Jeff Horwitz

Perhaps not fully accurate on timing — while not conclusive, my reporting suggested Mark had already gotten super enthused about the metaverse concept by early 2021.

Thought I’d be hard-pressed to argue that, as a way to change topics, it didn’t work!

WSJ hope page featuring an ad in prime placement

The frequency with which I see prominent ads for Instagram Teen Accounts makes me think that they're currently providing a non-negligible subsidy to to a lot of publications.

if you've been on the fence about joining the coolest club in indie tech media, now is the time

You should sue: both your mom and Gemini

AI can be hilarious. Here's Google giving two contradictory answers to the exact same travel-related question. (Accidentally tested within 30 seconds by my wife and me on separate computers.)

This is genius. “Baby shoes, never worn” level

I mean sure but make them work for it. Also VPN’s can get detected.

I have not read this. Sounds kinda like “The Game.” Explain!

The value provided by having the rough geographic location data of X users available to see is a reminder how this feature isn’t standard elsewhere. (Including here).

Mark Zuckerberg made clear in 2021 where child safety ranked relative to building the Metaverse.

One caveat here: the underlying documents from these Meta cites aren’t public yet, so everything here relies on plaintiffs’ context. That said, Meta is opposing the release of many underlying docs.

A longitudinal study called MYST produced some gory details. (MYST is the source of the internal data I recently wrote finding that Meta recommends more body-image and eating disorder adjacent” content to teens who report they feel bad about themselves)
www.reuters.com/business/ins...

The company knew it was exposing teens to millions of sexual predators a day but delayed taking the obvious step – setting Teen accounts to private -- for years. It also pressured safety staff to justify its decision not to act. The researcher who did so was quickly promoted.

Meta designed its teen safety products to be ineffective and rarely used, outright blocking feature tests that might trigger users to spend less time on the platform.

Per Instagram’s own research, mental health clinicians overwhelmingly believe IG is addictive/harmful.

Nick Clegg was skeptical that the bad news could all be explained away by declaring that users were conditioned to be negative toward Meta, and an unnamed employee confirmed that this wasn’t plausible. An employee compared the decision to bury the findings Big Tobacco-reminiscent.

In 2019 Meta did causal research looking at the effects of randomly asking Facebook users to stop using the platform for a month. After the first week of the study, results showed that leaving the platform was good for people’s mental health.

Meta then shut the project down.

The defendants include Meta as well as Snap, TikTok and YouTube. But the most interesting citations are generally from Meta (though TikTok boasting that it had paid the National PTA enough to say “whatever we want” deserves an honorable mention.)

Here are the most notable allegations:

I’ve spent almost seven years covering Meta and have had a good deal of exposure to internal work product on teen well-being. But a Friday filing in the school district social media litigation breaks some ground on Meta’s causal findings regarding social media harm.

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Jmail, logged in as jeevacation@gmail.com You are logged into jeevacation@gmail.com, Jeffrey Epstein's email. Sourced from the November 2025 House Oversight Committee data release.

Whoever set up a functional gmail style inbox of Epstein's inbox deserves a journalism prize.

jmail.world

Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn Chatbot roleplay and image generator platform SecretDesires.ai left cloud storage containers of nearly two million of images and videos exposed, including photos and full names of women from social me...

AI porn generator and ERP chatbot Secret Desires left millions of images and videos exposed in unsecured cloud storage. I took a look and found folders called "faceswap," where people had uploaded tons of stolen content and random photos of women www.404media.co/ai-porn-secr...

My concern was less the holding of value than the atrociously slow transfer times, incompatible wallets and frequent QR codes.

And the fees! It’s like I was running my payment through a payday loan window.

Where the hell were you when I needed you

For the first time ever, I had to make a payment in crypto.

I can now confidently say that crypto payments combine the speed of a dial up modem and the ease of updating the drivers on a 1998 HP Laserjet printer.

Mystery Fuels Unease in Maine Woods: Who Bought Burnt Jacket Mountain?

Mark Zuckerberg vacation home upsets new neighbors, Maine edition:

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/u...

I forgot to include some images of a maggots growing out of a terrible boil on somebody's face. Sorry, that's an essential part of the business operationm.

I mean absolutely. I'll have AI generate a website that links to a custom printing drop shipping marketplace that will steal your credit card and use it sign you up for some fake androgen supplements that it won't deliver.

Give me three minutes, and I'll have the URL for you.

A picture of a Milwaukee Brand Tool which definitely doesn't exist

I knew doing scam research would put me into the "dumbest guy alive" digital ad targeting category, but nonexistent Milwaukee Brand cyberpunk staplers?

Holy hell I don't think I was ready for the ad-based internet to get even worse.

Here was the previous story, which involved the plaintiff not getting compensated because she had used genAI to write her filings.

www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

Wrote about this a few weeks ago, but have an update:

X.com continues to stand up to the legal demands of British Columbia, which has demanded that the platform remove... non consensual intimate imagery in response to a court order.

news.gov.bc.ca/releases/202...

The simplest explanation is that they are getting a return on what they spend on Meta. (There are more complicated stories involving attribution, but that's the simple one.)