Meta’s Opinion-Checking

PRESENTED BY SOMEWHERE

It’s Wednesday, Future Party. Our hearts go out to all those affected by the Palisades and Eaton Fires raging in Los Angeles. It’s going to be a long road to recovery for the city.

DAILY TOP TRENDS

Meta Gives Up On Fact-Checking

Meta announced that it’s swapping out its third-party fact-checkers with a community-notes model over the next few months in hopes of fighting back against alleged bias and censorship.

The Big Picture: Meta is once again changing with the tide. After nearly a decade of trying to thwart extremism, hateful speech, and misinformation on its platforms, the company has decided that there appears to be more public sentiment — and political clout — in letting the community police itself.

Behind the Changes: CEO Mark Zuckerberg and newly installed global affairs officer Joel Kaplan announced several big changes to Meta’s content moderation protocols.

• Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will change from using third-party fact-checkers (which multiplied headcount over the past eight years) in favor of a community-notes model that Elon Musk’s X uses.

• The company is also moving its trust and safety team from California to Texas to avoid the appearance of bias or over-censorship. (Fun fact: Musk also moved X to Texas.)

• The platforms will also adjust their automated moderation filters to only search for illegal content or “high severity violations,” giving users more freedom to discuss sensitive topics such as “immigration” and “gender.”

• Additionally, the platform will allow more political content to appear on users’ timelines. People can customize how much they want to see.

The Future: In announcing the changes, Kaplan wrote that Meta platforms have “become too restrictive over time [...] including about those kinds of sensitive topics [...] that people want to discuss and debate.” While many will take issue with that (or simply see it as a “kiss the ring” gesture), it goes to show how social media platforms ebb and flow with the changes of the political guard. Only time will tell how that changes engagement on the platforms.

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Scientists May Soon Live Underwater

Ocean exploration company Deep is starting tests on a habitat where research divers can live and work at depths of 100 meters (over 300 feet) for up to a week at a time — a stepping stone for an even larger enclosure that could keep people underwater for years. 

Why It Hits: The success of Deep’s habitats represents a major milestone in humanity’s ability to exist underwater for an extended period, which could supercharge our understanding of oceanic ecology and climate regulation.

Beyond the Surface: Deep is piloting its first enclosure in an abandoned quarry near the border of England and Wales.

• That habitat, dubbed “Vanguard,” is a moveable, shipping-container-sized module that can house three divers at a time for up to three weeks, complete with proper pressurization, air mix, energy, and food.

• The goal is to soon level up to the even-larger “Sentinel” habitat by 2027, which will be more permanent and consist of several modules. It’ll house six people, include several labs and submarine docking stations, and sit at depths of 200 meters.

Last Breath: The deep sea is not a hospitable place for humans. Current diving methods only allow people to get to 200 meters underwater for about 10 minutes of work before having to decompress for six hours before returning to the surface. It also requires a very specific type of diving approach called “saturation diving,” so that humans can properly acclimate to the pressure and chemical changes at those depths. Otherwise, you could die. Oil companies are really the only firms that employ these methods for workers on offshore rigs.

But Deep has pioneered novel manufacturing technology and cutting-edge systems to bring these skills to the scientific community. Kirk Krack, Deep’s human diver performance lead, says the habitats will allow scientists to get seven years of work done in just 30 days. Whoa.

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DEEP DIVES

• Watch: Behind the Lens talks with Inside Out 2 director Kelsey Mann, who now holds the record for the highest-grossing box office debut ever after the film grossed $1.7 billion.

• Read: Forbes profiles Bluesky CEO Jay Graber on how she’s scaling the platform to handle an influx of users and ensuring that it can never just be taken over by a billionaire.

• Listen: The SmartLess comedy crew chats with Luis Elizondo, the former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

85.5% of you voted No in yesterday’s poll: Have you ever invested in a memecoin?

“Nor will I ever.”

“It’s BS, fake, and a con.”

“I like real money.”

“Bought a lot of other crypto, but I exclude memecoins. Have to resist de-evolution.”

“Yes, but with no seriousness. I treat it like buying a lottery ticket. It’s a cheap thrill, fun while it lasts, and you don’t expect to get money out of it.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

👨‍⚖️ Ted Farnsworth, the CEO of Helios & Matheson Analytics, pleaded guilty to defrauding MoviePass investors.

✏️ New LA-based animation company Bizaar Studios now counts author George R.R. Martin, entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine, and animation director Conrad Vernon as advisors and investors.

🎮 The former Annapurna Interactive heads are starting a new company and taking over the development of games from the recently shuttered Private Division label.

→ Technology

🦿 Nvidia announced a new “family” of foundational AI models called “Cosmos” that were trained on human movements so that they could be used to power robots.

🚗 BMW is rolling out an in-car operating system, “iDrive,” that gives users an AR heads-up display on vehicle windshields.

🤖 Anthropic is set to raise $2 billion in a new funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, giving the AI firm a valuation of $60 billion.

→ Fashion / E-commerce

😔 Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is feeling “gloomy” after realizing that AI can do his job… and everyone else’s at the company. Big yikes.

📱 Shark Kevin O’Leary is joining billionaire Frank McCourt’s potential bid for TikTok… if it goes on the auction block.

🏎️ Adidas inked a multi-year deal to outfit the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 team.