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'It Is Not Too Late to Avoid Disaster': Sanders Calls for AI Development Pause
"Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei, and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your word."
Aug 10, 2026
As progressives on Monday urged US House Speaker Mike Johnson to haul artificial intelligence leaders before Congress to answer questions under oath about "the dangers posed by this technology," Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote directly to a trio of AI CEOs.
"Almost every day, there is a new story about how your companies are losing control of the AI technology you are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote to OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.
Citing a study published Thursday in the journal Science, he noted that "this week we learned, frighteningly, that AI has been used for the first time ever to create new viruses. As you know, this type of development, in the wrong hands, could lead to new bioweapons that result in the deaths of tens of millions of people."
That revelation came just weeks after "the world found out OpenAI lost control of an AI model," the senator continued. "The result? The model hacked into another company’s computers—a clear violation of federal law. After conducting internal reviews, Anthropic and Meta reported their models similarly escaped their control."
Pointing to recent calls for action from Yoshua Bengio, the most cited living scientist in the world, as well as top scientists at various AI companies, Sanders stressed that the international community wants "to create a safety mechanism—a pause button—to avoid catastrophe."
"And yet, at a moment when we have seen human loss of control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses, your companies are still racing ahead—investing tens of billions of dollars into a technology that nobody can fully understand, predict, or control," he wrote. "That is absurd, irresponsible, and extremely dangerous. It is also a betrayal of your own stated commitments."
After outlining those commitments from the past few years, the former presidential candidate argued that "AI capabilities HAVE reached a critical threshold. There is a reason why the head of the CIA says that AI models are 'akin to digital nuclear weapons' and 'almost like a doomsday device.'"
"Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei, and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your word. Pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control," he urged. "Let me be very clear: If you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the US Senate will."
Sanders earlier this year proposed the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would give the public "a direct ownership stake" in the largest artificial intelligence companies in the country. The senators is also co-leading a data center moratorium bill.
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DuckDuckGo Releases 'Normal Sunglasses' to Troll Meta's AI-Powered 'Pervert Glasses'
"These are the first smart glasses guaranteed to never record nude videos of you and send them to random people. I never thought I’d have to guarantee that, but here we are.”
Aug 07, 2026
As Meta faces heat for selling artificial intelligence-powered sunglasses that record people without their knowledge, the web browser DuckDuckGo responded with what it called "the world's most innovative anti-surveillance sunglasses"... otherwise known as normal sunglasses.
Meta, the Big Tech behemoth that owns Facebook and Instagram, likely did not expect to become the subject of relentless scorn and mockery over its new line of "Meta Glasses," which retail for upwards of $299 and have been plugged by the likes of Kylie Jenner.
But internet users have saddled the shades with the nickname "pervert glasses." For good reason: among other high-tech bells and whistles, the latest version is equipped with photo and video technology that some of the clientele have used to discreetly film strangers.
As the Los Angeles Times chronicles, some women have been approached by bespectacled creeps only to later find a recording of the encounter posted online, entirely without their consent. Although the glasses have a white light to indicate that recording is in progress, some elite-tier perverts have found ways to disable it.
DuckDuckGo, a company that has billed itself as an alternative to its data-mining, privacy-violating competitors, responded to the backlash against Meta by partnering with the eyewear company Knockaround and selling its own pair of glasses whose primary gimmick is that they do absolutely nothing but sit on your face.
"No camera, no microphone, no AI, no battery, no electronics of any kind," reads the website, "Just a beautifully crafted pair of matte black sunglasses with a glossy DuckDuckGo logo, designed to block the sun and never send data to the cloud."
“We’re obsessed with innovation. So when Big Tech started putting cameras in smart glasses, we asked ourselves a radical question: What if we just didn’t do that?” a July 30 social media post from DuckDuckGo said. “These are the first smart glasses guaranteed to never record nude videos of you and send them to random people. I never thought I’d have to guarantee that, but here we are.”
This was not merely a hyperbolic what-if. It's been reported that Meta's AI glasses have recorded videos of users having sex and using the bathroom that were then viewed by Kenyan subcontractors involved in manually training Meta's AI systems.
Internal documents have also revealed plans by Meta to embed facial recognition technology into the glasses, which dozens of rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, warned "would allow anyone wearing them to identify by name any strangers in their vicinity—including at protests, medical clinics, and businesses."
