Ofcom concerned TikTok’s age verification is ineffective, leaving some exposed to posts on suicide, self-harm and pornography
TikTok is under formal investigation over concerns it has failed to protect children from harmful content, the UK’s online regulator, Ofcom, has announced.
The social media platform’s approach to checking the ages of users has sparked “particular concerns” at the watchdog, almost a year after measures to protect children from the worst of online content came into effect under the Online Safety Act.
Twenty-six current and former Meta employees allege AI-assisted productivity metrics unfairly influenced layoff decisions affecting workers on protected leave. Meta denies the claims.
Lawsuit filed by dozens of employees says people who took maternity or disability leave were disproportionately selected for layoffs
Dozens of Meta employees have sued the social media company over claims that it used artificial intelligence tools to tag workers for mass layoffs. The workers allege that those AI tools targeted them after they asked for protected or maternity leave or disability accommodation.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in the northern district of California, points to Meta’s workforce reduction of about 8,000 employees earlier this year. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The suit alleges that Meta used a “constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems”, including AI performance ratings and keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, to pinpoint who to lay off.
These days, corporations aren’t just using AI as an excuse to justify layoffs, but are increasingly turning to their chatbots for advice deciding who to fire.
As Reuters reports, 26 Meta employees filed a lawsuit accusing the company of using an internal AI platform to select targets for the thousands of jobs cut earlier this year. Per the suit, Meta used its AI to cull workers based on opaque productivity metrics and large language model (LLM) token usage, a move which disproportionately targeted people with disabilities, and those who had taken maternity or medical leave — literally adding insult to injury.
The 26 plaintiffs, whose names have been redacted from the suit, include engineers, managers, researchers, and designers, as well as a director who had direct access to the AI platform.
Nearly half of the plaintiffs say that their termination was the result of taking either maternity or parental leave, protected activities which Meta’s AI-integrated human resources platform “Checkpoint” allegedly failed to take into consideration. Others claim to have been targeted after taking medical leave for their own disabilities, bereavement leave, or to care for family members.
In some cases, plaintiffs allege to have been specifically warned by Meta leadership not to take time off. The anonymous director, for example, says he was “discouraged and deterred from taking FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act] leave that his treating provider had recommended, out of a well-founded and objective concern from a manager that such a leave would be held against him in the [reduction in force].”
In the suit, the director corroborates the claim that Meta’s Checkpoint used protected leaves of absence against workers, arguing that the platform “failed to distinguish employees’ leave from lack of engagement.”
The current complaint seeks to block Meta from laying off the 26 plaintiffs, who will each have to file an independent suit owing to legal agreements with the company, Reuters reports.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson disputed the basic facts of the case.
“Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI,” the spokesperson told Reuters.
Meta's AI-fueled layoffs of 8,000 employees targeted workers with disabilities and those who took protected medical or family leaves, alleged a lawsuit filed by 26 employees who were selected for termination. Meta used internal AI tools to select employees for layoffs, according to the complaint filed yesterday by 26 "Doe" plaintiffs in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
"Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work. Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems—including a system referred to internally as 'Metamate,' employee-trained 'second-brain' agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration—to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list," the lawsuit said.
Employees were allegedly graded, among other things, on how much they used Meta's AI tools. "Meta’s internal dashboards classified employees by their stage of adoption of its artificial-intelligence tools, using categories such as 'AI Native,' 'AI First,' and 'AI Enabled,'" the lawsuit said.
And the situation is only getting worse. According to a shocking new BBC investigation, Instagram has been profiting off paid adverts that promote CSAM in India, a shocking revelation that highlights glaring holes in Meta’s efforts to get ahead of the problem.
Earlier this year, Meta announced it was trying to reduce its reliance on third party human moderators by — you guessed it — switching to AI. But considering the latest news, these systems are seemingly inadequate to stem a tidal wave of deeply disturbing content on its platforms.
Some of the incriminating ads reviewed by the BBC include terms like “rape video” and “child video” and link the platform’s users to shadowy Telegram channels, where the material can be bought for as little as $1.
The shocking revelation has sent shockwaves through the country’s government. Over the weekend, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a notice to Meta, calling it to immediately disable all ads and content that promote the sale of CSAM. According to Indian broadcaster DD News, the ministry is giving Meta until July 11 to provide a “detailed explanation.”
After the BBC reached out to Meta for comment, the company claimed to have disabled several adverts and suspended any associated accounts for violating its policies. A Meta spokesperson argued that “no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations.”
“We continue to run proactive detection technology on ads once they’re live, and anyone can report an ad to us that they think breaks our rules,” the spokesperson told the BBC.
Telegram also told the British broadcaster it had removed “more than 274,000 groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material in 2026.”
Former Facebook vice president Brian Boland argued that Instagram’s algorithms were designed to maximize profit.
“I think what’s sad and tragic is over time, the trade-off of revenue and user experience became a more core part of the conversation,” he told the BBC.
Boland testified against Meta in a trial that saw a New Mexico jury find the company guilty of misleading users over the safety of its platforms for children. The jury concluded in March that Meta had allowed the proliferation of CSAM, turning its platforms into marketplaces for child sex trafficking.
“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew,” said New Mexico’s attorney general Raúl Torrez in a statement at the time. “Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
With 1.9 million reports of CSAM on a leading tipline, India is only second to the United States. And children’s rights advocacy groups warn that plenty of crime is still falling through the cracks.
We’ve been hearing plenty about how Meta’s workforce is in total disarray. But this latest story takes the cake — or acorn, perhaps.
As Wired reports, a squirrel got loose inside one of the company’s buildings in Bangkok, Thailand, after someone received it in the mail. It’s unlikely the creature had plotted to infiltrate the Meta office, but it coincidentally made it just in time to plunder the snacks that executives had vowed to give back to their dispirited employees.
For a long and chaotic twenty minutes, the squirrel wreaked havoc as it bolted around the office before finally being caught, according to the reporting. The bizarro incident had at least one human casualty: a worker who got scratched on the finger by the rodent while trying to capture it.
The rodent may be apprehended, but its exploits will live on infamy. It’s already becoming workplace lore.
New York Times reporter Mike Isaac, who first broke the story, wrote on X that “employees are predictably having a field day with it internally.”
One worker “created an AI-generated video mimicking an HR training course on squirrel-related office best practices,” Isaac said. Another edited a meme of an infamous Facebook safety notification so it read, “Marked Safe From Meta Squirrel Attack Today,” underneath a blue flag icon. For demoralized Meta employees who are reeling from their bosses surveilling their computers to train AI agents, not to mentioning firing thousands of their colleagues, maybe a squirrel attack was a welcome change of pace.
Who sent the squirrel — and why — is unclear. An internal memo obtained by Wired said that the delivery was accepted by an outside janitor, who in the aftermath was written up and vowed to ensure “such an incident does not recur.” The employee who got nicked by the squirrel, meanwhile, was taken to a hospital for treatment. The squirrel’s fate is unknown.
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