Meta ditches fact-checkers, embraces Community Notes

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a significant shift in the company's content moderation approach, emphasizing free speech and reducing censorship. This includes abandoning its fact-checking program and transitioning to a Community Notes model, similar to X (formerly Twitter), across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Zuckerberg argues that complex moderation systems often lead to unintended censorship, impacting millions of users. By empowering the community to assess and provide context for potentially misleading information through Community Notes, Meta aims to improve accuracy and reduce reliance on internal fact-checkers. While Community Notes have shown promise on other platforms, concerns remain about their effectiveness in preventing misinformation spread.

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Meta Quest headsets bricked after updates

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Numerous Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3 headsets are becoming unresponsive after recent software updates, leaving users frustrated. The issue, affecting devices left unused for extended periods, displays an error message declaring them "corrupt."

Meta initially offered costly out-of-warranty replacements, but backlash led to a temporary fix—a forced reboot. However, this often fails. The company is investigating and working on a permanent solution, while advising users to avoid updates and contact support. This incident highlights the critical importance of thorough software testing before release.

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Threads introduces advanced search filters

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Meta is trying to keep its Threads competition at bay with a new update for its search option. It's not quite as comprehensive as what you'll see on X but it at least allows you to narrow your queries by keywords, language, exact phrases, hashtags, excluded words, and more. As Tech Crunch pointed out, it brings the social site more on par with Bluesky's search options. But the Bluesky app doesn't show all the filtering options yet.

Before this update, Threads would only show a keyword or keywords and filter these through "Top" or posts with the most engagements, and "Recent" or the latest posts. This new search feature is going to be rolled out to users in the coming weeks.

SOURCE | VIA

Report: Meta plans global subsea cable network

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Meta is reportedly planning to construct a massive, privately-owned subsea cable network spanning the globe. This ambitious US$10 billion (around CA$14.3 billion) project aims to create a 40,000+ kilometre network that circumvents geopolitical hotspots, enhancing the company's control over data traffic for its services like Facebook and Instagram.

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