After being secretly implemented for a brief period without being accessible to consumers, the technology was rolled back. But concerns remain that it could be added again, and there have been growing calls from lawmakers and privacy groups in the US and Europe to ban the glasses.
One British activist group called Everyone Hates Elon has begun a viral guerrilla marketing campaign against the Meta glasses.
One satirical ad, placed at a bus stop in London, shows the infamous sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein wearing the frames, with the tagline "glasses for people who don't do consent" next to the Meta logo.
"These glasses feel like they’re making perverts’ and abusers’ lives easier when we should actually be making women’s lives easier. They are pervert glasses," a spokesperson for the group told The Times of London. "We wanted to use Jeffrey Epstein to highlight who these glasses will be used by, and it’s powerful men and abusers.”
In this environment, it's perhaps not a surprise that DuckDuckGo's tech-free alternative has been a hit. The company said that within a week, the shades, which cost $35 a pair, had sold out.
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'Good Start': Meta Fine Now Nearly $1 Billion for Social Media Giant's Harm to Kids
"We cannot allow Meta to put its short-term profits above the emotional well-being of our kids," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Aug 07, 2026
A New Mexico court on Thursday ruled that Meta must pay an additional $567 million fine on top of the $375 million a jury fined the tech giant in March for harms caused to teens and children who use its Instagram and Facebook social media platforms.
First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in his 68-pager ruling that "significant numbers of people in New Mexico experience harm from Meta’s products due to risks of sexual exploitation, interference with education, and adverse mental health outcomes."
"The harm to the impacted New Mexicans is not doubtful, eventual, or contingent, but an immediate, temporally connected, and highly probable result of Meta’s actions," he continued.
"The youth mental health crisis has inflicted significant and widespread harm in New Mexico in terms of the number of youth suffering mental health harms, the profound suffering they and those in their families suffer, and the resulting interferences with the functioning of the schools, law enforcement, [and] healthcare systems in New Mexico," the judge added.
The case centered on allegations that Meta knowingly designed and operated Facebook and Instagram in ways that exposed children to harmful content, encouraged excessive use, and failed to adequately protect minors from exploitation. New Mexico officials argued that internal company knowledge and outside warnings showed Meta was aware of risks associated with its platforms but did not act sufficiently to address them.
Most of the new fine—$420 million—will go toward funding youth treatment services, while the rest is designated for awareness and prevention, screening services, and other costs.
Biedscheid's order also compels Meta to make changes to its platforms in New Mexico, including removing "like" counts and only showing them to minors with parental consent, and prohibiting overnight push notifications for users under age 18.
"Regardless of whether it is labeled as an 'addiction' or 'problematic use,' the evidence at trial proved that design elements, such as autoplay, infinite scroll, 'like counts,' and push notifications create a product that, particularly for adolescent users, is highly rewarding psychologically and neurochemically," he wrote. "As a result, for many, it is irresistibly compelling to start scrolling and very difficult to stop or abstain from its use."
"In addition," the judge added, "algorithmic content recommendations can create harmful feedback loops and 'rabbit hole' users. Within a similar vein, 'like counts'... can provide a potentially harmful focus for adolescent users."
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company would appeal the ruling, claiming: “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez hailed the ruling, saying that “Meta built products it knew would fuel addiction, deepen a youth mental health crisis, and expose children to sexual exploitation, then lied to parents and policymakers about the danger. Today, it pays for that choice.”
At Fairplay—a children's advocacy group—executive director Josh Golin hailed the "landmark ruling" as "the clearest indication yet that the tide is turning when it comes to protecting kids from social media."
"For the first time, Meta is being compelled by a court to change its dangerous and harmful design," he continued. "And with so many states lined up to sue Meta and other social media companies, we should expect to see a lot more injunctive relief to make online platforms used by young people safer."
“This ruling also clearly indicates why families need the Kids Online Safety Act," Golin added, referring to a controversial bill advanced this week by the Senate Commerce Committee. "The judge said it was up to Congress to address the addictive features on Instagram and other social media platforms. KOSA’s duty of care against compulsive use is the key to ensuring that Meta and other social media companies stop designing for addiction, as addictive design is the root of all social media harms.”
Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement: "This verdict is an important step towards creating safer social media for children and young people. For years, Amnesty International has warned that major social media platforms have been designed to maximize engagement and profit, while failing to adequately protect children’s rights."
