FILE - A person stands in front of a Meta sign outside of the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, March 7, 2023. Canada's government has announced on Wednesday July 5, that it will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram in response to Meta’s decision to block access to news content on their social platforms as part of a temporary test. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
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The Big Story
New Facebook, Instagram claims fuel child safety push
A former Meta staffer alleged the company’s top executives dismissed warnings about teens on Instagram facing sexual advances and bullying.
The allegations from Arturo Béjar, a former Facebook engineer who later returned to the company as a consultant, came before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.
Senators on both sides of the aisle doubled down on the need for Congress to take urgent action, specificallyrallying around the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
“No parent or child can trust Facebook, or Meta, after this whistleblower’s powerful account, laying bare their denial and deception,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), chair of the subcommittee and a lead sponsor of KOSA.
“Congress must act. It must pass the Kids Online Safety Act,” Blumenthal added.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the ranking member of the subcommittee, said Congress should have taken action “years ago.”
Béjar alleged Meta executives know about the harm to kids and potential mitigation solutions but chose not to act.
“We cannot trust them with our children and it’s time for Congress to act,” Béjar said.
Meta pushed back strongly on Béjar’s allegations and assessment. Company spokesperson Andy Stone said that there have been changes made to Meta-owned platforms as a result of surveys like the ones Béjar highlighted.
Political advertisers will not be allowed to use Meta’s new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, the company said on Monday. Meta began rolling out its generative AI features for advertisers, which can create multiple backgrounds and versions of ad text and automatically adjust image and video sizing, in early October. However, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram said in a note on Monday that they cannot …
As more than 300 banking and investment executives gathered in Hong Kong to discuss “living with complexity” in the financial world, they ended up trading trepidations about an uncertain future. “My biggest fear is there’s one more geopolitical escalation and there’s a market event,” Christian Sewing, chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank, said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong. …
News we’ve flagged from the intersection of tech and other topics:
New alerts on Waze warn of accident-prone roads
Waze, a crowd-sourced navigation app, is rolling out a new safety feature that alerts drivers when they are approaching a particularly accident-prone portion of the road, The Verge reported.
YouTube tests AI-generated comment summaries
YouTube is testing out a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that would generate summaries of the comment sections beneath videos and organize them by topic, Mashable reported.
On Our Radar
Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee on primary health and retirement securitywill hold a hearing on potential harms of artificial intelligence in health care on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
The Senate will hold the fifth and sixth AI Insight Forums in two sessions — one about elections and another about privacy and liability — Wednesday.
Former President Trump’s attorney Alina Habba went after New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday, saying she’s “just not that bright.” James … Read more
Special counsel David Weiss on Tuesday appeared in a closed-door meeting with congressional investigators probing his leadership of the Hunter Biden … Read more
