Meta chief executive paid roughly €20m for gothic-style mansion built in 1830 and its surroundings
It stretches the definition of pied-à-terre but Mark Zuckerberg now has a pad in Ireland: Strancally castle.
The Meta chief executive and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have bought the gothic-style mansion and its 178-hectare (440-acre) estate in county Waterford to use as a base during visits to Ireland.
Continue reading...Small cruise ship rescued skiff in south-east Alaska even though Meta billionaire’s $300m megayacht was closer
Mark Zuckerberg has faced questions over why a small cruise ship in south-east Alaska rescued a stranded skiff and its crew when his 387ft superyacht had been closer.
The Silicon Valley billionaire’s yacht, worth a reported $300m, is said to have “repeatedly” declined to assist when a nearby boat called for help last week.
Continue reading...Stock tumbles nearly 8% after weaker-than-expected results, despite CEO’s blitz to tout positive effects of AI
Mark Zuckerberg’s media spree touting the positive effects of artificial intelligence did little to cushion the blow of Meta’s second-quarter earnings, which sent its stock tumbling on Wednesday.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Tuesday, the Meta chief executive expressed his optimism for a world where everyone has access to a super-intelligent machine.
Continue reading...New Mexico hails ‘historic’ win after jury finds firm misled consumers over safety and enabled harm against users
A New Mexico jury on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties after it found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users.
This is the first bench trial to find Meta liable for acts committed on its platform.
Continue reading...Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech
Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said.
Continue reading...Tesla CEO’s absence is marked departure from his constant presence at the White House in early days of Trump 2.0
As Donald Trump hosted leaders from the biggest US tech companies at a lavish White House state dining room dinner on Thursday night, there was one notable absence. Elon Musk, once inseparable from Trump and a constant, contentious presence in the White House, was not in attendance.
The dinner, which included Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, was exactly the type of event where Musk would have sat at Trump’s right hand only a few months ago. Instead, the Tesla CEO stated on his social media platform X that he had been invited but could not make it. He said he planned to send a representative and spent the day on X posting a familiar stream of attacks on immigration and trans people.
Continue reading...Developer of ChatGPT says new tools will be ‘for wide benefit’, echoing announcement by Mark Zuckerberg
OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models.
The ChatGPT developer has announced two “open weight” large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by developers.
Continue reading...Meta CEO reportedly to offer pay packages worth up to $100m, a gambit OpenAI’s Sam Altman calls ‘crazy’
Mark Zuckerberg reportedly spent months putting together a list of the top AI engineers and researchers across the globe, preparing to offer potential recruits lucrative compensation packages in Meta’s attempt to poach AI talent from key competitors.
Silicon Valley has been talking for weeks about the Meta CEO’s quest to attract top AI talent, including by offering pay packages worth up to $100m.
Continue reading...Alvaro Bedoya points to ‘interesting coincidence’ that he was dismissed after criticizing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos
A day after his abrupt firing by Donald Trump from the Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya raised questions about the US president’s relations with some of the country’s richest men.
Appearing at a hearing of the joint judiciary committee of the state legislature in Colorado on Wednesday, the ousted Democratic commissioner said it was an “interesting coincidence” his final public statement in post had blasted Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder.
Continue reading...Former Trump White House adviser says supplication akin to Japanese surrender to allied forces in September 1945
Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House chief strategist, has described the tech titans gathering at Monday’s inauguration as “supplicants” to Donald Trump making “an official surrender”, akin to the Japanese surrender to allied forces on the deck of the USS Missouri in September 1945.
Bannon, who served as architect of Trump’s 2016 presidential win but later fell out with the president-elect after he criticized his intellect and members of his family, told ABC News in an interview airing Sunday that Trump “broke the oligarchs” who had previously been aligned against him.
Continue reading...For middle-aged users, it will be ‘even harder to discern the truth’ among extremist content, expert says
Experts fear the decision by Meta to drop professional factcheckers from Facebook will exacerbate so-called boomer radicalisation in the UK.
Even before what Keir Starmer described as “far-right riots” in England last summer, alarm bells were ringing amid fears older people were even more susceptible to misinformation and radicalisation than younger “digital natives”.