“Crucially, the court went beyond imposing a financial penalty," he continued. "By ordering changes to platform features, including removing 'like' counts for people under 18 and restricting overnight notifications, the ruling recognizes that the harms children experience online are often the result of deliberate design choices."
“Amnesty has been calling for exactly this kind of action," Mazzola added. "Child safety must be built into platforms from the start, not added as an afterthought once harms are identified. This decision sends a clear message that social media companies cannot continue to prioritize engagement at the expense of children’s well-being and rights.”
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on Bluesky: "This is good news. For far too long, Big Tech corporations have put their bottom lines ahead of the health and safety of kids on their platforms."
"Congress must continue to push for accountability and real guardrails for companies like Meta as tech giants continue to grow," added Jayapal, who was critical of the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act approved by the House of Representatives in June.
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also welcomed the ruling, posting on X that billionaire Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "greed is fueling a youth mental health crisis in America."
"Today, a judge ordered Meta to pay a $567 million fine for the damage it has done to our kids," Sanders added. "Good start. We cannot allow Meta to put its short-term profits above the emotional well-being of our kids."
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'The Creepiest Possible Path': Meta Letting Facebook, Instagram Use Your Personal Posts for AI Image Generation
"People should not wake up to discover their face has become raw material for someone else’s AI experiment. This is another invasion of consumers’ privacy."
Jul 08, 2026
Tech giant Meta on Tuesday introduced an artificial intelligence image generation model that critics say is a major potential risk to users' personal privacy.
Meta, the parent company of social networks including Facebook and Instagram, described its new Muse Image model as a "creative partner that knows your world, making it easy to turn your ideas into high-quality visuals that you can download and share anywhere, including directly to your feed, story, or chat."
In its announcement, Meta explained how users can either alter existing images or create new ones from scratch using AI prompts.
"You can describe what you want in simple, conversational language, and Meta AI handles the rest thanks to Muse Image," the company said. "Ask it to mock up an image of you in front of a historical landmark, cleanly erase a photobomber from the background of a shot, or write a custom prompt to build a functional QR code."
However, tech publication The Verge on Tuesday flagged a potentially troublesome feature that could compromise user privacy, noting that "users can... mention other Instagram accounts in Muse Image prompts," which will let the AI model "incorporate their likeness into its output."
According to a Tuesday report from Wired, the feature will let users snatch photos from any public Instagram and Facebook accounts unless those accounts' owners specifically choose to opt out of the system.
What's more, opting out of the system is not a simple one-click operation.
"If you want to avoid these AI generations of your Instagram posts without switching your account to private, you’ll have to dig into the app’s settings," reported Wired. "Open the Instagram app, tap your profile, and then tap the three lines in the top-right corner of the screen. Then, scroll down to the Sharing and reuse tab. Here is where you should see a section labeled 'Allow people to use your content on Instagram and with AI features on Meta,' with a toggle for Posts and one for Reels."
JB Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy at Public Citizen, blasted Meta for being careless with its users' privacy by making them jump through hoops to stop others from swiping their photos.
"Meta has once again chosen the creepiest possible path," said Branch. "People should not wake up to discover their face has become raw material for someone else’s AI experiment. This is another invasion of consumers’ privacy. Instead of asking for meaningful consent, Meta quietly defaults users into the system and buries the opt-out in account settings."
Branch added that while Meta had a long history of violating user privacy, forcing them to opt out of its new AI image generation model "crosses what should be a bright line."
"If our faces can be repurposed for AI simply because we posted a public photo, then very little remains off limits," Branch emphasized. "Congress should establish clear privacy protections that require affirmative consent before companies can use a person’s image or likeness for AI products."
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You Can Mute Notifications But You Can't Escape the Algorithm
Social media companies have intentionally designed their products to be addictive to young users; the issue cannot be resolved until the entire architecture of the platforms is overhauled.
Jun 14, 2026
You can mute Instagram stories. You can turn off Snap Maps. You can silence every notification on your phone. But try turning off reels. Try removing your “explore page.” Try turning off your TikTok algorithm.
Social media platforms have spent years perfecting the art of giving users just enough control to feel empowered, but not enough to actually break away. The result is a false sense of autonomy. Psychology Today cites that users used to control their feeds by choosing who to follow and which posts to interact with, but most platforms have shifted to algorithms that prioritize content for users based upon its likelihood of engagement. Consumers now get countless settings to reorganize the surface level features of a structure that cannot be fundamentally changed.
