Meta Platforms

The EU's landmark curbs on how tech titans do business online kick in from Thursday, but just how far Brussels succeeds in bringing the giants to heel will hinge on bitter battles that still lie ahead.

The Facebook and Instagram applications are currently experiencing a widespread outage globally, as reported around 5:30 p.m. Bulgarian time. According to Downdetector, there have been over 120,000 reports of issues with Facebook and a five-digit number of reports for Instagram within the last thirty minutes.

Consumer groups from eight countries in the European BEUC network, including from Greece, on Thursday filed complaints against Meta with their national data protection authorities, saying Meta has failed to adhere to GDPR principles on the processing of personal data.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg met Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a visit to Japan, discussing the risks of generative AI, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

Zuckerberg is on a mini-tour of Asia that includes stops in Japan, India and South Korea, where he travelled on Tuesday night.

Amid growing concerns over the spread of misinformation and the misuse of artificial intelligence, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announces plans to establish a dedicated team to address these issues ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections in June, as reported by Reuters.

In a bid to enhance user experience and reduce unwanted exposure to political content, Instagram and its sister app Threads have announced changes to their recommendation algorithms.

The long-standing question of why major tech players have overlooked Bulgaria seems to have been answered, albeit in a surprising manner. In a strategic move, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has quietly acquired a Bulgarian startup called Acutance Imaging.

Meta and Amazon on Thursday blew through expectations in their latest quarterly results as Big Tech continued to impress Wall Street.

Meta, the tech titan behind Facebook and Instagram, reported a profit of $14 billion in the final three months of last year, beating analyst forecasts as revenue climbed to $40.1 billion in the quarter.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a public apology in U.S. Congress on Wednesday as hostile lawmakers grilled tech chiefs over the dangers that children face on social media platforms.

The executives convened by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee were put to task in a session titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis."

Türkiye's competition board has declared that it started to fine Facebook-parent company Meta Platforms 4.8 million Turkish Liras ($160,000) per day over failure to fulfill its obligations on data collection from users.

In 2021, the Competition Authority initiated a probe in response to the software update imposed by WhatsApp on its users, mandating data sharing.