Tech Oversight Project

PRESS RELEASE: Advocates Urge FTC to Halt Meta’s Plan to Use AI Chatbot Data for Ads <p>The letter urges the agency to exercise its oversight authority and act under both Meta’s existing consent decree and Section 5 of the FTC Act to stop this practice from moving forward. </p>

Read @epic.org 's full release here:

The reason Meta wouldn't answer @amyklobuchar.com 's question yesterday about protecting user privacy when targeting ads with chatbot convo data, is because they can't.

We joined a coalition urging the FTC to stop Meta's terrible plan to mine AI chatbot data for ads, before it starts.

@rosen.senate.gov sums it up: "We've seen agencies across the Trump administration try to force private organizations, educational institutions, journalists...essentially agreeing to silence themselves in order to gain access to basic government services, to federal funding."

Sen. Klobuchar: “Meta plans to use people’s conversations with Meta AI chatbots to personalize ads served to them. How will Meta protect people’s privacy while selling information about their private conversations to advertisers?”

Meta exec: No answer

@amyklobuchar.com: “Meta plans to use people’s conversations with Meta AI chatbots to personalize ads served to them. How will Meta protect people’s privacy while selling information about their private conversations to advertisers?”

Meta exec: No answer

These Big Tech execs are purporting to care about "free speech." They haven't mentioned the part where they cave to government threats, fund their enforcers, and turn user harm into quarterly growth.

Harold Feld from @publicknowledge.bsky.social : "The fundamental problem facing American discourse today is not whether platforms moderate content, but rather that only a handful of massive technology companies control how millions of Americans receive information..."

Testifying now: top executives from Google and Meta — not victims of government pressure but partners in it, trading public safety and kids' wellbeing for political access and profit.

Kids are dying. They know exactly what they're doing, and they keep doing it anyway.

At some point, the question stops being “what are you doing to fix it” and becomes “how do you live with yourself.”

Big Tech CEOs have created platforms that are harming children — driving anxiety, self-harm, and psychosis through algorithms designed to exploit pain for engagement.

Jim Jordan’s latest hearing was a frightening look at American authoritarianism The Ohio Republican invited executives before the House Judiciary Committee and then pressured them to spend more on advertising on far-right media platforms.

They aren’t victims of government pressure — they’re participants in it.

They’ve met every threat from the right with compliance, every demand with accommodation, every abuse of power with silence.
www.msnbc.com/the-reidout...

Kimmel's suspension is the latest display of Trump's growing power over the US media landscape President Donald Trump has intensified his efforts to reshape the media landscape, using threats, lawsuits and government pressure.

While the right throws out accusations o f “jawboning,” they’ve spent the past year using subpoenas, executive orders, and state power to threaten, censor, and control tech platforms themselves.
apnews.com/article/tru...

**NEW TIME AND WITNESS UPDATE** Part II of Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a full committee hearing titled “Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans, Part II” on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, at 10:30 am EST. This hearing will examine how the Biden administration pressured big tech companies to censor protected speech online, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and recent elections.

www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/10/par...

📺 HAPPENING NOW: another Republican hearing about being "silenced" led by the people who actually want to decide what everyone can read, post, and say.

From Prince Harry to Steve Bannon, unlikely coalition calls for ban on superintelligent AI The call, signed by Nobel laureates, ex-military leaders and public figures worldwide, seeks a ban on research that could create machines smarter than people.

Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle? Might sound like a group chat gone wrong, but they can all agree on this: Big Tech can’t be trusted to police itself.

The Dispatch A weekly newsletter about tech policy from the Team at The Tech Oversight Project.

For a weekly digest on Big Tech’s biggest harms and the effort to hold them accountable in Congress and statehouses across the country, subscribe to The Dispatch.

Big Tech Lobbying Breaks Records, Amazon Breaks the Internet, and Trump Breaks the White House This week in The Dispatch we’re covering Big Tech’s record lobbying operation in Congress, Amazon’s AWS breaks the web, Meta’s own research proving Meta harms kids…again, and Trump demolishes the Whit...

📬 INBOX ALERT: This week in The Dispatch we cover Big Tech’s record lobbying operation in Congress, Amazon’s AWS outage that broke the web, Meta’s own research proving Meta harms kids…again, and Trump demolishing the White House to party with tech CEOs.

