Russia has officially ordered a nationwide block on WhatsApp, marking the most significant step yet in its campaign to isolate citizens from Western communication tools.
The Kremlin announced the move on Thursday, following months of technical disruptions that had already forced many users to rely on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
The official justification for the ban is a lack of legal compliance. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed the service was blocked due to Meta’s “unwillingness to comply with the norms and the letter of Russian law.”
Specifically, Moscow has long demanded that foreign tech firms store the data of Russian users on local servers and provide law enforcement with access to encrypted messages – demands that WhatsApp, which uses end-to-end encryption, has consistently refused.
Rights groups have condemned the move as a transparent attempt to ramp up state surveillance. WhatsApp, which had over 100 million users in Russia, warned that trying to isolate people from secure communication is a “backwards step” that only decreases public safety.
The ban follows similar restrictions placed on Telegram, which regulators accused of failing to abide by security laws, despite the app’s widespread use among Russian military personnel.
MAX super-app
In place of Western platforms, the Kremlin is aggressively promoting MAX, a state-developed “super-app” designed to be a Russian equivalent to China’s WeChat. MAX is touted as a one-stop shop for messaging, making payments, and accessing online government services. However, the convenience comes with a significant catch: the app lacks the end-to-end encryption found in WhatsApp.
Experts warn that MAX is a “surveillance app” by design. The platform openly declares it will share user data with authorities upon request, leaving private conversations vulnerable to state snooping. To ensure adoption, the government has mandated that MAX be pre-installed on all new devices sold in Russia, while public sector employees and students are increasingly required to use the platform for official communication.
The block on WhatsApp completes a digital iron curtain that already includes bans on Facebook, Instagram, and X. By pushing the population toward a state-monitored ecosystem, the Kremlin is hoping to create a “sovereign internet” where the flow of information can be entirely controlled and monitored by the state.
Russian authorities have taken new measures to ensure they can monitor all communications by people inside the country, officially blocking access to the popular, Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp.
WhatsApp said in a statement shared Thursday on social media that Russia had “attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” calling it an attempt to isolate “over 100 million users from private and secure communication.”
WhatsApp called it a “backwards step” that would lead to “less safety for people in Russia.”
People look at their phones while riding an escalator in the Moscow metro, Feb. 12, 2026, as Russian officials confirmed the popular messaging service WhatsApp had been blocked over a failure to comply with national laws.
Hector RETAMAL/AFP/Getty
Speaking to reporters Thursday in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed “a decision was indeed made and implemented” in response to a question on the WhatsApp ban.
He said the decision was taken due to WhatsApp’s unwillingness “to comply with the norms and letter of Russian law.”
The ban appears to stem from Russian legislation that requires all companies listed on a register of online information disseminators to store both personal user details and data on all electronic messages exchanged within Russia, and to make that information available to government agencies.
Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal agency responsible for monitoring — and censoring — mass media in the country,added WhatsApp to that register in late 2024.
WhatsApp said in its statement that it would “do everything we can to keep users connected.”
CBS News found on Thursday that while WhatsApp was blocked for users inside Russia, it was still possible to use the app via a virtual private network (VPN), which is not illegal in the country, despite the Kremlin’s ban.
Earlier in the week, another popular messaging app, Telegram, also faced new restrictions in Russia in a move highly criticized by many citizens. According to Roskomnadzor, which, like all Russian government agencies, uses the platform itself to distribute official announcements, Telegram failed to protect users’ personal data.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian national who lives in exile in Dubai and who faces outstanding allegations in France over alleged criminal activity on his platform, criticized the move, saying the real motive was political censorship.
“Russia is restricting access to Telegram in an attempt to force its citizens to use a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship,” he said, adding that “restricting citizens’ freedom is never the right answer.”
Russia previously banned a number of social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly known as Twitter) in response to what it said was the platforms’ “discrimination” against Russian media following the launch of Moscow’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia’s state-backed “Max” app
The “surveillance app” app referred to in the statements by WhatsApp and Telegram’s Durov is a platform called MAX. Launched in 2025 with full backing from the government, it is a multifunction app that includes messaging and e-commerce functions, but also access to a wide range of government services such as medical and municipal appointments.
Similar to the WeChat app in China, MAX is touted by Russian officials as both a social network and key portal for government services.
Authorities ordered the state-backed app to come pre-installed on all new digital devices sold in Russia from last year.
The MAX app logo is displayed on a smartphone screen in front of a Russian flag in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 9, 2026.
Sefa Karacan/Anadolu/Getty
The company notes in its legal terms that it can share user data with Russian authorities upon request, but says it does so only after a “mandatory legal assessment is conducted to determine the legality, validity, and adequacy of the requested data volume for the stated purposes,” and that it provides “only the minimum amount of data expressly required by applicable law.”
India’s government last year revoked a previous order for all new devices sold in the country to come pre-loaded with a state-developed and owned communications app, amid an outcry by opposition politicians and privacy organizations warning that it would be intrusive.
US authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta can read users’ encrypted chats on the WhatsApp messaging platform, which it owns. The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week, which claimed Meta “can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”. Meta has denied the allegation, reported by Bloomberg, calling the lawsuit’s claim “categorically false and absurd”. It suggested the claim was a tactic to support the NSO Group, an Israeli firm that develops spyware used against activists and journalists, and which recently lost a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp. Guardian
An ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proposed a bill to ban social media for children, as the world’s biggest market for Meta and YouTube joins a global debate on the impact of social media on young people’s health and safety. “Not only are our children becoming addicted to social media, but India is also one of the world’s largest producers of data for foreign platforms,” lawmaker L.S.K. Devarayalu told Reuters on Friday. Reuters
At the height of the Cold War, US Air Force officials proposed a terrifying plan to help America demonstrate its superiority over the Soviet Union: detonating a nuclear bomb on the Moon. The top secret programme, Project A119, envisaged carrying a hydrogen bomb aboard an intercontinental ballistic missile into space and exploding it on the lunar surface. The detonation was to be visible from Earth and show American muscle after Russia had gained a lead in the space race. Fortunately, the 1958 project was cancelled over fears of nuclear fallout poisoning future astronauts. Yet now, the global space race is on the brink of going nuclear once again. Telegraph
Until recently, Elon Musk claimed that Tesla’s Optimus robot (pictured) was already deployed in the company’s factories and could be ready for sale to private customers by 2027. However, this now appears to be far from the truth. Contrary to earlier statements, not a single Optimus unit is currently performing productive work in Tesla’s plants. Musk himself confirmed during the latest earnings call that the robot remains in development and is currently being trained – “it’s more so that the robot can learn,” as he put it – rather than actually assisting in production. NotebookCheck
We have seen this before. Hijacked Google search resultsto direct users to malicious websites or installs. And now here we go again. This time with an attack that specifically targets millions of Apple users. Make sure you do not fall victim. Per Apple Insider, sponsored Google ads are now “leading users on to faked Apple support pages that try to get the user to use the Terminal and install malware on Macs.” The ads show when users search for “mac cleaner” in Google rather than using a legitimate app store to find a suitable option. Forbes
I have spent the last few months investigating AI music. What has emerged is a picture of a vast attempted fraud, as technologically-equipped criminals use AI tools to try and take billions of pounds away from real-life musicians. The fraud takes place in two stages which sound like something from a science-fiction novel, but are now part of everyday life in the hidden world of the internet economy. First, the fraudsters make huge amounts of AI music. Then, they build bots to stream that music over and over again and thereby make some royalties. Sky News
If you continue to notice problems such as random pop-ups or apps installing on your device even after following the measures mentioned in this guide, then the best solution is to factory reset your smartphone.
In some cases, the malicious app will not be visible in the app drawer, so you should do a complete check through your phone’s Settings.
Once you delete the virus APK, we recommend changing the passwords of all the accounts signed in on your phone when the app was installed.
WhatsApp-related frauds have risen sharply in recent times, with scammers increasingly tricking users into installing malicious APK files disguised as the messaging app. Once installed, these fake apps can silently access sensitive information, monitor activity, and in some cases allow attackers to take control of key phone functions. If you suspect a WhatsApp APK scam has compromised your phone, this guide walks you through simple and effective steps to fix the issue. It also explains how to protect yourself from similar scams in the future.
Signs That Your Phone May Be Hacked
If you have recently installed an APK from WhatsApp and notice the issues mentioned below, then you should act immediately:
Phone heating up even while idle
Rapid battery drain
Unknown apps are installing and appearing in the app drawer
Pop-ups asking for accessibility access
Bank alerts or random OTPs that you did not request
Note that one symptom alone may not confirm that your device is compromised, but several issues together are a major red flag.
Follow these steps to safeguard yourself from the potential virus or malware:
1. Disconnect from the Internet Immediately
Turn on airplane mode on your phone and ensure that mobile data, WiFi, USB tethering, and all other forms of accessing the internet are cut off. This prevents the malware from receiving remote commands and sharing your data with the hacker’s servers.
2. Uninstall Unknown APKs and Apps
Check your phone for unknown or random apps that you did not install. In some cases, the malicious app will not be visible in the app drawer, so you should do a complete check through your phone’s Settings.
1. Open Settings on your phone and go to Apps.
2. Now select App Management. The option name will vary by your phone’s OEM.
3. Check the list of all the apps installed on your device. If you notice any unknown apps, delete them immediately.
3. Boot into Safe Mode
The Safe Mode on Android disables all external apps on your phone, leaving it in the same condition as a factory reset. It shows installed apps as a greyed-out option. This helps to analyse which app is causing the problem on your device. Here’s how you can enter safe mode:
1. Power off your phone.
2. Hold the power and volume down keys to boot into Safe Mode.
3. Verify the text or watermark of Safe Mode once your device boots.
4. Check for any unknown apps and uninstall them quickly.
5. Once you are done, restart your device to boot it normally.
4. Run an Antivirus Scan
If you still notice any issues, or you are just paranoid, then its recommeded to run an antivirus scan which will detect any hidden viruses. Here are some free and reputable antivirus software for Android that you can try:
5. Change Passwords of Your Accounts
Once you delete the virus APK, we recommend changing the passwords of all the accounts signed in on your phone when the app was installed. This is a precautionary measure to revoke any potential access gained by the compromised app. You should change the password of your Google account, Microsoft account, and also social media services like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and others.
6. Factory Reset Your Device (If Problems Persist)
If you continue to notice problems such as random pop-ups or apps installing on your device even after following the measures mentioned in this guide, then the best solution is to factory reset your smartphone. This will ensure that all the hidden virus and malware is wiped from the system completely, giving you a fresh and safe start.
How to Stay Safe From WhatsApp APK Frauds
Even after staying cautious, it is possible to make a human error by unintentionally installing an APK file from WhatsApp in the flow of the moment. This leaves a significant risk of exposing yourself to hackers and scammers, for just making a simple mistake of installing an unknown app. But there’s no need to worry, as the Android OS provides an option to prevent it. Here’s how you can enable it:
1. Open the Settings app on your phone and search for Installation sources.
2. Search for WhatsApp, and disable the toggle.
Your phone will now block any attempt to install an app when you try to open an APK file received on WhatsApp. Here’s how it would look:
This security feature is available on all Android phones. However, the name of the settings may vary. You can refer to your phone’s OS guide for installation sources of apps.
FAQs
Q. How to stop WhatsApp fraud?
You can prevent WhatsApp fraud by avoiding clicking on links received from unknown numbers. You should also immediately report and delete such chats, and never install any anonymous APKs. However, there is no direct method to stop receiving fraudulent or scam messages on WhatsApp.
Q. How to check if my WhatsApp is hacked?
You can go to WhatsApp settings and check for any unknown linked devices, as that is the most common way using which hackers get access to your account. You can also check previous active sessions from the same menu, and remove any unauthorised logins for your safety.
Wrapping Up
With WhatsApp frauds increasing by the day, it has become necessary to stay more cautious while opening any link or installing any APK that you receive. By disabling the app installation permission of WhatsApp, you can safeguard yourself from unintentional mistakes of installing a malicious app. It is also important to spread this word among more people, especially those who are not very aware of the modern scammer tactics.
