Businesses

Duolingo Grows, But Users Disliked Increased Ads and Subscription Pushes. Stock Plummets Again (barrons.com) 35

Friday was "a horrible day" for investors in Duolingo, reports Fast Company. But Friday's one-day 14% drop is just part of a longer story.

Since last May, Duolingo's stock has dropped 81%. Yes, the company faced a social media backlash that month after its CEO promised they'd become an "AI-first" company (favoring AI over human contractors). And yes, Duolingo did double its language offerings using generative AI. But more importantly, that summer OpenAI showed how easy it was to just roll your own language-learning tool from a short prompt in a GPT-5 demo, while Google built an AI-powered language-learning tool into its Translate app.

And yet, Friday Duolingo's shares dropped another 14%, after announcing good fourth quarter results but an unpopular direction for its future. Fast Company reports: On the surface, many of the company's most critical metrics saw decent gains for the quarter, including:

— Daily Active Users: 52.7 million (up 30% year-over-year)
— Paid Subscribers: 12.2 million (up 28% year-over-year)
— Revenue: $282.9 million (up 35% year-over-year)
— Total bookings: $336.8 million (up 24% year-over-year)

The company also reported its full-year 2025 financials, revealing that for the first time in its history, it crossed the $1 billion revenue mark for a fiscal year.

But the Motley Fool explains that Duolingo's higher ad loads and repeated pushes for subscription plans "generated revenues in the short term, but made the Duolingo platform less engaging. Ergo, user growth decelerated while revenues rose." Thursday Duolingo announced a big change to address that, including moving more features into lower-priced tiers. Barron's reports: D.A. Davidson analyst Wyatt Swanson, who rates Duolingo stock at Neutral, posited that the push to monetize "led to disgruntled users and a meaningful negative impact to 'word-of-mouth' marketing." Duolingo has guided for bookings growth between 10% and 12% in 2026, compared with the 20% rate the company would have expected to see "if we operated like we have in past years...." If stock reaction is any indication, investors are concerned about Duolingo's new focus.
China

A Chinese Official's Use of ChatGPT Accidentally Revealed a Global Intimidation Operation (cnn.com) 27

A sprawling Chinese influence operation -- accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official's use of ChatGPT -- focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. From a report: The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down.

The report offers one of the most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts. The influence operation appeared to involve hundreds of Chinese operators and thousands of fake online accounts on various social media platforms, according to OpenAI.

AI

Metacritic Will Kick Out Media Attempting To Submit AI Generated Reviews (gamereactor.eu) 1

An anonymous reader shares a report: While some see AI as a tool to be used, its specific use and how it is deployed responsibly is being heavily debated online across a wide range of industries. In terms of journalistic content, and in this particular instance, reviews, review aggregator Metacritic has taken a firm stance on content published and submitted to their platform, that have been generated by artificial intelligence in some way.

In a statement by co-founder Marc Doyle, sent to Gamereactor, he says this: "Metacritic has been a reputable review source for a quarter century and has maintained a rigorous vetting process when adding new publications to our slate of critics. However, in certain instances such as a publication being sold or a writing staff having turned over, problems can arise such as plagiarism, theft, or other forms of fraud including AI-generated reviews. Metacritic's policy is to never include an AI-generated critic review on Metacritic and if we discover that one has been posted, we'll remove it immediately and sever ties with that publication indefinitely pending a thorough investigation."

So, what is this about specifically? Well, it's probably a sound guess, that this pertains to Videogamer's review of Resident Evil 9: Requiem, which was removed from the platform after a barrage of comments accusing the review of being AI-written, and for the author of being made up.

Businesses

Netflix Ditches Deal for Warner Bros. Discovery After Paramount's Offer is Deemed Superior (cnbc.com) 47

Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed a revised bid by Paramount Skydance to be a superior offer. From a report: Earlier this week, Paramount raised its bid to buy the entirety of WBD to $31 per share, up from $30 per share, all cash. It was the latest amendment to Paramount's multiple offers in recent months -- and since moving forward with a hostile bid to buy the company -- and it's now unseated a deal between WBD and Netflix to sell the legacy media company's studio and streaming businesses for $27.75 per share.

