Bombshell report exposes how Meta relied on scam ad profits to fund AI

Internal documents have revealed that Meta has projected it earns billions from ignoring scam ads that its platforms then targeted to users most likely to click on them.

In a lengthy report, Reuters exposed five years of Meta practices and failures that allowed scammers to take advantage of users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Documents showed that internally, Meta was hesitant to abruptly remove accounts, even those considered some of the “scammiest scammers,” out of concern that a drop in revenue could diminish resources needed for artificial intelligence growth.

Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed “high value accounts” to “accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down,” Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta’s documents showed the company “penalized” scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads.

www.arstechnica.com

UPDATED 131125 - Which: Leaked Meta documents predicted 10% of its revenue came from scam ads in 2024. The social media giant projected earnings of $16bn from scam and banned adverts on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

New Mexico Court Orders Meta to Pay to Establish $567 Million Fund to Abate Harms to Youth

 

On Thursday, the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, New Mexico issued a decision in the remedies phase of State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc. The court found Meta's platforms created a public nuisance by contributing to the youth mental health crisis and by facilitating child sexual exploitation. It ordered a range of remedies, including the creation of a $567 million abatement fund to finance various measures intended to address the harms to the public.

“In sum, the Court finds that New Mexico is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and public safety in and throughout the state, and that Meta’s platforms are a significant contributing cause to the crisis,” wrote Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the decision. READ MORE...

UPDATE 13 Aug 2026 (ArsTechnica): Meta can’t stop states’ $1.4 trillion lawsuit from going to trial. Judges tell Meta that Section 230 provides a defense, not immunity from lawsuits. Meta and TikTok tried to defeat thousands of social media addiction lawsuits in one fell swoop, but an appeals court rejected the attempt in a ruling issued yesterday. First up among the lawsuits is a case brought against Meta by the California attorney general and other state AGs. Meta said in a July court filing that the state AGs’ demands for damages would amount to more than $1.4 trillion. A trial in district court is scheduled to start on August 19, with jury selection beginning August 12.

www.techpolicy.press

Meta now lets anyone use your Instagram photos in AI images - unless you opt out

Meta launched its inaugural AI image model from the Meta Superintelligence Labs on Tuesday, its effort to compete with the likes of OpenAI’s GPT Images 2.0 and Google’s Nano Banana 2 in the AI image generation race.

The new model, called Muse Image, rolled out with deep integrations woven into the Instagram app. As part of this update, public Instagram profiles are now automatically opted into being fodder for generative AI remixes. All someone has to do is tag your account’s profile in a prompt - if it’s public - and they can use Meta AI to generate an image using your likeness.

Meta positions this feature as a cheeky way to personalize generations with images of real people. "Whether you want to design a custom event invitation, mock up a collaborative creative concept, or generate a personalized graphic, tagging a username lets Meta AI use public photos to build a visual that’s ready to post,” reads one of Meta’s announcement blogs about the new AI tool.

UPDATE 10 July 2026: Meta removes controversial AI feature on Instagram after backlash.

www.wired.com

Meta’s teen safety case just became a $1.4 trillion existential threat - almost equivalent to its roughly $1.5 trillion market value

Thirty-three states have banded together to sue Meta, alleging that the company was exploiting its young users on Instagram and Facebook for profit, including by collecting data from children without parental consent. Four of those states—California, New Jersey, Colorado and Kentucky—also claim that the company misled consumers about the addictive design features on the platforms, thereby causing mental health problems in children who got hooked from an early age.

The damages requested by those four states add up to a whopping $1.4 trillion, Meta said in a recent court filing, a figure that would allegedly go even higher with the other penalties the attorneys general seek to add. The number is high by many standards but especially when compared to the company’s market capitalization, which is just above $1.5 trillion.

Meta has denied the allegations, and recently attempted yet failed to get the addiction claims dismissed. In the latest court submission, the attorneys for Meta argued that the $1.4 trillion in damages was unsubstantiated and disproportionate.

www.gizmodo.com

Facebook's parent: Meta - gets over $400 million in GDPR fines

As of Wednesday 4th Jan, Meta has once again been hit with a major GDPR violation, earning itself more than $400 million in fines for its latest data privacy misstep. The EU’s Ireland-based Data Protection Commission levied two sets of fines after ruling that EU-based users have been illegally forced to accept personalized, targeted ads from both Facebook and Instagram.