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Have any questions related to our how-to guides, or anything in the world of technology? Check out our new GadgetsToUse AI Chatbotfor free, powered by ChatGPT.
Expand your mind, man. Opsec is really all about time travel—taking small, protective steps now before you have a disaster on your hands later. If you’re not on auto-delete, then an explosive, emotional text exchange with the person you’re currently dating—or, ahem, photos you sent to each other—will hang around forever. It’s normal for things to change and for relationships of all types to come and go. You may trust someone and be close to them now but grow apart in a year or two.
If you imagine an even more extreme scenario where you’re being investigated by the police, they could obtain warrants to search your digital accounts or devices. People have to go to great lengths to maintain their opsec if they’re trying to hide activity from law enforcement. To be clear, this guide is definitely not encouraging you to do crimes. Don’t do crimes! The goal is just to understand the value of keeping basic opsec principles in mind, because if some of your digital information is revealed haphazardly or out of context, it could, theoretically, appear incriminating.
You probably intuitively understand a lot of this. Don’t give your password to friends, duh.) So this guide is going to largely skip the obvious and emphasize more subtle, unintended consequences of failing to practice good opsec.
Memorable Opsec Fails
“Signalgate,” 2025: US officials discussed war plans in a group chat on the mainstream, secure messaging app Signal. Then they accidentally added a journalist to the chat. Subsequently, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth famously (embarrassingly) messaged the chat, “we are currently clean on OPSEC.” At least some members of the chat were also potentially using a modified, insecure version of Signal. All extremely not clean on opsec.
Gmail Drafts Exposed, 2012: Then-CIA director David Petraeus and his paramour shared a Gmail account to hide their communications by leaving them for each other to see as draft messages. Kind of ingenious given that this was before most texting or messaging apps offered timed disappearing/ephemeral messages, but the FBI figured out the strategy.
Identities
Opsec is all about compartmentalizing, and that’s the hardest part. Failure to compartmentalize is often how criminals get caught or how information that was meant to stay secret gets exposed. Think of your online life like rooms in a house. Each room has a separate key. If someone breaks into one room, they can grab everything there, but you don’t want them to be able to run wild beyond that room.
You can have multiple identities online and compartmentalize the activities of each, but it takes forethought to maintain the separation. There’s the real you who uses your main Gmail or Apple ID for personal and family stuff and social accounts where you use your real name, plus school and maybe work. Another compartment is your school email and school file storage. Then there’s your more adaptable, online personas who may have semi-anonymous handles, like jnd03 for Jane Doe. Friends know that these accounts are yours and classmates can probably guess them. Finally, there may be a pseudonymous you: alt accounts with no obvious link to real you—like Jane Doe using the handles “_aksdi0_0” or “peter_mayfield01.”
Rules of Separation
You have accounts under your real name, but you probably also need pseudonymous accounts. Tight compartmentalization will prevent people from doxing your pseudonymous accounts. But that’s easier said than done.
Obviously, don’t recycle usernames across platforms. If JaneD03 is your Instagram handle, don’t use it or a similar name for your anonymous Reddit account. Don’t even reuse passwords—but especially don’t reuse passwords between real and pseudonymous accounts. To prevent a compromised pseudonymous account from revealing your name, don’t use your main email address; instead, use a unique, pseudonymous one. Gmail “dot tricks” (jane.doe@, j.ane.doe@) don’t count, because they all equally reveal your master account.
Meta has prevailed over an existential challenge to its business that could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp after a judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued his ruling Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May. His decision runs in sharp contrast to two separate rulings that branded Google an illegal monopoly in both search and online advertising, dealing regulatory blows to the tech industry that for years enjoyed nearly unbridled growth.
The Federal Trade Commission “continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions,” Boasberg wrote in his ruling. “Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now. The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so.”
The federal agency had argued that Meta maintained a monopoly by pursuing an expression CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in 2008: “‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.”
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During his April testimony, Zuckerberg pushed back against claims that Facebook bought Instagram to neutralize a threat. In his line of questioning, FTC attorney Daniel Matheson repeatedly brought up emails — many of them more than a decade old — written by Zuckerberg and his associates before and after the acquisition of Instagram.
While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg has often sought to downplay the contents, saying he wrote the emails early in the acquisition process and that the notes did not fully capture the scope of his interest in the company. But the case was not about the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago, which the FTC approved at the time, but about whether Meta holds a monopoly now. Prosecutors, Boasberg wrote in the ruling, could only win if they proved “current or imminent legal violation.”
The FTC’s complaint said Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and “neutralize perceived competitive threats,” just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.
Meta said Tuesday’s decision “recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition.”
“Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America,” said Jennifer Newstead, chief legal officer, in a statement.
The social media landscape has changed so much since the FTC filed its lawsuit in 2020, Boasberg wrote, that each time the court examined Meta’s apps and competition, they changed. Two opinions to dismiss the case — filed in 2021 and 2022 — didn’t even mention popular social video platform TikTok. Today, it “holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.”
Quoting the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “that no man can ever step into the same river twice,” Boasberg said the same is true for the online world of social media as well.
“The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly. While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down,” he wrote.
Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley said Meta’s win “is not necessarily surprising considering the lengths it’s gone to in recent years to keep up with TikTok.”
“But from a regulatory standpoint, Meta is far from out of the woods: next year, major social networks will face landmark trials in the US regarding children’s mental health,” she added. “Still, today’s win is surely a boost for the company as it battles criticism and questions over how its massive AI spending will ultimately benefit Meta in the long run.”
Facebook bought Instagram — then a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult following — in 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deal’s value fell to $750 million after Facebook’s stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012.
Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller “acqui-hires” — a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.
WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.
Investors didn’t appear surprised at the ruling. Shares of the Menlo Park, California-based company were down $1.52 at $600.49 in afternoon trading Tuesday, in line with broader market trends.
Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WhatsApp’s mass adoption stems in part from how easy it is to find a new contact on the messaging platform: Add someone’s phone number, and WhatsApp instantly shows whether they’re on the service, and often their profile picture and name, too.
Repeat that same trick a few billion times with every possible phone number, it turns out, and the same feature can also serve as a convenient way to obtain the cell number of virtually every WhatsApp user on earth—along with, in many cases, profile photos and text that identifies each of those users. The result is a sprawling exposure of personal information for a significant fraction of the world population.
