<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meta-smart-glasses-face-recognition-nametag-connections/">A WIRED analysis</a> found that Meta has incorporated facial recognition technology into apps that connect to the company’s smart glasses.
The feature, called “NameTag,” was integrated into the app through several updates in 2026. It identifies people through the glasses’ camera and alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone, according to WIRED. Although the feature has not yet been enabled, NameTag relies on three AI models implemented through Meta’s servers and stored on users&#8217; phones.
“One model detects faces, one crops them, and a third encodes them into biometric data,” WIRED reported. 
This discovery, identified by independent experts cited by WIRED, suggests that Meta has already distributed facial-recognition code to customers&#8217; devices while publicly claiming it is still “thinking through” whether to deploy the technology. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html">According to the New York Times</a>, Meta said in February that it would not “roll anything out” before taking a “thoughtful approach.” 
“While we frequently hear about the interest in this type of feature — and some products already exist in the market — we’re still thinking through options,” a Meta executive told the Times. 
At the time, Meta’s smart glasses only activated their cameras when users took photos, recorded videos, or interacted with the AI assistant. The company, however, was also developing a feature known as “super sensing,” which would allow the cameras to operate continuously throughout the day. According to reports, facial recognition was a key component of that effort. 
WIRED shared its findings with Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab. Although NameTag is not available to consumers, Quintin said the feature appears &#8220;nearly ready to go,” with the core facial-recognition components “already in Meta’s companion app.” 
“Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine,” Quintin said.
While a feature like this could benefit the blind, which is one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg supported research into this field, it also poses significant dangers — especially when the company begins embedding this technology without altering its original statement. In April, more than 70 advocacy groups called on Meta to abandon Nametag, arguing it could allow stalkers and abusers to covertly identify strangers in public.
Meta has denied that it is preparing to launch the feature.
Spokesman Ryan Daniels said that despite what he described as “sensational reporting,” the company is merely “exploring” the technology.
“Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything,” Daniels said. “If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a central face database.&#8221; 
However, WIRED reported that NameTag is capable of pulling faceprints from Meta&#8217;s servers and storing them on a consumer&#8217;s phone.  
Meta previously faced scutiny over facial recognition technology used on Facebook. Beginning in 2010, the company deployed software that analyzed photographs and suggested tags for users who appeared in images. According to WIRED, the system became “one of the largest consumer face-recognition systems ever deployed.” 
European regulators and U.S. privacy advocates raised concerns about the technology&#8217;s legality in 2011. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion settlement to the Federal Trade Commission as part of a broader privacy case that included scrutiny of the company&#8217;s handling of user data and facial-recognition practices.

Daily Life In Caen

Meta Smart Glasses Platform Contains Face-Recognition Code, Report Says

Facebook

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Mark Zuckerberg

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Don’t Fall For This Hot MAGA Influencer

