Mar 30, 2026
As our surveillance dystopia continues to spread, good news keeps popping up. OpenAI shut down its video slop generator; Facebook was defeated in two separate court cases for harming kids; and people are starting to ridicule Zuck’s spy glasses.
OpenAI is shutting down Sora, the video-generation technology the company unveiled in 2024, shocking entertainment executives with its ability to use artificial intelligence to quickly produce short videos that looked as if a Hollywood studio had made them.• Disney’s Sora Disaster Shows AI Will Not Revolutionize Hollywood (by Jason Koebler in 404 Media, March 25, 2026):
Just three months ago, OpenAI and Disney signed a three-year licensing deal allowing Sora users to generate videos with Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Yoda.
Disney is pulling out of its billion-dollar investment in OpenAI entirely. . . . it was hard to imagine why Disney would infect its flagship paid streaming service with content from a service whose viral videos consisted of users turning Pikachu into a felon and SpongeBob into Hitler. It was not clear why Disney would want AI slop made by randos to live next to, say the $200 million Toy Story 4 or any number of Disney’s masterpieces. It was also hard to imagine why a company that has so aggressively enforced its copyright would suddenly say all bets are off for Sam Altman’s plagiarism machine. The only thing that made any sense is that Hollywood executives, like Silicon Valley executives, hate paying for human labor so much that they have convinced themselves that their customers would happily consume AI slop if it was shoved down their throats.Facebook shuts down metaverse
First came a verdict in New Mexico, fining the company $375m (£280m) for enabling harm, including child sexual exploitation, on its platforms and for misleading consumers about their safety. Twenty-four hours later, jurors in California awarded $6m in damages to a young user who had argued that Meta (along with YouTube) had deliberately designed addictive products that had hooked her from childhood, causing her grave harm.• . . . and note that the $6 million award isn’t much on its own, but it could open the way for thousands of similar lawsuits to follow. From Axios March 27, 2026: “In California, a jury this week found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark social media addiction trial. This case is tied to more than 2,000 other pending lawsuits, meaning the monetary penalties could add up quick.”
. . . The court in New Mexico heard how a former Meta employee wrote to Mark Zuckerberg urging him to see the danger in allowing young girls access to a cosmetic surgery filter on Instagram that let users see how they would look with bigger eyes or thicker lips. The colleague emailed to say that one of his daughters had been “hospitalised twice for body dysmorphia” and that, when it came to body image, “the pressure on them and their peers coming through social media is intense”. Zuckerberg was unmoved. . . .
[Facebook whistleblower Frances] Haugen, who used to work in the company’s civic integrity team, told me how colleagues might propose a small tweak that would substantially reduce the harm the platform was doing. But if that tweak – say, not sending notifications to children late at night, urging them to come back to Instagram – caused so much as a 1% drop in user engagement, the bosses would veto it. As Haugen puts it: “Mark said the most important thing is increasing time spent on the platform.”
The evidence presented at trial – which included internal Meta documents and testimony from former Meta employees, law enforcement officials, and New Mexico educators – established that Meta’s design features enabled pedophiles and predators to engage in child sexual exploitation on Meta’s platforms. Evidence from those witnesses and other industry experts also demonstrated that Meta intentionally designs its platforms to addict young people and, contrary to Meta’s public commitments, expose them to dangerous content related to eating disorders and self harm.• The Terrible Cost of the Infinite Scroll (gift link, NYT Opinion, by Julia Angwin, March 26, 2026):
The verdict is likely to be appealed. And we’ll probably see contradictory rulings as other plaintiffs’ cases are tried in courts across the country. But with this ruling, the era of holding tech companies accountable for their antisocial choices has finally begun.• See also NYT coverage of the California lawsuit (gift link, March 25, 2026) . . . and Futurism on how the rulings could affect the AI industry.
Reportedly “highly sensitive videos recorded by users’ Meta Ray Ban smart glasses are being sent to the company’s subcontractors in Nairobi, Kenya, for data annotation. Contractors told the newspapers that they were watching people “going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” often not knowing that they were even recording or being recorded. Automated systems designed to blur faces often failed, the contractors claimed, effectively giving them a front row seat of somebody’s most intimate moments.• Meta sued over AI smart glasses’ privacy concerns, after workers reviewed nudity, sex, and other footage (TechCrunch, March 5, 2026):
Meta is facing a new class action lawsuit [in the UK] over its AI smart glasses and their lack of privacy, after an investigation by Swedish newspapers found that workers at a Kenya-based subcontractor are reviewing footage from customers’ glasses . . . Now, the tech giant is facing a lawsuit in the United States, as well. In the newly filed complaint, plaintiffs . . . allege that Meta violated privacy laws and engaged in false advertising.• The Rise of the Ray-Ban Meta Creep (Wired, March 23, 2026): “Between pickup artists and juvenile pranksters, the wearable device is becoming associated with pests of all kinds.”
Molly, whose name has been changed for anonymity, was filmed in the street non-consensually by a stranger using Meta Glasses who approached her while she was feeding her dog. Recalling how the interaction seemed innocent enough, Molly, a full-time content creator, told me how she had shared her Instagram username with the man when he asked, “out of politeness more than anything.”• Fight for the future video about Zuck's Ray-Ban spy glasses (March 11, 2026) and the risk toward children
She was unaware that the interaction was being filmed until a male user tagged her in a TikTok video the next day:
“I watched the interaction back and felt this real cold chill over me. I felt hot and cold at the same time. Even though the interaction itself was absolutely fine, I still felt as though something had been taken from me. It felt really violating.” Molly explained how the video included private details about her location that the man had now broadcast publicly, “What was worse was that I had told the guy where I lived, as he had asked me. There were comments from men saying he should have followed me home, telling people to look out for me in that area and that everyone should move to the area I mentioned.”