These apps enable endless settings to facilitate an illusion of control, whether that be through settings privacy, hiding like counts, or blocking certain pages. But none of these features are meaningful. They all act as a decoy to prevent change from the much deeper issue.
The features you cannot turn off are the ones that keep you scrolling hour after hour. It is the product of years of behavioral engineering, precisely designed to exploit dopamine loops and addiction to keep account holders in a cycle that generates a feeling of continuous rewards. The ability to scroll infinitely on any platform through videos and suggested posts prevents the natural end that a finite feed would create. As time goes on, algorithms adapt to the users employing them. It understands what will make you excited, enraged, or captivated, all at the expense of your attention span and countless unreturnable hours of your life.
The question isn’t about how to not use social media—it's unavoidable. It’s about if you even have the ability to not use it.
In a landmark case in March of 2026, Meta and Youtube were just found guilty of intentionally addicting young users and damaging their mental health. The juries found them both negligent in the design of their platforms, knowing it was dangerous and failing to appropriately warn of the risks. The companies were required to pay $3 million in compensatory damages, and jurors recommended another $3 million in punitive damages.
This verdict is revolutionary because for the first time, the law has indicated that the design of the apps was the issue, rather than the content or the users. It changes the conversation from blaming consumers for being on social media too much to recognizing these apps are designed to make it impossible to walk away. This trial could set the precedent for the over 1,500 similar cases that have been filed against the companies.
The findings of this case are nothing new. For countless years, tobacco companies sold cigarettes knowing the devices engineered customer addiction, while vehemently denying the harm every step of the way. It's easy to reflect on that chapter of history with clearer vision, but it was difficult to spot in the moment. Now we are living through its modern day counterpart.
The difference in these cases is that purchasing cigarettes takes explicit effort, but social media follows you everywhere you go. It’s in your pocket, it’s with you at school, in the office; no place is out of reach and no moment is off-limits. There is no social media equivalent of a “no smoking zone” or too inappropriate of a place to check your phone. It is a socially enabled addiction with no guardrails to limit engagement.
The question isn’t about how to not use social media—it's unavoidable. It’s about if you even have the ability to not use it. When the entire algorithm is designed to keep you from clicking away, and keep the app gaining revenue, it’s not about your personal autonomy anymore, it's about the devices keeping you from being able to physically peel yourself away.
Politicians can see this problem too. California AB 2169 would require companies to provide a copy of their personal data, including behavioral profiles and the digital map of online interactions. It also mandates that platforms build a bridge to allow users to sync their friends and interactions to other apps. Michigan's Kids Over Clicks package SB 757-760 goes further to prohibit platforms from using minors' personal data to fuel recommendation algorithms without parental consent, banning manipulative patterns like streaks and reward systems to incentivize continued app usage, and strictly regulating AI companion chatbots that could encourage self-harm or serve as unlicensed therapists.
While these bills make leaps toward restoring user autonomy, none of them actually address social media addiction head-on. Knowing the features these apps use to trap you into endless scrolling is helpful but doesn’t stop the behavior at its core. The option to turn off these privacy settings and default restrictions is still present. The problem isn’t the content on the apps, but the design. We can’t stop at changing the features and restructuring the settings. The issue cannot be resolved until the entire architecture of the platforms is overhauled.
I’ll leave you with this: We already know how the story ends if we do nothing as we have lived it before. So what are we going to do today to write a different ending?
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Bearing Witness in the Age of Generative AI
Pushing back against the assault on verifiable reality is a crucial undertaking in the pursuit of justice.
May 31, 2026
The advent of generative AI has made it even harder to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t, and also easy to claim what is real is fake. This threatens to undermine the very idea of "evidence," which traditionally has been used to enforce accountability, by fracturing shared, verifiable reality.
For example, in Iran authorities attempted to dismiss protest footage as edited or artificially manufactured after AI was used to enhance long-distance footage of someone confronting the military, effectively turning this doubt into a propaganda weapon. Doubt was also a feature in the aftermath of the recent bombing of a girls' school which killed 168 people—mostly children—in Minab, Iran. And in the midst of an already distorted information ecosystem, methods developed to detect AI fakes are now being weaponized to falsely discredit authentic evidence.