Artificial Intelligence

influencer

Instagram

MAGA

scams

Social Media

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
When news broke about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/verdict-reached-in-landmark-social-media-media-addiction-trial">Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube</a> forking over $3 million to a 19-year-old user caught in the spider’s web, my first thought was something like, “Yeah! Screw Mark Zuckerberg!” A tech giant takedown warms the heart. 
My second thought was, “Wait, so can we all sue Facebook now?” What about “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” espresso martinis, Ben &amp; Jerry’s, Reddit comment sections, IKEA, pressure washing videos, Chick-fil-A, Roblox, weed gummies, March Madness, and Amazon Prime? There are countless other things we can’t quit.
With roughly <a href="https://youtu.be/iwPbm2To4Qw?t=97">10,000</a> other cases in the works against social media at large, it’s game on in the courts. “We’re figuring out that there is a causal connection between cancer and cigarettes,” tech journalist <a href="https://youtu.be/iwPbm2To4Qw?t=416">Jacob Ward</a> told CNN, likening the moment to the <a href="https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-tobacco-control/master-settlement-agreement">Big Tobacco</a> settlement of the &#8217;90s. “We’re at the beginning of an absolutely new era in thinking about how social media is really working on kids.” 
Using this analogy, despite raging against the machine, all the kids are still holding full packs of “cigarettes” and “chain smoking.” 
A <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-25/social-media-lawsuit-trial-meta-google-verdict">Los Angeles Times</a> headline read: “Landmark L.A. jury verdict finds Instagram, YouTube were designed to addict kids.” Oh really? Was it the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/14/meta-and-google-trial-are-infinite-scroll-and-autoplay-creating-addicts">infinite scroll</a>, autoplay, <a href="https://ioufinancial.com/financial-insights/10-social-media-engagement-tactics-that-can-help-you-grow-your-audience-2/">polls</a>, quizzes, reels, algorithms, notifications, FOMO, or <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11594359/">dopamine dumps</a> that gave it away? Maybe it’s a little confusing since most of us describe our social media feeds as “addictive,” while social media calls this business model “<a href="https://bitly.com/blog/how-to-increase-social-media-engagement/?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=20610041883&amp;gbraid=0AAAAAC3Maq4pYCZkL2FiRyXbdXH2hxDwC&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwspPOBhB9EiwATFbi5PLOH9cbbGJVhE56QWJTyENp_urJ-Q3hU4hy3GOj_0_Ywy12R73pwBoCQmcQAvD_BwE">engaging</a>.” Tomato, to-mah-to.
It all made me wonder when the responsibility for making good decisions floated off of our own shoulders and onto the desk of Deborah in HR. This is America. We’re free to like what we like and do what we want, and then sue the crap out of the companies that give us what we desire.
Has anyone ever sued Doritos for being too delicious? Yes. In 2025, <a href="https://cen.acs.org/policy/ultra-processed-food-pfas-pesticide-antibiotic-resistance-atrazine-cancer/103/web/2025/12">San Francisco</a> went after a bunch of snack companies, including Doritos’ parent PepsiCo, for “cheap, colorful, flavorful, and addictive” products, like they were looking directly at a bag of <a href="https://www.doritos.com/products/doritos-dinamita-flamin-hot-queso-flavored-rolled-tortilla-chips">Doritos Dinamita Flamin’ Hot Queso</a>.
Bringing a lawsuit against hot coffee before it was cool, <a href="https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts#:~:text=At%20least%20one%20juror%20later,attaching%20enough%20importance%20to%20that.%E2%80%9D">79-year-old Stella Liebeck</a> famously won $3 million in damages from <a href="https://www.tortmuseum.org/liebeck-v-mcdonalds/">McDonald’s in 1992</a> after she spilled coffee in her lap, giving herself third-degree burns. It sounds terrible. But McDonald’s didn’t pour hot coffee on Stella; Stella did, while holding it between her legs to add cream and sugar. 
Three years later, the bit appeared on “<a href="https://youtu.be/Qpru2vsqdN8?t=98">Seinfeld</a>” when Kramer scalded his groin with hot coffee in a movie theater. “We got a chance?” Kramer asks his defense attorney, Jackie Chiles. “You get me one coffee drinker on that jury, you’re gonna walk out of there a rich man,” says Chiles.
The scalding liquid lawsuits kept coming. There was the <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2017/05/19/starbucks-must-pay-jacksonville-woman-100000-hot-coffee-spill/15755762007/">$100,000 Starbucks payout in 2017</a> after Joanne Mogavero spilled hot coffee on herself. And a high-profile settlement in 2025 paid out <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-awarded-50-million-starbucks-hot-tea-rcna196616">$50 million</a> to 25-year-old Postmates driver <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/14/business/starbucks-hot-coffee-driver-verdict#:~:text=the%20US%20market-,Starbucks%20ordered%20to%20pay%20$50%20million%20to%20delivery%20driver%20burned,and%20onto%20Garcia%2C%20Parker%20said.">Michael Garcia</a>, who spilled hot Starbucks tea in his lap and will be best known by strangers for his “<a href="https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/starbucks-just-got-some-very-bad-news-its-a-timely-warning-for-every-other-company/91164537">penis injury</a>.” 
