Major Silicon Valley employers have announced significant job reductions in recent months. Oracle this month cut more than 500 Bay Area positions as part of a much larger global reduction reportedly affecting about 30,000 workers. Meta is set to begin laying off 3,000 employees in July across Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Burlingame, San Francisco and Fremont. LinkedIn also plans to eliminate more than 500 positions in Sunnyvale, San Francisco and Mountain View. Cisco, based in San Jose, cut more than 200 Bay Area jobs last October and announced in May that it would eliminate about 4,000 jobs worldwide, even as the company reported record earnings.

Despite those announcements, the Bay Area economy has not shown the kind of widespread distress normally associated with a recession. Housing remains difficult to afford in San Francisco and surrounding communities, and the region continues to be a major driver of California’s economy.

Sarah Bohn, vice president and director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Economic Policy Center, said the current wave of layoffs is slower than the pace seen in 2022, when many technology companies moved aggressively to shrink payrolls after rapid pandemic-era hiring.

Employment and job growth in the Bay Area have been relatively flat over the past year, Bohn said. While that does not signal strong expansion, she said it does suggest the technology sector has moved past the sharpest phase of its post-pandemic correction.

Technology also continues to have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the economy. Many workers who lose jobs in the sector are able to find new positions relatively quickly, Bohn said, particularly because of the size and depth of California’s technology labor market.

Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, said the impact of layoffs has also been softened by severance packages and the financial position of many technology workers. Strong stock market performance has helped some laid-off employees maintain spending power while searching for their next job.

Still, economists caution that the outlook could change if large-scale job cuts continue. A prolonged series of layoffs could eventually be reflected more clearly in regional employment numbers.

The labor market is also changing as technology companies invest in growth areas that do not always require the same level of staffing. Bellisario pointed to data centers and artificial intelligence as examples of areas where companies may expand without adding as many employees as they once did.

The result is a more competitive environment for some technology workers. Opportunities remain, Bellisario said, but the hiring market is no longer as overheated as it was just a few years ago.

In statewide political developments, Democrat Xavier Becerra has taken the lead in California’s primary race for governor, though his likely November opponent has not yet been determined. Republican Steve Hilton holds a narrow advantage over Democrat Tom Steyer for the second spot. If Hilton advances, Becerra would enter the general election as the favorite in a state where registered Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans. A Becerra-Steyer matchup would instead set up a high-profile contest between two Democrats.

Ballot counting could continue for days or weeks. President Donald Trump and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli have raised concerns about widespread election fraud, though no evidence has been presented. Essayli said multiple investigations are underway. California Democratic officials have acknowledged the state’s slow vote count but defended the integrity of the election process.

Other statewide races are also taking shape. In the insurance commissioner race, Democrat Jane Kim has advanced and may face Democrat Ben Allen. For lieutenant governor, Democrat Fiona Ma has advanced and could face Republican Gloria Romero. Sonja Shaw and Richard Barrera advanced in the race for superintendent of public instruction. In the treasurer’s race, Democrat Eleni Kounalakis and Republican Jennifer Hawks advanced.

In congressional races, Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party to run as an independent in a different district, is positioned to face Democrat Richard Pan, a former state senator who holds a slim edge for second place in California’s 6th District. In California’s 7th District, Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui advanced and could face Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang, also a Democrat.

In Los Angeles, Republican Spencer Pratt has fallen behind Democrat Nithya Raman in the race to determine who will challenge incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal is also drawing concern from California’s life sciences industry. The plan would limit the amount of tax credits businesses can claim each year, affecting fewer than 100 of the largest corporate taxpayers in the state. The administration estimates the proposal would generate about $850 million in revenue during the 2026-27 fiscal year.

The proposed limit would reduce the value of California’s research and development tax credit, a provision long used by biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Industry representatives warn that reducing the credit could make it harder for companies to remain in California, build facilities or hire workers.

Tim Scott, president and chief executive of Biocom, said the credit plays an important role in keeping life sciences jobs and investment in the state.

The proposal has particular relevance in Southern California, where San Diego is one of the nation’s leading biotech hubs. Industry groups argue that lowering the credit could put California at a disadvantage against other states competing for research facilities and high-wage scientific jobs.

