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Social Distance

The end of the everything app: The thinking behind Meta’s move to tear Instagram in half and spin out Meta AI

Meta is finally realizing Facebook isn’t cool.

2/28/25 11:23AM

Some of Meta’s features want to move out of Mom’s basement.

Yesterday we learned that the social media behemoth may spin off Reels, its short-form video product and TikTok competitor, from the Instagram mothership, the The Information reported. Per CNBC, we also learned it’s launching Meta AI, its ChatGPT competitor that had previously existed as a chatbot on its Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger apps, as its own stand-alone app.

Why the sudden unbundling? We have some ideas.

It’s a way to set itself apart from uncool Facebook. While breaking off apps has been a standard playbook for Meta over the years, the need to distance its new apps from its old has lately become more acute. Facebook, and to a lesser extent Instagram, have grown long in the tooth and, as the kids say, cheugy. They certainly don’t poll well among young people, who prefer TikTok and SnapChat. Separate apps could help Meta shed some of its most unattractive baggage. Personal request from a not-quite-young person: please spin out Marketplace, too.
It lets Meta focus on the competition. Breaking off Reels and Meta AI allows Meta to more directly compete with TikTok and ChatGPT, which are typically at the top of the app store while Facebook and Instagram languish further back. Rather than simply copying its competitor apps and then burying that functionality in the bowels of its existing offerings, Meta is now seemingly giving users what they want: the other apps. It can also focus more on making these smaller apps better or at least more comparable to their competition (read: TikTok’s algorithm is a lot better). It’s worked before — look no further than Meta’s successful launch of Threads, a stand-alone competitor to Twitter/X that launched in 2023 and already has 300 million monthly active users.
Americans want an app for everything, not an everything app. It’s notable that this move from Meta runs counter to its previous push to be the WeChat of the West, a mega app that’s all things to all users, offering everything from social media to subscriptions, food delivery to friendship, payments to plane tickets. It’s a concept that has never really caught on in the US, and it looks like perhaps Meta is realizing this. Of course, Elon Musk is still carrying this mantle aloft at X, which most recently partnered with Visa so users can make real-time payments on the “everything app.”

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5