We also sue for the drugs we misuse. In 2022, Johnson &amp; Johnson and three major distributors finalized a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-opioids-camden-dec0982c4c40ad08b2b30b725471e000">$26 billion</a> settlement, set to be paid out to just about every state in the U.S. in light of the opioid crisis. In 2025, Purdue Pharma and its owners agreed on a <a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/ag-sunday-announces-historic-settlement-with-purdue-pharma-and-sackler-family-regarding-manufacture-distribution-of-opioids-that-fueled-addiction-epidemic/">$7.4 billion</a> settlement for their part in the drug epidemic that continues to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/understanding-the-opioid-overdose-epidemic.html#:~:text=The%20rise%20in%20opioid%20overdose,2">rage on</a>. 
But are these high-profile settlements doing anything other than temporarily stinging the pockets of megacorporations? Will people decide to do less drugs, be more careful with their coffee, and skip the Doritos if there’s a federally mandated warning label on the package? We were already eating bright orange, cheese-dusted corn chips. It’s not like we thought they were carrots. 
When one 2024 <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/latino-parents-support-policies-addressing-social-medias-impact-on-childrens-mental-health/">study</a> shared a warning about social media use before asking Latino parents if they were now likely to monitor or limit their kids’ time on the platforms, 76% of them said yes. By then, we’d all heard about the <a href="https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/social-media-risks-tips-to-keep-your-children-safe">dangers</a>. So what were those parents waiting for?
Sometimes, even severe warnings can have the opposite effect. When I stopped by a bistro in Seattle, forced to weave through a gaggle of duck-costumed PETA protestors holding gruesome posters, I asked the bartender if the anti-foie gras crowd outside affected business. “Every time they’re here, we sell a ton of foie gras,” he said. Zing. 
Mulling over the concept of phone addiction in the middle of the night, I came across a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2">study</a> showing that some adults assume we’re addicted to social media when we’re actually not. (Yes, I found it on my phone.) Overuse of social media is commonly called “addiction” without looking at the full range of symptoms. 
In <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2">substance abuse</a>, that looks like “impaired control, craving and dependence, withdrawal when not using, conflict with other activities, and hazardous or risky use,” according to Scientific Reports. But some social media “addicts” described benefits, too: “Facebook users who self-reported greater life conflict and lack of control (two symptoms of addiction) also reported greater positive impacts of Facebook use.”  
There’s a difference between forming a <a href="https://relevancerecovery.com/habit-vs-addiction/">habit versus an addiction</a>. Addiction is always harmful, but habits are not. And calling yourself an addict when you’re engaging in a bad habit lessens your ability to change the behavior. It also increases <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2">self-blame</a>, which doesn’t help.
Like <a href="https://youtu.be/b1kbLwvqugk?list=RDb1kbLwvqugk&amp;t=48">Taylor Swift</a> sang in “Anti-Hero,” when it comes to getting lost in the doomscroll, “It&#8217;s me. Hi. I&#8217;m the problem, it&#8217;s me.” Maybe it’s time to bring personal responsibility back.
“Accountability is not a dirty word,” licensed professional counselor <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stress-fracture/202002/it-was-me-i-did-it-why-no-one-takes-accountability-anymore">Jamie Cannon</a> says. “By admitting to our own faults and mistakes, we jettison the victim role and take back the power to change.”
Social media addiction is not yet a formally recognized <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352853225000215">disorder</a>. But the question remains as to whether a multimillion-dollar settlement lets irresponsible adult users off the hook. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychiatrys-think-tank/202501/coping-with-problematic-effects-of-social-media">Set time limits</a>, turn off notifications, and know your triggers. Praising the benefits of going phone-free with people you love, <a href="https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/anna-lembke">Stanford University</a> psychiatrist <a href="https://youtu.be/D34KyceGhPE?t=53">Dr. Anna Lembke</a> told the Huberman Lab podcast, “Our collective challenge, and it should be our mission, is to make sure that we are preserving and maintaining offline ways to connect.”

