’s 2010 film The Social Network was a landmark for a quiet, even counterintuitive reason. Before the film was released, some questioned whether Aaron Sorkin, a writer not exactly known for his mastery of, nevermind obsession with, the technical sphere, was the right man to tell the origin story of Facebook. And while Sorkin may well have converted Mark Zuckerberg into terms he could better understand – namely, a motormouthed wiseass who deep down wants to impress a smart, serious-minded girl – he and Fincher also made one of the first internet-centric movies to treat online life as a natural extension of IRL dynamics, rather than the otherworldly tech portal seen in so many 90s internet movies.

Granted, that’s the whole deal with Facebook: its viral spread of social networking, something so simple and addictive that aunts, grandpas and coworkers everywhere could understand it. Yet understanding its simultaneous extension and distortion of the real world wasn’t a given; four years later, for example, 2014’s Men, Women and Children was widely derided for taking an alarmist approach to the internet as a haven for adults seeking an affair, teenagers nursing porn addictions and fame-hungry strivers of all ages. The Social Network, on the other hand, is remarkably nonjudgmental about the basic mechanics of Facebook, rooting its nascent flaws in the human weaknesses that birthed it. In retrospect, the movie only feels outdated to the extent that it underestimates Zuckerberg’s grasping for power and the potential for grim carelessness that his online kingdom was built on.

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© Photograph: Leah Gallo/Sony Pictures/AP

© Photograph: Leah Gallo/Sony Pictures/AP

© Photograph: Leah Gallo/Sony Pictures/AP

The new models, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, are meant to compete with cutting-edge A.I. models from rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI.

© Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

When influencer/singer/content creator Chiara King visits Copenhagen all the trips to trendy shops and fancy restaurants soon take a turn for the worse

British influencer/singer/content creator Chiara King stars as influencer/singer/content creator Chiara King, or some kind of parafictional version of herself, in this quease-inducing thriller exercise. The ick gets generated not necessarily by the eventual gore that erupts in the last reel, but by the tacky weirdness of the way the film apes the mannerisms of social media reels and streaming nonsense to both satirise the ugly side of the business but also exploit and profit off it at the same time. On one level, it’s an eerily clever exercise in bad faith, like a poor Michael Haneke film (think Funny Games) for gen-Z kicks; on another, maybe it’s just a crappy ripoff of online tropes that have been way overexposed already. Or both.

Anyway, here’s what happens: influencer Chiara gets invited to visit Copenhagen by a tourist organisation, a deal set up by her avaricious manager Alice (Jazmine Summer). Of course, this means practically every moment of her time awake in the city will be filmed, both by Chiara herself on her trusty smartphone, or a camera crew led by director Mike (played by Mike Nybroe, who is also director of The Influencer Project, ha ha); Mike is supported by sound man Daniel (Daniel Parmo) and cameraman Victor (Luca Storm). The early sections turn in all the influence-slop you would expect, with shopping trips to trendy merch vendors such as Baum und Pferdgarten, and meals at fancy local restaurants, and then a livestreamed visit to a “haunted house,” which is the big thing on Instagram and TikTok these days.

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© Photograph: Icon Film Distribution/PA

© Photograph: Icon Film Distribution/PA

© Photograph: Icon Film Distribution/PA

Jeremy Strong in “The Social Reckoning,” Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network” and the real Meta executive are all playing parts. But only one has changed his approach.

© Columbia Pictures; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Columbia Pictures

The city’s latest feathered extraordinaires are captivating the Upper West Side with their screeches.

© David Barrett

As streamers poach viral creators to appeal to children, digital whack-a-mole has become a new kind of family challenge

Exasperated dad Simon Hooper shakes his fist at the camera in a viral video. “We managed to get rid of YouTube in our household six months ago and the kids are finally OK with it,” he says – but Netflix is “now commissioning YouTubers to make their brain rot and putting it back in front of my kids’ faces”.

The precise “brain rot” he’s referring to is the arrival of a polarising show that’s lighting up parent chats around the globe. And while Salish and Jordan Matter might be new to Netflix Kids users, the father-daughter content creators are familiar to anyone who’s spent any time on the internet.

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© Composite: Pituk Loonhong/Getty Images/Guardian Design

© Composite: Pituk Loonhong/Getty Images/Guardian Design

© Composite: Pituk Loonhong/Getty Images/Guardian Design

The model, actor and influencer is known for making her own frozen yoghurt, bubblegum or even toothpaste while dressed in immaculate haute couture. But she insists she is not who the internet thinks she is

Nara Smith is not a tradwife, she wants you to know that. Nor is she an ex-tradwife – pace the New York Times who included her in a feature on how ex-tradwives are as popular a movement now as the tradwives were in the first place. Nor was she peddling a tradwife-adjacent lifestyle choice by marrying at 18, having four children by 24, and devoting hours to cooking and documenting it online. Nor is she Mormon, by the way. Although, yes, her husband, the model and former teen heart‑throb Lucky Blue Smith, was raised Mormon, but we’ll get to that. Nor was she telegraphing subliminal religious messages in her content: “There is no secret agenda.” Nor was she abandoning her biracial heritage by wearing her hair in a sleek little bob. Nor was she leaning into a 1950s housewife archetype – even when dressed in a pink and red polka-dot minidress to batch-cook sourdough.

