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Meta's AI-Powered Ad Machine Is Coming for WhatsApp Next

WhatsApp, the Meta-owned messaging app used by close to 2 billion people worldwide, is ramping up its advertising efforts. While the app has long promised a privacy-first experience free from traditional ads, recent updates suggest that's changing, and changing fast. In a blog post published Monday, WhatsApp announced an expansion of its "Channels" discovery and business tools, designed to help you find more content and shops directly within the app. Alongside this rollout, Meta is preparing to

Ads are “rolling out gradually” to WhatsApp

For the first time since launching in 2009, WhatsApp will now show users advertisements. The ads are “rolling out gradually,” the company said. For now, the ads will only appear on WhatsApp's Updates tab, where users can update their status and access channels or groups targeting specific interests they may want to follow. In its announcement of the ads, parent company Meta claimed that placing ads under Updates means that the ads won’t “interrupt personal chats.” Meta said that 1.5 billion pe

Threads will let you hide spoilers in your posts

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Threads is rolling out a test that will let you hide images or text that contain spoilers, according to a post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. With the test, you’ll be able to blur content by tapping an image or highlighting text and selecting the “mark spoiler” option. Other users can view the hidden content by tapping or clicking the spoiler. Redd

Instagram users complain of mass bans, pointing finger at AI

Instagram users have for weeks complained about a significant increase in accounts being mistakenly banned or suspended. Many suspect, without direct evidence, that the issues may have to do with the use of AI automation. Reached for comment, Meta has so far not offered an on-record statement. According to a growing number of social media posts, including on sites like Reddit and X, Instagram users report that their accounts were banned even though they had not violated the company’s terms of

Character.AI and Meta "therapy" chatbots spark FTC complaint over unlicensed mental health advice

What just happened? Chatbots can do a lot of things, but they're not licensed therapists. A coalition consisting of digital rights and mental health groups isn't happy that products from Meta and Character.AI allegedly engage in the "unlicensed practice of medicine," and has submitted a complaint to the FTC urging regulators to investigate. The complaint, which has also been submitted to Attorneys General and Mental Health Licensing Boards of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, claims t

Meta and Oakley tease a smart glasses announcement for June 20

Reports emerged earlier this year that Meta was working with Oakley on smart glasses and it seems we're about to see the fruits of those labors. A new Instagram account called @oakleymeta has popped up and its first post teased an announcement for this Friday (June 20). Instagram's own official account and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the clip on their stories, as did Oakley on its social channels, so this is legit. The end of the video shows the Oakley and Meta logos side by side in a very

Threads is testing spoiler text, Zuckerberg says

Threads, Meta’s microblogging platform, is testing spoiler text, according to a post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Spoiler text refers to words (or images) that are greyed out in a post and only become readable if you manually click to see them. As the name suggests, spoiler text is often used on platforms like Discord or Reddit to help people communicate about new movies, TV shows, or books without accidentally revealing plot points and twists for people who aren’t caught up. Image Credits:T

OpenTelemetry for Go: Measuring overhead costs

Everything comes at a cost — and observability is no exception. When we add metrics, logging, or distributed tracing to our applications, it helps us understand what’s going on with performance and key UX metrics like success rate and latency. But what’s the cost? I’m not talking about the price of observability tools here, I mean the instrumentation overhead. If an application logs or traces everything it does, that’s bound to slow it down or at least increase resource consumption. Of course,

WhatsApp has ads now, but only in the Updates tab

It has been a long time coming — seven years since Meta first announced its plan to do so , in fact — but ads are starting to appear in WhatsApp as of Monday. They'll only be visible on the Updates tab and the company says those who use the app only to chat with family and friends really won't see any change to their WhatsApp experience. The same goes for two other new features: channel subscriptions and promoted channels. "We've been talking about our plans to build a business that does not int

WhatsApp is officially getting ads

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. WhatsApp is rolling out ads. In an update on Monday, Meta announced that it will now show ads from businesses through its Stories-like status feature. The status feature lives within WhatsApp’s “Updates” tab and allows users to share disappearing text, photo, voice notes, or video messages. But now, you might see sponsored content in addition to th