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Big Tech Made Social Media Addictive, But That’s Not The Whole Story

Lawsuit

social media addiction

Upstream

There is a not-so-secret war being waged for control of your kid&#8217;s mind.
Who owns your child&#8217;s mind? Social media companies? The government?
Or is it you?
A landmark lawsuit that just sent a gigantic shockwave through Silicon Valley. Meta (Facebook) and YouTube (Google) were found negligent in facilitating social media addiction.
Let’s break down the case that could upend Big Tech, reshape AI regulation, and force a national reckoning over parenting power and responsibility.
The legal case found both companies were negligent in facilitating social media addiction. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-media-trial-verdict.html">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote>The bellwether case, which was brought by a now 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M., had accused social media companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos. Citing features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube, claiming they led to anxiety and depression. &#8230; 
K.G.M., whose first name is Kaley, filed her lawsuit in 2023 against Meta, Snap, YouTube and TikTok. Kaley, who lives in Chico, Calif., said she had begun using social media at age 6 and claimed the sites caused personal injury, including body dysmorphia and thoughts of self harm. </blockquote>
Variety said that the verdict was rooted in an argument around cigarette addiction. Back in the 1990s, there were settlements with the big tobacco companies where it was found that the tobacco companies fraudulently marketed products they knew were addictive as non-addictive, and that drew millions of people into serious health risks like lung cancer.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2396-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
That doesn&#8217;t seem like a crazy take. We were told originally that social media would be a gigantic benefit for all of us. It would open “new vistas.” We&#8217;d all experience “new worlds.” We&#8217;d have “so many friends.” (Yeah, they&#8217;d be Facebook friends, but they were still friends.) We&#8217;d never have to go outside again. We&#8217;d all live in the metaverse, etc.
All of that was untrue. All of these social media companies are clickbait machines. That is what they are designed to do, in Pavlovian style.
Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, who wrote a book called “Dopamine Nation,” speaks about this. She writes:
<blockquote>We&#8217;re wired to connect. It&#8217;s kept us alive for millions of years in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger. Moving in tribes safeguards against predators optimizes scarce resources and facilitates pair bonding.
Our brains release dopamine when we make human connections, and that incentivizes us to do it again. Social connection has now become drugified by social media apps, making us vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. These apps can cause the release of large amounts of dopamine into our brains’ reward pathway all at once, like heroin. meth or alcohol. They do that by amplifying the feel-good properties that attract humans to each other in the first place.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s not just the social connection. It&#8217;s also because when you scroll on X, it&#8217;s literally designed to provide a brief dopamine rush. That&#8217;s why there&#8217;s that little sound effect. It&#8217;s almost a literal Pavlovian response. A Pavlovian response was established when you rang a bell in front of a dog and fed it a piece of meat at the same time. Eventually, when you rang the bell, the dog would start to salivate even if the meat wasn&#8217;t there because the brain had now been trained: Bell means meat, so bell causes salivation.
Social media companies do that too. This is why when you scroll, there&#8217;s a little sound effect. You&#8217;re going to get a dopamine hit, even if nothing new appears, just because you hear that little sound effect. 
Social media companies are arguing that they&#8217;re not the ones who are actually causing the addiction to really serious stuff. They say, “Sure, our algorithms are designed to make you click, but it&#8217;s the videos themselves that are responsible for the harm, not the design of the product.” 
In other words, if you were watching lots of cooking videos on social media and it fed you an infinite loop of cooking videos and not skinny influencers, you&#8217;d be totally fine. You&#8217;re the one who decides whether you are clicking on skinny influencers or whether you&#8217;re clicking on cooking videos. And what&#8217;s more, it turns out, these social media companies aren&#8217;t the ones who are actually making the content. The social media companies say, &#8220;We&#8217;re a platform, like a phone line.&#8221;
Yes, they make money by featuring viral content, but the consumer picks which content to actually watch. The person posting the content is actually responsible for the content, unless it&#8217;s an AI or a bot these days.
Until now, social media companies have been avoiding legal culpability by citing Section 230. Section 230 says that if you&#8217;re a platform and your website has a comment section, you&#8217;re not responsible for what&#8217;s in the comments.
If you&#8217;re YouTube, you&#8217;re not responsible for the content of the videos that are on YouTube because you&#8217;re just providing the platform on which others can post.
Section 230 says that all of these platforms ought not be held liable for content produced by others.
But that&#8217;s not on point.
The actual argument here is that these social media sites are, by their very nature, addictive, and that almost no matter what the content is, the medium is damaging to kids.
This raises a broader question for parents. Are you responsible for your children and their social media use?
The answer here should be yes.
My kids aren&#8217;t on social media because they are banned from using social media. Kids who are addicted to TV also don&#8217;t have great lives, but we don&#8217;t actually hold TV companies responsible for that fact. Nobody&#8217;s suing Apple because your kid is watching Apple TV all day.
That&#8217;s a point made yesterday by Meta&#8217;s president, Dina Powell McCormick, who said, “You know, as a mom, this is really important to me and very personal. I see firsthand just how hard the company is trying to ensure that there&#8217;s not harmful content, to ensure that we are empowering parents to the best of our ability. And it&#8217;s something that I watch being focused on every single day. We respectfully disagree with that decision, and we&#8217;re appealing.”
She&#8217;s not totally wrong here. The fact is that as a parent of four kids, going on five, I&#8217;m all over what my kids are consuming. I decide what movies they watch. I decide what TV shows they watch. They&#8217;re not allowed on social media. They do not have interactive capability on social media, anything like that.
This issue is kind of a sticky wicket, as social media companies are responsible for part of the problem because of the dopamine response. And yes, parents are also responsible for the problem.
Here&#8217;s the actual solution: not gigantic lawsuits. The answer is governmental legislation banning social media for kids under 18. Period.
That is what we should be doing. It&#8217;s what a lot of countries are doing right now — and they are correct to do so.
Users should have to register as over 18. Companies that don&#8217;t do it should be held legally accountable.
If we&#8217;re going to actually carry this analogy all the way through, if we&#8217;re going to treat social media like tobacco or alcohol, then the answer historically wasn&#8217;t to sue tobacco companies for kids smoking, it was to ban kids from smoking. The same is true for alcohol.
The reason I&#8217;m a little bit averse to lawsuits like these is because I think it will be extended to adults. I think what&#8217;s going to happen is that this will be used as a broader argument, not just against social media, where I’m relatively indifferent, but to actual useful technologies like AI, because this is a big societal question: Should we blame technology for our own failures as adults?
Kids are a different story. The reason that this particular lawsuit is emotionally appealing is because it&#8217;s about a kid who got addicted. And kids do get addicted. And honestly, I blame the parents as the primary source.
I don&#8217;t let my kids get addicted to things. It&#8217;s my job to prevent that. I don&#8217;t give my kids candy bars even though they want candy bars every single day, all the time. And if I decide to feed that to them, and they get Type 2 diabetes. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s on the candy company. I think it&#8217;s on me.
My biggest problem here is that we start blaming technologies for our failures as adults.
We have to look to ourselves to solve some of these problems.