This affirms that the emergence of generative AI is not simply a technological issue, but is creating a visual evidence problem. The consequences are already being felt not only by those chronicling and exposing injustice.
Historically, visual media has been an important tool to document injustice. In South Africa, for instance, a generation of photographers used the camera to challenge the prevailing power structures of apartheid. By exposing the apartheid’s injustices and delegitimizing the system, as well as documenting resistance and everyday life, photographers had a huge impact on the liberation struggle in South Africa. So much so, that the camera would be “seen as an instrument of insurrection” by the apartheid regime, resulting in a ban on foreign journalists and documentary photography.
What would have happened if the apartheid regime had claimed that photographs like Nzima’s were faked or AI generated? Would this have created doubt for the audiences who saw it, impacting international support for South Africa’s liberation struggle?
Although they were not the sole targets of apartheid repression, those photographing or filming were often targeted by the regime. Security forces regularly exposed films, confiscated equipment, conducted raids, and banned publications, as well as people. For example, photographer Sam Nzima was harassed by police and placed under house arrest for months following the publication of his iconic photo of the dying 13-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police during the youth uprising on June 16, 1976. The photo not only fueled the liberation movement within South Africa, but also galvanized stronger international condemnation of apartheid. Apartheid Minister Stoffel Botha even referred to those documenting what was unfolding in the country as "media terrorists."
While there have been attempts to deny or downplay apartheid, including from the now late last apartheid president F. W. de Klerk, systemic denial has not been possible owing to the evidence available. This underscores the role of documentation in defending truth, even if incomplete.
What would have happened if the apartheid regime had claimed that photographs like Nzima’s were faked or AI generated? Would this have created doubt for the audiences who saw it, impacting international support for South Africa’s liberation struggle? Today these questions are not rhetorical, owing to the emergence of generative AI.
To be sure for most of the world, the saying, “The camera never lies” has never been true. Visual media was vital to the Nazi regime's propaganda efforts. Before that, it played “a critical role in propagating colonialist myths about Africa,” with colonial states using photographic imagery to cement white supremacy. It would also become a tool for apartheid in South Africa, used to not only legitimize and validate itself, but to also attempt to shape global perceptions of what was happening in the country.
But the story did not end there. Visual media would also become a tool for liberation movements in South Africa and beyond, because documentation impacts how the world is perceived, meaning is made, and reality is verified.
For example, Human Rights Watch recently used geolocated images to verify the Israeli military’s unlawful use of white phosphorus, a highly reactive chemical which ignites when exposed to oxygen, in residential areas in Lebanon. This offers a pathway for accountability in the future. Similarly, the Syrian Archive, which tracks and preserves videos of war crimes in Syria, has used documentation to pursue accountability for the deadly use of chemical weapons in the country.
Documentation is critical in the pursuit of justice, as well as the need to preserve the past to confirm reality. Not only for these worthy ideals, but also so that those who are left to pick up the pieces know that their experiences of injustices are documented, even in the face of denial and propaganda aimed at persuading people otherwise.
Of course the risks and harms are heightened in conflict situations, which does not need to be inevitable. For example, Meta’s Oversight Board recently called for new rules on how deceptive AI content is managed by the platform to enable users to distinguish between what is real and fake. This follows Meta’s failure to appropriately designate an AI-generated video that purported to show significant damage caused by Iranian soldiers in Haifa, Israel. While the board’s recommendations are not binding, should Meta fail to urgently implement these, it will be yet another example of a platform knowing how to address harms but failing to do so. This must change.
To this end, pushing back against the assault on verifiable reality is a crucial undertaking. This includes protecting people's ability to safely document and preserve their documentation; accessible and effective detection tools, alongside transparency for AI-generated content; and democratic policies, laws, and regulations that center human rights considerations.
As history has repeatedly shown us, secrecy is a shield that protects injustice and emboldens bad actors. So, bearing witness, exposing truth, and insisting on justice remains as important now as it was for South Africa’s liberation movement and beyond— even in the age of generative AI.
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In Leaked Audio, Zuckerberg Tells Meta Workers He's Been Using Them to Train AI Ahead of Mass Layoffs
"AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion," said one engineer, urging his colleagues to sign a petition to stop Meta's use of an AI tracking program. "It’s not too late to pump the brakes."
May 20, 2026
Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company's offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company's new artificial intelligence data tracking program—which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted late last month as a way for its new AI models to "learn from watching really smart people do things."