Smith wants you to scrap everything you think you know about her and start again. She also doesn’t care if you don’t. As with her content: “Those that get it, get it. Those that don’t, don’t. And that’s totally fine. I tell people: ‘If you don’t like my content, I won’t see you scroll past me.’ ‘If you need to block me for your own sanity, please do. I promise I won’t know.’ And if you want to stick around, that is beautiful, I’m grateful, welcome.”

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© Photograph: Mary Rozzi/The Guardian

© Photograph: Mary Rozzi/The Guardian

© Photograph: Mary Rozzi/The Guardian

Tom Watson, of Worcester, alleged to be behind Big Time Charlie X account that created so-called Traitorbase

The owner of a recruitment firm has been accused of being at the centre of a so-called “doxxing” campaign against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), anti-racism activists and business executives who recruit black, Asian and minority ethnic workers.

Tom Watson, from Worcester, is alleged to be behind an X account calling itself “Big Time Charlie”, which was deactivated shortly after he was named by the campaign group Hope Not Hate.

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© Photograph: Facebook

© Photograph: Facebook

© Photograph: Facebook

Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning shows how public opinion has changed around billionaire CEOs since The Social Network’s release

When The Social Network came out, Mark Zuckerberg organised a staff viewing of a film he described as “fun”.

A group corporate outing to the sequel is unlikely.

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© Photograph: Sony

© Photograph: Sony

© Photograph: Sony

Skits and parodies making fun of the trillion-dollar industry have taken over social media, racking up millions of views

Johnny Hilbrant Partridge kept getting stuck next to the same kind of finance guy at weddings – the one bragging about his family’s full-time nanny and lavish vacations while name-dropping elite club memberships and private schools.

To Partridge, a former fitness instructor, their shameless knack for self-promotion felt ripe for comedy. Using a filter that puts an exaggerated sneer on his face, Partridge donned a puffer vest and created “The PE Guy”, a caricature of the men who work in the private equity industry.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Likely in the next few weeks, a federal judge will decide if Donald Trump can become the first president to personally profit from selling early access to government information in his social media posts.

At a hearing Wednesday, Department of Justice civil attorney Brantley Mayers argued that there was no conflict whatsoever with Trump charging up to $100,000 monthly for instant API access to Truth Social posts that often break news from his administration.

Trump is the largest stakeholder and majority owner of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company that owns Truth Social, and the value of the API access comes largely from Trump’s role as president.

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© BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Contributor | AFP

Béjar’s daughter was 14 when she told him Instagram was failing to keep her safe. So when he became part of Meta’s ‘wellbeing team’, he knew he had to speak out – and his testimony cost it billions

The Social Reckoning hits cinemas this Friday, but the real world has already been working on a sequel – or rather, a threequel. Directed by Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a follow-up to The Social Network, detailing the further misadventures of Mark Zuckerberg and his social media empire, and in particular Frances Haugen, the employee who in 2021 leaked internal documents that appeared to show Facebook was aware of the harms its products had inflicted.

It’s no spoiler to reveal the film climaxes with Haugen’s testimony to the US Senate, on 5 October 2021. That very same day, Arturo Béjar, a consultant on the wellbeing team of Instagram (which is also owned by Facebook), hit send on a long-gestating email to Zuckerberg and other senior Facebook executives on a similar theme. “I wanted to bring to your attention what I believe is a critical gap in how we as a company approach harm, and how the people we serve experience it,” Béjar began, before laying out some shocking statistics from his team’s survey. For example: 24.4% of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram said they had received unwanted advances, and 21.8% said they had been the target of bullying on the platform in the past seven days. Furthermore, 51% of Instagram users said they had had a bad or harmful experience in the past seven days. Only 1% of them reported it, and of those, 2% had the content taken down – so just 0.02%. This was a far greater degree of harm than the company’s existing measurements suggested. Zuckerberg never replied.

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© Photograph: Ethan Parker/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ethan Parker/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ethan Parker/The Guardian

In ad to be shown before The Social Reckoning, Ian Russell will say ‘too little has changed’ since death of Molly, 14

Molly Russell’s father will tell UK cinemagoers that “Instagram helped kill my daughter” in an advert to be shown before screenings of a new film about Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire.

