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Meta said that it has removed 135,000 Instagram accounts for “sexualizing children,” and has launched new protections for teenage users.

A further half a million Instagram and Facebook accounts were removed by the platform when they were found to be linked to the offending profiles …

Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said one of his biggest priorities for the year was “to get back to some OG Facebook.” Starting today, we’re seeing the fruits of that thanks to a new Friends tab rolling out inside the Facebook app.

Meta community notes are expected to launch within the next couple of months, after the social network announced it would be ending its own fact-checking program because facts are so 2015. You can now apply to be a contributor to these, signing up on one of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Meantime, X owner Elon Musk appears to be threatening the impartiality of his platform’s community notes, announcing plans to “fix” the feature …

Yesterday Meta reported its quarterly earnings, and amid sharing updates on Threads, Instagram, and yes, the metaverse, CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined an interesting new priority for this year: getting back to ‘OG Facebook.’

Plenty of people have tried to replace Twitter/X, but only a few new social media apps have achieved any traction, notably Threads and Bluesky.

But a new app created by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams isn’t trying to replace those, but instead do one of the things I most value about social media, and absolutely nothing else …

Meta is currently experiencing a major outage across all its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp. As noted by Downdetector.com, there has been a sharp increase in reported outages from users of these various services. Here’s what we know so far.

Update 5 p.m. Eastern: Over four hours into the outage, Meta has restored service for some users but many continue to experience issues and there has been no new update yet.

Note: This report contains links to reports about teenage suicides

Australia has followed France in imposing a social media ban for kids, and other countries are expected to follow. The French government is now pushing for an EU-wide ban.

Social media platforms are of course pushing back as they face losing a demographic seen as key to their future, and questions are being raised about how the ban will be enforced …

Update: Australia has now voted to ban social media use by children under the age of 16. In a 9to5Mac reader poll on the issue, the vast majority of you thought the US should do the same – see the end of the piece.

The impact of social media use by kids is perhaps one of the hottest topics in tech. There’s significant evidence that social media apps like Instagram can be harmful to the mental health of children, while others argue that it can also enable social connection.

Meta has been fined €91M ($101M) after it was discovered that to 600 million Facebook and Instagram passwords had been stored in plain text.

Some of those passwords had been unprotected since 2012, and were searchable by more than 20,000 Meta employees …

Meta announced Monday that it has banned RT and other Russian state media outlets from its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, among others, citing ‘foreign interference activity’ in the US presidential election.

Meta has admitted to scraping all public Facebook and Instagram posts made since 2007 in order to train its generative AI model, adding to the privacy contrast with Apple Intelligence.

While the admission was made during a public enquiry in Australia, the company’s statement applies globally …

Over the last several days, Facebook users have revolted after the app’s iPhone icon seemingly adopted a new black and blue design. As it turns out, however, this is just a bug, and Facebook is already rolling out a fix.

Back in May, Meta started testing the ability to cross-post from Instagram to Threads, and the company is now rolling this out to everyone.

The feature also lets you cross-post from Facebook, continuing Meta’s integration of its three different social media platforms …

Update: Both the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Commission have now launched investigations into the legality of making it opt-out instead of opt-in.

If you use Instagram or Facebook, Meta is using your data to train its AI models. The company uses posts as training material for its generative AI systems. Privacy legislation in the UK and European Union means that the company is forced to offer an opt-out option – but it is doing so in a rather sketchy way …

An EU investigation has been opened into growing concerns about teen Instagram addiction, to determine whether parent company Meta is breaking the law by deliberately seeking to make its apps addictive.

The investigation will also look into whether the company’s age-verification procedures are sufficiently robust, and the phenomenon of sending users down potentially harmful ‘rabbit holes’ …

A court is being asked to decide whether or not Meta has a legal obligation to allow the use of Unfollow Everything – a browser tool which effectively empties your Facebook feed.

The idea behind the tool is that instead of being sucked into an effectively endless feed of posts from every friend, group, and page you have ever followed, you get to proactively choose the posts you read …

Yesterday’s global meta outage seemingly took out the company’s entire network, with users unable to access Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, and Quest headsets.

The outage lasted between one and two hours for most users, and while everything now appears back to normal, questions are naturally being asked about what went wrong …

In a blog post on Thursday, Meta announced changes to how advertisers pay for “boosted posts” on Facebook and Instagram. According to the company, advertisers will now pay a 30% fee when they purchase boosts from inside the Facebook or Instagram apps on iPhone. This is due to changes to the App Store guidelines that went into effect over a year ago.

In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple responded to Meta’s criticism and its attempt to shift the blame to Apple.