Tech
Meta deletes 600K accounts linked to predatory behavior in teen safety push

Meta introduced new safety tools for teen accounts on Wednesday, along with stats that show the impact of their latest safety features.
In a blog post, Meta said that it removed approximately 635,000 Instagram accounts earlier this year, part of a larger effort to make Instagram safer for teens.
The new features include the option for teens to view Safety Tips, to block and report accounts with just one button, and to view the date a person joined Instagram, which is all "designed to give teens age-appropriate experiences and prevent unwanted contact."

Credit: Meta
"At Meta, we work to protect young people from both direct and indirect harm. Our efforts range from Teen Accounts, which are designed to give teens age-appropriate experiences and prevent unwanted contact, to our sophisticated technology that finds and removes exploitative content," the platform said in a press release. "Today, we’re announcing a range of updates to bolster these efforts, and we’re sharing new data on the impact of our latest safety tools."
However, Common Sense Media Founder and CEO James P. Steyer told Mashable that to protect kids online, Meta's measures are "too little, too late."
"For years, the company has prioritized the relentless pursuit of profits over our kids’ safety, ignoring repeated warnings from parents, experts, and even its own employees. These new features are a small, reactive concession that wouldn’t be necessary if Meta had been proactive about taking responsibility in the first place," Steyer said.
Meta makes moves to protect teens and kids on Instagram

Credit: Meta
Teens on Instagram blocked accounts one million times in June and reported another one million after seeing a Safety Notice on Instagram, Meta reported. Last year, the company implemented a new nudity protection feature that blurs suspicious images. Now, the company says the vast majority — 99 percent — keep the tool activated. In June, over 40 percent of those blurred images stayed blurred, "significantly reducing exposure to unwanted nudity," the blog post read. Meta recently started giving users a warning when they attempted to forward a blurred image, asking them to "think twice before forwarding suspected nude images." And in May, 45 percent of people who saw the warning didn't forward the blurred message.
The platform is also implementing protections for adult-managed Instagram accounts that feature — or represent — children. Among those protections are the new Teen Account protections and additional notifications about privacy settings. The company says it will also stop these accounts from showing up as recommendations for adult accounts with suspicious behavior. Finally, the company will bring its Hidden Words feature to these kid-focused accounts, which should help prevent sexualized comments from appearing on these accounts' posts.
As part of these teen safety efforts, Meta has removed "nearly 135k violating Instagram accounts that were sexualizing these accounts," and 500,000 accounts "that were linked to the original accounts," according to the blog post.
This move from Meta is part of its continued efforts to make Facebook and Instagram safer for kids and teens — but it also comes as the company successfully lobbied to stall the Kids Online Safety Act in 2024. The Kids Online Safety Act was reintroduced this year, despite, according to Politico, a "concerted Meta lobbying campaign" to keep the bill out of Congress. Meta opposes the bill because it says it violates the First Amendment, although critics argue that its opposition is financially motivated.
This announcement comes after Meta announced it removed 10 million fake profiles impersonating creators as part of a broader push to clean up users' Facebook Feeds.
UPDATE: Jul. 23, 2025, 8:55 p.m. EDT This article has been updated with a quote from Common Sense Media Founder and CEO James P. Steyer.
Tech
Stop your AI subscriptions and get an all-in-one tool for life

TL;DR: Access dozens of top AI tools in one platform — 1min.AI bundles content, chat, design, audio, video, PDF, and more under a single lifetime license for just $79.97.
One of the bigger annoyances of the digital age is the subscription model. Juggling a half-dozen AI tools, each with its own login credentials, pricing tiers, and learning curve, is exhausting. That’s why 1min.AI can be a helpful alternative to the usual chaos.
It’s like your favorite productivity cheat code — an all-in-one platform that brings together top-tier AI features for writing, design, video, audio, and more under a single dashboard. And you can get a lifetime subscription to the Advanced Business Plan for just $79.97 (down from the MSRP of $540) — with no recurring fees, ever.
Need blog posts written in your brand voice? Check. Want to generate YouTube thumbnails, edit PDFs with AI, or even clean up audio? Covered. From chatting with advanced models like GPT-4o and Claude 3 to turning PDFs into summaries, translating audio, or batch-generating marketing copy, 1min.AI does it fast — like, one-minute fast. That’s the whole point.
Whether you’re a solo creator or running a small team, 1min.AI simplifies your stack. You’ll have access to multiple flagship models like GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama, plus unlimited brand voice slots, unlimited prompt storage, and 4,000,000 credits/month to spend on whatever you want to make.
If you’re tired of managing a spreadsheet of AI tools (we’ve been there), this is your chance to condense it all into one slick, ever-evolving platform — without the subscription guilt of drain.
Get lifetime access to the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan for just $79.97 while you can and streamline your digital tools forever.
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Tech
Anthropic reportedly cut OpenAI access to Claude

