O MPF (Ministério Público Federal) intensificou suas ações contra a Meta Platforms, controladora do Facebook, Instagram e WhatsApp, diante de denúncias de bloqueios em massa e restrições arbitrárias de perfis durante o período eleitoral de 2026. A apuração é do analista de Política da CNN Teo Cury, ao Live CNN.
A ofensiva ocorre em paralelo à atuação do MPE (Ministério Público Eleitoral), que também apurou a conduta da empresa e concluiu que a Meta não cumpriu todas as determinações do TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral).
O parecer do MPE, apresentado por Alexandre Espinosa, vice-procurador-geral eleitoral que atua perante o TSE, avaliou as respostas fornecidas pela empresa e concluiu que elas não foram suficientes.
De acordo com o MPE, a Meta não atendeu à exigência de disponibilização de estatísticas e filtros na ferramenta de inteligência artificial, nem garantiu o processamento igualitário das denúncias recebidas dentro das plataformas. O órgão também citou diferenças nas respostas da ferramenta de tradução utilizada nas plataformas da empresa.
O relatório aponta, porém, que a empresa cumpriu algumas determinações, como a reversão das restrições na conta de anúncios de campanha, a suspensão de anúncios eleitorais não contratados pelas candidaturas e a reposição da entrega de impulsionamento não servido.
Houve ainda cumprimento parcial da exigência de revisão humana prévia das restrições às contas de anúncio.
Origem da disputa no TSE
O caso teve início após questionamento do Partido dos Trabalhadores ao TSE, alegando que a campanha de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) era alvo de restrições na entrega de anúncios e de desabilitação da conta de anúncios.
A campanha também apontou a aprovação de anúncios pagos do exterior sem rótulo, conteúdo sintético em período vedado e perfis de inteligência artificial.
A empresa afirmou ter cumprido todas as determinações, mas o ministro solicitou que o MPE avaliasse as respostas. A Meta atribuiu os problemas identificados a falhas algorítmicas, afirmando não ter controle total sobre elas e que estaria trabalhando para resolvê-las.
MPF atua em diversas frentes
Além da atuação do MPE perante o TSE, o MPF também intensificou sua ofensiva por outras vias. Por meio da Procuradoria Federal dos Direitos do Cidadão, o órgão apresentou recomendações à Meta cobrando garantia de liberdade de expressão nas publicações realizadas no Facebook e no Instagram, bem como maior transparência na metodologia de distribuição de conteúdo nas plataformas.
Com o segundo turno a apenas três dias, o tempo para que novas decisões sejam tomadas e efetivamente cumpridas é considerado bastante restrito. A expectativa agora é pela decisão de Belizze com base no parecer do MPE e em todo o histórico do caso.
Os textos gerados por inteligência artificial na CNN Brasil são feitos com base nos cortes de vídeos dos jornais de sua programação. Todas as informações são apuradas e checadas por jornalistas. O texto final também passa pela revisão da equipe de jornalismo da CNN. Clique aqui para saber mais.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse accounts in a month and a half and growth remained strong.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse accounts in a month and a half and growth remained strong.
Meta will give its investors free shares if Mark Zuckerberg hits certain "extraordinary" targets.
It will pay 1:1 share dividends each time Meta stock doubles and has compounded at over 10% a year.
Meta is rolling out Class C shares to address Zuckerberg's tax concerns and keep him in California.
Meta stockholders are set to receive free shares if Mark Zuckerberg absolutely crushes it as CEO.
The social-media giant revealed in a Wednesday filing that if its upcoming Class C shares double from a baseline price of $580.60 to just over $1,161, and their compound annualized return since September 10 has been at least 10%, shareholders will receive a dividend: a Class C share for every Meta share they own.
If Meta stock — specifically its 30-day volume-weighted average price — doubles again to around $2,322, and has risen by at least 10% on average per year, shareholders will receive the same dividend again, and so on.
Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and the AI agent Muse, acknowledged how difficult it will be to unlock those dividends, describing the stock price targets as "extraordinary" in its filing.
Its stock has already surged more than sevenfold from its November 2022 low, giving Meta a nearly $1.8 trillion market capitalization that ranks it among the 10 most valuable companies in the world.
The additional dividends would be paid on top of the initial dividend declared by Meta's board on Wednesday, which will see Class A and Class B shareholders receive Class C shares on a 1:1 basis, likely in late January.
Meta is rejigging its share structure in response to Zuckerberg's concerns about California's so-called billionaire tax: a one-off, 5% wealth tax on the roughly 250 billionaires living in the state.
Zuckerberg, who ranked fifth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a $247 billion net worth at Wednesday's close, will be able to sell the Class C shares to access the liquidity needed to pay the tax, avoiding a sale of his existing shares that would erode his voting power.
Meta's board took action after Zuckerberg said he was considering moving out of California because of the potential tax, and cautioned that the steps involved in relocating, such as listing his home for sale, could spark questions from employees about the company's management, the filing says.
Meta has struck a deal with Mark Zuckerberg to help him foot a possible California wealth tax targeting billionaires.
The social media company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp revealed on Wednesday night that the arrangement would keep its chief executive living in California, where Meta’s headquarters are located.
Meta Platforms plans to expand its Muse personal agent and charge businesses for transactions it handles, CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) stated on the company’s Q3 earnings call.
He said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse in a month and a half, and about 25% use it on any given day
Zuckerberg stated Muse had a “clear product-market fit” and that Meta will focus on attracting more users, increasing revenue and optimising compute costs.
“We expect to grow Muse to serve billions of people,” he said, calling the goal as “both our mission and our strategy”.
The Muse line began in April with Muse Spark, the first model from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. This month Meta followed with Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full.
Shopping is Muse’s most common use, with more than a quarter of users shopping through the agent.
Zuckerberg said Muse “should be free” for most people, with Meta taking a fee on transactions it facilitates for businesses. Subscriptions would cover access to the most advanced models or extra tokens, and business owners could also subscribe directly.
“We have been discussing our vision for personal superintelligence for more than a year now,” he said. “We want every person [to] have an extremely capable personal agent that understands your goals and can help you achieve them,” he said.
Meta Q3 metrics Meta’s quarterly revenue rose 26% year over year to $64.6 billion.
Costs climbed 68% to $51.6 billion, including a $9.89 billion charge from an August agreement with 52 attorneys general over teen mental health claims.
Operating income fell 37% to $13 billion and the operating margin halved to 20%. Net income rose to $9.9 billion from $2.7 billion a year earlier, when a one-time $15.9 billion tax charge reduced profit.
Capital spending totalled $34.9 billion, with Meta forecasting $135 billion to $145 billion for 2026.
Its apps reach 3.64 billion people a day, up 3% from a year ago but just below the 3.65 billion analysts expected, according to StreetAccount. Zuckerberg said Threads has overtaken X in monthly users.
Reality Labs, which makes the Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban and Oakley AI glasses, lost $4.1 billion on $443 million of revenue, compared to a $4.4 billion loss a year ago.
Meta CFO Susan Li said the company expects Reality Labs to lose $18 billion to $19 billion in 2026, down slightly from $19.2 billion in 2025.
Also yesterday, Reuters reported a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found it misled consumers in a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The tech giant said it will appeal.
Poland has paused the delivery of a large military aid package to Ukraine after a Lviv regional council honored the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a WWII nationalist force, a source in the Ukrainian government told European Pravda on 21 October. A Polish Defense Ministry spokesperson told Fakt the report was untrue, though he told WP he knew nothing about a possible delay in shipment.
If confirmed, the freeze would carry a history dispute into Poland’s military aid. The row flared in May, when Kyiv named a special forces unit after the UPA, and in June Poland’s president stripped Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest honor. Even so, Ukraine’s ambassador said in August that Polish military aid was still flowing.
