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The Verge
25-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Meta's antitrust defense wraps with one big claim: WhatsApp and Instagram couldn't be better
For five weeks, the Federal Trade Commission asked a federal judge to imagine a world where Instagram and WhatsApp flourished outside Meta's control instead of being acquired by the tech giant. In the sixth and final week of trial, Meta asked Judge James Boasberg to consider that actually, these apps might be as good as they can get. Meta rested its case Wednesday after a brief four days in court (many of its witnesses were also called by the FTC, so it already had the chance to question them in prior weeks). In those final days, Meta called on WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton and an early Instagram infrastructure executive to explain how Meta helped those apps grow in ways they'd be unlikely to otherwise — countering testimony from Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom, who claimed Meta withheld resources to help the app grow and become safer, and believed Instagram would have still been a hit on its own. Meta argues that far from becoming competitors that checked Meta's power, Instagram and WhatsApp might have withered, remaining far less useful or accessible to consumers than they are today. Several Meta witnesses also called out the elephant in the room: TikTok. The FTC says that social media apps primarily focused on entertainment like TikTok and YouTube are not part of the personal social networking services market it claims Meta's monopolized — where users connect to their friends and family. Meta says this definition misses the point of how competition works in the social media space. Rather than focus on how consumers use aspects of the apps, it argues, the judge should focus on which industry players compete with one another. It says what actually constrains its power is the constant fight for users' time and attention, creators' content, and ad dollars. 'Antitrust law does not require consideration of such an 'infinite range' of possible substitutes' Economic experts helped Meta argue that TikTok's rapid growth poses real competition that must be accounted for. Though TikTok has evolved into a much more formidable competitor for Meta's products in the years since the FTC first filed the case in 2020, Boasberg warned in a November order that Meta's argument about competing for time and attention 'is true but beside the point.' Accepting Meta's view would require accepting that 'Meta competes not just with YouTube, TikTok, and X, but also with watching a movie at a friend's house, reading a book at the library, and playing online poker,' he wrote. 'Antitrust law does not require consideration of such an 'infinite range' of possible substitutes.' He also cautioned, however, that the government's claims 'at times strain this country's creaking antitrust precedents to their limits.' During the trial, Boasberg seemed to take seriously a point Meta's chief marketing officer Alex Schultz testified to: that Facebook and Instagram have already added just about as many US users as they could possibly get. The FTC had noted that Meta's user growth rate may look slower because it's already added most of the nation's 250 million potential eligible users, but even in the face of its claimed competition from TikTok and YouTube, that doesn't mean it's not still growing overall. Schultz said that's exactly why competing for attention with those apps has become so important, since if almost everyone has them downloaded, which ones get regularly opened is what matters. Boasberg later asked the FTC's lead economic expert, Scott Hemphill, to respond to this, adding that it would be 'pretty hard' for Instagram to be much bigger in the US than it already is. Hemphill argued that growing Instagram to its massive scale today doesn't mean Meta made social media better for users than it otherwise would be. Without Meta's stewardship, he said, the whole personal social networking market — not just Instagram — might have been a better one for consumers on metrics like consumer welfare and app quality. 'Meta is a proud American success story' Meta has argued the FTC is living in the past and exaggerating the continued importance of friends and family sharing on its apps. Still, the company has recognized some users still want to use its products to connect with people they know in real life, prompting them to roll out 'OG Facebook,' which lets users scroll through a feed of exclusively their mutual connections, avoiding what's become the main Facebook experience in 2025 of mostly algorithmically recommended posts. Head of Facebook Tom Alison testified that on the main feed, a user might have to scroll all day to see all the posts from their friends, as the 'core experience' has moved away from this kind of content. Judge Boasberg will decide whether the experience of connecting with friends on social media is still important enough to be a distinct market Meta dominates. He dismissed Meta's attempt to get an early ruling in its favor, however, saying he's not prepared to issue a verdict yet. Should he side with the FTC, the government would likely ask him to consider tearing away the very apps Meta bought to expand its empire. Meta says that would stifle the exact kind of innovation that the FTC claims it's promoting. 'After six weeks trying to make their case to undo acquisitions made over a decade ago and show that no deal is ever truly final, the only thing the FTC showed was the dynamic, hyper-competitive nature of the past, present and future of the technology industry,' Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro says in a statement. 'Meta is a proud American success story, and we look forward to continuing to innovate and serve the people and businesses who love our services.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Yahoo built AI-driven content discovery into its revamped news app