Last week, Netflix granted WBD a seven-day waiver to reengage with Paramount, resulting in the higher bid. Paramount's offer is for the entirety of WBD, including its pay-TV networks, such as CNN, TBS and TNT. Netflix had four business days to make changes to its own proposal in light of Paramount's superior bid, the WBD board said in a statement Thursday. Instead, the decision by the streaming giant to walk away puts a pin in a drawn-out saga that saw amended offers from both bidders.

The Military

Anthropic CEO Says AI Company 'Cannot In Good Conscience Accede' To Pentagon (apnews.com) 84

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday the artificial intelligence company "cannot in good conscience accede" to the Pentagon's demands to allow wider use of its technology. The maker of the AI chatbot Claude said in a statement that it's not walking away from negotiations, but that new contract language received from the Defense Department "made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons."

The Pentagon's top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a Friday deadline to agree to its demands. Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon "has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement."

Anthropic's policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It's the last of its peers -- the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI -- to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network. Parnell said the Pentagon wants to "use Anthropic's model for all lawful purposes" but didn't offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from "jeopardizing critical military operations." "We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions," he said.
In a post on X, Parnell said Anthropic will "have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide. Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk for DOW."
Education

What's the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework? 153

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: There's a new agentic AI called Einstein that will, according to its developers, live the life of a student for them. Einstein's website claims that the AI will attend lectures for you, write your papers, and even log into EdTech platforms like Canvas to take tests and participate in discussions. Educators told me that Einstein is just one of many AI tools that can do homework for students, but should be seen as a warning to schools that are increasingly seen by students as a place to gain a diploma and status as opposed to the value of education itself.

If an AI can go to school for you what's the point of going to school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, there isn't one. "I think about horses," he said. "They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free," he said. "They can do whatever they want now. It would be weird if horses revolted and said 'no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.'" But humans aren't horses. "This is much bigger than Einstein," Matthew Kirschenbaum told 404 Media. "Einstein is symptomatic. I doubt we'll be talking about Einstein, as such, in a year. But it's symptomatic of what's about to descend on higher ed and secondary ed as well."

[...] The attractiveness of agentic AIs is a symptom of a decades-long trend in higher education. "Universitiesby and large adopted a transactive model of education," Kirschenbaum said. "Students see their diploma as a credential. They pay tuition and at the end of four years, sometimes five years, they receive the credential and, in theory at least, that is then the springboard to economic stability and prosperity." Paliwal seems to agree. He told 404 Media that he attempted to change the university from the inside while working as a TA, but felt stymied by politics. "The only way to force these institutions to evolve is to bring reality to their face. And usually the loudest critics are the ones who can't do their own job well and live in fear of automation," he said.
"I think we really need to question what learning even is and whether traditional educational institutions are actually helping or harming us," said Paliwal. "We're seeing a rise in unemployment across degree holders because of AI, and that makes me question whether this is really what humans are born to do. We've been brainwashed as a society into valuing ourselves by the output of our productive work, and I think humanity is a lot more beautiful than that. Is it really education if we're just memorizing things to perform a task well?"

Kirschenbaum added: "What we're finding is that if forms of education can be transacted then we've just about arrived at the point where autonomous software AI agents are capable of performing the transaction on your behalf," he said. "And so the whole educational paradigm has come back to essentially bite itself in the ass."
Google

Google Launches Nano Banana 2 Model With Faster Image Generation (techcrunch.com) 6

Google has launched Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), a faster, more realistic image generation model that becomes the default across Gemini, Search, Lens, and Flow. TechCrunch reports: The new Nano Banana 2 retains some of the high-fidelity characteristics of the Pro model but produces images faster. The company says you can create images with a resolution ranging from 512px to 4K, in different aspect ratios. Nano Banana 2 can maintain character consistency for up to five characters and fidelity of up to 14 objects in one workflow for better storytelling. Users can also issue complex requests with detailed nuances for image generation, Google says. In addition, users can create media with more vibrant lighting, richer textures, and sharper detail.

