Meta Apps - Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads

Meta platforms Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads on an Apple iPhone (Getty Images)

INSTA PLUS MAX

Meta is testing out premium subscriptions on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp

Ahead of its earnings, expected after the bell today, Meta has announced plans to trial a paid tier on its apps.

1/28/26 7:37AM

The list of periodic charges granting entry to much of the essential watching, listening, and even tasting that modern life demands might now be getting one subscription service longer.

On Monday, Meta told TechCrunch that it plans to trial new premium subscriptions on social media apps Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp in the coming months. According to the company, the paid offerings will give users access to exclusive features such as expanded AI capabilities, though the “core experiences” will (supposedly) remain the same for users in the ad-supported tier.

Deals on Reels

Still, unlike Spotify and Netflix, which actually pay for the content on their platforms and are only incrementally looking to advertising to juice up their bottom lines, Meta is already squeezing plenty of revenue from users without a paid subscriber model. In its third-quarter results back in October, the company reported total revenues of $51.2 billion — about $50 billion (~98%) of which came directly from advertising.

Meta’s ability to turn eyeballs into cash has seen it rake in a cumulative $813 billion from ads since 2019. And, having put ads in WhatsApp for the first time last June, this figure is only expected to get larger when the tech behemoth reports its quarterly earnings later today. Indeed, Meta’s only division in which consumers pay up rather than advertisers — Reality Labs — is also the only one that continues to light billions of dollars on fire.

Face value

The new tiered model comes as Meta looks to expand its AI offering, with the tech giant outlining plans to scale Manus — the web-browsing, content-producing AI agent it acquired right at the end of 2025 — and short-form video generator Vibes as part of the subscription plans.

But what might convince some more social media-savvy users to start paying up are additional features designed to give “more control” over Instagram accounts in particular, including creating unlimited audience lists, seeing which followers don’t follow them back, and viewing a Story without the poster seeing that they viewed it.

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.

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Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

19h

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

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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

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

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

Rani Molla22h

Tesla used skewed data in push for European FSD approval, Reuters finds

Tesla has used highly questionable safety stats in an effort to win over European regulators and rekindle sales in the region, according to a Reuters investigation.

Tesla reportedly pitched regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands with claims that its Full Self-Driving (FSD) tech is over 7x safer than human drivers. However, independent researchers told Reuters that the stats are misleading because Tesla compares airbag-deployment crashes involving FSD-equipped vehicles with much broader US crash statistics, while also benchmarking newer Teslas against the entire US vehicle fleet, which is significantly older on average.

Despite the flawed metrics, the Dutch regulator approved FSD in April, saying its decision was based on its own “tests, analyses and verifications,” and Tesla is now pushing for EU-wide clearance. A version of FSD is currently available in five European markets.

Exclusive: Tesla presented misleading ‘Full Self-Driving’ safety data to European regulators

Rani Molla6/12/26

Report: Microsoft weighs Xbox spin-off amid major overhaul

Microsoft is reportedly considering spinning out or restructuring its struggling Xbox unit, per The Information. While new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who took over in February, is preparing for layoffs, she’s simultaneously planning to boost investment in its biggest franchises like “Halo,” “Fallout,” and “Minecraft.”

The latest potential shake-up comes as the gaming division battles major headwinds, following a massive 33% plunge in Q3 console sales and a recent move to slash Game Pass prices while removing new “Call of Duty” titles.