Mark Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” doesn’t seem to be affecting Facebook’s growth. Meta’s social network added 37 million users during the first quarter of the year, bringing total daily users up to 2.037 billion. Meanwhile, the number of daily users across the company’s “family of apps” rose to over 3 billion users for the first time in company history.

The company reported the growth in its first-quarter earnings report for 2023, the first since Zuckerberg announced the company was focusing on “efficiency” amid an economic downturn that has led the company to shed thousands of jobs. That shift seems to be showing some signs of success, as Meta reported $28.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 3 percent from last year and the first revenue growth in nearly a year for Meta.

Despite the boost, though, Zuckerberg confirmed that more layoffs are still scheduled to take place next month. “Even as our financial position improves, I continue to believe that slowing hiring, flattening our management structure, increasing the percent of our company that is technical and more rigorously prioritizing projects will improve the speed and quality of our work,” he said during a call with analysts.

Reality Labs also continues to take major losses, losing just under $4 billion for the quarter. That’s a bit less than the $4.3 billion the company lost last quarter, but Meta has said it expects 2023 losses for its metaverse division to top the $14.3 billion it lost last year.

During the call, Zuckerberg said the company is still prioritizing its massive investment in the metaverse, even as it increasingly turns its attention to generative AI. “A narrative has developed that we're moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision,” Zuckerberg said. “So I just want to say upfront that that's not accurate. We've been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now, and we will continue to focus on both.” He added that the company was preparing to launch its “next-generation consumer virtual and mixed reality device” later in the year.

Meta’s CEO also talked more about his plan to create “AI agents” and other generative AI tools for the company’s apps. “I think that there's an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful. We're exploring chat experiences in WhatsApp and messenger, visual creation tools for posts on Facebook and Instagram and ads, and, over time, video and multimodal experiences as well.”

The Oversight Board has issued its response to Meta’s request to help it reevaluate its COVID-19 misinformation rules. The social network first asked the Oversight to weigh in on the rules last summer, noting that it policies had resulted in an “unprecedented” number of removed posts but that the pandemic had “evolved” considerably since the rules were first put in place.

In its policy advisory opinion, the Oversight Board said that Meta should continue to remove false claims about the pandemic that are “likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent and significant physical harm,” but that it should "reassess" the specific claims that qualify for removal. The board also recommended that Meta make it easier for external researchers to study misinformation, and study how its own algorithms could contribute to the spread of harmful misinformation.

When Meta first asked the Oversight Board about its COVID-19 misinformation rules, many speculated that the company was looking to soften its stance. Prior to the pandemic, the company rarely removed users' posts on the basis of misinformation. Instead, it relied on fact checkers to evaluate such questionable content, and information rated as false was down-ranked to make it less visible.

But at the start of the pandemic, Meta said it would remove misinformation that health experts said was likely to lead to harm. The result, as the Oversight Board notes, is that 27 million posts were removed from Facebook and Instagram between March 2020 and July 2022. The company currently lists 80 specific claims that qualify for removal, including allegations that COVID vaccines cause magnetism and that the pandemic is linked to 5G technology. 

In its advisory, the Oversight Board said that as long as the World health Organization designates COVID-19 as a global health emergency, Meta should continue to remove the most harmful misinformation. But it notes that the company has not consulted with public health officials or other experts to assess whether all the claims it removes continue to pose a serious threat.

“Should Meta find that any claims are no longer false or no longer ‘likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, such claims should no longer be subject to removal under this policy,” the Board writes. And while the Oversight Board didn’t attempt to weigh in on any of the specific claims, it did say that Meta should consult with a range of exerts, including those versed in virology, disinformation, human rights and “freedom of expression."

Notably, the Oversight Board is also, once again, pushing Meta to examine its own role in helping misinformation spread. The board recommended the company “commission a human rights impact assessment of how Meta’s newsfeed, recommendation algorithms, and other design features amplify harmful health misinformation and its impacts.” The Oversight Board made a similar recommendation in the wake of January 6th, saying that Meta should look at how its own decisions contributed to the insurrection, but the company declined to commit to new research. 