[...] On Google's higher-end plans, Google AI Pro and Ultra, subscribers can continue to use Nano Banana Pro for specialized tasks by regenerating images via the three-dot menu. [...] The company said that all images created through the new model will have a SynthID watermark, which is Google's mark to denote AI-generated images. The images are also interoperable with C2PA Content Credentials, created by an industry body consisting of companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Meta. Google said that since launching the SynthID verification in the Gemini app in November, people have used it over 20 million times.

China

Chinese Official's Use of ChatGPT Revealed a Global Intimidation Opperation (cnn.com) 20

New submitter sabbede shares a report from CNN Politics: A sprawling Chinese influence operation -- accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official's use of ChatGPT -- focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down. "This is what Chinese modern transnational repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, told reporters ahead of the report's release. "It's not just digital. It's not just about trolling. It's industrialized. It's about trying to hit critics of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] with everything, everywhere, all at once."

Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official focused on emerging technologies, said the report from OpenAI "clearly demonstrates the way that China is actively employing AI tools to enhance information operations. US-China AI competition is continuing to intensify. This competition is not just taking place at the frontier, but in how China's government is planning and implementing the day-to-day of their surveillance and information apparatus."
Television

HBO Max's Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Expand Globally in 2026 (thewrap.com) 21

HBO Max will be cracking down on password sharing around the world. From a report: The streamer first started cracking down on password sharing in the United States late last August. Subscribers are now able to add an additional out-of-household account for $7.99 a month. Before that August change, Warner Bros. Discovery had been testing for months to determine who may or may not be a "legitimate user," as CEO and President for Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming and Games JB Perrette described the plan.

On Thursday during the company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2025, WBD revealed that the streaming limitations would be expanding. This news came as part of an answer about which levers the company plans to pull to grow HBO Max. Password crackdowns have proven to be a lucrative way to both boost revenue and subscriptions. Netflix, for example, saw 9 million more subscribers after its first wave of password crackdowns in 2024. The caveat is that password crackdowns do not lead to consistent growth, and they often infuriate subscribers.

Movies

DVD Sales Decline Slows Sharply as Gen Z Discovers the Appeal of Physical Media (yahoo.com) 89

DVD and Blu-ray sales have been in freefall for years, but the decline is slowing considerably as Gen Z buyers turn to physical media and drive a measurable uptick at video rental stores and retailers across the U.S.

Overall disc sales fell just 9% last year after dropping more than 20% in both 2023 and 2024, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, and U.S. consumers spent 12% more on 4K UHD Blu-rays in 2025 than the prior year. The Criterion Collection, a leading boutique Blu-ray label, confirmed significant year-over-year sales increases that its president credits to younger customers.

Vidiots, a video store in Los Angeles, averaged 170 rentals a day in January 2026 -- its biggest month ever -- after loaning about 22,000 discs total in 2023 and roughly 50,000 in 2024. Barnes & Noble reported DVD and Blu-ray sales growth of "mid-double digits" over the past year.
Social Networks

Discord Distances Itself From Persona Age Verification After User Backlash (theverge.com) 26

Discord is attempting to distance itself from the age verification provider Persona following a steady stream of user backlash. From a report: In an emailed statement to The Verge, Discord's head of product policy, Savannah Badalich, confirms the company "ran a limited test of Persona in the UK where age assurance had previously launched and that test has since concluded."

After Discord announced plans to implement age verification globally starting next month, users across social media accused Discord of "lying" about how it plans on handling face scans and ID uploads. Much of the criticism was directed toward Discord's partnership with Persona, an age verification provider also used by Reddit and Roblox.

Privacy

Russia Targets Telegram as Rift With Founder Pavel Durov Deepens (ft.com) 25

Russia has opened an investigation into Telegram founder Pavel Durov for "abetting terrorist activities," [non-paywalled source] in the latest sign that his uneasy relationship with the Kremlin has broken down. From a report: Two Russian newspapers, including the state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta and Kremlin-friendly tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, alleged on Tuesday that the messaging app had become a tool of western and Ukrainian intelligence services.