Other issues under discussion across California include proposed changes to how the state distributes funding for supportive services for older adults. Maral Karaccusian, director of the Los Angeles County Aging and Disabilities Department, has warned that the changes could reduce funding for high-need communities and jeopardize meal services for thousands of elderly residents.

Advocates are also urging lawmakers to preserve Treatment Atlas, a free online tool that provides information about whether addiction treatment facilities use evidence-based practices. Author David Sheff has called on the state to protect the program during budget negotiations.

Additional stories drawing attention around California include state workers protesting Gov. Newsom’s return-to-office mandate with another billboard; a long-delayed affordable housing project in Half Moon Bay facing renewed opposition; and Imperial County considering a moratorium on data centers.

In Southern California, federal training exercises with military-style helicopters have been tied to FBI preparations ahead of the World Cup. In San Diego, a Trump administration official has discussed a vision for additional desalination plants along the California coast. Meanwhile, Fresno County officials are preparing for a projected $300 million deficit, with expected cuts to social services tied to federal budget legislation cited as a major factor.

Original source: CalMatters

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Russia has added the spokesman of U.S. technology company Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to a wanted list, according to an online database maintained by the country’s interior ministry.

Russian state agency Tass and independent news outlet Mediazona first reported that Meta communications director Andy Stone was included on the list Sunday, weeks after Russian authorities in October classified Meta as a “terrorist and extremist” organization, opening the way for possible criminal proceedings against Russian residents using its platforms.

The interior ministry’s database doesn’t give details of the case against Stone, stating only that he is wanted on criminal charges. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Mediazona, an independent news website that covers Russia’s opposition and prison system, Stone was put on the wanted list in February 2022, but authorities made no related statements at the time and no news media reported on the matter until this week.

In March this year, Russia’s federal Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into Meta. It alleged that the company’s actions following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 amounted to inciting violence against Russians.

After Russian troops moved into Ukraine, Stone announced temporary changes to Meta’s hate speech policy to allow for “forms of political expression that would normally violate (its) rules, like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’”

In the same statement, Stone added that “credible calls for violence against Russian civilians” would remain banned.

Mediazona on Sunday claimed that an unspecified Russian court issued an arrest warrant earlier this month for Stone on charges of “facilitating terrorism.” The report didn’t specify the source of that information, which couldn’t be independently verified.

Western social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and X — formerly known as Twitter — were popular with young Russians before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but have since been blocked in the country as part of a broad crackdown on independent media and other forms of critical speech. They are now only accessible via VPN.

In April 2022, Russia also formally barred Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg from entering the country.

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It’s a rare issue that can bring 41 states together for a bipartisan fight. This week, state attorneys general across the political spectrum joined forces in suing Facebook parent company Meta for allegedly using features on Instagram and other platforms that hook young users, while denying or downplaying the risks to their mental health.

This comes two years after states began investigating Meta following revelations that the company’s internal research found Instagram was having a negative effect on some teen users’ mental health. Since then health professionals, including Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and the American Psychological Assn., have urged tech companies to make their products safer for young people.

But there hasn’t yet been significant change in the industry. Most companies haven’t been willing to overhaul their platforms to curb addictive features or harmful content for users under 18 years old, such as setting time limits on their apps or changing algorithms that steer kids into “rabbit holes” to keep them online. Nor have federal lawmakers been able to enact comprehensive product safety regulations because legislation has stalled in Congress or been blocked by courts.

In the absence of policy changes, lawsuits are the next logical step in prodding technology companies to ensure their products are safe for young people or be held accountable. Some have compared the states’ legal strategy to lawsuits against Big Tobacco and opioid manufacturers that revealed how the companies lied about the harm caused by their products, and forced them to change their business practices.

Meta is the first target because of the 2021 revelations, but the state attorneys general said this is an industry-wide investigation. They have also begun looking into TikTok.

The federal complaint alleges Meta used harmful and “psychologically manipulative product features,” such as “likes,” infinite scroll and constant alerts, to hook young people on Instagram and Facebook and keep them engaged for as much time as possible in order to boost profits. Despite knowing that young users’ brains are particularly vulnerable to manipulation by such features and internal studies warning that kids were being harmed, Meta allegedly concealed, denied and downplayed the harms.

