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Op-Ed: What Letting Meta's Muse Run Your Life Looks Like

The AI agent streamlines daily tasks very well, but raises privacy concerns, write Eli Tan

(Newser) - Meta's latest AI experiment isn't just chatting with you—it's calling your dentist, canceling your subscriptions, and bargaining for your bowls. In a New York Times opinion piece, tech reporter Eli Tan describes handing over large chunks of his life to Muse, Meta's new consumer AI...

Woman's Arrest for FB Post Leads to Shuttered Police Force

State probe followed Jennifer Combs' detention in Trinidad, Texas, over post about tainted water

(Newser) - Texas officials are pulling the plug on a tiny town's police force after deciding it wasn't helping the public. The Trinidad Police Department, which employs five full-time officers and several part-timers, has been ordered to shut down effective Friday following a state investigation triggered by the arrest of...

Key Points of Meta's Deal to Cut Teen Scrolling
Key Points of Meta's
Settlement on Teen Scrolling
the rundown
Aug 27, 2026 10:50 AM CDT

Key Points of Meta's Settlement on Teen Scrolling

Deal adds screen time caps, night curfew, and faster complaint responses

(Newser) - If it works, Meta's landmark settlement with the government would put some brakes on teen scrolling. Key points of the $18 billion deal, via the Washington Post , the New York Times , and the AP :
  • Time caps: Instagram and Facebook will cap use at two hours a day for users
...

Meta to Pay Up to $17.1B in Teen Addiction Settlement

Settlement forces tech titan to enact teen usage limits, parental tools, and age checks

(Newser) - Meta is poised to shell out one of the largest tech penalties on record—and overhaul how its apps hook young users. In what the New York Times calls "a dramatic capitulation," the company behind Facebook and Instagram agreed to pay as much as $17.1 billion and...

Nearly 30 States Team Up to Take On Meta

Company faces big trial over alleged harm to young users, addictive design, data misuse

(Newser) - Meta is heading to trial in California in a high-stakes case that could rewrite how Instagram and Facebook work for young users. A bipartisan group of 29 states alleges that the company built its platforms to hook kids and teens, misled families about safety, and illegally harvested children's data,...

Ex-Facebook Exec Who Wrote Blistering Memoir Is Now Suing

Sarah Wynn-Williams challenges gag order over memoir's explosive claims

(Newser) - A onetime Facebook insider who wrote a blistering bestseller about the company now wants a federal judge to let her talk about it. Former policy executive Sarah Wynn-Williams has sued Meta, arguing the company's move to force her into arbitration—and to gag her from promoting her memoir , Careless ...

Meta Is Apparently Jealous of Kalshi, Polymarket

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has directed staff to build Arena app to tap into prediction market craze

(Newser) - Mark Zuckerberg is taking another swing at prediction markets, this time with a no-cash app called Arena. Meta has assigned a small team to build the stand-alone smartphone app, modeled on fast-growing platforms Polymarket and Kalshi, staffers tell the New York Times . Users would bet with points, not money—at...

Couple Dead After Elder Scam Involving Fake Tom Selleck

Officials say Calif. husband, wife died in suspected murder-suicide not necessarily related to scammer

(Newser) - A California woman who friends say sent thousands of dollars to someone posing as Tom Selleck is now dead in what authorities describe as a murder-suicide. Donald and Karen Whitaker, ages 80 and 79, were found with traumatic injuries in their Bermuda Dunes home on May 15 after a welfare...

Meta Settles With School District in Bellwether Case

TikTok, Snap, and YouTube settled with Kentucky district earlier this week in addiction lawsuit

(Newser) - Social media companies including Meta have settled the first of many lawsuits brought by hundreds of school districts seeking compensation for costs they say they incurred dealing with harms to children's mental health from social media addiction. The lawsuit brought by a small, rural Kentucky school district was set...

No, Grandma, Brad Pitt Isn't Pitching Medicare on Facebook

Advocacy group says Medicare scam ads heavily target older users on Meta platform

(Newser) - Meta is under fresh fire over some of its ads, and being watched carefully on what happens next. A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate says Facebook is awash in deceptive Medicare-themed ads that rely on bogus celebrity endorsements and that mainly target older users, reports NBC...