Trump’s Ballroom Fundraising Taps Cash from Crypto, Tech Allies President Donald Trump is constructing a $300 million White House ballroom with the force of a political campaign, tapping his former campaign finance director to raise money for the high-profile but ...

“Make no mistake about what’s happening: Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Google are bankrolling pageantry and luxury for an administration that’s making a mockery of ethical standards and policymaking for the people.” - @sachalouise.bsky.social

ICE is building a social media panopticon ICE is ramping up efforts to monitor people online.

"This is another example of Big Tech CEOs partnering with an increasingly authoritarian federal government as part of Trump's ongoing attempts to clamp down on free speech," @sachalouise.bsky.social tells @theverge.com "This should terrify and anger every American."
www.theverge.com/policy/8064...

Big Tech Bankrolls Trump's White House Teardown While Ripping Off Americans - Tech Oversight Project As Big Tech CEOs finance the demolition of the White House to build Donald Trump a luxury ballroom, they’re simultaneously evading scrutiny and enriching themselves and the president by buying off court cases and reaching shady settlements, all while continuing to fail their most basic responsibilities and slash trust and safety programs. The Tech Oversight […]

Apple, Google, and Meta are now working hand-in-hand with Trump’s DOJ to silence immigration watchdog apps — just as raids ramp up in the Bay Area. Apple says it was for “safety.” The safety of whom, exactly?
techoversight.org/2025/10/24/...

Meta Layoffs Included Employees Who Monitored Risks to User Privacy

🤔 "Current and former employees in the risk organization said they were skeptical that replacing them with automated systems would be as effective, particularly around issues as sensitive as user privacy."

Data-Center Power Use to Become Major Antitrust Issue As tech giants pour billions into data centers to cope with unrelenting demand, regulators are taking note. Jonathan Kanter, a former top official at the U.S. DOJ’s trustbusting division, expects it t...

Jonathan Kanter: Looking ahead, energy, power is going to be an extremely important area of focus for antitrust enforcers...data centers consume power at the expense of local communities and businesses.

A $60 Mod to Meta’s Ray-Bans Disables Its Privacy-Protecting Recording Light Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses usually include an LED that lights up when the user is recording other people. One hobbyist is charging a small fee to disable that light, and has a growing list of customers ar...

mark zuckerberg saw “peeping tom” and thought “scalable feature"
www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

Column | The hidden way using a rewards card can cost you more Starbucks tracked my every purchase — then gave me fewer deals. It’s called surveillance pricing.

"Starbucks tracked my every purchase — then gave me fewer deals. It’s called surveillance pricing," writes @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social . "My loyalty was working against me."

The Dispatch by The Tech Oversight Project A weekly newsletter about tech policy from the team at The Tech Oversight Project.

For a weekly digest on Big Tech’s biggest harms and the effort to hold them accountable in Congress and statehouses across the country, subscribe to The Dispatch.
dispatch.techoversight.org/#/portal/si...

Big Tech Buying Influence, Threatening Nonprofits, and … Summoning the Antichrist? This week in The Dispatch we’re covering Big Tech’s no-holds-barred lobbying campaign that secured a last-minute veto of the nation’s strongest kids’ AI safety bill, OpenAI’s legal intimidation campaign, and Palantir CEO Peter Thiel’s bizarre obsession with the Antichrist.

📬 INBOX ALERT: This week in The Dispatch we cover Big Tech’s no-holds-barred lobbying blitz that killed the nation’s strongest kids’ AI safety bill, OpenAI’s legal intimidation campaign, and Peter Thiel’s bizarre obsession with the Antichrist.
dispatch.techoversight.org/big-tech-bu...

Nothing says "accountability" like another record-busting lobbying year for Big Tech — CEOs and lobbyists are spending millions to drown out the people calling for change.

“Committed to teen safety” is doing a lot of work for a company that can’t filter 98% of harmful posts.

These teens saw 10.5% of their feed filled with body-focused or disordered-eating material — compared to 3.3% for others.

They also saw twice as much content labeled “mature,” “risky,” or “suffering.”

Meta’s filters missed 98.5% of that content.