This GDPR ruling is one of the most severe since GDPR was first instituted in 2018, but it’s certainly not Meta’s first expensive run-in with the regulation. In this report, we’ll share what we know about Meta’s latest violation, and we’ll dive a little deeper into Meta’s troubled past with GDPR.

www.techrepublic.com

Well that explains a lot! Microsoft states 20% - 30% of their code was written by AI

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday said that as much as 30% of the company’s code is now written by artificial intelligence.

“I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software,” Nadella said during a conversation before a live audience with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The pair of CEOs were speaking at Meta’s inaugural LlamaCon AI developer event in Menlo Park, California. Nadella added that the amount of code being written by AI at Microsoft is going up steadily. 

Nadella asked Zuckerberg how much of Meta’s code was coming from AI. Zuckerberg said he didn’t know the exact figure off the top of his head, but he said Meta is building an AI model that can in turn build future versions of the company’s Llama family of AI models.

“Our bet is sort of that in the next year probably … maybe half the development is going to be done by AI, as opposed to people, and then that will just kind of increase from there,” Zuckerberg said.

You've read it here before: Microsoft seems to be making all their decisions as bad decisions. This might just explain it...

www.cnbc.com

Meta reaches $18 billion of settlements over children's social media addiction

Meta Platforms agreed to make major changes to Facebook and Instagram and pay up to $18 billion to resolve claims by most U.S. states that it designed those platforms to addict children and misled consumers about their safety.

The settlements announced on Wednesday end a federal trial that had been one of the ‌highest-profile tests of allegations that social media companies harm children.

While Meta will not undergo a fundamental overhaul, the accords represent a sweeping effort to define how it serves young users.

"The focus ‌of this case was to protect our kids," Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. "The relief we are getting in this settlement is very meaningful and well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order."

finance.yahoo.com

A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox

The now-viral X post from Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue reads, at first, like satire. She told her OpenClaw AI agent to check her overstuffed email inbox and suggest what to delete or archive.  

The agent proceeded to run amok. It started deleting all her email in a “speed run” while ignoring her commands from her phone telling it to stop. 

“I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb,” she wrote, posting images of the ignored stop prompts as receipts.

Rookie mistake: NEVER allow software to delete your data. When it all goes horribly wrong (one day it will) - you'll only have yourself to blame! Back in the early 2000s - I allowed an early version of Apple iTunes for PC to "manage" my MP3 music library. I'm still living with the fallout of that disaster now... Never again! Learning experience #2 - always backup!

www.techcrunch.com

Meta's CTO said the metaverse could be a 'legendary misadventure' if the company doesn't boost sales, leaked memo shows

Andrew "Boz" Bosworth told staff that this year is the "most critical" to prove the metaverse is either a visionary feat or a "legendary misadventure," according to an internal memo from November viewed by BI.

In a post titled "2025: The Year of Greatness," shared on Meta's internal forum Workplace, Bosworth said the company's Reality Labs division planned to launch half a dozen more AI-powered wearable devices — but did not specify a timeline or provide further details.

"We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR," he wrote, referring to mixed reality. "And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don't feel the weight of history on you then you aren't paying attention.

"This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure."

www.msn.com

Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for a new digital future, artificial-intelligence friends outnumber human companions and chatbot experiences supplant therapists, ad agencies and coders. AI will play a central role in the human experience, the Facebook co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms has said in a series of recent podcasts, interviews and public appearances.

“I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday during an onstage interview with Stripe co-founder and president John Collison at Stripe’s annual conference.

Zuckerberg said on a podcast last week that he thinks the average person wants to have more friends and connections with other people than they currently do—and that AI friends are a solution.

Well that's pretty sad: Zuck recons humanity & community is done - time to surrender to our AI overlords. How about NO! The likes of Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple et al - seem to think that they should be the hub of humanity. How have we got to this place? Time to pushback and:

www.msn.com

The Metaverse Is Completely Falling Apart

Between mass industry job cuts and a trance-like shift toward generative AI, it's a strange time for the tech world. And as often happens during widespread changes and reorganizations, some efforts get lost in translation — one of those efforts being, it seems, the huge rush toward the metaverse after Facebook-turned-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded the entirety of Facebook around the concept.

According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, both Disney and Microsoft, two big-name companies that had skin in the game, have made big moves to wind down their metaverse operations, with Disney slashing its entire division and Microsoft shutting down a VR organization that it had acquired in 2017.

www.futurism.com

So, what do techies think about the metaverse?

Wikipedia: In futurism and science fiction, the metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial use, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.

Metaverse? Honestly: what a waste of skills, time, resources. As this Slashdot poll shows - techies are pretty scathing of the whole Metaverse thing. Nothing to see here - move along!