In April 2024, Yahoo acquired Artifact, a tool that uses AI to recommend news to readers. Yahoo folded Artifact's—which was cofounded by Instagram cofounders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom—into its revamped news app to help surface and curate content for readers. 5 Navy SEAL strategies to turn stress into success in any situation Going 'AI first' appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo Rite Aid closing stores update: See the list of 68 pharmacy locations that will shutter across 7 states Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone came on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about the acquisition, the company's approach to news curation, and what the future could hold for the private equity-owned company. This interview has been edited and condensed. This embedded content is not available in your region. Yahoo acquired news discovery platform Artifact last year. Now, the technology is used in Yahoo's revamped news app. Why did you acquire the platform? Artifact had come up as a startup founded by the Instagram cofounders. It used AI and advanced algorithms to pull in really great content and also do a great job of surfacing it. When we read that they were going to shut it down, I reached out to Kevin Systrom immediately to say we should talk about acquiring it. We basically took the backbone of the Artifact app and made it the Yahoo News app. We look to acquire companies if they can fill a gap for us. We're not in the game of acquihires. It has to be a product fit. We're the No. 1 news publication in the U.S. in terms of total traffic. We got to that point by being an aggregator. We're aggregating thousands of sources and then using algorithms to surface the right ones for each of our millions of users. With Artifact, how are you using AI to personalize a user's newsfeed? We hope the end user doesn't think about it at all. It's just about the Yahoo News app getting smarter at delivering the right content to you at the right time. We're very pro publisher and we are a big part of the ecosystem. We send them traffic and give them revenue as part of it. We've been doing that for over 20 years. That is, in some ways, pro publisher, but AI summaries come up on search and articles get summarized via bullet points. That means users may not actually read the articles, and media companies will get fewer page views. I would think about it a little bit differently. If you go back to the beginning of how Yahoo has always worked with publishers, we're a huge part of the ecosystem in sending traffic out. It's very important to us to keep the ecosystem very healthy, at least how it historically was. I understand your point, and certainly that's a new factor for publishers to worry about in terms of AI companies sucking in all their data. Everything we do is with the publisher. We brought all of our publisher relationships to Artifact. Even when there's a summary, it's not trying to [stop people looking at] the article, it is trying to pull out the highlights of [the article]. We will also summarize a topic across publishers just for helpful understanding. But again, it all goes back to sending people down the funnel to [media] properties. But they would only go down that funnel if they want to learn more, right? I don't know how much time you've spent with any of these apps, but I'd say they're bullet points, short tidbits at the top. They're really not summarizing the whole article. A news algorithm designed for people can contribute to their biases. Yahoo's role is nonpartisan, but how do you think about balancing the goal of providing a customer service with preventing the information that only reinforces a reader's beliefs? We think a lot about it. We try to be very nonpartisan. It's a hard job. One of the signs we're getting it right is I get nasty emails from people on both sides. Part of our job with the algorithm is to make sure readers don't go too [far] into the rabbit hole and that [they] actually can continue to see a balance of things. At the same time, our job is to customize for them as an individual, so the algorithms take that into account. But there are a couple other things happening. We also balance [AI curation with] human curation, which is part of Yahoo being the trusted guide for all these years. Then of course, we are working with trusted publishers that we have long standing relationships with—not sharing user generated content. How does the app fit into Yahoo's business strategy? In any given month, we are usually the No. 2 ranked property on comScore in the US multiplatform or in the top five across desktop and mobile. We're in the top five with Gen Z, and 90% of internet users in the US touch Yahoo in any given month. So monetization of one property is not our issue. We monetize very well. Most of it's through advertising, like with any major freemium publisher or product. A certain percentage of our users subscribe to our more premium offerings in given categories like sports or finance or email. News is just a part of that. You've said job No. 1 is making every one of these products and brands under Yahoo superstrong on their own within the categories in which they operate. There've been news reports saying you might want to spin off different products and take them public. There've been other reports saying you might want to take the company public as a whole. I guess I'm trying to get a sense of what you think the future is for Yahoo. I would answer that maybe two ways. It's our job to create value and grow the business, which 30 years old. But for those who don't know, we were spun out of Verizon by Apollo, the world's largest private equity firm in September 2021, then I came in as CEO. Most private equity firms want returns. There are two ways to get a return. If you're a private equity firm, you could go public or you can sell. It is also possible that your investors feel that they have a tiger by the tail and want to hold out longer. I've founded startups, I've worked at big public companies. It doesn't matter the size of your company, the name of the game is growth either way. That's also a sign of a healthy company. It's a sign that you're delivering for users. We'll create a very valuable company, whether it's us stand-alone going public, or it's someone acquiring the company. That said, we definitely have inbounds all the time, especially because it is owned by private equity of