The Oversight Board touched on another thorny topic for Meta: the ability of external researchers to study what happens on Facebook, which is particularly consequential for misinformation research. The board pointed to reports that Meta is getting ready to disband CrowdTangle, the analytics tool used by researchers and journalists, and said that “research tools should be strengthened rather than discontinued."

“Meta should institute a pathway for external researchers to gain access to non-public data to independently study the effects of policy interventions related to the removal and reduced distribution of COVID-19 misinformation, while ensuring these pathways protect the right to privacy of Meta’s users and the human rights of people on and off the platform,” the board wrote.

As with all Oversight Board recommendations, Meta isn’t obligated to change any of its policies, but it is required to respond to each recommendation within 60 days.

Snapchat’s ChatGPT-powered AI personality is expanding to all the app’s users. An upgraded version of “My AI,” the in-app chatbot that was previously limited to Snapchat+ subscribers, is now launching globally, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced at the company’s Partner Summit event.

With the expansion, My AI has a number of new Snapchat-specific features. It can provide Snapchat users with recommendations for restaurants and other activities based on what’s popular in the Snap Map, and can suggest augmented reality lenses. Users can also add the AI to group chats, and set a custom name and avatar (via Bitmoji) for the AI persona. My AI is also now able to respond to photo and video snaps. For now, it can only respond with text messages, but Snap says that “soon” it will be able to respond to snaps with its own AI-generated art. (That feature will, however, be exclusive to Snapchat+.)

While My AI’s rollout has been limited until now, the company says that My AI has already been a hit with users, who exchange 2 million messages a day with the bot. Snap’s implementation of OpenAI’s technology has also been criticized, though. The Washington Post reported that the bot engaged in inappropriate conversations and gave questionable advice to researchers posing as teens.

Now, Snap says that My AI uses “additional moderation technology” so that users’ can be temporarily restricted from the feature if they “misuse the service.” The company also says the AI has been trained to consider the age of the user it’s messaging with to help prevent chats from veering into unsafe territory. Additionally, parents will eventually be able to use the app’s parental control feature, Family Center, to track how much time their teens are spending chatting with their new AI friend.

Even so, Snap seems to be well-aware of the limitations of My AI, which it has previously described as “prone to hallucination.” Even Spiegel, who has suggested that interacting with AI like ChatGPT will soon be an everyday activity, was somewhat cautious in his endorsement “My AI certainly makes plenty of mistakes, so you can’t rely on it for advice, but it’s definitely entertaining,” he said.

Snap, once happy to let creators take a backseat to users’ friends and family, is making a new push to bring more creators onto its platform. The app is expanding its revenue sharing program and adding new public-facing features to help creators get started and get discovered in the app.

Snapchat first introduced mid-roll ads as a way for some of its Snap Stars to earn money from their Stories last year. Now, the company says that creators with at least 50,000 followers, 25 million monthly views and at least 10 Stories posts a month “may be eligible” to participate in the revenue-sharing arrangement. Presumably, the company is still reserving the right to greenlight individual users into the program, but the metrics at least give budding creators a target to shoot for.

The program isn’t the only way creators can earn money from Snap, but sharing in ad revenue has long been top creators’ preferred way to get paid as it tends to be the most reliable. The company also has a music-focused creator fund and pays users for popular Spotlight content.

Snap

For those who aren’t yet getting views in the millions, Snap is also adding new public-facing profiles and Stories, which will be available to any user over the age of 18. The changes allow users to share both private “friend” content and publicly viewable Stories from the same account, along with analytics and other metrics. As Snap notes, this gives users a pathway to becoming a more prolific creator even if they aren't yet eligible to become a Snap Star. Users can also save Stories posts and specific snaps to their public profile, the first time the app has enabled non-ephemeral snaps and Stories.

The features are also one of the most notable ways that Snap has blurred the lines between public content and friend content. The company has long bragged about its origins as a messaging app for “real friends” and said that disappearing messages reduce the kinds of social pressure often associated with its rivals. But those constraints aren’t necessarily conducive to successful — or well paid — creators. Now Snap is trying to find a ways to make both possible.