Meta And Youtube Found Liable In Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

Did Social Media Destroy The Kids?

Big Tech

Opinion

Teenagers

YouTube

A Los Angeles County jury found that Meta and YouTube have contributed to growing mental health problems stemming from social media use.
The social media giants must now pay $3 million in damages over personal injury caused by its platforms. The verdict is expected to influence similar suits throughout the country filed against social media companies.
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bellwether-social-media-addiction-trial-puts-instagram-youtube-and-tiktok-in-the-crosshairs">case</a> in the California Superior Court centered on a 19-year-old woman, referred to as K.G.M., who argued that social media platforms have knowingly designed their platforms to get children and young users addicted. The California jury found Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, 70% responsible for the harm to K.G.M. and YouTube 30% responsible, NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verdict-reached-landmark-social-media-addiction-trial-rcna263421">reported</a>.
The verdict comes after a New Mexico jury handed Meta a $375m bill in civil penalties after it found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms. Like the landmark case in Los Angeles, the New Mexico verdict is historic on its own as the first jury trial to find Meta liable for acts committed on its platform. Like the Los Angeles Court Verdict, Meta has said it will appeal the ruling.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content,” said a Meta spokesperson. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
In a statement to The Daily Wire in January, YouTube said the allegations it faces in social media addiction suits “are simply not true.”
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” said YouTube spokesman José Castañeda. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls. The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.”
K.G.M.&#8217;s social media addiction, which started when she was a minor, resulted in crippling depression, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts, according to the lawsuit. The suit was also filed against Snapchat and TikTok, but those platforms settled with K.G.M. before the trial started. K.G.M.’s case is just the first of many that are expected to trial this year, targeting Snapchat, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Social media platforms, including Meta and YouTube, have touted online safety features in recent years, such as Instagram&#8217;s &#8220;Teen Accounts&#8221; and YouTube &#8220;Kids,&#8221; which are meant to create safer and more controlled experiences for children. Yet even with these additional features, social media use for children remains a hotly debated issue.