The lawsuit, which was filed jointly by 33 states, including California, also accused Meta of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law that protects the digital privacy of children under 13 years old. Eight states and the District of Columbia filed separate lawsuits in state or federal courts, many alleging that Meta violated state consumer protection laws.

Meta said in a statement that it has already rolled out 30 tools to support teens on its apps since 2021, including reminders on Instagram for teens to take a break and sharing expert resources if kids search for posts on suicide or eating disorders. That’s a good start. The company lamented that the states chose to sue rather than work with tech firms “across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards.”

Indeed, there is a need for comprehensive safety standards across social media platforms. But a tech lobbying group of which Meta is a member has sued to stop an effort by California, which passed a first-in-the-nation law last year requiring age-appropriate design and child privacy protection. The law was recently put on hold by a federal judge citing 1st Amendment concerns. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has filed an appeal.

This is complex legal and regulatory terrain, and the states’ lawsuits are not a sure bet given existing laws that protect online platform companies from being held liable for content posted by users on their sites. Nor will any of these cases be resolved quickly. That’s OK. This is an essential fight for the future.

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Dozens of US states, including California and New York, are suing Meta Platforms Inc. for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. A lawsuit filed by 33 states in federal court in California, claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.

In addition, nine attorneys general are filing lawsuits in their respective states, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41 and Washington, D.C. “Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms,” the complaint says. “It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children.”

The suits seek financial damages and restitution and an end to Meta’s practices that are in violation of the law. “Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like Meta are to blame,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. “Meta has profited from children’s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem.”

In a statement, Meta said it shares “the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families.” “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,” the company added.

The broad-ranging federal suit is the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. It follows damning newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, based on the Meta’s own research that found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.

Following the first reports, a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press, published their own findings based on leaked documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has testified before Congress and a British parliamentary committee about what she found. “Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line.” The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world.

Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center. To comply with federal regulation, social media companies ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms — but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent, and many younger kids have social media accounts.

The states’ complaint says Meta knowingly violated this law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, by collecting data on children without informing and getting permission from their parents. Other measures social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health are also easily circumvented. For instance, TikTok recently introduced a default 60-minute time limit for users under 18. But once the limit is reached, minors can simply enter a passcode to keep watching.

TikTok, Snapchat and other social platforms that have also been blamed for contributing to the youth mental health crisis are not part of Tuesday’s lawsuit. Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wouldn’t comment on whether they’re also looking at TikTok or Snapchat. For now they’re focusing on the Meta empire of Facebook and Instagram, he said. “They’re the worst of the worst when it comes to using technology to addict teenagers to social media, all in the furtherance of putting profits over people.”

In May, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” from the harms of social media.

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California and other states on Tuesday sued Facebook parent company Meta over allegations that it “designed and deployed harmful features” on the main social network and its platform Instagram.

“Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement. “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line. We must protect our children and we will not back down from this fight.”

The 233-page lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Northern California, alleges the social media giant violated consumer protection laws and a federal law aimed at safeguarding the privacy of children under 13 years old. Bonta co-led a bipartisan coalition of 33 attorneys general filing the federal lawsuit against Meta. Eight attorneys general are also filing lawsuits against Meta on Tuesday in state courts, according to Bonta’s office.

In 2021, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general, including from California, Tennessee and Nebraska, announced they were investigating Meta’s promotion of its social media app Instagram to children and young people. Advocacy groups, lawmakers and even parents have criticized Meta, alleging the platform hasn’t done enough to combat content about eating disorders, suicide and other potential harms.

As part of the investigation, the state attorneys general looked atMeta’s strategies for compelling young people to spend more time on its platform. The lawsuit alleges that Meta failed to address the platform’s harmful impact to young people.

Meta said it’s committed to keeping teens safe, noting it rolled out more than 30 tools to support young people and families.

“We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

Scrutiny over Meta’s potential damage to the mental health of young people intensified in 2021 after Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, disclosed tens of thousands of internal company documents. Some of those documents included research that showed Facebook is “toxic for teen girls,” worsening body image issues and suicidal thoughts, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2021. Meta said its research was “mischaracterized,” and teens also reported Instagram made them feel better about other issues such as loneliness and sadness.