One group of Austrian researchers have now shown that they were able to use that simple method of checking every possible number in WhatsApp’s contact discovery to extract 3.5 billion users’ phone numbers from the messaging service. For about 57 percent of those users, they also found that they could access their profile photos, and for another 29 percent, the text on their profiles. Despite a previous warning about WhatsApp’s exposure of this data from a different researcher in 2017, they say, the service’s parent company, Meta, still failed to limit the speed or number of contact discovery requests the researchers could make by interacting with WhatsApp’s browser-based app, allowing them to check roughly a hundred million numbers an hour.
The result would be “the largest data leak in history, had it not been collated as part of a responsibly conducted research study,” as the researchers describe it in a paper documenting their findings.
“To the best of our knowledge, this marks the most extensive exposure of phone numbers and related user data ever documented,” says Aljosha Judmayer, one of the researchers at the University of Vienna who worked on the study.
The researchers say they warned Meta about their findings in April and deleted their copy of the 3.5 billion phone numbers. By October, the company had fixed the enumeration problem by enacting a stricter “rate-limiting” measure that prevents the mass-scale contact discovery method the researchers used. But until then, the data exposure could have also been exploited by anyone else using the same scraping technique, adds Max Günther, another researcher from the university who cowrote the paper. “If this could be retrieved by us super easily, others could have also done the same,” he says.
In a statement to WIRED, Meta thanked the researchers, who reported their discovery through Meta’s “bug bounty” system, and described the exposed data as “basic publicly available information,” since profile photos and text weren’t exposed for users who opted to make it private. “We had already been working on industry-leading anti-scraping systems, and this study was instrumental in stress-testing and confirming the immediate efficacy of these new defenses,” writes Nitin Gupta, vice president of engineering at WhatsApp. Gupta adds, “We have found no evidence of malicious actors abusing this vector. As a reminder, user messages remained private and secure thanks to WhatsApp’s default end-to-end encryption, and no non-public data was accessible to the researchers.”
The only smartphone manufacturer with a 10/10 iFixit repairability score is finally bringing its products to the US, but it isn’t starting with its phones. Netherlands-based Fairphone announced this week that it will mark its expansion into the US with the Fairbuds XL, its repairable over-ear headphones. It’ll be available on Amazon later this month.
Fairphone says it achieved 61 percent revenue growth in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, though this is likely attributed to the launch of The Fairphone (Gen 6)—the company doesn’t release a new phone every year. It sold more than 100,000 units in 2024, including phones and audio products.
Right-to-repair laws have been cropping up all over the US, and Fairphone smartphones are the easiest to repair. The company provides a screwdriver, sells spare parts for years, and offers long-term software support. Its devices may not be the flashiest or the most powerful, but they are a more sustainable solution, also ensuring fair mining practices and wages for workers in its supply chain.
Bringing its smartphone over to the US is a little more complicated than headphones, as it requires carrier certifications, but Fairphone tells WIRED it’s in “advanced discussions” with select retailers and carriers.
WhatsApp Arrives on the Apple Watch
Courtesy of Meta
Meta seems to be on a quest to finally bring its apps to other platforms. A few months ago, it launched an Instagram app for the iPad; now we’re getting WhatsApp on the Apple Watch. Rather than just mirroring your notifications and sending basic replies, now you can read full messages on the Apple Watch, record and send voice messages, see who’s calling, send emoji reactions to messages, and see more of the chat history on the screen.
It syncs with your iPhone, so you don’t need to set it up as a companion device. You can’t take calls on the watch itself or even answer them; you can see who is calling and decline. It also doesn’t seem as though you can add the WhatsApp app as a complication.
Motorola’s Cheapest Phone Now Has 5G
It’s a little earlier than usual, but Motorola’s latest budget phones are here: the Moto G 2026 and Moto G Play 2026. They share a similar look and aren’t too different from the design language Motorola has employed on its 2025 Moto G devices. What’s most notable is that the Moto G Play will have 5G support, making it one of the cheapest handsets with 5G at $170.
Both phones have 6.7-inch 120-Hz LCD screens, big 5,200-mAh batteries, and IP52 water resistance. They’re powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 6300 processor with 4 GB of RAM, but they differ in storage size, with the Moto G offering 128 GB of internal storage and the Play with 64 GB (both are expandable with a microSD). Cameras are the other place where the two phones diverge, with a 50-MP main sensor on the Moto G and a 32-MP sensor on the Play. Yes, they still have headphone jacks.
Motorola says the Moto G Play will arrive first on November 13 at Motorola, Best Buy, and Amazon for $170, and the $200 Moto G launches on December 11 at Motorola’s website first, then at Best Buy and Amazon on January 15.
Canon’s R6 III Goes More Pro
Courtesy of Canon
Canon has announced its much-anticipated new EOS R6 Mark III full-frame mirrorless camera. The R6 III features a new 32.5-megapixel sensor (the same sensor in the EOS C50 cinema camera), as well as the company’s latest Digic X processor.
US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton has reduced the damages Meta is getting from the NSO Group from $167 million to $4 million, but she has also ordered the Israeli spyware maker to stop targeting WhatsApp. If you’ll recall, Meta sued the NSO Group in 2019 over its Pegasus spyware, which it said was used to spy on 1,400 people from 20 countries, including journalists and human rights activists. Meta said at the time that Pegasus can infect targets’ devices even without their participation by sending text messages with malicious codes to WhatsApp. Even a missed call is enough to infect somebody’s device.
According to Courthouse News Service, Hamilton reduced the damages because they would need to follow a legal framework designed to proportionate damages. However, she has also handed down a permanent injunction on the NSO Group’s efforts to break into WhatsApp. In her decision, she took note of statements made by NSO’s lawyers and its own CEO revealing that it hasn’t stopped collecting WhatsApp messages and trying to get around the messaging app’s security measures. The defendants previously said that the injunction Meta was requesting would “put NSO’s entire enterprise at risk” and “force NSO out of business,” since WhatsApp is one of the Pegasus spyware’s main ways to infect targets’ devices.