The articles, credited to materials from Russia's FSB security service, accused Telegram of enabling attacks in Russia and said that Durov's "actions ... are under criminal investigation." Russia has restricted Telegram's functions, accusing it of flouting the law and is seeking to divert users towards Max, a state-run rival messenger. The steps escalate pressure on a platform that remains deeply embedded in Russian public life.

United States

US Farmers Are Rejecting Multimillion-Dollar Datacenter Bids For Their Land (theguardian.com) 96

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: When two men knocked on Ida Huddleston's door last May, they carried a contract worth more than $33m in exchange for the Kentucky farm that had fed her family for centuries. According to Huddleston, the men's client, an unnamed "Fortune 100 company," sought her 650 acres (260 hectares) in Mason county for an unspecified industrial development. Finding out any more would require signing a non-disclosure agreement. More than a dozen of her neighbors received the same knock. Searching public records for answers, they discovered that a new customer (PDF) had applied for a 2.2 gigawatt project from the local power plant, nearly double its annual generation capacity. The unknown company was building a datacenter. "You don't have enough to buy me out. I'm not for sale. Leave me alone, I'm satisfied," Huddleston, 82, later told the men.

As tech companies race to build the massive datacenters needed to power artificial intelligence across the US and the world, bids like the one for Huddleston's land are appearing on rural doorsteps nationwide. Globally, 40,000 acres of powered land – real estate prepped for datacenter development -- are projected to be needed for new projects over the next five years, double the amount currently in use. Yet despite sums that often dwarf the land's recent value, farmers are increasingly shutting the door. At least five of Huddleston's neighbors gave similar categorical rejections, including one who was told he could name any price.

In Pennsylvania, a farmer rejected $15m in January for land he'd worked for 50 years. A Wisconsin farmer turned down $80m the same month. Other landowners have declined offers exceeding $120,000 per acre -- prices unimaginable just a few years ago. The rebuffs are a jarring reminder of AI's physical bounds, and limits of the dollars behind the technology. [...] As AI promises to transcend corporeal fallibility, these standoffs reveal its very physical constraints -- and Wall Street's miscalculation of what some people value most. In the rolling hills of Mason county and farmland across America, that gap is measured not in dollars but in something harder to price: identity.

AI

Raspberry Pi Stock Rises Over Its Possible Use With OpenClaw's AI Agents (reuters.com) 46

This week Raspberry Pi saw its stock price surge more than 60% above its early-February low (before giving up some gains at the end of the week). Reuters notes the rise started when CEO Eben Upton bought 13,224 pounds worth of shares — but there could be another reason. "The rally in the roughly $800 million company has materialised alongside social-media buzz that demand for its single-board computers could pick up as people buy them to run AI agents such as OpenClaw."

The Register explains: The catalyst appears to have been the sudden realization by one X user, "aleabitoreddit," that the agentic AI hand grenade known as OpenClaw could drive demand for Raspberry Pis the way it had for Apple Mac Minis. The viral AI personal assistant, formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, has dominated the feeds of AI boosters over the past few weeks for its ability to perform everyday tasks like sending emails, managing calendars, booking appointments, and complaining about their meatbag masters on the purportedly all-agent forum known as MoltBook... In case it needs to be said, no one should be running this thing on their personal devices lest the agent accidentally leak your most personal and sensitive secrets to the web... In this context, a cheap low-power device like a Raspberry Pi makes a certain kind of sense as a safer, saner way to poke the robo-lobster...
The Register argues Raspberry Pis aren't as cheap as they used to be "thanks in part to the global memory crunch. Today, a top-specced Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB of memory will set you back more than $200, up from $120 a year ago."

"You know what's cheaper, easier, and more secure than letting OpenClaw loose on your local area network? A virtual private cloud..."
Social Networks

Is 'Brain Rot' Real? How Too Much Time Online Can Affect Your Mind. (msn.com) 20

Can being "very online" really affect our brains, asks the Washington Post: Research suggests that scrolling through short videos on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube Shorts is affecting our attention, memory and mental health. A recent meta-analysis of the scientific literature found that increased use of short-form video was linked with poorer cognition and increased anxiety...