That year, executives from the social media company including Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri testified before Congress. Instagram then paused its development of a kids’ version of the app and rolled out more controls so parents could limit the amount of time teens spend on it. Social media apps like Instagram require users to be at least 13 years old, but children have lied about their age to access the platform.

The photo- and video-sharing app Instagram is popular among U.S. teens, according to a Pew Research Center survey released this year. About 62% of teens reported using Instagram in 2022. Google-owned YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat are also commonly used by teens.

The amount of time teens spend on social media has been a growing concern especially as platforms use algorithms to recommend content it thinks users like to view. In 2022, attorneys general across the country started investigating TikTok’s potential harm to young people as well.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Friday that new commitments by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies that are leading the development of artificial intelligence technology to meet a set of AI safeguards brokered by his White House are an important step toward managing the “enormous” promise and risks posed by the technology.

Biden announced that his administration has secured voluntary commitments from seven U.S. companies meant to ensure that their AI products are safe before they release them. Some of the commitments call for third-party oversight of the workings of the next generation of AI systems, though they don’t detail who will audit the technology or hold the companies accountable.

“We must be clear eyed and vigilant about the threats emerging technologies can pose,” Biden said, adding that the companies have a “fundamental obligation” to ensure their products are safe.

“Social media has shown us the harm that powerful technology can do without the right safeguards in place,” Biden added. “These commitments are a promising step, but we have a lot more work to do together.”

A surge of commercial investment in generative AI tools that can write convincingly human-like text and churn out new images and other media has brought public fascination as well as concern about their ability to trick people and spread disinformation, among other dangers.

The four tech giants, along with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and startups Anthropic and Inflection, have committed to security testing “carried out in part by independent experts” to guard against major risks, such as to biosecurity and cybersecurity, the White House said in a statement.

That testing will also examine the potential for societal harms, such as bias and discrimination, and more theoretical dangers about advanced AI systems that could gain control of physical systems or “self-replicate” by making copies of themselves.

The companies have also committed to methods for reporting vulnerabilities to their systems and to using digital watermarking to help distinguish between real and AI-generated images or audio known as deepfakes.

Executives from the seven companies met behind closed doors with Biden and other officials Friday as they pledged to follow the standards.

“He was very firm and clear” that he wanted the companies to continue to be innovative, but at the same time “felt that this needed a lot of attention,” Inflection CEO Mustafa Suleyman said in an interview after the White House gathering.

“It’s a big deal to bring all the labs together, all the companies,” said Suleyman, whose Palo Alto, California-based startup is the youngest and smallest of the firms. “This is supercompetitive and we wouldn’t come together under other circumstances.”

The companies will also publicly report flaws and risks in their technology, including effects on fairness and bias, according to the pledge.

The voluntary commitments are meant to be an immediate way of addressing risks ahead of a longer-term push to get Congress to pass laws regulating the technology.

Some advocates for AI regulations said Biden’s move is a start but more needs to be done to hold the companies and their products accountable.

“A closed-door deliberation with corporate actors resulting in voluntary safeguards isn’t enough,” said Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute. “We need a much more wide-ranging public deliberation, and that’s going to bring up issues that companies almost certainly won’t voluntarily commit to because it would lead to substantively different results, ones that may more directly impact their business models.”

While voluntary, agreeing to submit to “ red team” tests that poke at their AI systems is not an easy promise, said Suleyman.

“The commitment we’ve made to have red-teamers basically try to break our models, identify weaknesses and then share those methods with the other large language model developers is a pretty significant commitment,” Suleyman said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said he will introduce legislation to regulate AI and is working closely with the Biden administration “and our bipartisan colleagues” to build upon the pledges made Friday.

A number of technology executives have called for regulation, and several attended an earlier White House summit in May.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Friday that his company is making some commitments that go beyond the White House pledge, including support for regulation that would create a “licensing regime for highly capable models.”