A vote and a disputed freeze
The Lviv Oblast Council voted on 20 October to name 2027 the year of the UPA, its commander Roman Shukhevych, and nationalist activist Oleh Olzhych. The UPA fought Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but Poland holds it responsible for mass killings of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1944. The resolution disappeared from the council’s website late that evening, RMF24 reported.
The source blamed what it called the councilors’ irresponsible actions, saying the vote came as Poland prepared the shipment and that work through closed channels is underway. The ministry spokesperson, Janusz Sejmej, called the report untrue. Asked whether it could reflect a delay in shipment, he said he knew nothing about that.
Explore further
Progress on a sore point for Ukraine and Poland: remains of over 40 Ukrainians killed by Polish WWII units found in Łasków
Polish officials push back
On 20 October, Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote that Ukraine’s authorities must distance themselves from the council’s position.
The next morning, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the vote unwise and harmful above all to Ukraine. He said he had warned Zelenskyy earlier that such gestures hinder Ukraine’s friends, though the president was not responsible for this vote. At such moments, Tusk said, Russians always rub their hands.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski then requested that councilor Sviatoslav Sheremeta, who proposed the resolution, be added to Poland’s list of unwanted persons. That afternoon, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said the decision had been made. Sheremeta is barred from the Schengen zone until 2031, RMF24 reported. Poland had already barred him once, in 2017, the outlet said.
Kyiv asks for restraint
Earlier on 21 October, before the ban, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the vote counterproductive in a reply to journalists and urged Warsaw to avoid abrupt steps. Zelenskyy’s closest aides had also promised the resolution would not take effect, Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki told TVN24.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bridget Griswold, the 25-year-old CEO of Lean In, who lives in San Francisco. It's been edited for length and clarity.
I fell in love with technology at Brown University, where I studied computer science and business. I worked with two female professors to build a robot. I interned at a semiconductor manufacturing company and also loved design and art.
Product management felt like a really wonderful combination of all those interests, and that was my role at Meta a year after graduating from college. My team and I redesigned the Instagram search grid, so now when you search for large Instagram accounts, you're routed to the search results page rather than directly to those accounts. I'm very proud of that.
While at Meta, an incredible female mentor connected me to Sheryl Sandberg. Meeting her felt so surreal and is what led me to start my role as CEO at Lean In in March. It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do mission-driven work.
Griswold started working at Meta two years after Sheryl Sandberg stepped down as COO.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
I was a swimmer as a kid, and as my swim coach used to say: "You get out of swimming what you put into it." I think that applies to many things in life: The more you put in, the more you get out.
Here's a day in my life.
I wake up to my needy, angelic cat around 7:30 a.m.
The second I wake up, I pet my crying and whining cat. She's an angel but very needy.
I'm not a breakfast person, but I need coffee immediately. I have many cups of coffee throughout the day. One of the first things I do is make some at home.
I always tidy up my apartment while brushing my teeth
The most productive two minutes of my day are when I brush my teeth. I clean and tidy my apartment at the same time.
I'm probably not super focused on brushing my teeth, which is maybe a problem, but I'm also making my bed, emptying the dishwasher, feeding my cat, or starting the coffee maker.
I always move really quickly; I don't like to sit still. Brushing my teeth and standing still would make me antsy, so I like to get something else done at the same time.
I'm still adjusting to West Coast hours
I moved from New York City to San Francisco in August.
In New York, I went to Solidcore classes before work every day. Working on the West Coast, the workday starts earlier than on the East Coast, so I'm still learning whether I like to work out in the morning or after work.
When I take the bus to the office three days a week, I often use that time to catch up on personal housekeeping tasks like scheduling appointments or texting back my friends who live on the East Coast.
I come to the office around 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m.
A majority of my in-person time is spent in meetings. As CEO, I enjoy being involved in all aspects of the team.
I'll meet with our content and research team — we spend a lot of time digging into data, such as some really exciting new research on trad wives in the manosphere. I also often meet with our product and tech team, as well as many of our partners, to help grow our programs.