“Today’s ruling bans spyware maker NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp and our global users again,” said Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp. “We applaud this decision that comes after six years of litigation to hold NSO accountable for targeting members of civil society. It sets an important precedent that there are serious consequences to attacking an American company.”
Hamilton wrote that the proposed injunction requires the Israeli company to delete and destroy computer code related to Meta’s platforms, and that she concluded that the provision is “necessary to prevent future violations, especially given the undetectable nature of defendants’ technology.” It’s not quite clear how Meta will ensure that the NSO Group doesn’t use WhatsApp to infect its users’ devices again. Notably, the NSO Group was recently acquired by an American investment group that invested tens of millions of dollars into it to take controlling ownership.
Meta-owned chat app WhatsApp changed its business API policy this week to ban general-purpose chatbots from its platform. The move will likely affect WhatsApp-based assistants of companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, Khosla Ventures-backedLuzia, and General Catalyst-backed Poke.
The company has added a new section to address “AI providers” in its business API terms, focusing on general-purpose chatbots. The terms, which will go into effect on January 15, 2026, say that Meta won’t allow AI model providers to distribute their AI assistants on WhatsApp.
Providers and developers of artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies, including but not limited to large language models, generative artificial intelligence platforms, general-purpose artificial intelligence assistants, or similar technologies as determined by Meta in its sole discretion (“AI Providers”), are strictly prohibited from accessing or using the WhatsApp Business Solution, whether directly or indirectly, for the purposes of providing, delivering, offering, selling, or otherwise making available such technologies when such technologies are the primary (rather than incidental or ancillary) functionality being made available for use, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion.
Meta confirmed this move to TechCrunch and specified that this move doesn’t affect businesses that are using AI to serve customers on WhatsApp. For instance, a travel company running a bot for customer service won’t be barred from the service.
Meta’s rationale behind this move is that WhatsApp Business API is designed for businesses serving customers rather than acting as a platform for chatbot distribution. The company said that while it built the API for business-to-business use cases, in recent months, it saw an unanticipated use case of serving general-purpose chatbots.
“The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates. Our focus is on supporting the tens of thousands of businesses who are building these experiences on WhatsApp,” a Meta spokesperson said in a comment to TechCrunch.
Meta said that the new chatbot use cases placed a lot of burden on its system with increased message volume and required a different kind of support, which the company wasn’t ready for. The company is banning use cases that fall outside “the intended design and strategic focus” of the API.
The move will effectively make WhatsApp unavailable as a platform to distribute AI solutions like assistants or agents. It also means Meta AI is the only assistant available on the chat app.
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Last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT on WhatsApp, and earlier this year, Perplexity launched its own bot on the chat app to tap into the user base of more than 3 billion people. Both of the bots could answer queries, understand media files, answer questions about them, reply to voice notes, and generate images. This likely generated a lot of message volume.
However, there was a bigger issue for Meta. WhatsApp’s Business API is one of the primary ways the chat app makes money. It charges businesses based on different message templates like marketing, utility, authentication, and support. As there wasn’t any provision for chatbots in this API design, WhatsApp wasn’t able to charge them.
During Meta’s Q1 2025 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that business messaging is a big opportunity for the company to bring in revenue.
“Right now, the vast majority of our business is advertising in feeds on Facebook and Instagram,” he said. “But WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly [active users], with more than 100 million people in the US and growing quickly there. Messenger is also used by more than a billion people each month, and there are now as many messages sent each day on Instagram as there are on Messenger. Business messaging should be the next pillar of our business.”
WhatsApp is taking a new anti-spam feature for a spin. On Friday, TechCrunchreported that the trial limits the number of messages accounts can send without a reply from the recipient. The company is currently experimenting with different limits. But it’s aiming for a number that only targets high-volume senders and spammers.
All messages from individuals and businesses are said to count toward this cap. That includes multiple unread ones sent to the same recipient. But if the person replies, those messages are removed from the monthly tally. WhatsApp will show a warning to accounts nearing the limit.
The company told TechCrunch that average users won’t likely reach the limit. It’s generally good form for individuals not to keep messaging people who don’t reply anyway. So, the test indeed sounds tailor-made for businesses and spammers. The test will roll out in multiple countries over the coming weeks.
The trial is the Meta-owned company’s latest attempt to fend off its festering spam and scam problem. Last year, it added the ability to unsubscribe from businesses’ marketing messages. This August, it began notifying users when someone not in their contacts adds them to a group. Alongside that announcement, WhatsApp said it banned over 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centers in the first half of 2025.
Did you find this article by typing in the name of a website associated with Elon Musk? Did it sound like you could invest in SpaceX, Neuralink, or one of Musk’s AI ventures like Grok and xAI? It’s fake. It’s 100%, without a doubt, completely fake.
I know you may not believe it, but please read on. Because this article could save you from losing a lot of money. Elon Musk is a very wealthy man. He’s worth $500 billion, according to Forbes, making him the wealthiest person on the planet. But Musk does not have a website dedicated to making other people rich.
You may have seen an ad on Facebook or maybe a video on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. It may have even looked like Elon Musk was talking about some amazing investment opportunity. Maybe it looked like Elon was raising money for a sick child. You may have even been asked to send money through gift cards or a bitcoin ATM. But it was fake. You need to believe us. Because it’s true.
Musk does not have a website selling cryptocurrencies. He doesn’t have a website for trading stocks. He doesn’t have a public website selling shares of his private companies like SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and X. The promotional video you saw is fake and probably used artificial intelligence tools to make it look like Elon Musk was saying something he never said.
People are losing millions
Did someone reach out to you on a social media site like Facebook or Instagram claiming to be Elon? Did they tell you to talk with them over Signal or Telegram or WhatsApp? That person is a scammer. Elon Musk does not reach out to people on websites and ask them for money. And if they haven’t already asked you to send money, that part is coming.
Again, you might be skeptical. A lot of people want to believe that Elon Musk is offering ways for the average person to become rich. But he’s not. Among other reasons, he doesn’t have time.
Here at Gizmodo, we’ve written about scammers impersonating Elon Musk for years.
There was the woman in Washington who lost $63,000 because she thought she was talking to Elon.