Some experts and upstart competitors worry that the type of regulation being floated could be a boon for deep-pocketed first-movers led by OpenAI, Google and Microsoft as smaller players are elbowed out by the high cost of making their AI systems adhere to regulatory strictures.

The White House pledge notes that it mostly only applies to models that “are overall more powerful than the current industry frontier,” set by recent models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and image generator DALL-E 2 and similar releases from Anthropic, Google and Amazon.

A number of countries have been looking at ways to regulate AI, including European Union lawmakers negotiating sweeping AI rules for the 27-nation bloc that could restrict applications deemed to have the highest risks.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said the United Nations is “the ideal place” to adopt global standards and appointed a board that will report back on options for global AI governance by the end of the year.

Guterres also said he welcomed calls from some countries for the creation of a new U.N. body to support global efforts to govern AI, inspired by such models as the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The White House said Friday that it has consulted on the voluntary commitments with a number of countries.

The pledge is heavily focused on safety risks but doesn’t address other worries about the latest AI technology, including the effect on jobs and market competition, the environmental resources required to build the models, and copyright concerns about the writings, art and other human handiwork being used to teach AI systems how to produce human-like content.

Last week, OpenAI and The Associated Press announced a deal for the AI company to license AP’s archive of news stories. The amount it will pay for that content was not disclosed.

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Meta unveiled an app to rival Twitter on Wednesday, appearing to target users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk.

Called Threads, the new offering is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”

The app went live just after midnight Wednesday in the U.K. in Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Early celebrity users include chef Gordon Ramsay, the pop star Shakira and Mark Hoyle, better known as the YouTuber LadBaby.

Users get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, according to screenshots provided to media, suggesting that Meta Platforms has been gearing up to directly challenge the platform after Musk’s tumultuous ownership has resulted in a series of unpopular changes that have turned off users and advertisers.

There are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a “thread,” and counters showing the number of likes and replies that a post has received.

“Our vision is that Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video,” the company said.

Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.

Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.

Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.

Meta’s new offering, however, has raised data privacy concerns.

Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info,” according to its data privacy disclosure on the App Store.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointed it out in a snarky tweet saying, “All your Threads are belong to us” that included a screenshot of the disclosure. Musk replied “yeah.”

One place Threads won’t be rolled out is in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.

Meta has informed Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission that it has no plans yet to launch Threads in the 27-nation bloc, commission spokesman Graham Doyle said. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s main privacy regulator for the EU because the company’s regional headquarters is based in Dublin.

While Meta had teased Threads with a listing on Apple’s U.K. App Store earlier this week, it could not be found in the French, German or Dutch versions. The company is working on rolling the app out to more countries but cites regulatory uncertainty for its decision to hold off on a European launch.

Analysts said its success is far from guaranteed, citing Meta’s track record of starting standalone apps that were later shut down.

Also in question is whether it’s the right move for Meta, which has announced tens of thousands of layoffs over the past year amid a tech industry slowdown.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg also has been focusing on the metaverse, investing tens of billions of dollars in the virtual reality concept.

Meta risks “spreading itself too thin,” said Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, a global market research company. “Meta is banking on a moment in time amidst peak Twitter frustration. However, this window of opportunity is already flooded with Twitter alternatives including Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Post.News and Hive, which are all competing for Twitter’s market share.”

Even so, Threads could be a fresh headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.

He’s made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data. He also is now requiring paid verification for users to access the online dashboard TweetDeck.

Musk’s rivalry with Zuckerberg could end up spilling over into real life. In an online exchange the two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a cage match face-off, though it’s unclear if they will actually make it to the ring.

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SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington state judge on Wednesday fined Facebook parent company Meta nearly $25 million for repeatedly and intentionally violating campaign finance disclosure law, in what is believed to be the largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history.

The penalty issued by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North was the maximum allowed for more than 800 violations of Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum was appropriate considering his office previously sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law.

Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Washington’s transparency law requires ad sellers such as Meta to keep and make public the names and addresses of those who buy political ads, the target of such ads, how the ads were paid for and the total number of views of each ad. Ad sellers must provide the information to anyone who asks for it. Television stations and newspapers have complied with the law for decades.