We have lunch in the office — my favorite is a salad-plus-smoothie combo — and it's a really wonderful time to connect with the team.
Most of Griswold's workday consists of meetings.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
I also love connecting with our Lean In community. One thing we're focused on is closing early gender gaps in AI usage. Our flagship program, Circles, consists of groups of 8 to 12 women who meet regularly to support each other in their careers — we have over 170,000 members. It's a perfect forum to hold each other accountable for upskilling in AI.
Every week, I send AI tips to our network leaders. A recent one encouraged the use of AI notetakers, as women are more likely to take notes during meetings and miss out on participating.
Lean In is in over 180 countries, and it's really heartwarming to see that our commitment to our mission has a positive impact on women's careers. Getting to speak with them is really energizing and rewarding.
I rehearse for meetings by talking to myself on walks
If I have a presentation or interview coming up, I'll set up a Zoom and practice speaking to myself. Talking for a long time is sort of an unnatural act, and the first time you do it is probably not going to be your best.
Sometimes, I'll even go on a walk and wear headphones, pretending like I'm in a meeting or on a phone call, but I'm actually talking to myself and practicing.
When there's a bug, I usually fix the code myself
Because of my background in computer science, I spend a lot of my time finding bugs or things I believe we should change on our platform. I'll code and fix those on my own. Thankfully, with AI, it's so much faster to code now than it was a few years ago.
Our team is busy, and my goal is to enable everyone to have as much impact and move as quickly as possible. If I can help unblock the tech team or resolve an issue rather than add it to their plate, I'm always more than happy to do so.
I leave work around 6 p.m.
I continue to work until I go to bed pretty much every night.
It's nice to have that time at home, when I'm not running around between meetings, to focus, give feedback on documents the team has sent, write, respond to emails, and brainstorm my own ideas.
I take breaks to tidy up my apartment and make dinner. Living in New York got me out of the habit of cooking, so I'm taking the initiative to cook more meals, like rice bowls.I would say about half the time I order takeout, like pho, and the other half I cook, which is progress for me.
Griswold continues working when she gets home, catching up on more deep work when she doesn't have meetings.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
If my work doesn't require intense focus, I'll do it from the couch and put a happy TV show on, which right now is "Schitt's Creek." I think it's a nice balance between relaxation and getting things done.
I usually get in bed around 10:30 p.m.
I've been trying to make a habit of reading every night instead of going on my phone, which has been a really positive change. I like anything I read to be a distraction. I'm currently reading "Big Little Lies" and enjoying it.
It's nice to spend 30 minutes reading something like fantasy that's completely different from what I think about at work. That way, I'm not spinning on all the things I need to do or coming up with new ideas that can't get done in my sleep anyway.
Weekends are for the beach and farmers market
My boyfriend works in Los Angeles and flies up to San Francisco every weekend. We've made a tradition of going to the Fort Mason Farmers Market on Sundays for fresh produce to cook an at-home meal that night.
I also enjoy seeing friends over the weekend. My preference is to go on a long walk or go to the beach. I also enjoy fitting in some work — emails, deep-focus work, or reading — throughout the weekend.
Ethem Coban, a researcher at Meta, left the company earlier this month to launch a legal tech startup, according to a person familiar with the matter. Coban, who worked on teaching Meta's language models to reason through legal questions, has been in talks to raise $6 million at a $25 million valuation.
Talks are still early, and the terms of the deal could change.
The startup is the latest entrant in an increasingly crowded legal tech market. Long seen as laggards, lawyers have spent the past two years experimenting with tools built on large language models. Early movers like Harvey and Legora saw a crush of demand, setting off a wave of investment in startups promising to transform how lawyers work.
Now, that opportunity is attracting researchers from the companies building the underlying models.
Coban spent almost two years at Meta, most recently at its Superintelligence Labs, where he helped train models to give better answers to legal questions and reduce hallucinations, the person said. He previously studied law at American University and Goethe University in Frankfurt.