Meta is finally bringing ads to WhatsApp

It took 11 years since Facebook acquired it for $19 billion, but Meta is finally bringing ads to WhatsApp, marking a major change for an app whose founders shunned advertising. Meta announced Monday that businesses will now be able to run so-called status ads on WhatsApp that prompt users to interact with the advertisers via the app's messaging features. The ads will only be shown to users within WhatsApp's "Updates" tab to separate the promotions from people's personal conversations. Additiona

RP1 says that metaverse needs its own browser

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more RP1 has been trying to make the metaverse happen for a while. It was touting its tech for bringing a lot of people into a digital space in 2022, and it’s still trying hard to make it happen today. And this time, RP1 CEO Sean Mann believes that the world needs a metaverse browser. And he and his cofounder Dean Abramson touted the idea at t

Meta AI app ‘a privacy disaster’ as chats unknowingly made public

The Meta AI app has been described as “a privacy disaster,” as users unknowingly make their embarrassing questions public. One tech writer described it as like discovering your web browser history has been public all along without you knowing it … TechCrunch reports that there is an absolutely ridiculous privacy default for many users. Whether you admit to committing a crime or having a weird rash, this is a privacy nightmare. Meta does not indicate to users what their privacy settings are as

Here's how to keep Meta AI from sharing your prompts on Facebook, Instagram

Artificial intelligence-generated images of women kissing while mud wrestling and President Donald Trump eating poop are some of the conversations users are unknowingly sharing publicly through Meta's newly launched AI app. The company rolled out the Meta AI app in April, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI's ChatGPT. But the tool has recently garnered some negative publicity and sparked privacy concerns over some of the wacky — and personal — prompts being shared publicly from user ac

How to set up a WhatsApp account without Facebook or Instagram

There's no shortage of reasons to stay off the Meta ecosystem, which includes Facebook and Instagram, but there are some places where WhatsApp remains the main form of text-based communication. The app is a great alternative to SMS, since it offers end-to-end encryption and was one of the go-to methods to send uncompressed photos and videos between iPhone and Android users before Apple adopted RCS. Even though Facebook, which later rebranded to Meta, acquired WhatsApp in 2014, it doesn't require

Have a damaged painting? Restore it in just hours with an AI-generated “mask”

The restoration is printed on a very thin polymer film, in the form of a mask that can be aligned and adhered to an original painting. It can also be easily removed. Kachkine says that a digital file of the mask can be stored and referred to by future conservators, to see exactly what changes were made to restore the original painting. Still, there has been no way to translate digital restorations directly onto an original work, until now. In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature, Alex

CI/CD Observability with OpenTelemetry Step by Step Guide

In the fast-paced world of CI/CD, understanding the performance and behaviour of your pipelines is crucial. GitHub Actions has become a popular choice for automating builds and deployments, but anyone who's debugged a flaky workflow or long-running job knows how challenging it can be to get visibility into what's happening under the hood. We usually rely on build logs, timing data, or guesswork when something goes wrong. Wouldn't it be nice to trace a pipeline run step-by-step, or have metrics o

Have a damaged painting? Restore it in just hours with an AI-generated "mask"

The restoration is printed on a very thin polymer film, in the form of a mask that can be aligned and adhered to an original painting. It can also be easily removed. Kachkine says that a digital file of the mask can be stored and referred to by future conservators, to see exactly what changes were made to restore the original painting. Still, there has been no way to translate digital restorations directly onto an original work, until now. In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature, Alex

Google reportedly plans to cut ties with Scale AI

In Brief Meta’s big investment in Scale AI may be giving some of the startup’s customers pause. Reuters reports that Google had planned to pay Scale $200 million this year but is now having conversations with its competitors and planning to cut ties. Microsoft is also reportedly looking to pull back, and OpenAI supposedly made a similar decision months ago, although its CFO said the company will continue working with Scale as one of many vendors. Scale’s customers include self-driving car com

Shaping Light – Volumetric Lighting

As I became more familiar with post-processing over the past few months, I was curious to push those newly learned techniques beyond pure stylization to achieve something more functional. I wanted to find new ways to enrich my 3D work which wouldn't be possible without leveraging effects and passes alongside custom shaders. As it turns out, post-processing is great entrypoint to enhance a 3D scene with atmospheric and lighting effects, allowing for more realistic and dramatic visuals. Because t