In a 2025 study published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, researchers looked at longitudinal data from more than 7,000 children across the country and found that more screen use was associated with reduced cortical thickness in certain areas of the brain. The cortex, which is the outer layer that sits on top of our more primitive brain structures, allows for higher-level thinking, memory and decision-making. "We really need it for things like inhibitory control or not being so impulsive," said Mitch Prinstein, a senior science adviser to the American Psychological Association and professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the study. The cortex is also important for controlling addictive behaviors. "Those seem to be the areas being affected by the reduced cortical thickness," he said, explaining that impulsivity can prompt us to seek dopamine hits from social media. In the study, more screen time was also associated with more attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms...

But not all screen time is created equal. A recent study removed social media from kids' devices but let them use their phones for as long as they wanted. The result? Kids spent just as long on their phones but didn't have the same harmful effects. "It's what you're doing on the screen that matters," Prinstein said.

Social Networks

Pinterest Is Drowning in a Sea of AI Slop and Auto-Moderation 30

Users say Pinterest has become flooded with AI-generated images and heavy-handed automated moderation, with artists reporting wrongful takedowns and their hand-drawn work mislabeled as "AI modified." As the company doubles down on AI features and layoffs, longtime users argue the platform's creative ecosystem is being undermined. 404 Media reports: "I feel like, increasingly, it's impossible to talk to a single human [at Pinterest]," artist and Pinterest user Tiana Oreglia told 404 Media. "Along with being filled with AI images that have been completely ruining the platform, Pinterest has implemented terrible AI moderation that the community is up in arms about. It's banning people randomly and I keep getting takedown notices for pins." [...]

r/Pinterest is awash in users complaining about AI-related issues on the site. "Pinterest keeps automatically adding the 'AI modified' tag to my Pins... every time I appeal, Pinterest reviews it and removes the AI label. But then... the same thing happens again on new Pins and new artwork. So I'm stuck in this endless loop of appealing, label removed, new Pin gets tagged again," read a post on r/Pinterest. The redditor told 404 Media that this has happened three times so far and it takes between 24 to 48 hours to sort out. "I actively promote my work as 100% hand-drawn and 'no AI,'" they said. "On Etsy, I clearly position my brand around original illustration. So when a Pinterest Pin is labeled 'Hand Drawn' but simultaneously marked as 'AI modified,' it creates confusion and undermines that positioning."

Artist Min Zakuga told 404 Media that they've seen a lot of their art on Pinterest get labeled as "AI modified" despite being older than image generation tech. "There is no way to take their auto-labeling off, other than going through a horribly long process where you have to prove it was not AI, which still may get rejected," she said. "Even artwork from 10-13 years ago will still be labeled by Pinterest as AI, with them knowing full well something from 10 years ago could not possibly be AI." Other users are tired of seeing a constant flood of AI-generated art in their feeds. "I can't even scroll through 100 pins without 95 out of them being some AI slop or theft, let alone very talented artists tend to be sucked down and are being unrecognized by the sheer amount of it," said another post. "I don't want to triple check my sources every single time I look at a pin, but I refuse to use any of that soulless garbage. However, Pinterest has been infested. Made obsolete."
Movies

AMC Theatres Will Refuse To Screen AI Short Film After Online Uproar (hollywoodreporter.com) 12

An anonymous reader shares a report: When will AI movies start showing up in theaters nationwide? It was supposed to be next month. But when word leaked online that an AI short film contest winner was going to start screening before feature presentations in AMC Theatres, the cinema chain decided not to run the content.

The issue began earlier this week with the inaugural Frame Forward AI Animated Film Festival announcing Igor Alferov's short film Thanksgiving Day had won the contest. The prize package for included Thanksgiving Day getting a national two-week run in theaters nationwide. When word of this began hitting social media, however, some were dismayed by the prospect of exhibitors embracing AI content, with many singling out AMC Theatres for criticism.

Except the short is not actually programmed by exhibitors, exactly, but by Screenvision Media -- a third-party company which manages the 20-minute, advertising-driven pre-show before a theater's lights go down. Screenvision -- which co-organized the festival along with Modern Uprising Studios -- provides content to multiple theatrical chains, not just AMC. After The Hollywood Reporter reached out to AMC about the brewing controversy, the company issued this statement to THR on Thursday: "This content is an initiative from Screenvision Media, which manages pre-show advertising for several movie theatre chains in the United States and runs in fewer than 30 percent of AMC's U.S. locations. AMC was not involved in the creation of the content or the initiative and has informed Screenvision that AMC locations will not participate."