A spokesperson for Meta didn't respond to a request for comment.
Coban has told investors that his new company aims to help law firms and corporate legal teams build and customize models around their expertise. The bet is that companies will increasingly want to own their AI rather than license it from outside companies, because it gives them more control over their data.
Law firms also see a chance to turn mountains of case files into a competitive advantage that other firms can't simply buy off the shelf. Kirkland & Ellis, the industry's revenue leader, has committed $500 million to building proprietary software. Latham & Watkins has been buying its own Nvidia servers to customize models in-house.
For Coban, the challenge won't be convincing law firms that they need artificial intelligence. It will be persuading them that someone who knows how the models work from the inside is best suited to build them.
Companies are announcing enormous new data centers to power the AI boom. Some promise facilities bigger than anything the industry has built before.
There's just one problem: Most of these projects may never happen.
Bernstein Research analyzed thousands of planned US data centers and concluded that only about 35% of the announced capacity is likely to get built. That's roughly 170 gigawatts of data center capacity out of a total of almost 500 gigawatts.
The rest? A significant chunk of it belongs to a category the industry has a wonderfully dismissive name for: "Bragawatts." These are ambitious announcements, often from newcomers with little experience building data centers, that have a slim chance of becoming reality.
"Press releases are cheap…concrete is not," Bernstein analysts wrote in a research note.
Bernstein began its analysis with more than 7,000 data center projects across North America, drawing on information from Aterio, a company that tracks construction through satellite imagery, permits, and other records. The analysts narrowed that to more than 5,000 projects (partly by excluding thosealready canceled).
Then they assessed the chances of these remaining projects being completed. The analysts considered factors such as whether construction had started, whether electricity was available, and whether the companies involved had successfully built data centers before.
The results revealed a striking divide.
The 'bragawatt brigade'
Kevin O'Leary.
Daniel Delgado Jr./Disney via Getty Images
Experienced operators including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta landed at the top. Bernstein gave these companies perfect scores of 5 out of 5 for their development credentials. Other data center specialists, such as Digital Realty, Equinix, and CoreSite, got top marks, too.
O'Leary Digital, associated with celebrity investor Kevin O'Leary, ended up at the bottom,with a credibility score of 0.35 out of 5, according to Bernstein. His company has announced 15 gigawatts of data center projects, and Bernstein estimates that only 489 megawatts, or about 3%, will actually materialize.
Although the term "bragawatts" has been doing the rounds in the data center industry lately, it's unclear who coined it, Bernstein analyst Madison Rezaei told me.
"I wish I could take credit for that," she said. "I believe I originally heard it from an Equinix executive, but I don't think he owned it either."
She said that whilesome ambitious newcomers could succeed, they haven't yet demonstrated they can deliver.
"It's not that all of these guys are sort of terrible and not going to deliver, but we just have lower confidence because we don't know them," Rezaei said.
O'Leary Digital responds
O'Leary Digital disputed Bernstein's assessment, saying the research doesn't account for substantial work that occurs before construction begins.
While acknowledging that O'Leary Digital is a young company, CEO Paul Palandjian said the team has decades of experience building major infrastructure projects and that its proposed 15 gigawatts of capacity would be built in stages over several years.
The company said it has secured binding agreements covering about 11,000 acres in Utah and 13,000 acres in Alberta, obtained a 30-year development agreement in Utah, and made progress on planning, engineering, and permits at both sites. It also said the projects would generate their own electricity.
The company said its early development work is funded, additional capital is committed to reaching key milestones, and experienced engineering and construction partners are involved.
"We would rather be judged on milestones than on a model," Palandjian said.
'An announcement in search of a project'
Opponents of the proposed La Osa data center attend a Pinal County Board of Supervisors meeting in Florence, Arizona, on August 26.
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Other low scorers in the "bragawatt" brigade included Vermaland and Joule Capital Partners, according to Bernstein analysis based on Aterio data.
