Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal may feel like very old news. But the consequences are still arriving, and the latest comes with a $25 billion price tag. Reuters reports that a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties after a jury found that Facebook misled consumers about its data practices and its handling of hate speech and misinformation. Meta says it expects to win on appeal. This case is about more than information ending up in the wrong hands. It…
Meta says it has resolved an issue after some Ray-Ban Meta owners reported that their glasses recorded conversations without the “Hey Meta” wake phrase. Users reported finding recordings and transcripts of conversations they did not knowingly save. Recording without anyone realizing raises privacy concerns for both the wearer and the people around them. The complaints surfaced on Reddit, where one owner described unexpected recordings occurring with three pairs of glasses. The owner said the…
If you thought that having companies trawling your social media, browsing history, and TV habits for behavioral clues was bad, sit tight. Meta is just getting started. Its Muse personal AI agent is taking surveillance to the next level. TIME magazine analyzed the software’s internal instructions and found that it maintains constantly updated dossiers on users and the people they know. Meta released Muse last month, positioning it as a digital assistant that can handle different parts of your…
A Facebook Marketplace buyer arrived at a seller’s apartment to collect a keyboard. The seller wasn’t home and didn’t know anyone was coming. Meta’s AI assistant Muse had handled the conversation, shared his address, and arranged the visit without telling him. We often write about AI misalignment and how to use AI agents and browsers safely. That can sound theoretical, but this is an example of the real-world risk when an agent is allowed to act on someone’s behalf. Muse is Meta’s semi…
If you’re still OK with posting pictures of your kids on social media, take a minute to hear from mother of two Kalie Robins. At the start of September, she did something that hundreds of thousands of parents do every day. She posted a video of her young daughter on Facebook. Under the video of Robins and her daughter singing in a car, Facebook’s Meta AI system displayed a suggested question: “Who is the child passenger?” Robins was shocked that Facebook would ask this question about a minor,…