Continue reading...Technology secretary Peter Kyle has the task of making Britain a leading player in the AI revolution, but says economic growth will not come at the cost of online safety
With the NHS still struggling, a prisons crisis still teetering and Britain’s borrowing costs soaring, there are few easy jobs going in Keir Starmer’s cabinet at present.
But even in such difficult times, the task of convincing Silicon Valley’s finest to help make Britain a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution – all while one leading tech boss uses the Labour government as a regular punching bag and others ostentatiously move closer to Donald Trump – is among the most challenging.
Continue reading...Senior cabinet minister promises not to dilute new measures despite Zuckerberg’s attacks on countries ‘censoring’ content
Britain’s new laws to boost safety and tackle hate speech online are “not up for negotiation”, a senior government minister has warned, after Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg vowed to join Donald Trump to pressure countries they regard as “censoring” content.
In an interview with the Observer, Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, said that the recent laws designed to make online platforms safer for children and vulnerable people would never be diluted to help the government woo big tech companies to the UK in its defining pursuit for economic growth.
Continue reading...Brazilian officials also ask tech giant to clarify whether it intends to implement changes in country within 30 days
The decision by the social media giant Meta to end factchecking in the United States is “bad for democracy”, Brazil’s newly appointed communication minister, Sidonio Palmeira, said on Wednesday.
Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stunned many with his announcement on Tuesday that he was pulling the plug on factchecking at Facebook and Instagram in the US, citing concerns about political bias.
Continue reading...Pulitzer prize winner Ann Telnaes drew a cartoon of the paper’s owner kneeling before Donald Trump
The Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from her position at the newspaper after its refusal to publish a satirical cartoon depicting the outlet’s owner Jeff Bezos – along with other media and technology barons – kneeling before Donald Trump as he gears up for his second US presidency.
“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” Telnaes wrote on Friday in an online post on the Substack platform detailing her decision to quit. “Until now.”
Continue reading...Donations, not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries seek favor with incoming administration
US business leaders are spending big on Donald Trump’s second inaugural fund, which is predicted to exceed even the record-setting $107m raised in 2017.
The donations, which are not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries and business leaders seek to curry favor with the incoming administration after the president-elect decisively won a second, non-consecutive term in November.
Continue reading...Meta CEO reportedly wants to support president-elect after previously banning him from Instagram and Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest former Donald Trump critic to make his way Mar-a-Lago to break bread with the incoming US president.
The tech mogul had banned Trump from the social media sites Instagram and Facebook, which he owns, following the January 6 riot that the president-elect egged on in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.
Continue reading...Company beats financial predictions but does not increase daily users as much as Wall Street thought it might
Meta’s blowout year continues after the company reported another stellar financial quarter on Wednesday. Shares fell in after-hours trading.
Wall Street analysts had high expectations for the Instagram and WhatsApp parent company, projecting an 18% jump in sales year over year. The company reported $40.6bn in sales, a 19% increase year over year that outpaced investor expectations of $40.19bn. Meta, which saw a 25% jump in its share price over the past two months, reported $6.03 in earnings per share (EPS), surpassing Wall Street’s expectations of an EPS of $5.29.
Continue reading...Facebook’s parent company to pay out to shareholders as it reports $40bn revenues for final quarter
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is expected to receive $700m (£549m) a year in dividends.
On Thursday, Meta announced it would pay its first-ever quarterly dividend to investors since Facebook floated on the stock market in 2012, after beating Wall Street expectations with $40bn in revenues for the final quarter last year.
Continue reading...Many parents held up images of the children who died after falling prey to abusers on apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat
Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of children who killed themselves after being subjected to online sexual exploitation during a US Senate hearing Wednesday. Evan Spiegel offered condolences to parents whose children obtained deadly illegal drugs via Snapchat. The words were too little, too late for their intended audience, though. The grieving guardians expressed only frustration with the social media CEOs’ responses to their plight and to questions from members of Congress.
“I’m not happy with the answers the CEOs are giving. They can’t give a straight answer. Not even ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Tammy Rodriguez, the mother of Selena Rodriguez, who was 11 when she died by suicide three years ago after being solicited for sexually exploitative content by strangers on Instagram and Snapchat.
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