Television

How Streaming Became Cable TV's Unlikely Life Raft (wsj.com) 10

Cable TV providers have spent the past decade losing tens of millions of households to streaming services, but companies like Charter Communications are now slowing that exodus by bundling the very apps that once threatened to replace them.

Charter added 44,000 net video subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025, its first growth in that count since 2020, after integrating Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ directly into Spectrum cable packages -- a deal that grew out of a contentious 2023 contract dispute with Disney. Comcast and Optimum still lost subscribers in the quarter, though both saw those losses narrow.

Charter's Q4 numbers also got a lift from a 15-day Disney channel blackout on YouTube TV during football season, which drove more than 14,000 subscribers to Spectrum. Charter has been discounting aggressively -- video revenue fell 10% year over year despite the subscriber gains. Cox Communications launched its first streaming-inclusive cable bundles last month, and Dish Network has yet to integrate streaming apps into its packages at all.
Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg Grilled On Usage Goals and Underage Users At California Trial (wsj.com) 20

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced a barrage of questions about his social-media company's efforts to secure ever more of its users' time and attention at a landmark trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday. In sworn testimony, Zuckerberg said Meta's growth targets reflect an aim to give users something useful, not addict them, and that the company doesn't seek to attract children as users. [...] Mark Lanier, a lawyer for the plaintiff, repeatedly asked Zuckerberg about internal company communications discussing targets for how much time users spend with Meta's products. Lanier showed an email from 2015 in which the CEO stated his goal for 2016 was to increase users' time spent by 12%. "We used to give teams goals on time spent and we don't do that anymore because I don't think that's the best way to do it," Zuckerberg said on the witness stand in sworn testimony.

Lanier also asked Zuckerberg about documents showing Meta employees were aware of children under 13 using Meta's apps. Zuckerberg said the company's policy was that children under 13 aren't allowed on the platform and that they are removed when identified. Lanier showed an internal Meta email from 2015 that estimated 4 million children under 13 were using Instagram. He estimated that figure would represent approximately 30% of all kids aged 10 to 12 in the U.S. In response to a question about his ownership stake in Meta, which amounts to roughly more than $200 billion, Zuckerberg said he has pledged to donate most of his money to charity. "The better that Meta does, the more money I will be able to invest in science research," he said.

[...] On the stand, Zuckerberg was also asked about his decision to continue to allow beauty filters on the apps after 18 experts said they were harmful to teenage girls. The company temporarily banned the filters on Instagram in 2019 and commissioned a panel of experts to review the feature. All 18 said they were damaging. Meta later lifted the ban but said it didn't create any filters of its own or recommend the filters to users on Instagram after that. "We shouldn't create that content ourselves and we shouldn't recommend it to people," Zuckerberg said. But at the same time, he continued, "I think oftentimes telling people that they can't express themselves like that is overbearing." He also argued that other experts had thought such bans were a suppression of free speech. By focusing on the design of Meta's apps rather than the content posted in them, the case seeks to get around longstanding legal doctrine that largely shields social-media companies from litigation. At times, the case has veered into questions of content, prompting Meta's lawyers to object.

China

China's Hottest App of 2026 Just Asks If You're Still Alive (japantimes.co.jp) 20

A bare-bones Chinese app called "Are You Dead?" -- whose entire premise is that solo-living users tap daily to confirm they're still alive, triggering an alert to an emergency contact after two missed check-ins -- has rocketed to the top of China's app store charts and gone viral globally without spending a dime on advertising.

The app wasn't built for the elderly, as many assumed; its creators are Gen-Z developers who said they were inspired by the isolation of urban life in a country where one-person households are expected to hit 200 million by 2030. Its rise coincided with China's birth rate plunging to a record low. Beijing quietly removed the app from Chinese stores last month, and the developers are now crowdsourcing a new name on social media after their first rebrand attempt, "Demumu," failed to catch on.

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