Twitter has, once again, quietly updated a significant policy without explanation. The company appears to have changed its hateful conduct policy to remove a section that protected transgender people from misgendering and deadnaming, in a move spotted by GLAAD.

Twitter had originally banned targeted deadnaming and misgendering in 2018. “We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category,” the policy stated. “This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

That last sentence has now been removed. Twitter’s policy page indicates it was last updated in “April 2023.” But, as GLAAD points out, a look through the Wayback Machine suggests the change was made April 8th.

GLAAD and others have condemned the move. “Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike,” GLADD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “While the rules were sparsely enforced, this greenlights further targeting of trans users,” wrote Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic, who also flagged the change.

Twitter so far hasn’t publicly commented on the rule change or provided an explanation. Elon Musk disbanded the company’s communications team. 

However, Musk has previously signaled that he wanted to walk back the rules. One of his first moves as CEO was to restore a number of high profile users who had been banned under the previous policy. Around the same time, Bloomberg reported that Musk — who has repeatedly mocked people who specify their pronouns — had instructed staff to “review” that section of the company’s hateful conduct rules. 

Elon Musk’s plans for his own AI company are starting to come into focus. The Twitter CEO said that he wants to “create a third option” for a company that could challenge OpenAI and Google.

In an interview with Fox News, Musk said that he’s thinking of calling the venture “TruthGPT” and that the goal would be to create a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe” and that “hopefully does more good than harm.”

Musk acknowledged that he would be starting with a significant disadvantage to his rivals as he’s “starting late.” And, as is often the case, it’s unclear how serious or far along his plans actually are. But speculation about Musk’s AI ambitions has been mounting as he recently filed paperwork for a business called X.AI Corp. He also reportedly bought thousands of GPUs and hired researchers from DeepMind for an unknown Twitter AI project. It’s unclear if the two initiatives are related. Musk has been known to move employees across his companies.

Musk said his motivation stemmed from concerns about the direction of AI and the threat it could pose to humanity. Notably, he was an early backer of OpenAI, which he helped start in 2015. But Musk distanced himself from the organization after a reported disagreement with Sam Altman about who would run the organization. More recently, he has criticized OpenAI for spinning off a for-profit business and working with Microsoft.

While it’s unclear how Musk’s AI plans could affect Twitter, he did tease one upcoming feature for the service. He said Twitter was working on a feature that would allow users to optionally encrypt their direct messages, and that it’s “hopefully coming out later month, but no later than next month.”

Encrypted direct messaging has been rumored for years and Musk, a known fan of encrypted messaging apps, has previously said that Twitter should offer Signal-style encryption. “If you are in a conversation you think is sensitive, you can just toggle encryption on and then no one at Twitter can see what you’re talking about,” Musk explained.

Montana is poised to become the first state to ban TikTok. The state’s legislature passed a bill requiring app stores to block the app in the state. The bill will now head to Republican Governor Greg Gianforte, who previously banned the app from state-owned devices.

The ban is slated to go into effect in 2024, though it will likely face legal challenges well before then. Still, the bill has been closely watched as pressure ramps up on TikTok. CEO Shou Chew testified at a Congressional hearing last month where he tried, largely unsuccessfully, to downplay the company’s ties to ByteDance and China.

Meanwhile, the United States government is trying to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok entirely. As The New York Timespoints out, Montana’s ban could serve as a kind of template for the rest of the country, even though it’s unclear whether such bans will hold up to legal challenges.

Like federal lawmakers, the Montana bill claims that TikTok’s ties to ByteDance puts US users personal data at risk because the company could be compelled to turn over information to the Chinese government. TikTok has long denied these claims, and has committed more than a billion dollars to Project Texas, a project meant to address national security concerns.

TikTok has previously said that the proposed ban would hurt small businesses that rely on the app. In a statement following the bill's passage, a TikTok spokesperson called it "egregious government overreach" and said it planned to "fight" the measure. 