A day before about 8,000 Meta employees began receiving emails notifying them that they were being laid off—a process that began in Singapore at 4:00 am local time Wednesday and continued in European and US offices in their respective time zones—the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union shared a leaked audio file in which Zuckerberg was heard explaining how the AI training program worked.
"The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks," said Zuckerberg. "So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do, who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company."
LEAKED AUDIO: In an all-hands meeting on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg tells employees that he's training AI on them ahead of mass layoffs.
"The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things... The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is… pic.twitter.com/lt9eeJ3cwh
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 19, 2026
He assured the company's 78,000 employees that "no human is looking at or watching what people are doing on their computers... None of the data is being used for looking at what people are doing or surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that. It's purely just that we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks."
Zuckerberg explained how the employees have been used to train the model that could potentially replace many of them days after Meta announced it was planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce as the company invests heavily in AI, spending $125 billion to $145 billion on the technology—more than double what it spent last year.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that employees "revolted" when they learned about the AI tracking program, and expressed fears that they had unknowingly been training a model that would ultimately replace them.
An engineering manager asked on the company's internal communication platform how workers can opt out of having their computer activity monitored to train the AI model, only to be told by chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, "There is no option to opt out on your corporate laptop."
Another employee told Bosworth, “Your callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning."
On Monday, The New York Times reported, employees learned that in addition to the layoffs, another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to help develop AI tools.
About 2,000 employees began working this month on a new Applied AI and Engineering team, which is set to use the data gathered by the AI tracking program Zuckerberg described to build AI tools. Those who volunteered to join the group would not be included in this week's layoffs, the Times reported.
"Every company is training AI on their employees," said Chen Avnery, an independent adviser on AI governance and data platforms. "Meta just said it out loud. The question stopped being, 'Will AI replace you?' a year ago. Now it's whether you're building the agents or generating their training data."
More than 1,000 people in the company have signed the petition calling to halt the AI data program, according to the newspaper.
Software engineer Mack Ward urged his colleagues to sign on earlier this month, telling them in an internal post that "AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion."
"It’s not too late to pump the brakes and consider how we, society, want to go about this,” Ward said. “Speaking up is never easy, but ‘easy’ isn’t what you were hired to do.”
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Rights Groups Warn Against Meta's 'Dystopian' Plan to Add Facial Recognition Tech to AI-Powered Eyeglasses
"Meta’s reported plans to introduce this technology into broadly available consumer products is a red line society must not cross."
Apr 14, 2026
The ACLU and a coalition of 75 other rights organizations on Tuesday issued a warning to tech giant Meta about its plan to install facial recognition technology onto its artificial intelligence-powered eyeglasses.
In a letter organized by the ACLU, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the groups said adding facial recognition technology to Meta's Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses would pose a grave threat to Americans' privacy.
"People should be able to move through their daily lives," the letter states, "without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially matching their names to a wealth of readily available data about their habits, hobbies, relationships, health, and behaviors."
When it comes to specific dangers posed by embedding this technology into the company's products, the letter points to the potential for scammers to use it to "find out, quickly and in complete stealth, not just the name of the person sitting next to them on the subway—but their address, marital status, social media profiles, workplace, income, hobbies, health information, and habits."
Because of this, the letter says that "Meta’s reported plans to introduce this technology into broadly available consumer products is a red line society must not cross."
Blocking facial recognization technology from Meta glasses "is a prerequisite for a free and safe society," reads the letter.
The letter concludes with a series of demands, including that Meta stop any plans to attach facial recognition technology to its products; publicly disclose any past instances of Meta glasses being used for stalking and harassment; and reveal any "past or ongoing" discussions with law enforcement agencies such as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement about deploying the technology.
Cody Venzke, senior staff attorney working on surveillance, privacy, and technology issues for the ACLU, described facial recognition technology as "inherently invasive and unethical," and said adding it to a widely available consumer product "would vastly increase the risk of harm to individuals, families, and our democracy itself."
Kade Crockford, director of technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, argued that "the American people have not consented to this massive invasion of privacy," which is why Meta must abandon plans to deploy it.
"Stalkers and scammers would have a field day with this technology," Crockford said. "Federal agents could use it to harass and intimidate their critics. It’s dangerous and dystopian, and Meta must disavow it."