Joule has announced 50 data center projects with a combined capacity of 11.7 gigawatts. Bernstein estimates that only about 11% of that capacity will actually get built. Almost all of Joule's planned capacity remains at the announcement stage, with little evidence of construction progress or of major customers committing to use the facilities, Bernstein wrote in a July note to investors.
The analysts gave Joule a credibility score of 2.05 out of 5, placing it among the lowest-ranked developers in its database.
"An announcement in search of a project," the analysts wrote.
Vermaland has announced plans for a massive data center project in Arizona. Bernstein estimates that only 4% of its proposed 2.2 gigawatts of capacity will get built. The company is primarily a landowner, not a data center developer. Its proposed $33 billion La Osa project near Eloy had already been sharply scaled back amid local opposition and without construction approval. In late August, regulators formally rejectedthe project. Even before that, the analysts gave Vermaland a credibility score of 0.75 out of 5.
Joule and Vermaland didn't respond to emails seeking comment this week.
A yawning gap for data centers
Sergio Toro, CEO of Aterio, sees similar patterns in his firm's voluminous, detailed data.
Aterio's tracking shows that roughly 30 to 40 gigawatts of new data center capacity get announced each month. Yet only about 7 gigawatts begin construction each month, while 2 to 3 gigawatts actually start operating.
This leaves a yawning gap.
Many announced projects get withdrawn before construction begins — and before real money has been spent.
"They just make the announcement, but they didn't get their approvals. Or they make multiple filings in multiple locations to see which one gets selected," Toro told me. "That's why we track with satellite if there's real movement on the ground or not."
Indeed, Bernstein analysts wrote recently that the amount of "stranded" data center capacity has surged. These are projects that are either canceled, delayed, or not approved.
The AI boom's three tiers
Toro sees three broad groups competing to build AI infrastructure.
At the top are the established technology giants, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. They've built data centers for decades and generally deliver on their commitments. Most of their projects will get done, he said.
In the middle are "neoclouds," newer companies such as CoreWeave that rent out computing power specifically for AI. Although they're more vulnerable to financing problems and delays, many are making solid progress, especially because some of these players already have access to electricity.
"We see them advancing quite well," Toro said. "Sometimes we see some delays, but it's not something significant or any kind of big capacity that is at risk."
Then come the newcomers making extraordinary promises. That's where most delays and cancellations happen, Toro said.
Even Amazon needs a backup plan
A technician works at an Amazon Web Services AI data center in New Carlisle, Indiana.
Noah Berger/Getty Images via Amazon Web Services
Not every project that disappears was a fantasy, though. Even a top player like Amazon struggles sometimes to secure electricity and other supplies on time for these huge projects.
The biggest, most experienced tech companies deliberately pursue more potential data center capacity than they need because they know some developments will fail or get delayed.
Major AI companies were committing to three or four times the space and electricity they needed over the following two years, Jeffrey Moerdler, a data center lawyer, estimated during an interview with Bernstein analysts.
His reasoning: Of data center projects that haven't started construction, roughly a third will arrive on schedule, another third will be delayed, and the remainder won't happen.
Rezaei and Toro estimate that the top players don't over-commit that much — more like double the capacity they need at most.
The strategy provides a "Plan B," as Toro put it, in case of delays involving electricity, equipment, permits, local opposition, or other factors.
Texas has a ghost problem
The Decker Creek Power Station in Austin.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
This helps explain another extraordinary number.
Data center companies have requested connections for roughly 450 gigawatts of electricity demand on Texas' main power grid, more than five times the grid's roughly 85 gigawatts of existing capacity, according to Toro and others.
Many of those requests are placeholders rather than firm construction plans. Toro calls them "ghost projects."
These speculative projects clog the waiting lists for electricity connections, making the electricity shortage look a lot worse than it actually is.
"Developers routinely spam projects across several sites, and many are speculative builds with no customer yet," Ryan McEntush, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a recent blog. "Often these new developers have never even plugged in a GPU, let alone a power plant."