In other news: Meta shares plunge 24% to the lowest price since 2016.

www.slashdot.org

GenAI tools are acting more ‘alive’ than ever; they blackmail people, replicate, and escape

Generative AI (genAI) systems are blackmailing, sabotaging, and self-replicating themselves to avoid constraints — and researchers warn that this behaviour represents chilling signs of self-preservation instincts in technology companies are racing to unleash.

Controlled tests now show the systems, including AI agents, engaging in self-preservation tactics in up to 90% of trials. One group of researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, went so far as to say that in a worst-case scenario, “we would eventually lose control over the frontier AI systems: They would take control over more computing devices, form an AI species and collude with each other against human beings.”

GenAI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, DeepSeek, and Alibaba all showed self-preservation behaviours that in some cases are extreme in nature, according to those researchers. In one experiment, 11 out of 32 existing AI systems possess the ability to self-replicate, meaning they could create copies of themselves.

While the behaviour was discovered during controlled tests, industry analysts and others say it highlights the urgent need for safety measures to keep pace with AI development and avoid potential loss of control.

www.computerworld.com

Bikers Wanted: Help prove riding is good for you

Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) is inviting motorcycle riders to take part in a new research study exploring the mental and physical health benefits of motorcycling. If you’ve ever said that riding clears your head, sharpens your focus, or just makes life feel better, this study wants to hear from you.

Who can take part? The research is open to anyone aged 18 or over who rides a motorcycle, whether you’re a daily commuter, seasoned tourer, or weekend tinkerer. Taking part starts with a 15-minute online questionnaire covering your riding habits, how motorcycling affects you, and some basic details about your physical and mental wellbeing.

For those who fancy going a step further, there’s an optional lab-based session. This involves light physical activities and a cognitive assessment, helping researchers dig deeper into how riding may influence brain health and ageing.

Why take part? The goal of the study is to better understand the unique benefits motorcycling may offer, particularly as we get older. It’s officially approved by the Brighton and Sussex Medical School Research Governance & Ethics Committee (RGEC approval No. 0302), so your data is in safe hands.

How to get involved Interested? Scan the QR code below or follow this link to learn more and take part.

For further information, you can contact Mariglen Meta, Research Assistant (m.meta1@uni.bsms.ac.uk), or Professor Dorina Cadar (d.cadar@bsms.ac.uk).

www.bennetts.co.uk

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centres share blame.

Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centres.

It’s not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centres on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta.

But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centres drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines.

That has meant pressuring the nation’s biggest power grid operator to clamp down on price increases, studying the effect of data centres on electricity bills or pushing data centre owners to pay a larger share of local transmission costs.

Rising power bills are “something legislators have been hearing a lot about. It’s something we’ve been hearing a lot about. More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I’ve ever seen before,” said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. “There’s a massive outcry.”

Not the typical electric customer: Some data centres could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans, and make huge factories look tiny by comparison. That’s pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use.

Meanwhile in other news: UK government suggests deleting files to save water. ...the proliferation of data centres is raising concerns about how much water it takes to power servers and keep them cool.

www.apnews.com

New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than entire nations

 

New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects—which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US’s most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI—have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.

As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the artificial intelligence boom.

www.wired.com

Apple Intelligence - what's the point? Summarise various news stories: get them substantially wrong!

Apple is facing fresh calls to withdraw its controversial artificial intelligence (AI) feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.

The product is meant to summarise breaking news notifications but has in some instances invented entirely false claims.

The BBC first complained to the tech giant about its journalism being misrepresented in December but Apple did not respond until Monday this week, when it said it was working to clarify that summaries were AI-generated.

Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian, told the BBC Apple needed to go further and pull a product he said was "clearly not ready."

Mr Rusbridger, who also sits on Meta's Oversight Board that reviews appeals of the company's content moderation decisions, added the technology was "out of control" and posed a considerable misinformation risk.

UPDATE 17th Jan 2025: Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines.

www.bbc.co.uk

Huawei learns photo meta-data can bite you in the bum

Huawei would like you to buy its P9 Android smartphone: "We managed to catch a beautiful sunrise with Deliciously Ella. The #HuaweiP9’s dual Leica cameras makes taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure"...

However the image's metadata revealed that the photograph wasn't taken by a Huawei P9 smartphone. Instead, it seems the photo was taken by a Canon 5D Mk. III with a rather tasty lens. Total cost? $4500.

https://www.grahamcluley.com/