Facebook and Instagram users are reporting widespread issues, with many saying they were booted out of the social media platforms and are now unable to log back in. 

DownDetector, a site that monitors internet service outages, said it has received more than 350,000 reports of problems with Facebook and more than 50,000 reported problems with Instagram as of 10:30 a.m. ET. 

Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, didn't immediately return a request for comment.

A European consumer rights consortium has released a scathing new report accusing Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, of using a privacy “smokescreen” to obscure what it’s deemed a “massive, illegal” data collection scheme.

In particular, the European Consumer Organisation says Meta’s Nov. 2023 policy of charging European Union residents a monthly privacy fee if they don’t want to be tracked violates an EU privacy law known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Facebook and Instragram's parent company, Meta, is contemplating stricter rules around discussing Israeli nationalism on its platforms, a major policy change that could stifle criticism and free expression about the war in Gaza and beyond, five civil society sources who were briefed on the potential change told The Intercept.

The board, which is run independently of Meta and funded through a grant by the company, described the policy as “incoherent, lacking in persuasive justification and inappropriately focused on how content has been created, rather than on which specific harms it aims to prevent.”

The recommendation came as part of the board’s review of Meta’s decision to leave up a manipulated video of President Biden on Facebook that was edited to make it appear as though he was inappropriately touching his granddaughter.

A video on Facebook manipulated to suggest that President Joe Biden behaves inappropriately toward women can remain on the platform, but only because of a problematic loophole in Meta’s “incoherent” policies, the company’s Oversight Board said Monday.

The loophole threatens elections worldwide and should be closed as soon as possible, the quasi-judicial board added.

Meta was told to label any media that featured edits of politicians generated by artificial intelligence.

The Oversight Board, an organization created by Meta to oversee what content the company removes from Facebook and Instagram, ruled on Monday that Meta had to leave AI-generated media designed to deceive the public on its platforms but that it had to label them as such.

Meta announced Tuesday that it plans to start applying labels to Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts that contain images the company has identified as generated by AI.

Why it matters: Meta-owned platforms host more than 5 billion active accounts — and every one of its apps will be subject to the labeling policy in all supported languages.

Meta has been under pressure, including from its own Oversight Board, to develop stronger AI-generated content policies ahead of dozens of elections around the world in 2024.

“I’m a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10pm and it’s a Tuesday night?…Let the hacking begin.” So typed a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, liveblogging from his Harvard dormitory as he began work on a website called Facemash. The site displayed randomly selected pairs of students’ mugshots, harvested from the university’s intranet, and allowed users to vote on who was hotter. It caused a stir and was promptly shut down. But before long, a successor was in the making. On February 4th 2004 Mr Zuckerberg launched a new site: TheFacebook.com.

Mark Zuckerberg delighted Meta shareholders and Wall Street this week with news of the social media giant’s first-ever dividend.

The IRS may also be happy, now that it’s staring at millions in taxes on the Meta stock dividends bound for Zuckerberg’s portfolio.

Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms Inc. META, +20.32%, is poised to make $700 million in dividends yearly. He owns nearly 350 million shares, according to FactSet, and the company will start paying a quarterly dividend of 50 cents a share.