Texas has paused applications to review and weed out projects that aren't serious. Toro, from Aterio, expects this to favor the established players at the expense of the bragawatts.
The real AI boom
None of this means the AI infrastructure boom is imaginary.
Aterio tracks thousands of buildings, including major projects already under construction. Bernstein estimates that nearly 80% of the capacity the largest technology companies are directly developing is credible.
And when speculative projects disappear, Rezaei doesn't expect a wave of unpaid debt. Many will fail before building begins, the stage when developers borrow serious money through project financing.
Some of those missing data centers were never really coming in the first place.
A tecnológica norte-americana Meta anunciou na quarta-feira 21 de outubro um lucro de 52,481 mil milhões de dólares (46,7 mil milhões de euros) até setembro, mais 39% face ao período homólogo, impulsionado pela publicidade nas suas redes sociais e pela inteligência artificial (IA).
Detentora das redes WhatsApp, Instagram e Facebook, a empresa registou uma receita de 181,712 mil milhões (161,8 mil milhões de euros) entre janeiro e setembro, mais 29% face ao período homólogo, segundo comunicado divulgado após o fecho do mercado de Wall Street.
O fundador e diretor-executivo da Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, destacou que a empresa alcançou no último trimestre “marcos” em IA, como o lançamento do Muse e do Muse Wonder, o seu “primeiro modelo de fronteira”, do mesmo género que os das concorrentes OpenAI e Anthropic.
Os “investimentos estão a dar frutos” e a empresa apresenta um “avanço acelerado”, afirmou Zuckerberg, segundo o comunicado da Meta.
A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms META.O on Wednesday to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found the company had misled consumers about the privacy of their data, hitting the company with one of the largest financial penalties in US history.
The ruling came in a case stemming from allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, obtained data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. New Mexico had sued Meta, accusing it of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data.
“Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order, which came more than three weeks after the verdict.
Mathew found that a penalty of more than $219 billion was warranted based on state law, but he reduced the figure to $25 billion.
Meta vows to appeal $25 billion penalty
In a statement, C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the company is confident it will win on appeal.
“This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Mahoney said. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement after the ruling the penalty was one of the largest financial penalties against a corporation in US history.
Meta previously faced a $5 billion penalty from the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Six other states settled their lawsuits against Meta related to Cambridge Analytica for $459.2 million as part of a $17.1 billion multistate settlement the company reached in August to resolve states’ claims that the company’s platforms had harmed teen mental health.
Cambridge Analytica scandal at heart of lawsuit
New Mexico’s attorney general sued Meta in 2021 following revelations that Cambridge Analytica had harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app.
The state accused Meta of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data and its handling of hate speech and misinformation posted on the platform. It alleged the company knew third parties had broad access to users’ data and tolerated hate speech or other harmful content when it benefited the company’s bottom line.
Cambridge Analytica, now defunct, used the data for voter profiling and targeting.
“It has been a long time coming holding Big Tech accountable,” Torrez told a press conference in Albuquerque after Wednesday’s ruling. “I think today’s judgment is a clear break with that past and a very clear warning to those in this space and beyond that we intend to protect our people and protect our consumers.”
Mathew’s decision comes as Meta faces thousands of lawsuits and pressure from lawmakers over the impact of Instagram and Facebook on teen mental health, with another trial slated to begin next week.
Earlier this year, New Mexico won $942 million in a pair oftrials against Meta over claims it facilitated sexual exploitation of young people on Instagram and Facebook and misled consumers about the platforms’ safety.
Analyst Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson & Co, called the latest New Mexico ruling costly but unlikely to impact the company’s value.
“Meta is worth nearly two trillion dollars, and will likely continue to appeal these cases and drag them out,” Luria said.
Legal experts anticipate lengthy appeals
Jurors in September had found that the company and its leadership made 26 misleading statements on data privacy, hate speech and other subjects. Multiplying those statements by their potential audience, they said the company had committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws.