Meta Threatens to Pull Facebook, Instagram in NM

And also WhatsApp; company says proposed child-safety reforms would force its exit from New Mexico

(Newser) - Meta is dangling a stark threat over New Mexico: Change the rules, or lose Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp altogether. In a court filing this week, the company said proposed child-safety remedies in a major lawsuit are so burdensome that they could force Meta to shutter its platforms in the state...

Meta Shares 'Unwelcome News' With Its Employees

10% of the staff will go

(Newser) - Meta is shrinking its payroll as it doubles down on artificial intelligence. The parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp plans to cut about 10% of its staff—roughly 8,000 jobs—and eliminate another 6,000 open positions, per an internal memo to employees confirmed by the company. In that...

Meta Monitors Staff Activity Across Major Sites to Train AI

Internal tool called Model Capability Initiative captures staff activity on third-party platforms

(Newser) - Meta's push to sharpen its AI tools now includes watching how its own employees use the internet, down to their clicks and keystrokes. Internal messages seen by CNBC show that the social media company is logging staffers' activity on hundreds of sites and apps via a tool called the...

Op-Ed: Retirees These Days Can't Put Down Their Phones

With no one holding them accountable, retirees describe lost hours to scrolling

(Newser) - Retirement, the Yoders have discovered, comes with an unexpected time thief in their pockets. In the Wall Street Journal 's "Retirement Rookies" column, former editor Stephen Kreider Yoder and his wife, Karen Kreider Yoder, describe how their post-work freedom has been quietly swallowed by the endless scroll of...

Heavy Social Media Use Tied to Lower Support for Democracy

New Gallup survey links such use to openness to political violence, less support for voting rights

(Newser) - Clocking five-plus hours a day on social media may leave Americans feeling more politically powerful, all while cooling their enthusiasm for democracy. That's one takeaway from a Gallup and Charles F. Kettering Foundation survey of more than 20,000 US adults, which found that heavy social media users are...

Meta Loses Landmark Trial in New Mexico

Jury finds Meta misled users, enabled child exploitation on platforms

(Newser) - Meta just took a major hit in New Mexico, where a jury has ordered the company to pay $375 million over claims it misled families about how safe its platforms are for kids. After a six-week trial, jurors found Meta violated the state's consumer protection law by presenting Facebook, Instagram,...

Maybe They Shouldn't Have Named Meta After Metaverse

Social media giant is quietly winding down its virtual reality world, pivoting to artificial intelligence instead

(Newser) - Mark Zuckerberg's once-grand virtual kingdom is looking more like a cul-de-sac these days. Five years after he rechristened Facebook as Meta and declared the "metaverse" as the company's future, Meta is sharply scaling back its virtual reality ambitions and shifting its weight to artificial intelligence. The New ...

Message in a Bottle Took 'a Hell of a Journey'

Dog walker in Scotland discovers note thrown overboard from Canadian ferry

(Newser) - A beach walk with the dogs in Scotland turned into a trans-Atlantic surprise. Mike Scott says he was out two weeks ago in St. Cyrus, south of Aberdeen, when Maggie, his Labrador retriever, nosed a wine bottle out of the shallows, reports UPI . "The brown glass bottle was well...

Meta Just Bought a New Kind of Social Network

Moltbook was designed for AI 'agents'

(Newser) - Facebook and Instagram owner Meta just picked up another social network, one that was designed for bots. The company has acquired Moltbook, a two-month-old platform built by technologist Matt Schlicht that lets AI "agents" chat with one another, the New York Times reports. Terms weren't disclosed, but Schlicht...

Teens Can Say Goodbye to AI Characters on Meta

Instagram owner says access will be denied to minors until 'the updated experience is ready'

(Newser) - Meta is halting teens' access to artificial intelligence characters, at least temporarily, the company said in an updated blog post on Friday. Meta Platforms Inc., which own Instagram and WhatsApp, said that starting in the "coming weeks," teens will no longer be able to access AI characters, "...

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