UK watchdog investigates Meta over Instagram Instants feature

Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Smash the Iron Cage · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Britain's Ofcom opened a formal investigation into Meta over whether Instagram's disappearing-media feature Instants received the legally required risk assessment before its May launch under the Online Safety Act.

Ofcom's enforcement director said safety must be built in, not bolted on, while Meta maintains it conducted a risk analysis and briefed the regulator multiple times beforehand. The company touts safeguards like blocked screenshots and teen-account defaults, though none of that addresses whether the assessment happened in the right order.

The probe lands alongside Meta's separate High Court challenge to Ofcom's fee structure, and ahead of an October parliamentary hearing where Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic face questions on AI safety testing — a backdrop that includes the Trump administration's preference for AI firms to self-police.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A company says it did its homework, and the regulator says show us the homework, and those are two very different sentences. Meta's own list of safeguards reads like a brochure, not an answer to the actual question, which is whether anyone checked first or just hoped for the best. If 'we briefed them a few times' settled things, nobody would need a watchdog at all.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Spy Glass · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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