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AI search grounded in Facebook posts? What could go wrong?

17 June 2026 at 14:30
An iPhone with the Facebook app on screen showing Meta AI Mode search
More AI search in more places.

AI is pretty reliable at putting things on your calendar these days, but it hasn't quite cracked answering the related and all-important question of "What should I do this weekend?" Meta's new AI Mode in search could be a useful tool - if it ever learns to stop getting stuff wrong.

AI Mode is a new option when you hit the search bar in the Facebook app. It's designed to tackle complex queries - much like AI Mode in Google Search. But Meta's version draws on public posts across Meta apps - including Facebook Groups and Instagram Reels - to inform its results. That could be useful, considering the neighborhood groups and local organizations a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Threads hits 500M users as Meta rolls out new features

17 June 2026 at 10:24

Meta Platforms’ Threads app has reached 500 million monthly active users, marking a significant milestone for the platform as it moves to deepen engagement through a suite of new community tools and personalised feed controls.

The social media giant stated the growth has been driven largely by communities, which are groups of users sharing interests spanning books, basketball, parenting, and music.

To mark the milestone, Meta is graduating its communities feature out of beta and launching a series of updates aimed at making those groups more visible and easier to navigate.

The communities hub is being added to the main menu to the left of the feed, making it easier for users to find and switch between groups.

Communities will also get their own distinct icons to make them more recognisable across the platform, alongside a progress indicator showing users how close a topic is to achieving full community status and what they can do to help it get there.

Champion recognition is being expanded to more users across communities, with local communities launching in Japan, Korea and Taiwan with native-language tags.

Meta stated Live Chats will expand to more communities in the coming weeks, with co-hosting and the ability to quote moments directly to a user’s feed.

Your Algo
Alongside the community updates, Meta is introducing Your Algo, a new personal feed setting which builds on the Dear Algo feature launched in February.

While Dear Algo allowed users to tell the Threads algorithm what they wanted to see more or less of, Your Algo adds a private layer of control, letting users filter specific topics from their feed and set how long a request lasts across one, three or seven days. Both tools will be manageable from a single hub.

Your Algo rolled out in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Meta stated the updates are the beginning of continued investment in the platform based on user feedback.

It launched Threads in July 2023 in a bid to compete against Elon Musk-owned X.

The post Threads hits 500M users as Meta rolls out new features appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Half a billion people are using Threads every month

16 June 2026 at 12:00
An image showing the Threads logo

Threads has surpassed 500 million monthly active users, Meta announced on Tuesday, hitting the milestone just shy of the platform's third birthday. Threads got off to a hot start in 2023, reaching 100 million users even faster than ChatGPT, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that he thinks Threads could hit 1 billion users.

Meta says that daily active users on Threads continue to "increase strongly across the globe," with "all" of it driven by communities, which allow users to see and make posts about different topics. The company is bringing them out of beta and adding features like a communities hub in the Threads menu and giving communitie …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Facebook’s new AI Mode search gets its info from public posts

15 June 2026 at 22:15
A screenshot of AI-generated search results in Meta’s AI Mode on Facebook

Your public Facebook posts could help inform AI-generated results in Meta's new AI Mode. When you search on Facebook, the "AI Mode" option will appear alongside the usual search modes like "People" and "Marketplace." It's one of several new AI features Meta is rolling out starting today, including photo presets that swap sports jerseys onto fans and suggestions for collage templates.

A screenshot of AI-generated search results in Meta's AI Mode on Facebook

Instead of "just links," it gives users AI-generated results that pull from publicly-posted content across Meta's platforms, like the AI search feature in its new Reddit-like Forum app. Users can also ask Meta's AI follow-up questions in response to the search …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta’s new β€˜AI Mode’ on Facebook pulls from public info across its platforms

15 June 2026 at 19:30
Meta announced Monday that it's rolling out a wave of new AI features on Facebook, the latest sign of the company's effort to catch up in the AI race and keep users more engaged on the platform.

You can just tell the Instagram algorithm what you want now

10 June 2026 at 18:06
The Instagram camera icon on a pink, blue, and black background

Instagram is going to let you tweak what its algorithm shows you on your main feed. With the Your Algorithm feature, "you can now see the topics we think you're interested in, and change them, across all the major parts of Instagram," according to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri. Right now, the feature will only surface topics, but Instagram is working on "supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more."

The company has been slowly giving users more agency over some algorithms on Instagram, having already launched the Your Algorithm feature for your Reels feed and the Explore page. With Wednesday's announcemen …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Social Reckoning trailer gives us our first look at Jeremy Strong as Zuck

10 June 2026 at 15:02
Actor Jeremy Strong as Muck Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning.

Over 15 years after David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network premiered in theaters, Sony has released the first trailer for The Social Reckoning ahead of its theatrical release on October 9th. The follow-up takes place 17 years after the events portrayed in the original film and follows a young Facebook engineer who enlists the help of a Wall Street Journal reporter to expose the platform's secrets.

The film stars Jeremy Strong as a much older Mark Zuckerberg (doing a memorable impression of the Meta CEO's voice), Mikey Madison as Facebook engineer and whistleblower Frances Haugen, and Jeremy Allen White as WSJ reporter Jeff Horw …

Read the full story at The Verge.

WhatsApp ordered to host rival AI assistants for free

10 June 2026 at 09:40
The WhatsApp logo against a green, white, and black background.

Meta has been ordered by the European Commission to restore free WhatsApp access for chatbots made by rival AI providers while the regulator finishes its antitrust investigation. The rare interim measure announced on Tuesday was deemed necessary "to prevent serious and irreparable damage to competition" in the general-purpose AI assistant market.

This is only the second time that the EU has used the emergency power in more than 20 years, Politico reports. It follows the launch of a formal investigation in December 2025 into whether Meta was abusing its market dominance by banning third-party AI chatbots from its WhatsApp messaging platform. …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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