There was the person who lost over $18,000 watching a video livestream they thought was for Tesla.
There was also the Florida principal who sent an Elon Musk scammer a check for $100,000.
People have literally been losing millions of dollars to scammers over the years because they thought they were investing in something approved by Elon Musk. But it was all fake.
Scam AI Videos
It’s incredible what can be accomplished with AI these days. You can make people appear to say things they never said. For example, here’s an ad we spotted below. Elon never said any of that.
Fake Elon Websites
All of the websites below are scams. And while Gizmodo is often reluctant to advertise the web domains of scammers, because it risks inadvertently driving more people to scammy websites, using the names of the scams is the only way to help get the word out that these specific websites will steal your money.
And this list only scratches the surface. These are some of the domains that have been reported to the FTC, but there are so many more out there.
ceomusk.org [SCAM]
elonbitcoin.fun [SCAM]
elonchristmas.com [SCAM]
fastmars.net [SCAM]
investmuskspace.icu [SCAM]
marshome.us [SCAM]
marsway.net [SCAM]
marsyox.com [SCAM]
marsvalue.net [SCAM]
myteslatoken.com [SCAM]
official2xMusk.com [SCAM]
shippingteslamail.com [SCAM]
tesla-clubs.com [SCAM]
tesla-prize-x.com [SCAM]
teslaminingprogram.com [SCAM]
teslaminingplatform.aphatrad.com [SCAM]
teslaoption.com [SCAM]
teslapresale.net [SCAM]
tesla.token-presale.org [SCAM]
teslatoken-presale.online [SCAM]
telsaxmarketing.com [SCAM]
tsla-marketspro.com [SCAM]
teslgets.com [SCAM]
tsl-xspace.pw [SCAM]
x-coin-platform.io [SCAM]
Scam Names
There are also scams that you may know by various names that aren’t dedicated websites, but are being spread through social media platforms. Some of the common ones we’ve seen are below.
Elon Musk Fan Page Membership Card
Elon Musk x Donald Trump Crypto Giveaway
Space Stock Mining
Tesla Bitcoin
Tesla Token
Tesla Mining
Neuralink Crypto Token
SpaceX Token
Please believe us. It’s not real.
Maybe someone sent you this article. Maybe you found it through Google. Please know that visiting these websites and “investing” in them will only lead you to heartache and pain.
The people who’ve been scammed at these sites often feel foolish afterward. And we don’t want you to feel foolish. We want you to avoid just handing your money away for nothing.
If you’re interested in investing, there are plenty of reputable places to do that. You can even invest in Musk’s company, Tesla, if you want to buy stock in that company through a reputable stockbroker. All investing involves risks, but the websites we’ve featured here aren’t just risks where you might make some money or you might lose some money.
If you give any of these websites your money, you will only lose. We promise you.
Have you been scammed and want to tell your story? You can email the author of this article at [email protected].
Furthermore, sharing a voice note publicly might not be the best idea for your privacy, so I have a method for you to consider.
Yes, Kaptionai is free to use, but there are limitations to the number of notes you can transcribe, and also, the speed of transcribing is better in the premium version.
Then whenever you use WhatsApp, you can simply forward any note to Kaption AI chat, and it will take care of the rest.
WhatsApp recently added thier Audio transcribing feature, which can convert any voice note into text. You can see that they rushed to make the feature live, as it often does not work properly. There is no context, and most of the audio part is not even transcribed. For those long voice notes, I have a tool that utilizes ChatGPT to transcribe them. That is what we will discuss in this article.
Transcribe those long voice notes
You can very easily transcribe any voice notes, but the key is to transcribe them correctly. We have already discussed some of the methods before, if you want to check them out. For a power user, it is almost impossible to pay attention to a long note. They would rather have a long text and summarize it later. Furthermore, sharing a voice note publicly might not be the best idea for your privacy, so I have a method for you to consider. Now this tool uses ChatGPT, and because of that, the accuracy of the transcribed notes is better than the built-in feature.
Using Kaption AI
Kaptionai is a tool built specifically to work with WhatsApp. It is secure and reliable. This tool can very easily convert any audio note into text in a few clicks. You can directly download the Chrome extension and pin it. Then whenever you use WhatsApp, you can simply forward any note to Kaption AI chat, and it will take care of the rest. For better clarity, refer to the steps mentioned below.
2. Then head over to your WhatsApp web, and you will see a separate chat of Kaptionai.
3. Once you receive a voice note, next to it, you will see an Aa icon; click on it to transcribe.
4.If Kaptionai does not automatically transcribe, you can always forward the voice note to Kaptionai chat.
5. Kaptionai can also read your summary.
Bonus Tip: You also get a screen and chat privacy feature that will blur out your chat and contact window with a single click. Also, once you have added Kaptionai chat to your web interface, you can use it anytime on your phone or linked devices. Simply forward the voice note to the Kaptionai chat, and it will work.
FAQs
Q. How can I transcribe voice notes on an iPhone?
You can use the built-in feature of WhatsApp, or you can use Kaptionai in the web interface. You can also send your notes to the chat option of Kaptionai.
Q. Is Kaptionai free to use?
Yes, Kaptionai is free to use, but there are limitations to the number of notes you can transcribe, and also, the speed of transcribing is better in the premium version.
Wrapping Up
This article talks about the Kaptionai,which is an AI tool that helps you transcribe any voice note received on WhatsApp. This tool is completely safe and free. You do not have to worry about your private messages and chats; they are all safe. You also get privacy features in the WhatsApp web version, which is a bonus.
You may also like to read:
Have any questions related to our how-to guides, or anything in the world of technology? Check out our new GadgetsToUse AI Chatbotfor free, powered by ChatGPT.
You can avail discounts if you are a student with a valid student ID or you have recently purchased a pro device from the Pixel 10 series.
So in this article, I will share with you how you can also create your own custom WhatsApp stickers using Gemini AI for free.
The final stickers can be downloaded individually or in a ZIP file, simply click on Download all for a ZIP file.
Texting is more fun when there are stickers involved. You can create your custom WhatsApp stickers using just one image, and they look super cool. These stickers can be easily created using Gemini. There are a bunch of different styles to pick from, and you can also play around with them using any images. So in this article, I will share with you how you can also create your own custom WhatsApp stickers using Gemini AI for free.
