Sandhya Devanathan, who has led Meta's India and Southeast Asia operations since June 2024 after over a decade at the company, is moving to OpenAI. Based in Singapore, she will report to OpenAI's Asia-Pacific head Kiran Mani and take charge of consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships and regulatory engagement across Southeast Asia and Australia. Meta's India managing director Arun Srinivas will now report directly to the company's Asia-Pacific VP Benjamin Joe.
The Vergecast team discussed Apple's refreshed Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and new M6/M5 Ultra chips, questioning whether Apple's AI inference claims are more marketing than substance. They also previewed Apple's newly announced event, expecting no iPhone 18 but debating whether the foldable form factor is ready for an iPhone Fold, and examined Meta's settlement imposing new restrictions on teen accounts.
Meta is testing robots from vendors including Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB to perform physical data center tasks such as power-cycling servers and swapping networking cables. Internal workers say one robotic arm being evaluated could eventually replace up to 80 percent of certain workers' tasks, while a simpler device already in use can remotely press power buttons to restart machines.
According to Reuters, Meta executives led by Mark Zuckerberg pursued an internal initiative called Project Organization Transformation aimed at cutting entire teams by as much as 60 percent and replacing workers with AI agents. That plan followed May's layoffs of nearly 8,000 employees and was ultimately abandoned after a second wave of cuts was called off amid backlash, lawsuits, and low morale.
Seven U.S. states have enacted extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws that shift the cost and responsibility for packaging waste onto manufacturers, while more than a dozen other states are weighing similar measures. The policies aim to push companies toward more sustainable packaging choices, such as refillable containers or recyclable materials, rather than conventional plastics.
Sony will pull Signalis, Big Walk, and Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition from PlayStation Plus's monthly free games at the end of August. Subscribers on any tier have only a few days left to add these titles to their libraries at no extra cost.
Meta announced new restrictions for users under 18 on Instagram and Facebook, including a default 2-hour daily time limit, a night mode blocking content from midnight to 6 a.m., and a school mode muting notifications during class hours. The changes come as part of a settlement in an $18 billion lawsuit, though Meta denies any wrongdoing and did not admit liability.
Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to US states and roll out new safety features for teen users of Facebook and Instagram, resolving litigation over the platforms' impact on youth mental health. Coming changes include a two-hour daily usage cap for under-18s and a block on access between midnight and 6 a.m., with some restrictions removable only by a parent or guardian. The settlement applies only within the United States.
Meta's smart glasses were designed to block recording if their status LED was covered, but the check only ran when a recording started. That let wearers begin filming with the LED visible, then cover it up afterward to record undetected. Meta wearables VP Alex Himmel confirmed a fix is now rolling out to close this gap.
Meta has reached a settlement with attorneys general from 52 states and territories that ends a years-long lawsuit accusing the company of failing to protect children on its platforms. The deal requires Meta to pay a capped amount of roughly $16.68 billion and to roll out a series of new safety features, while also pledging to push YouTube and TikTok to adopt similar measures, even though that would raise Meta's own payout under the settlement's terms.
Meta's settlement with attorneys general from 29 states, which includes up to $18 billion in payments and new child safety measures, contains a clause shielding Meta from COPPA-related lawsuits over its use of children's data. The exemption applies specifically to data used to build and test an age-verification model meant to detect users under 13, and Meta must build this system within a year of the agreement taking effect. The deal explicitly bars use of under-13 data for ad targeting or algorithmic optimization, though critics note enforcement could be tricky.
A wave of polls and news reports indicates widespread American opposition to data centers, Flock surveillance cameras, and Meta's AI-equipped Ray-Ban glasses, which critics have nicknamed 'pervert glasses.' Recent events, including a grand jury declining to indict a man filmed damaging Flock equipment and protestors against data centers gaining online praise, underscore how deep and public this hostility has become.
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