The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Canada introduces the Safe Social Media Act, a bill that would ban social media for children under 16 and establish safety standards for AI chatbots (Maria Cheng/Reuters) [32d]
Instagram expands Your Algorithm to its main feed, letting users choose topics they want to see, and is working to support requests for people, moods, and more (Jay Peters/The Verge) [32d]
YouTube rolls out a new in-app messaging system for sharing videos and having 1:1 conversations; it discontinued its previous Messages feature in 2019 (Abner Li/9to5Google) [32d]
Amazon secures a $17.5B loan from Citigroup and other banks, after selling CA$14B in bonds on Monday, the largest corporate debt offering in Canadian dollars (Bloomberg) [32d]
CISA shortens the deadline for US agencies to fix the most critical vulnerabilities in their networks to three days, citing hackers' use of AI (Raphael Satter/Reuters) [32d]
Chinese companies are implementing "quiet" AI-driven layoffs to avoid labor laws that require government approval for job cuts exceeding 10% of a workforce (Laurie Chen/Reuters) [32d]
Sources: Microsoft's Xbox division is planning major layoffs next month and significant budget cuts for marketing and some other areas (Jason Schreier/Bloomberg) [32d]
Sources: Sea's Shopee is cutting hundreds of developer jobs globally; the reductions started this week and amount to about 8% of Shopee's developer workforce (Bloomberg) [32d]
OpenAI says it has banned China-linked accounts that used ChatGPT to draft social media influence campaigns targeting US debates over tariffs and data centers (Sam Sabin/Axios) [32d]
Oracle reports Q4 revenue up 21% YoY to $19.18B, vs. $19.1B est., and expects to raise ~$40B through a combination of debt and equity financing in FY 2027 (Juby Babu/Reuters) [32d]
Anthropic releases two policy proposals on how governments should address catastrophic risks and manage labor market disruption from advanced AI systems (Anthropic) [32d]
Dario Amodei says frontier models should face mandatory third-party testing for cyber, bio, and autonomy risks, in addition to overall transparency requirements (Dario Amodei/@darioamodei) [32d]
Dario Amodei outlines policy responses to AI's exponential progress across regulation and public safety, macroeconomics and taxes, science, geopolitics, more (Dario Amodei) [32d]
OpenAI and Visa partner to let AI agents make purchases online after users give their permission and to explore enterprise applications for AI-driven payments (Paige Smith/Bloomberg) [32d]