Social Media Platforms –  Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Threads

Verdict Reached In Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial

For now, Facebook is still technically called Meta. But the “metaverse,” Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious virtual reality project, is in shambles. Tech outlets <a href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-isnt-shutting-down-its-vr-metaverse-after-all-165520696.html">reported</a> last week that the company would be sunsetting Horizon Worlds, its VR social media platform. Then CTO Andrew Bosworth clarified that Horizon Worlds would remain operational, even if users could expect little in the way of updates or new content. The parallel reality that Zuckerberg invited his clientele to dream of will linger quietly on — like the mostly forgotten game &#8220;The Sims,&#8221; that nerds of a certain age sometimes spin up for old time’s sake, except with real people pretending to be virtual instead of the other way around. Meta’s rebrand was perhaps a bit premature.
But then, it wasn’t so much the “Meta” part that grated. It was the “Verse”: the all-encompassing and boundlessly presumptuous claim about how life would be from now on. Pretensions to metaversality were part of the enthusiasm for “Web 3,” a supposedly epochal transition from a world of siloed apps and websites to a paradise of digital interconnectivity. It was one of those tech projects that consists of a doomsday scenario presented unblinkingly as a sales pitch. In &#8220;Snow Crash,&#8221; a 1992 cyberpunk fantasia, the novelist Neal Stephenson gave the name “metaverse” to a digital world that his characters would escape into when socioeconomic conditions conspired to make their embodied lives unbearable.
Zuckerberg, striding confidently through a sea of early adopters wearing insectoid VR helmet-goggles for a photo op, didn’t seem to notice how viscerally unappealing the whole thing was. He comes across as totally deaf to these sorts of concerns, although maybe acting that way is part of his job. It also has to be said how profoundly the mood back then was affected by COVID-19, which spiked people’s screen time and created the impression that everything was getting ported to the cloud.
<div id="attachment_1063987" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1063987" class="size-large wp-image-1063987" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-864x576.jpg" alt="Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., speaks in a virtual Horizon Home environment during the virtual Facebook Connect event, where the company announced its rebranding as Meta, in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. A major theme at the annual conference will be the company's ambitions for the so-called metaverse, a new digital space that it believes will supplant smartphone apps as the primary form of online interaction. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1236189437.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Lots of things were, but it was silly not to expect an imminent counter-revolution once people grew disgusted with the effects of too much scrolling. In the first round of mass layoffs that followed his pandemic hiring spree, Zuckerberg regretfully <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-message-to-employees/">acknowledged</a> that he had seen the rush of users to the site and “predicted this would be a permanent acceleration.” Whoopsie. The four most foolhardy words in the English language are “if present trends continue.”
Present trends generally do not continue. In &#8220;<a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781478947271/?lens=publicaffairs">The Age of Surveillance Capitalism</a>,&#8221; the social psychologist Shoshanna Zuboff used the word “inevitabilism” to describe how technologists labor to make their designs seem inevitable “when they are actually meticulously calculated and lavishly funded means to self-dealing commercial ends.” What Zuboff called “the prediction imperative” puts tech companies in “the reality business,” where profit models depend on passing off corporate aspirations as unalterable, world-historical developments that must and will take place. Then the only question becomes whether you’ll get on board or, in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge from the 1951 adaptation of Dickens’s &#8220;A Christmas Carol,&#8221; “be crushed under with the weak and the infirm.” This is why product launches so often look and sound like something out of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, and why emissaries from the c-suite tend to talk like Thanos from &#8220;Avengers: Endgame&#8221;: &#8220;I.Am.Inevitable.&#8221;
What I want to propose is that inevitabilism is neither unique to tech nor especially modern. It’s just the standard advertising strategy for aspirants to global power. In 1817, anticipating the arrival in London of a colossal pharaonic statue from Egypt, Percy Shelley and Horace Smith embarked on a friendly competition to write a poem on the theme of monarchic pride. Shelley won with “Ozymandias,” a sonnet on the ruins of a dead king’s towering monument whose “vast and trunkless legs of stone” stand on a pedestal inscribed with the words “‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. / Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The real Ozymandias was Ramesses II, god-king of Egypt’s mighty New Kingdom. The Greek version of his name, which Shelley used for his title, came from the royal epithet he adopted at his coronation: Usermaatre Setepenre. It means roughly “Strong Justice and Chosen one of Ra,” the Sun God. Shelley neither invented nor exaggerated Ozymandias’ claims to ultimate power. The statue’s inscription in the poem is a rough paraphrase of a real one quoted by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus: “King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”
Ozymandias, Nebuchadnezzar, Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal&#8230;they came and they went. It used to be standard practice for imperial monarchs to boast of their sacred, eternal, and universal dominion. The fiction is appealing because it offers things people crave: permanence, stability, order, and certainty about the future. It’s tragic because, as Shelley observed, none of these are things that even very good men can guarantee. The sands of time’s desert are littered with trunkless legs. Nothing beside remains.
Understand these things, and you understand the politics of the Old Testament. The constant refrain of the Hebrew Prophets was that people look for eternity in the wrong places. “Put not your trust in princes”: again and again, the Jews of ancient Israel were invited to observe the wreckage of dynasties whose total dominion was once depicted — plausibly, at the time — as inevitable.
As it winds down its VR program, Meta will be diverting its resources and attention toward Artificial Intelligence. AI technology has so far proven vastly more useful and workable than the metaverse. It seems unlikely that we’ll look back on it as a passing fancy. At the same time, the predictions about the world AI will make — its powers to transform the universe, or come to life, or usurp God — have all the flavor of inevitabilism.
The same people who went all-in on the metaverse have moved on with undiminished confidence to telling us that AI will change everything, everywhere, all at once, that the whole thing is a fait accompli, that it’s pointless to speak of exercising restraint. “Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair.” I submit that we will continue to fall for this routine, chasing like hamsters after the next forever, just as long as we expect a company or a king to secure the future of the universe. If we want eternity, we will have to look elsewhere.
* * *
Spencer A. Klavan is co-host, with his father Andrew Klavan, of the “Klavans on the Culture” podcast. He is associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and author, most recently, of &#8220;Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Day Two of MWC Barcelona 2023