It seems OpenAI has been caught with its hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Anthropic has reportedly cut off OpenAI’s access to Anthropic’s APIs over what Anthropic is calling a terms of service breach.
As reported by Wired, multiple sources claim that OpenAI has been cut off from Anthropic’s APIs. Allegedly, OpenAI was using Anthropic’s Claude Code to assist in creating and testing OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-5, which is due to release in August.
According to these sources, OpenAI was plugging into Claude’s internal tools instead of using the chat interface. From there, they used the API to run tests against GPT-5 to check things like coding and creative writing against Claude to compare performance. OpenAI allegedly also tested safety prompts related to things like CSAM, self-harm, and defamation. This would give OpenAI data that it could then use to fine-tune GPT-5 to make it more competitive against Claude.
Unfortunately for OpenAI, this violates Anthropic’s commercial terms of service, which ban companies from using Anthropic’s tools to build competitor AI products.
“Customer may not and must not attempt to access the Services to build a competing product or service, including to train competing AI models or resell the Services except as expressly approved by Anthropic,” the terms read.
OpenAI responded by saying that what the company was doing was an industry standard, as all the AI companies test their models against the competing models. The company then went on to say that it respected Anthropic’s decision but expressed disappointment in having its API access shut off, especially considering that Anthropic’s access to OpenAI’s API remains open.
A spokesperson told Wired that OpenAI’s access would be reinstated for “benchmarking and safety evaluations.”
It’s not the first time this year that Anthropic has cut off API access. In June, the company cut off Windsurf’s API access after rumors that it was being sold to OpenAI. That deal ultimately fell through, but Anthropic’s cofounder, Jared Kaplan, told TechCrunch at the time that “it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.”
Anthropic has also tweaked its rate limits for Claude, which will take effect in late August, with one of the reasons being that a small number of users are violating the company’s policy by sharing and reselling accounts.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
Tech
Amazon is toying around with putting ads in Alexa+

It’s the end of another quarter, which means it’s time for yet another earnings call with concerning ideas for generating more revenue. This time around, it's Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who told shareholders on Thursday that there’s “significant financial opportunity” in delivering ads through Alexa+, the company’s new AI-powered voice assistant.
“I think over time, there will be opportunities, you know, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations to have advertising play a role — to help people find discovery and also as a lever to drive revenue,” Jassy said, per the investor call transcript.
Since launching earlier this year, Alexa+ has reportedly reached millions of users. Unlike the original Alexa, which mostly turns off lights and sets timers, Alexa+ is designed to be more conversational, context-aware, and AI-driven. It can help you plan your date night, entertain your kids, and even dabble in basic image and video generation — all under the banner of your $14.99/month Prime subscription.
But so far, Amazon Alexa has been an ad-free experience. It's also more than 10 years old, and it doesn't make money; thus, it's been deemed a "colossal failure" by those within the company.
Of course, Amazon isn’t alone in trying to figure out how to make AI pay for itself. Both Google and OpenAI have explored ad integration in their AI products as a way to generate revenue. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in particular, has made a notable pivot: once firmly against advertising in his chatbot, he’s since reversed course, possibly opening the door for ads in future versions of ChatGPT.
Whatever the motivation, injecting ads into Alexa+ would mark a major shift in both user experience and Amazon’s strategy, especially given the assistant’s long history of being expensive to maintain and hard to monetize. Ad-supported Alexa+ could be Amazon’s attempt to finally turn its once-money-burning smart assistant into a revenue machine, without hiking the subscription fee (at least for now).
Alexa+ is still new, and what an ad-supported experience would actually look like remains unclear. According to Jassy, the idea is to frame ads as helpful, something to assist customers in discovering products they might be interested in buying.
-
Entertainment5 months ago
New Kid and Family Movies in 2025: Calendar of Release Dates (Updating)
-
Tech5 months ago
The best sexting apps in 2025
-
Tech5 months ago
Every potential TikTok buyer we know about
-
Tech5 months ago
iOS 18.4 developer beta released — heres what you can expect
-
Politics5 months ago
DOGE-ing toward the best Department of Defense ever
-
Tech6 months ago
Are You an RSSMasher?
-
Politics5 months ago
Toxic RINO Susan Collins Is a “NO” on Kash Patel, Trashes Him Ahead of Confirmation Vote
-
Politics5 months ago
After Targeting Chuck Schumer, Acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin Expands ‘Operation Whirlwind’ to Investigate Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia for Calling for “Actual Weapons” Against Elon Musk