Goooooood morning, hope we’re all doing well. Let’s get stuck in, shall we?
1. Meta slapped with €1.2B fine
The European Union hit Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with a history-changing order to suspend data transfers to the U.S. on Monday. The order comes with a €1.2 billion fine — about $2 billion — which is the largest ever fine under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Read more about it over here.
2. Instagram back up and running
Yesterday, Instagram went down for about four hours, with reports flooding in that during peak Australian doomscrolling time (8am through 12pm) home pages could not be refreshed, posts couldn’t be made, and stories were left unseen. Reels were also left unseen, but that had nothing to do with the outage and everything to do with the fact no one likes watching Instagram Reels. Anyway. The official Instagram Comms Twitter account just reckons it was a “brief outage” – American customer service summed up in one tweet tbh.
Instagram is back! Sorry for the trouble – we had a brief outage earlier and resolved the issue that caused it. #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) May 22, 2023
3. TikTok sues U.S. state
TikTok sued the state of Montana Monday in an effort to overturn a first-of-its-kind law banning downloads of the app in the state. The lawsuit, which comes on the heels of other suits filed by Montanan TikTok creators, alleges the state’s law violates users’ freedom of speech and illegally singles TikTok out. If the law is allowed to take effect in January, the suit argues, it could deal a devastating blow to businesses and creators who rely on the app for their income. Read more about it over here.
4. You can now edit messages in WhatsApp
Back to Meta for a sec and WhatsApp has introduced an ‘edit message’ feature. In a blog post announcing the move, WhatsApp detailed that the edit feature will be activated by simply activating a long-press on a sent message and choosing Edit from the menu – for up to 15 minutes after. Edited messages will be marked as edited alongside them. Read more about it over here.
IT’S HERE 📣 Message Editing is rolling out now.
You now get up to 15 minutes after sending a message to edit it. So you don’t have to worry if you duck it up 🦆 pic.twitter.com/JCWNzmXwVr
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 22, 2023
5. A Wikipedia-like future for ChatGPT
Reuters is reporting ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI is testing how to gather broad input on decisions impacting its artificial intelligence, with president Greg Brockman discussing how the maker of the wildly popular chatbot is seeking regulation of AI globally, resulting in something akin to the model of Wikipedia. Brockman also floated the idea that governments around the world should coordinate to ensure AI is developed safely. Meanwhile, back in Australia, Department of Home Affairs chief Mike Pezzullo is hopeful that a whole-of-government position on ChatGPT will emerge (one that sees it blocked), with the department currently blocking its use by individuals, iTnews reports.
BONUS ITEM: Instagram’s algorithm served this up to me last night, and I had to share it with you all, even though it’s a few weeks old. Nightmare fuel, while simultaneously being exceptionally cool.
Have a great day.