But Meta has repeatedly objected to the requirements, arguing unsuccessfully in court that the law is unconstitutional because it “unduly burdens political speech” and is “virtually impossible to fully comply with.” While Facebook does keep an archive of political ads that run on the platform, the archive does not disclose all the information required under Washington’s law.

“I have one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case — arrogance,” Ferguson said in a news release. “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws. But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking. Where’s the corporate responsibility?”

In 2018, following Ferguson’s first lawsuit, Facebook agreed to pay $238,000 and committed to transparency in campaign finance and political advertising. It subsequently said it would stop selling political ads in the state rather than comply with the requirements.

Nevertheless, the company continued selling political ads, and Ferguson sued again in 2020.

“Meta was aware that its announced ‘ban’ would not, and did not, stop all such advertising from continuing to be displayed on its platform,” North wrote last month in finding that Meta violation’s were intentional.

Each violation of the law is typically punishable by up to $10,000, but penalties can be tripled if a judge finds them to be intentional. North fined Meta $30,000 for each of its 822 violations — about $24.7 million. Ferguson described the fine as the largest campaign finance-related penalty ever issued in the U.S.

Meta, one of the world’s richest companies, reported quarterly earnings Wednesday of $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, on revenue of nearly $28 billion, in the three month period that ended Sept. 30.

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A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Meta revealed Tuesday.

The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before it was able to gain a large audience. Nonetheless, Facebook said it was the largest and most complex Russian propaganda effort that it has found since the invasion began.

The operation involved more than 60 websites created to mimic legitimate news sites including The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Instead of the actual news reported by those outlets, however, the fake sites contained links to Russian propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine. More than 1,600 fake Facebook accounts were used to spread the propaganda to audiences in Germany, Italy, France, the U.K. and Ukraine.

The findings highlighted both the promise of social media companies to police their sites and the peril that disinformation continues to pose.

“Video: False Staging in Bucha Revealed!” claimed one of the fake news stories, which blamed Ukraine for the slaughter of hundreds of Ukrainians in a town occupied by the Russians.

The fake social media accounts were then used to spread links to the fake news stories and other pro-Russian posts and videos on Facebook and Instagram, as well as platforms including Telegram and Twitter. The network was active throughout the summer.

“On a few occasions, the operation’s content was amplified by the official Facebook pages of Russian embassies in Europe and Asia,” said David Agranovich, Meta’s director of threat disruption. “I think this is probably the largest and most complex Russian-origin operation that we’ve disrupted since the beginning of the war in Ukraine earlier this year.”

The network’s activities were first noticed by investigative reporters in Germany. When Meta began its investigation it found that many of the fake accounts had already been removed by Facebook’s automated systems. Thousands of people were following the network’s Facebook pages when they were deactivated earlier this year.

Researchers said they couldn’t directly attribute the network to the Russian government. But Agranovich noted the role played by Russian diplomats and said the operation relied on some sophisticated tactics, including the use of multiple languages and carefully constructed imposter websites.

Since the war began in February, the Kremlin has used online disinformation and conspiracy theories in an effort to weaken international support for Ukraine. Groups linked to the Russian government have accused Ukraine of staging attacks, blamed the war on baseless allegations of U.S. bioweapon development and portrayed Ukrainian refugees as criminals and rapists.

“Even though Russia is fully involved in Ukraine in the military conflict, they’re able to do more than one thing at a time,” said Brian Murphy, a former Department of Homeland Security intelligence chief who is now a vice president at the counter-disinformation firm Logically. “They have never stopped their sophisticated disinformation operations.”

Social media platforms and European governments have tried to stifle the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation, only to see Russia shift tactics.

A message sent to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., asking for a response to Meta’s recent actions was not immediately returned.

Researchers at Meta Platforms Inc., which is based in Menlo Park, California, also exposed a much smaller network that originated in China and attempted to spread divisive political content in the U.S.

The operation reached only a tiny U.S. audience, with some posts receiving just a single engagement. The posts also made some amateurish moves that showed they weren’t American, including some clumsy English language mistakes and a habit of posting during Chinese working hours.

Despite its ineffectiveness, the network is notable because it’s the first identified by Meta that targeted Americans with political messages ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The Chinese posts didn’t support one party or the other but seemed intent on stirring up polarization.