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s AI hiring spree

is a deputy editor and author of thenewsletter. He has been reporting on the tech industry for more than a decade. AI researchers have recently been asking themselves a version of the question, “Is that really Zuck?” As first reported by Bloomberg, the Meta CEO has been personally asking top AI talent to join his new “superintelligence” AI lab and reboot Llama. His recruiting process typically goes like this: a cold outreach via email or WhatsApp that cites the recruit’s work history and reque

U.S. Army bringing in big tech executives as lieutenant colonels

Four senior executives of tech giants like Meta and Palantir are being sworn into the Army Reserve as direct-commissioned officers at the unusually high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a new program to recruit private-sector experts to speed up tech adoption. The Army calls the program to recruit Silicon Valley executives Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps. One of the executives, Andrew Bosworth of Meta (formerly Facebook) posted on X that the “201” monicker was a nod t

New details emerge on Meta’s $14.3B deal for Scale

In Brief Meta’s deal to partially acquire the AI startup Scale, giving it 49% ownership, is certainly unusual. What Scale officially announced is that the deal values the company at over $29 billion and that it will “distribute” proceeds to shareholders and vested equity holders (aka employees) granting them with “substantial liquidity” while allowing them to continue as shareholders. Meta is also hiring Scale’s famed founder CEO Alexandr Wang, who famously dropped out of MIT at age 19 to bui

Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

Meta said on Thursday that it planned to invest $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a start-up that works with data to train artificial intelligence systems, in a deal that Meta hopes will add needed muscle to its disappointing A.I. division. As a condition of the deal, Alexandr Wang, Scale AI’s 28-year-old chief executive, plans to join Meta in a top leadership role in the new division, which Meta is calling its Superintelligence lab. Mr. Wang, whom people inside Meta have taken to calling a visionary

The fastest way to detect a vowel in a string

Austin Z. Henley Associate Teaching Professor Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] @austinzhenley github/AZHenley The fastest way to detect a vowel in a string 6/13/2025 I was nerdsniped recently: What is the best way to detect if a string has a vowel in it? This is trivial, right? But as I started getting into it, I realized there is much more to this. I challenged myself to come up with as many ways to detect a vowel as possible. I even asked a few friends to give it a go. Whi

Here's how to turn off public posting on the Meta AI app

This photo illustration created Jan. 7, 2025, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo. AI generated images of women kissing while mud wrestling and President Donald Trump eating poop are some of the conversations users are unknowingly sharing publicly through Meta's newly launched AI app. The company rolled out the Meta AI app in April, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI's ChatGPT. But the tool has recently garnered some negative publicity and sp

Silicon Valley tech execs are joining the US Army Reserve

In Brief Chief technology officers (CTOs) from companies, including Palantir, Meta and OpenAI, are taking part-time roles in the U.S. Army Reserve. In October, the U.S. Defense Department put out the call to top Silicon Valley talent to take high-ranking positions in the U.S. Army Reserve so they could periodically be tapped for short-term projects in areas like data and cybersecurity, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Now, eight months later, Silicon Valley is reporting for duty.

Mark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Absolutely Furious at His Own Failure

Mark Zuckerberg, it can't be said enough, is firmly entrenched as the second-richest man in human history. Despite the luxury this unfathomable wealth affords — enough to provide everyone on earth clean drinking water and waste disposal, if he was so inclined — Zuckerberg still feels like he's riding the struggle bus. Most recently, the tech tycoon has reportedly become intensely frustrated at Meta's failure to keep pace in the "AI race" with the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude

Scale AI plans to promote strategy chief Droege to CEO as founder Wang heads for Meta

Scale AI plans to promote Chief Strategy Officer Jason Droege to serve as its new CEO, with founder Alexandr Wang heading to Meta as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with the company, CNBC has confirmed. Meta is finalizing a $14 billion investment into artificial intelligence startup Scale AI, CNBC reported earlier this week. Wang will help lead a new AI research lab at Meta and will be joined by some of his colleagues. The New York Times was first to report about the new AI lab. Bloomberg f

Topics: ai cnbc meta new scale

Meta beefs up disappointing AI division with $15 billion Scale AI investment

Meta has invested $15 billion into data-labeling startup Scale AI and hired its co-founder, Alexandr Wang, as part of its bid to attract talent from rivals in a fiercely competitive market. The deal values Scale at $29 billion, double its valuation last year. Scale said it would “substantially expand” its commercial relationship with Meta “to accelerate deployment of Scale’s data solutions,” without giving further details. Scale helps companies improve their artificial intelligence models by pr