META

Meta and Amazon on Thursday blew through expectations in their latest quarterly results as Big Tech continued to impress Wall Street.

Meta, the tech titan behind Facebook and Instagram, reported a profit of $14 billion in the final three months of last year, beating analyst forecasts as revenue climbed to $40.1 billion in the quarter.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew found himself at the center of a heated exchange with US lawmakers as they probed the social media giant's connections to China, particularly its parent company ByteDance. Lawmakers questioned the extent of access granted to the Chinese government, raising concerns about potential influence on TikTok's operations and content policies, as reported by CNN.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a public apology in U.S. Congress on Wednesday as hostile lawmakers grilled tech chiefs over the dangers that children face on social media platforms.

The executives convened by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee were put to task in a session titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis."

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, will open a moderation office in Texas with an emphasis on fighting content linked to child sexual abuse, the company said.

Türkiye's competition board has declared that it started to fine Facebook-parent company Meta Platforms 4.8 million Turkish Liras ($160,000) per day over failure to fulfill its obligations on data collection from users.

In 2021, the Competition Authority initiated a probe in response to the software update imposed by WhatsApp on its users, mandating data sharing.

Human Rights Watch accused Meta yesterday of restricting pro-Palestinian content on Facebook and Instagram, decrying "systemic online censorship" since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.

In a recent announcement, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Instagram is experimenting with a feature allowing users to disable read receipts in Direct Messages (DMs). Although no specific release date was mentioned, Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared a preview of the upcoming read receipts toggle during a broadcast.

Facebook and Instagram users in Europe will be able to buy subscriptions to use the social networks without being tracked for targeted advertising from next month, Meta announced on Oct. 30, to comply with tougher EU rules.

The American technology giant "Meta" announced that it will release paid versions of its most popular social platforms - "Facebook" and "Instagram" - from November for its European customers.

They will be ad-free to comply with European Union regulations, Reuters reported on Monday.

The European Union yesterday unveiled a list of digital giants, including Apple, Facebook owner Meta and TikTok parent ByteDance, that will face tough new curbs on how they do business, but the move could trigger a wave of legal battles.