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'Earthquake for Big Tech': LA Jury in Social Media Addiction Trial Finds Meta, YouTube Harmed Child
"Between yesterday’s historic verdict in New Mexico and today’s ruling in California, it is clear that Big Tech’s free rein to addict and harm children is over," said one campaigner.
Mar 25, 2026
A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google acted negligently by harming a child user with their social media platforms' addictive design features in a landmark verdict that came on the heels of Tuesday's $375 million fine imposed on Meta by New Mexico jurors.
The California jury—which deliberated for 40 hours over nine days—ordered the companies to pay $3 million in compensatory civil damages to a now-20-year-old woman, known in court as Kaley G.M., for pain and suffering and other damages.
Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—must pay 70%, while Google, the Alphabet subsidiary that bought YouTube, will pay the rest.
The jury also found the companies acted fraudulently and with malice, and will impose an additional fine.
Kaley's legal team successfully argued that the social media companies designed products that are as addictive as cigarettes or online casinos, and that site features like infinite scrolling and algorithmic recommendations caused her anxiety and depression. Attorneys said Kaley began viewing YouTube videos when she was 6 years old and started using Instagram at age 9.
Attorney Mark Lanier called YouTube Kaley's "gateway" to social media addiction. Later, features like Instagram's "beauty filters" made her feel "fat" and unattractive.
Still, Kaley was hooked, testifying in court last month: “Every single day I was on it, all day long. I just can’t be without it.”
Kaley's lawyers submitted evidence including internal communications in which officials at the two companies privately acknowledged their products' addictiveness.
"If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens," one YouTube strategy memo states.
A communication from an Instagram employee says: “We’re basically pushers... We’re causing reward deficit disorder, because people are binging on Instagram so much they can’t feel the reward.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says, “Kids under 13 aren’t allowed on our services.” That's a lie. 2015: Internal review found 4 million kids on Instagram.2017: Meta employees, we're "going after <13 year olds” – Zuckerberg had been talking about this “for a while.”
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— Tech Oversight Project (@techoversight.bsky.social) February 20, 2026 at 10:18 AM
Kaley's attorneys said in a statement following Wednesday's verdict: "For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features. Today’s verdict is a referendum—from a jury, to an entire industry—on that accountability.”
One of those attorneys, Joseph VanZandt, told The New York Times that “this is the first time in history a jury has heard testimony by executives and seen internal documents that we believe prove these companies chose profits over children."
As Courthouse News Service reported:
Kaley is the first of nearly 2,500 plaintiffs in a consolidated case in Southern California suing four tech companies—Google, Meta, TikTok, and Snap—who say their social media and streaming platforms were designed in ways that caused or worsened depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia in minors.
TikTok and Snap settled with Kaley in the weeks before her bellwether trial but remain defendants in the broader consolidated litigation. The trial’s outcome could help spur a global settlement, though eight more bellwether trials are being prepared, with the next one scheduled to start this summer.
A Meta spokesperson told Courthouse News Service that “we respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options.”
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO and co-founder, insisted during the trial that Instagram is “a good thing that has value in people’s lives.”
Appeals by the companies could drag on for years, and, as Fox Business correspondent Susan Li noted on X, "if it’s just money that they have to pay, in the end it’s just a speeding ticket as they have deep pockets of cash."
Wednesday's verdict comes amid numerous pending lawsuits against social media companies and follows Tuesday's $375 million penalty imposed on Meta by a New Mexico jury, which found that the company violated the state's Unfair Practices Act by misleading users and exposing children to harm on its platforms.
Child welfare and digital rights advocates hailed Wednesday's verdict, which The Tech Oversight Project, an advocacy group, called "an earthquake for Big Tech."
"After years of gaslighting from companies like Google and Meta, new evidence and testimony have pulled back the curtain and validated the harms young people and parents have been telling the world about for years," the group's president, Sacha Haworth, said in a statement.
"These products were purposefully designed to harm [and] addict millions of young people, and lead to lifelong mental health consequences," Haworth added. "This trial was proof that if you put CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg on the stand before a judge and jury of their peers, the tech industry’s wanton disregard for people will be on full display."
Alix Fraser, vice president of advocacy at Issue One, said, “Today’s verdict is a victory for young people, their families, and all Americans, marking a critical turning point in the fight to hold Big Tech accountable."