“The bill's champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill's constitutionality will be decided by the courts. We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”

Developing…

Twitter creators who want to make money on the platform will now turn to Subscriptions, not Super Follows, in a rebrand announced by Elon Musk. Twitter originally introduced Super Follows in 2021 as a way for creators to charge for exclusive tweets. Now, subscriptions also include long-form content (thanks to those extra-long tweets) as well as “hours long videos,” according to Musk.

But the details of the program seem to be largely unchanged from Super Follows. Creators can charge $2.00, $4.99 or $9.99 a month, with exclusive content including subscriber-only chats in Twitter Spaces, as well as special badges for paid subscribers. Interestingly, as The Verge, points out, a help page says that “we hope to include newsletters and other Twitter features as potential bonus content.” That’s notable given Musk’s recent feud with Substack as well as because he shut down Revue, the newsletter platform Twitter acquired in 2021, soon after taking over as CEO.

Super Follows never seemed to gain much traction, even before Musk took over Twitter. Now, it seems he’s trying to lure creators with more favorable terms, at least initially. He said that Twitter would not be taking an additional cut of creators’ earnings from Subscriptions “for the next 12 months.” Instead, creators can expect 70 percent of their earnings from mobile and about 92 percent from web-based subscriptions, which should account for all revenue after app store and payment processing fees. “We will also help promote your work,” Musk said, though he didn’t elaborate on what that would entail.

Arkansas has become the second state to pass a law requiring social media platforms to verify the ages of their users. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed the “Social Media Safety Act” into law, which requires companies verify the ages of users under 18 and to gain parental consent before minors create new accounts.

Utah recently passed similar measures, which also impose strict rules on how social media platforms handle the accounts of their youngest users, including an age verification requirement. The laws are part of a growing movement to enforce age verification measures and other age-based restrictions for social media companies. At least three other states are currently considering similar legislation.

The laws are also controversial. While lawmakers have for years called for more protections for teens on social media, privacy advocates and civil rights groups have opposed age verification mandates. Likewise, some child safety groups have argued that comprehensive privacy legislation would be a more effective way to protect children.

Under the Arkansas law, slated to take effect in September, companies are required to check the ages of their users via government-issued IDs like a driver’s license or “any commercially reasonable age verification method.” But, as CNNnotes, it’s not entirely clear which companies will be forced to comply with the law. The legislation includes a number of exemptions that would seem to excuse some prominent platforms.

For example, it states that platforms focused on “professional networking” and “career development” are exempt, which would seem to be a direct reference to LinkedIn. It also has exceptions for gaming-focused companies, as well as companies that allow “a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment in which the primary purpose is not educational or informative,” which could be interpreted as excluding TikTok.

LinkedIn is making it easier to prove you are who you say you are on your profile. The platform is adding new identity verification features that will allow users to confirm their name and employer, and it doesn’t involve paid subscriptions or blue checkmarks.

With the update, LinkedIn is rolling out three ways its members can confirm their identity. The company is partnering with CLEAR — yes, the same CLEAR that can get you to the front of security lines at airports and other venues — to check that the name on your ID is the same as the one on your profile. The process is free but does require sharing a U.S phone number and government-issued I.D.

LinkedIn is also offering a feature for verifying where you work that’s a slightly less involved process. To confirm your employer, you’ll need to enter a verification code sent to your company email address. In both cases, once the verification is complete, a “verification” field will appear on your LinkedIn profile that states what details have been verified.

Alternatively, some users will be able to verify both their identity and employer at once via a partnership with Microsoft Entra, which creates workplace IDs for companies that enroll its program. LinkedIn says the Entra partnership will be rolling out at the end of the month to employees of the “dozens” of companies currently in the program.

LinkedIn previously added phone number and email verification features last year, but those checks were only visible if you tapped into a slightly hidden “about this profile” field. The latest changes add a prominent “verifications” section that will appear directly under a user’s profile details.

Notably, the company is orienting its verification around confirming its members identities, rather than checkmarks or other specialized features. And, unlike Meta and Twitter, LinkedIn is opting to keep verification separate from its paid subscriptions. That also means that having a verified profile doesn’t come with any additional advantages, at least for now. But it could offer an extra layer of protection for those wary of fake accounts, impersonators or other scammers.