Gem Stickers: Create your Personal Stickers
Gem Stickers allow you to create stickers for free using any image of your choice. You can create stickers, download them, and if you are not happy about the design, you can always have it revised. This can be a great gift to someone to give them thier personal reserve of stickers. Gem Stickers also offers different designs, you even have Vintage Bollywood, so yeah, they are great.
How to Craft Your Own Stickers
To craft your own stickers, you only need an image. For a seamless executio,n follow the steps mentioned below.
2. Then click on Upload photo to upload your picture or you can use Webcam.
3. After the picture is uploaded, you need to select from the given designs.
4. Finally, click on Create Stickers.
5. The final stickers can be downloaded individually or in a ZIP file, simply click on Download all for a ZIP file.
How to use Gem Stickers in WhatsApp
After you have completed crafting your very own custom stickers, you can use them in WhatsApp and have fun with friends and family. Here is how you can use these stickers in WhatsApp.
1. Simply open WhatsApp chat. Then tap on the sticker icon.
2. From there, tap on the Create button and choose the sticker of your choice.
3. To create a sticker pack of your own, simply tap on the Add sticker pack icon.
4. Name your sticker pack, and you are good to go.
5. Finally, you can add all the stickers to your customised pack and use them whenever you like.
FAQs
Q. How can I create the viral Instagram trend of vintage photos?
To create vintage photos of yourself, you only need the right prompt and Gemini. You need to upload your image and then enter the prompt given in this article, and you will be able to recreate those same kinds of images.
Q. How can I avail a discount on the Pro plan of Google Gemini?
You can avail discounts if you are a student with a valid student ID or you have recently purchased a pro device from the Pixel 10 series. Then you are eligible for a year’s worth of Pro plan for free.
Wrapping Up
In this article, we have discussed how you can create super cool and attractive-looking stickers of your images using only Gemini. The stickers are free to create and download, and cool to use during texting. So do try it on and share with your friends.
You may also like to read:
Have any questions related to our how-to guides, or anything in the world of technology? Check out our new GadgetsToUse AI Chatbotfor free, powered by ChatGPT.
Thousands of young Nepalis have poured onto the streets of Kathmandu after the government imposed a sweeping ban on 26 major social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, X and WhatsApp. What began as an outcry over digital restrictions has escalated into the largest youth-led uprising the country has seen in years, fueled by broader frustrations over corruption and political dysfunction.
Protesters, many in their teens and 20s, rallied outside Parliament chanting slogans such as “Shut down corruption, not social media.” Demonstrators attempted to storm barricades near Singha Durbar, the government headquarters, prompting police to respond with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Authorities later imposed a curfew across parts of the capital.
Casualty figures remain disputed. Local media have reported between two and eight deaths, while hospitals confirmed more than 80 people injured in clashes, including journalists caught in the crossfire.
The protests were triggered last week when Nepal’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology ordered platforms to suspend operations unless they formally registered under new regulations. Officials argued the ban was necessary to curb disinformation and protect national security. Critics, however, say the move is a thinly veiled attempt to stifle dissent and control online spaces heavily used by Gen Z.
Opposition parties have voiced support for the demonstrators, warning the government that the ban risks deepening instability. International human rights groups have also raised concerns about freedom of expression and access to information.
Whether the restrictions will hold remains unclear. Many Nepalis have already turned to VPNs to bypass the blocks, while organizers vow to continue street protests until the ban is lifted. For now, Kathmandu remains under tight security, with riot police stationed around major intersections and the city bracing for further unrest.
Like in other parts of South Asia, censorship is not new in Nepal. Earlier this year, Nepali auteur Deepak Rauniyar’s Venice-bowing “Pooja, Sir: Rajagunj” released in the country after a contentious battle with government censors that left the film with significant alterations.
The scenes in Nepal echo mass youth protests in neighboring Bangladesh last year, where students and young professionals mobilized against corruption, unemployment and government crackdowns. That movement, which paralyzed Dhaka for weeks, ultimately forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign after more than 15 years in power, reshaping the country’s political landscape and underscoring the rising influence of South Asia’s younger generations.
On Friday, WhatsApp announced that it had patched a software vulnerability that was being used by unknown hackers to target specific users of Apple products and hack them with spyware.
WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, said in an advisory that the previously unknown bug “may have been exploited in a sophisticated attack against specific targeted users.” The vulnerability is officially dubbed CVE-2025-55177.
TechCrunch notes that this week, WhatsApp fixed the bug while last week, Apple fixed another bug, known as CVE-2025-43300. Together, these vulnerabilities appear to have been the weak spots that allowed malicious spyware attacks targeting specific Apple users, intended to steal data from their devices, the outlet writes.
Apple describes its bug as such: “Processing a malicious image file may result in memory corruption. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” Gizmodo reached out to Apple and WhatsApp for more information.
WhatsApp told TechCrunch that it had notified “less than 200 users” that they may have been impacted by the campaign. Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, said that the notifications had been sent out over the past 90 days. “Our team at Amnesty International’s Security Lab is actively investigating cases with a number of individuals targeted in this campaign,” Cearbhaill said on X. “We are available to support members of civil society who have received the WhatsApp notifications.”
Zero-click attacks have become increasingly common and are frightening because, just as the name would suggest, they don’t require any active phishing to penetrate into the inner contents of a person’s mobile OS. Often, all a bad actor needs to do is send a malicious file (often an image), which can take over the phone by itself. Over the last several years, malware capable of zero-click attacks has been targeted at journalists, activists, and government officials—much of it originating from companies based in Israel.
We see people get catfished all the time — there’s an entire reality series about it called Catfish: The TV Show starring Nev Schulman on MTV. There’s an episode where a man believes he’s truly in a relationship with Katy Perry…and now, we have two women in Spain who were scammed out of over $300,000 by none other than Fight Club’s own, Brad Pitt.
