Meta

Meta has announced major changes to Instagram that it will be hoping will keep regulators satisfied. Like all social media platforms, Instagram has long been under pressure to do more to protect younger users from seeing inappropriate content; with this in mind, Meta says Teen Accounts will be guided by the PG-13 movie rating.

What this means in practice is that teenagers should only be able to “see content that’s similar to what they’d see in a PG-13 movie, by default”. Acknowledging that this will not be enough to keep everyone happy, parents will also have the option of making controls stricter if they feel it necessary or preferable.

Meta has announced an update to Facebook algorithms which may achieve something quite rare – actually surfacing content that people genuinely want to see. The change affects Reels specifically, and users are being given far greater control over what they see in their feeds.

As well as making it easier to indicate a preference for a particular type of video – or, indeed, express a dislike for others – the update makes it possible to prioritize displaying new content. This is not the end of the story; there are also new “friend bubbles” which Meta hopes will encourage users to engage in conversations about content on the platform.

Advertising is how Meta makes money, hence Facebook users being bombarded with ads and “recommended content”. Starting today you may receive a notification that things are about to change. Unsurprisingly, they are not changing for the better.

Meta says that it is going to “start personalizing content and ad recommendations on our platforms based on people’s interactions with our generative AI features”. What does this mean? Targeted ads, essentially.

A ruling by a Dutch court could ultimately force Meta to make sweeping changes to timeline appearance in the likes of Facebook and Instagram. While it is possible to switch form an algorithm-controlled timeline to a chronological one, the court says that this should be made more accessible.

What could this mean? Right now, it is difficult to say for sure, but it could be the case that – in some jurisdictions, at least – Meta could be required to make a chronological timeline the default.

Meta has announced that it is launching a subscription service in the UK that will let users of Facebook and Instagram pay to avoid ads.

The plan has already been rejected by the European Union, but this does not affect post-Brexit UK. Separate subscription tiers are available for the social platforms’  mobile apps and the web. For anyone unwilling or unable to pay, the Facebook and Instagram experience will remain riddled with ads.

We all know that data is a valuable commodity, whether it’s to build marketing profiles or target advertising. Increasingly it’s also being used to train AI models, but do you know what the sites you use are doing with your information?

Data privacy and removal company Incogni has released its Social Media Privacy Ranking 2025 report, which ranks major social media platforms on user privacy, compliance, and overall data protection practices.

WhatsApp has announced the launch of message translations after years of requests from users. Gone are the days of copying and pasting foreign language text into a translation too – everything is now taken care of in the app.

The aim is to allow for easy communication, wiping out language barriers. This is something that can benefit users having one-to-one chats, but it is also helpful in group chats where two or more languages may be in use. For now, it is something that is rolling out to Android and iOS users, and users with Android devices have access to a unique extra feature.

Facebook is primarily about staying in touch with people, but Facebook Dating is about starting relationships. It seems unlikely that Facebook is the first place people think of when it comes to finding partners, and Meta has just decided to add new features to Facebook Dating and use it as a reason to remind the world of its existence.

Despite the rather older demographic that Facebook generally attracts, Meta says that “hundreds of thousands of young adults in the US and Canada create Facebook Dating profiles every month”. It is for these people that a dating assistant and Meet Cute feature are being added.

Read receipts in WhatsApp are getting an upgrade. The two-tick system that appears below the sent message is loved and hated; yes, it lets you know that a message is sending, that it has been received, and that it has been read – but why is there no response now you know that it has been read!?

Putting aside concerns about why someone may be ignoring you, themes in WhatsApp which change the color of the messaging app can be problematic. If you’d become used to read receipts having blue check marks, the fact that some themes changed that had the potential for confusion. Now WhatsApp is addressing this.

Anyone who was a Facebook user in the early days of the social platform (at least when it was a global platform, not just one limited to students) will remember Facebook Pokes. Poking someone on Facebook (oh, do grow up!) was a wordless – slightly creepy – way of interacting with another person.

A Soke did not really serve any purpose beyond reminding someone of your existence in a somewhat passive-aggressive way. Having experimented with reviving the Poke, Facebook is having another go at making the idea relevant in 2025. This is more than just the return of the Poke; this is the Poke on steroids.

The inescapability of AI continues, and Meta is at the forefront. WhatsApp has already liberally coated itself in features driven by artificial intelligence, and now there are more.

This time around, things are fairly innocuous. The chat platform has now added the option of using AI backgrounds within video chats.

Instagram has a handful of updates to explore – some available to everyone, others in testing with a smaller group. First up there are updates to the handling of DMs, something Instagram is billing as being aimed at creators.

While creators’ inboxes are likely to be busier than the average person, everyone can use the new DM tools which provide new ways to sort and filter messages. Another exciting development sees the testing of picture-in-picture video mode for viewing Reels.

WhatsApp is getting another injection of artificial intelligence in the form of Writing Help. As you would guess from the name, this is a tool designed to help you come up with the perfect message for different scenarios.

With Writing Help being billed as something that could be of assistance in all manner of communication, there will be understandable concerns about privacy. WhatsApp is one step ahead of worried users here, pointing out that Writing Help is built on top of Private Processing technology.

WhatsApp beta testers have access to a new option that allows them to link to a verified Instagram profile, complete with a special icon that others should recognize.

This ability is not necessarily something that will appeal to or interest all WhatsApp users, but it is certainly something that has value for some types of user. Creators are among those who are likely to welcome this addition, as are companies and brands looking to build trust and drive engagement.

WhatsApp would like you to leave a message after the beep. In what feels like a blast from the past, Meta is testing what equates to an answerphone service in WhatsApp.

Currently undergoing beta testing with a limited number of users, the feature seeks to encourage conversation and connectivity. You have almost certainly been notified of a missed WhatsApp call on your phone, but how many times has the person who called followed up with a text message? Probably not often, and this is something WhatsApps is looking to address.