"The message is clear: The industry cannot continue to treat the youngest generation as its guinea pigs without consequences," he continued. "The trial process exposed how these platforms are designed, how risks to young users are understood internally, and how those risks have too often been outweighed by the pursuit of growth and profit."
"Today’s verdict builds on that truth. It affirms that young people are not test subjects for unproven products that prioritize profit at all cost," Fraser added. “No other industry enjoys the level of legal protection tech companies have relied on. This verdict begins to crack that shield and move us closer to a system where accountability is the norm, not the exception."
Josh Golin, executive director of the children's advocacy group Fairplay, said, “We are so pleased that a jury has confirmed what Fairplay and the survivor parents we work with have been saying for years: Social media companies like Meta and YouTube deliberately design their products to addict kids."
"Between yesterday’s historic verdict in New Mexico and today’s ruling in California, it is clear that Big Tech’s free rein to addict and harm children is over," he added.
JB Branch, the artificial intelligence and technology policy counsel at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "the parallels to Big Tobacco litigation are becoming harder to ignore."
"Like tobacco companies before them, social media firms built massive business models around dependency, denied or minimized mounting evidence of harm, and resisted meaningful safeguards while millions of young people were exposed to escalating risks," Branch explained. "Infinite scroll, push notifications, algorithmic amplification, and behavioral targeting were commercial design choices built to maximize attention, addiction, and revenue."
“Now more than ever, it’s time for Congress and federal regulators to establish enforceable safeguards for youth online while preserving the right of states to adopt stronger standards, including stronger product safety requirements, transparency obligations, limits on manipulative design practices, and accountability mechanisms for platforms whose business models depend on prolonged youth engagement," Branch added.
While many campaigners are urging congressional lawmakers to pass the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act, civil rights groups including the ACLU argue that KOSA is overbroad and poses serious risks of censorship of free speech.
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New Mexico Jury Orders Meta to Pay $375 Million for Endangering Kids
While the company plans to challenge the decision, the state's attorney general said the figure "should send a clear message to Big Tech executives that no company is beyond the reach of the law."
Mar 24, 2026
Democratic New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and other child advocates on Tuesday celebrated a state jury's landmark verdict against Meta, despite the social media giant's plans to fight the decision requiring it to pay $375 million in civil penalties.
"The jury's verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta's choice to put profits over kids' safety," said Torrez, who had accused the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp of violating the state's Unfair Practices Act. "Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today, the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough."
The Associated Press highlighted that "the landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial, and as jurors in a federal court in California have been sequestered in deliberations for more than a week about whether Meta and YouTube should be liable in a similar case."
Torrez said that "New Mexico is proud to be the first state to hold Meta accountable in court for misleading parents, enabling child exploitation, and harming kids. In the next phase of this legal proceeding, we will seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes to Meta's platforms that offer stronger protections for children."
"The substantial damages the jury ordered Meta to pay should send a clear message to Big Tech executives that no company is beyond the reach of the law," he added. "Policymakers and law enforcement officials across the country can help make this verdict a turning point in the fight for children's safety. This is a watershed moment for every parent concerned about what could happen to their kids when they go online—and this victory belongs to them."
Josh Golin, executive director of the nonprofit Fairplay, welcomed the verdict. He said in a statement that "we've known for years that Meta enables the sexual exploitation of children. Now, that has been proven by a jury."
"As an organization that fights to protect children from Big Tech's deadly business model, Fairplay thanks Attorney General Torrez for his leadership in taking Meta to court," Golin continued. "Between this case and the ongoing trial in Los Angeles, parents, survivors, and state officials are doing their part to hold Big Tech accountable. Now, it's time for our leaders in the US Congress to get off the sidelines and pass the Senate's version of the Kids Online Safety Act to force these companies to change their addictive and dangerous product designs."
As Common Dreams has reported, while a diverse coalition supports the Kids Online Safety Act, civil rights groups have also expressed concerns about the legislation. Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, warned last year that "the overbroad language in KOSA and similar legislation risks censoring everything from jokes and hyperbole to useful information about sex ed and suicide prevention."
Amid celebrations over the New Mexico jury's decision on Tuesday, Meta said in a statement that "we respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."
NBC News noted that "separately, Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits accusing it and other social media companies of intentionally designing their products to be addictive to young people, leading to a nationwide mental health crisis. Some of the lawsuits, which have been filed in both state and federal courts, seek damages in the tens of billions of dollars, according to Meta’s filings with financial regulators."
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