Except, as you may have realized, it wasn’t the former husband of Angelina Jolie who was actually talking to these women. On September 25, five people were arrested for posing as Brad Pitt on WhatsApp and scamming two women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Look, I get it. I, too, spend my days yearning for Harry Styles to slide into my DM’s. It’s just…I know that’s never going to happen. And if it does, it’s a fake account, of course. But, for some, they want to believe Brad Pitt (or any catfish celeb) is really speaking to them.
CNN reported that scammers profiled the victims and contacted them through a Brad Pitt fansite. They claimed the actor wanted to work with them on projects. Individually, one victim lost $195,000 and the other lost $167,000. Sadly, police were only able to recover $95,000.
It’s important to research before responding to or contacting a “celebrity” asking for money. Typically, legal professionals would handle such matters, and Brad Pitt likely doesn’t need your financial help.
Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Meta, his social-media-turned-metaverse-turned-artificial intelligence conglomerate, will upgrade its AI assistants to give them a range of celebrity voices, including those of Dame Judi Dench and John Cena. The more important upgrade for Meta’s long-term ambitions, though, is the new ability of its models to see users’ photos and other visual information.
Meta today also announced Llama 3.2, the first version of its free AI models to have visual abilities, broadening their usefulness and relevance for robotics, virtual reality, and so-called AI agents. Some versions of Llama 3.2 are also the first to be optimized to run on mobile devices. This could help developers create AI-powered apps that run on a smartphone and tap into its camera or watch the screen in order to use apps on your behalf.
“This is our first open source, multimodal model, and it’s going to enable a lot of interesting applications that require visual understanding,” Zuckerberg said on stage at Connect, a Meta event held in California today.
Given Meta’s enormous reach with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, the assistant upgrade could give many people their first taste of a new generation of more vocal and visually capable AI helpers. Meta said today that more than 180 million people already use Meta AI, as the company’s AI assistant is called, every week.
Meta has lately given its AI a more prominent billing in its apps—for example, making it part of the search bar in Instagram and Messenger. The new celebrity voice options available to users will also include Awkwafina, Keegan Michael Key, and Kristen Bell.
Meta previously gave celebrity personas to text-based assistants, but these characters failed to gain much traction. In July the company launched a tool called AI Studio that lets users create chatbots with any persona they choose. Meta says the new voices will be made available to users in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand over the next month. The Meta AI image capabilities will be rolled out in the US, but the company did not say when the features might appear in other markets.
The new version of Meta AI will also be able to provide feedback on and information about users’ photos; for example, if you’re unsure what bird you’ve snapped a picture of, it can tell you the species. And it will be able to help edit images by, for instance, adding new backgrounds or details on demand. Google released a similar tool for its Pixel smartphones and for Google Photos in April.
Powering Meta AI’s new capabilities is an upgraded version of Llama, Meta’s premier large language model. The free model announced today may also have a broad impact, given how widely the Llama family has been adopted by developers and startups already.
In contrast to OpenAI’s models, Llama can be downloaded and run locally without charge—although there are some restrictions on large-scale commercial use. Llama can also more easily be fine-tuned, or modified with additional training, for specific tasks.
In December 2020, the Federal Trade Commission ordered the biggest social media and streaming companies in the world, including Twitch owner Amazon, Facebook (now Meta), YouTube, Reddit, WhatsApp, Twitter (now X), Snap, Discord and TikTok’s ByteDance, to share how they used their users’ personal information.
On Thursday, FTC staff released a 129-page report, which found that these companies all “harvest an enormous amount of Americans’ personal data and monetize it to the tune of billions of dollars a year,” stated FTC chair Lina M. Khan.
“While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” Khan said.
The report called out major social media companies for collecting vast swaths of personal data and using it in ways their users may not expect. The FTC found, for example, that “many” of these companies buy data from third-party brokers about where a user is located, how much they make per year, and what their interests are, to understand more about a user’s activity on the Internet outside of the social media platform.
This personal information becomes the basis of targeted ads, which most social media sites rely on for revenue. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other products and platforms, reported that 98% of its $39.07 billion revenue in its second quarter came from ads on Facebook and Instagram.
According to the FTC report, it’s difficult for users to understand how social media platforms collect their information and how much is used to tailor ads. Many may not even be aware of what’s happening behind the scenes.
Plus, even if users are tuned in and know that social media platforms are using their data, they still don’t have “any meaningful control over how personal information [is] used,” the FTC report shows.
Companies use personal information to fuel algorithms, data analytics, and AI that, in turn, shape content recommendations, search, advertising, and other crucial aspects of their business. The FTC recommended that companies be transparent about the data they collect, do more to protect privacy, and put users in charge of data.
The FTC further found that if a user wants to delete their data, some sites will de-identify the data they have on hand, but keep it on file instead of wiping it all. The platforms that did delete personal data upon request would select which parts to delete and fail to remove all of it, according to the report.
“Companies can and should do more to protect consumers’ privacy, and Congress should enact comprehensive federal privacy legislation that limits surveillance and grants consumers data rights,” the report stated.
Meta is making changes to WhatsApp and Messenger in order to add interoperability with third-party chat apps — in Europe, that is — and the company is sharing how it would work in a new post. Based on previous reports, Meta started working on enabling third-party chats last year after the rules of the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into effect. Under the DMA, “gatekeepers” or the largest companies and platforms in the industry have to ensure interoperability with third parties since they’re prohibited from favoring their own services.
The company said it gathered feedback from potential partners and other stakeholders to help it shape the new experience. To start with, it designed new notifications for WhatsApp and Messenger that would alert users when a third-party service becomes available for integration. Users will be able to choose which third-party apps they want to receive messages from, and they can choose to either get those messages in a separate inbox. Those who don’t mind getting messages alongside their Messenger or WhatsApp chats can choose a combined inbox instead.
The apps will also provide rich messaging features to third-party chats, so they’re not purely a text affair. Users will be able to react to and directly reply to specific messages, see an indicator while the other person is typing and get read receipts. Next year, they’ll be able to create group chats, and in 2027, they can voice and video call their friends on other apps.
“Users will start to see the third-party chat option when a third-party messaging service has built, tested and launched the necessary technology to make the feature a positive and secure user experience,” Meta explained, so not all people’s preferred messaging app will be integrated with WhatsApp and Messenger. The company said, however, that it will keep collaborating with other services to expand its availability.