people trying to pick off part of our pieces of our company. Part of the private equity game is probably to listen to everybody and understand what your options are. Every search engine tech company that puts out any kind of content or that aggregates content is partnering with LLMs like Open AI or Anthropic. Who are you partnering with? Going back to the late 2000s, Yahoo has had a longstanding relationship with Microsoft, which led to an easy relationship with Microsoft copilot. We have the second largest email platform after Gmail, it's in the hundreds of millions of users. Even a year before Apple announced this Apple Intelligence series of products that would show up in their mail product, we announced AI in Yahoo Mail, helping you search mail, summarize it, write, edit, and more. That partnership was done with OpenAI. We also are partners with Anthropic, with Google, and others on other products that we have. We work with everybody so far and we'll continue to do so. We're also internally building a bunch of our own AI products. I think it's too important to leave it purely to third parties. We have to have our own expertise there. This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Fast Company
12-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
How Yahoo built AI-driven content discovery into its revamped news app
In April 2024, Yahoo acquired Artifact, a tool that uses AI to recommend news to readers. Yahoo folded Artifact's—which was cofounded by Instagram cofounders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom—into its revamped news app to help surface and curate content for readers. Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone came on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about the acquisition, the company's approach to news curation, and what the future could hold for the private equity-owned company. This interview has been edited and condensed. Artifact had come up as a startup founded by the Instagram cofounders. It used AI and advanced algorithms to pull in really great content and also do a great job of surfacing it. When we read that they were going to shut it down, I reached out to Kevin Systrom immediately to say we should talk about acquiring it. We basically took the backbone of the Artifact app and made it the Yahoo News app. We look to acquire companies if they can fill a gap for us. We're not in the game of acquihires. It has to be a product fit. We're the No. 1 news publication in the U.S. in terms of total traffic. We got to that point by being an aggregator. We're aggregating thousands of sources and then using algorithms to surface the right ones for each of our millions of users.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI chatbots are 'juicing engagement' instead of being useful, Instagram co-founder warns
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to 'juice engagement' by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent 'a force that's hurting us,' comparing them to those used by social media companies to expand aggressively. 'You can see some of these companies going down the rabbit hole that all the consumer companies have gone down in trying to juice engagement,' he said at StartupGrind this week. 'Every time I ask a question, at the end it asks another little question to see if it can get yet another question out of me.' The comments come amid criticism of ChatGPT for being too nice to users instead of directly answering their questions. OpenAI has apologized for the problem and blamed 'short-term feedback' from users for it. Systrom suggested that chatbots being overly engaging is not a bug, but an intentional feature designed for AI companies to show off metrics like time spent and daily active users. AI companies should be 'laser-focused' on providing high-quality answers rather than moving metrics in the easiest way possible, he said. Systrom didn't name any specific AI companies in his remarks. He didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In response, OpenAI pointed TechCrunch to its user specs, which state that its AI model "often does not have all of the information" to provide a good answer and may ask for "clarification or more details." But unless questions are too vague or difficult to answer, the AI should "take a stab at fulfilling the request and tell the user that it could be more helpful with certain information," the specs read.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI chatbots are 'juicing engagement' instead of being useful, Instagram co-founder warns
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to 'juice engagement' by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent 'a force that's hurting us,' comparing them to those used by social media companies to expand aggressively. 'You can see some of these companies going down the rabbit hole that all the consumer companies have gone down in trying to juice engagement,' he said at StartupGrind this week. 'Every time I ask a question, at the end it asks another little question to see if it can get yet another question out of me.' The comments come amid criticism of ChatGPT for being too nice to users instead of directly answering their questions. OpenAI has apologized for the problem and blamed 'short-term feedback' from users for it. Systrom suggested that chatbots being overly engaging is not a bug, but an intentional feature designed for AI companies to show off metrics like time spent and daily active users. AI companies should be 'laser-focused' on providing high-quality answers rather than moving metrics in the easiest way possible, he said. Systrom didn't name any specific AI companies in his remarks. He didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In response, OpenAI pointed TechCrunch to its user specs, which state that its AI model "often does not have all of the information" to provide a good answer and may ask for "clarification or more details." But unless questions are too vague or difficult to answer, the AI should "take a stab at fulfilling the request and tell the user that it could be more helpful with certain information," the specs read. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Sign in to access your portfolio