“While it failed, it’s important because it’s a new direction” for Chinese disinformation operations, said Ben Nimmo, who directs global threat intelligence for Meta.

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Meta is putting a lot of virtual eggs — and billions of dollars — into the metaverse basket, and Wall Street is pretty anxious about it.

Shares of the company formerly known as Facebook saw a historic plunge Thursday after the social media giant reported a rare profit decline due to a sharp rise in expenses, shaky ad revenue growth, competition from TikTok and fewer daily U.S. users on its flagship platform.

At the same time, it invested more than $10 billion in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious plan to transform Meta Platforms Inc. into a virtual reality — actually, make that “metaverse-based” — company.

Meta’s shares fell more than 26% to $237.76 in afternoon trading Thursday, lopping more than $230 billion off the company’s overall value, or market capitalization. That’s the largest single-day decline for a company on record.

“Meta is sacrificing its core business model for its fascination with the metaverse,” said Rachel Jones, an analyst with the research firm GlobalData. “Betting big on the metaverse isn’t a bad thing — the technology is set to be huge and provide a multitude of opportunities — but it will take at least another decade to really get going.”

While tech companies are accustomed to making big bets on futuristic-sounding ideas that sometimes become reality — and come with a huge payoff — Wall Street doesn’t like uncertainty. There’s also the inconvenient fact of Facebook’s continued difficulty in dealing with toxic real-world effects on its existing platform.

There’s “continued concern that Facebook’s past challenges will follow Meta into the metaverse,” said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester Research. “The company has work to do to convince consumers that Meta’s expression of the metaverse is a good thing,”

Since Meta took on its new name last fall, the company has been shifting resources and hiring engineers — including from competitors like Apple and Google — who can help Zuckerberg realize his vision.

Think of the metaverse as the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” in which you can immerse yourself instead of just staring at a screen. Theoretically, the metaverse would be a place where people can meet, work and play using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.

It might sound like science fiction, but then again, not long ago so were computers that fit in your pocket, driverless cars and microwaves that talk to you. Technology barrels ahead whether we like it or not and, to quote a vintage Facebook motivational poster in the company’s headquarters, “fortune favors the bold.” Despite an enormous backlash to Facebook’s problems ranging from misinformation and privacy mishaps to teen mental health and hate speech, Zuckerberg continues to believe that bold bets to steer the company in new directions have generally paid off.

In a Wednesday conference call, Zuckerberg said the company’s investments this year will focus on Reels — a TikTok-esque short form video service on Instagram — as well as messaging, ads, commerce, privacy, artificial intelligence “and, of course, the metaverse.”

“Making meaningful progress across all seven of these areas is going to improve the services we offer today and will help power a social, intuitive, and entertaining metaverse,” he said. But he acknowledged that “this fully realized vision is still a ways off, and although the direction is clear, our path ahead is not perfectly defined.”

But while Wall Street’s metaverse optimism appears to fall well short off Zuckerberg’s, Meta’s rivals are ramping up their own metaverse projects. This includes Apple, Google and Microsoft, which recently bought the video game company Activision Blizzard with the hopes of accelerating its ambitions for the metaverse.

But it’s not just the big companies. According to app analytics company SensorTower, 86 apps added “metaverse” to their title or description from November 2021 through January of this year. To date, 552 mobile apps include the term “metaverse” in their title or description.

Stifel analyst Mark Kelley sought to calm investors, noting that Zuckerberg outlined not one but seven investment priorities for the company this year. He said he doesn’t think Meta’s initial goal of reaching 1 billion metaverse users is a stretch — and importantly, he believes only 40% would be gamers, signaling its broader appeal.

Meta’s stock plunge doesn’t discourage metaverse enthusiast and venture capitalist Matthew Ball, who months before Facebook’s renaming started an index fund of metaverse-related companies. Meta the company is one of the 45 stocks in Ball’s index.

“Mark’s focus on the next-generation internet is actually justified by the fact they can see in their core business that growth is slowing, that users are shifting elsewhere, and in particular, young users are shifting to these virtual and immersive worlds where they’re a small participant and where their investments are focused,” he said.

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