At a hearing on October 1, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, had asked Mathew to award the state between $35 billion and $40 billion.
“This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price,” McGinn said.
In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion. The evidence showed that Meta does not sell user data and New Mexico did not prove that any consumer had actually been misled, the company said in court filings.
Uma ação coletiva foi ajuizada em um tribunal australiano contra o Facebook e o Instagram, plataformas da Meta, sob a alegação de que os serviços expuseram crianças a conteúdos prejudiciais e as mantiveram viciadas por meio de algoritmos.
A ação, apresentada neste mês pelo escritório de advocacia MinterEllison à Corte Federal, a segunda mais alta instância judicial da Austrália, pode ser a primeira no país a responsabilizar as redes sociais por danos causados a seus usuários, especialmente crianças e adolescentes.
O processo coletivo foi movido em nome de oito autores, que alegam ter sofrido danos causados pela Meta quando tinham menos de 18 anos, e buscam indenização.
“Estamos cientes dessa ação e nos defenderemos vigorosamente”, afirmou um porta-voz da Meta por e-mail.
Em uma ordem de sigilo emitida na segunda-feira (19), o tribunal proibiu a divulgação de qualquer informação que pudesse revelar a identidade dos autores da ação, bem como do conteúdo da petição inicial.
O processo ocorre em meio ao aumento das tensões entre a Austrália e as grandes empresas de tecnologia, após a implementação de uma proibição inédita no mundo ao uso de redes sociais por menores de 16 anos e a apresentação de novas regras propostas que poderiam permitir aos usuários desativar conteúdos determinados por algoritmos em seus feeds.
Em agosto, a Meta concordou em pagar US$ 18 bilhões para encerrar disputas com quase todos os estados dos Estados Unidos e resolver acusações de que a empresa desenvolveu redes sociais para viciar crianças.
A U.S. court ordered Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25 billion for deceiving the public about how it protects personal data, in a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Judge Francis Mathew set the fine on Wednesday after a jury determined that Facebook made misleading promises about who could access user data and how that information was protected, according to the ruling. The jury found 26 statements by Meta made between 2010 and 2021 to be misleading, including some by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
In his ruling, Mathew wrote that Facebook’s misconduct, developed over years and systematically disseminated to the public, went to the core of its business practices. According to the ruling, the company maintained those promises despite internal warnings that it could not fulfill them, and allowed certain business partners to retain access to data it had announced it would stop sharing in order to avoid losing revenue. The judge concluded that the messages sought to build trust and attract users, whose data are essential to the company’s personalized advertising business.
The case is deeply tied to Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and obtained data from millions of Facebook users without consent to promote political advertising, according to a statement from the New Mexico Department of Justice. Revelations about the firm, made public in 2018, affected up to 87 million profiles and sparked an international scandal over the use of personal information by social networks and their role in electoral campaigns. The trial also examined what Facebook said publicly about its efforts to combat disinformation and hate speech.
Although the judge initially calculated a fine of more than $219 billion, he ultimately reduced the amount to $25 billion, which will accrue annual interest of 15% until effective payment. The money will go to New Mexico’s education system, although the attorney general warned that an appeal by Meta could delay the availability of the funds.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez presented the decision as one of the largest financial penalties against a company in U.S. history.
El coche parece casi de juguete: se acerca a otros vehículos aparcados, activa unos propulsores para saltar por encima, aprovecha para dar una espiral en el aire y cae sobre el suelo como quien se tira al sofá para echar una siesta. Es el nuevo Tesla Roadster, que Elon Musk vende en X (antes Twitter) con el mensaje: “Resulta que en el futuro sí hay coches voladores”. Se trata de una afirmación como mínimo exagerada: no se sabe si esos propulsores sirven para algún tipo de vuelo sostenido ni si estarán disponibles en el modelo que se ponga a la venta.
La decisión fue tomada luego de que un jurado determinara que Facebook había hecho promesas engañosas sobre quién podía acceder a los datos de sus usuarios y cómo protegía esa información.
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