In the 30-second ad before The Social Reckoning, released on Friday, Ian Russell says “too little has changed” since the death of his 14-year-old daughter, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content on Instagram.

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© Photograph: Family handout/PA

© Photograph: Family handout/PA

© Photograph: Family handout/PA

A plausible-sounding sponsorship offer could mask an attempt to compromise your Google account

Lawyers launch super-complaint after research shows officers frequently dismiss image-based abuse

Police forces are routinely failing to investigate complaints about the circulation of image-based abuse, previously known as “revenge pornography”, according to research that has triggered a super-complaint over the way such crimes are handled.

Lawyers have gathered evidence from 100 people who reported intimate images being shared online without their consent. Their research suggests that image-based abuse is still frequently dismissed or not recognised as criminal offending, despite being described by the former prime minister Keir Starmer as a national emergency.

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© Photograph: Microgen Images/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

© Photograph: Microgen Images/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

© Photograph: Microgen Images/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

Watchdog examining whether company carried out adequate risk assessment as required by Online Safety Act

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is under investigation for a potential breach of the UK’s digital safety laws after launching a Snapchat-style feature on Instagram.

The communications watchdog, Ofcom, is investigating whether the $1.9tn (£1.4tn) company infringed the Online Safety Act (OSA) by failing to carry out adequate checks on whether its Instagram Instants product could show illegal content or be accessed by children.

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© Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

© Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

© Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

Soon, Reddit won’t let people use Old.Reddit.com unless they have used the site while logged in within the previous six months.

In July, Reddit started requiring that users be logged in to access Old Reddit. This new requirement is an effort to reduce Reddit’s biggest source of scraping and automated traffic, the company says.

Today, the social media platform announced additional upcoming restrictions on Old Reddit. A Reddit post from an employee, known as "judy-funnie" on the platform, says that “in the next few months, we'll further limit access for logged-in users to only those who have used Old Reddit in the last six months (which covers the vast majority of all Old Reddit users).”

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© Cheng Xin/Getty Images

The settlement, which also includes changes to the platform’s features, is the latest in a string of agreements by companies to address child addiction.

© Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Meta’s C.E.O. talks for the first time about his style evolution.

© Victor Llorente for The New York Times

Our cozy relationship with A.I. chatbots can lead to “artificial intimacy,” says one expert. Here’s how to keep it in check.

Federal officials asked to intervene in a case that accused the social media platform of allowing deceptive behavior on its site and resulted in a $140 million penalty.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times

Artificial intelligence again dominated the company’s annual developer conference, as Mark Zuckerberg doubled down on how the technology can empower people.

© Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

Unlike celebrity influencers with large followings, these creators produce a blizzard of videos for a fraction of the cost of traditional online campaigns and, in the process, shift public conversation.

© The New York Times

Advances in artificial intelligence and the myriad ways content is shared online have made establishing authenticity even more difficult for users of social media.

© The New York Times

The countries, along with Israeli firms, combined Chinese open-source A.I. models and A.I. agents for the campaigns, foreshadowing future online manipulation.

© Brian Stauffer

“The Social Reckoning” and other movies reflect growing discontent with Silicon Valley founders. But such films may be at the mercy of the companies themselves.

© Saiman Chow

She found a future in the internet’s past with a Tumblr blog of animated texts, a revolt against the clean minimalism of contemporary design aesthetics.

A proposed law would bar children under 13 from using social media across the 27-nation bloc.

© Nicolas Guyonnet/Hans Lucas, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dario Amodei’s 3,800-word letter laid out a three-step plan to rein in artificial intelligence.

© Priyanshu Singh/Reuters

As audiences demand perfection from live performances, pitch correction technology has become an increasingly common way for singers to deliver.

© Joseph Okpakko/WireImage, via Getty Images

Reviews by the Canadian Center for Child Protection and The New York Times found that explicit images of children remain on the social media site owned by Elon Musk.

© Andres Kudacki for The New York Times

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that prohibits social media platforms from providing addictive features to users under 16, the first law of its kind in the nation.

© Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York Times

Muse, Meta’s new A.I. agent, acts as a personal digital assistant that connects to Facebook and Instagram, as well as third-party apps such as Spotify and OpenTable.

For the company’s new artificial intelligence system to take off, it will need plenty of support from the makers of popular apps on Apple’s phones.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times

State attorneys general spent months in negotiations. Then, as its legal losses mounted, the social media giant’s new top lawyer brought a huge settlement to the table.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times

Their videos have proliferated on social media, but the payments are frequently hidden from viewers.

Smoking used to be everywhere, the way Facebook, TikTok, Snap, YouTube and Instagram are now. Society decided to break the habit, but it took a long time.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times