The Metaverse Was Never Inevitable

Books

Literature

Silicon Valley

Technology

This week, Meta announced it was shutting down Horizon Worlds, the company&#8217;s virtual reality social network, on June 15. Going forward, the platform will only be available as a mobile app and will no longer support VR headsets.
&#8220;We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience,&#8221; the company said in the announcement.
Skepticism greeted Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s vision from the start. When he declared in 2021 that Facebook would transform into the Metaverse — an online world where avatars would live, work, and play — even enthusiastic early adopters had doubts.
Zuckerberg formally announced the concept that year and renamed his company Meta to match, calling it &#8220;the next frontier&#8221; of tech.
&#8220;Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers,&#8221; Zuckerberg <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-letter/">said</a> in 2021.
Critics, meanwhile, called it unsettling and strange. Now, with the platform hemorrhaging billions and parts of it shutting down, those critics appear to have been right.
Horizon Worlds was once positioned as the centerpiece of Meta&#8217;s VR ambitions. The retreat comes just weeks after the company laid off more than 1,000 employees from Reality Labs, the division responsible for developing its metaverse products.
After news of the shutdown spread, Meta appeared to walk back its announcement, clarifying that it would continue to support some existing VR apps within Horizon Worlds, but would not be adding any new ones.
A February <a href="https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/2026-vr-state-of-the-union-horizon-mobile-focus/">blog post</a> insisted that the company &#8220;remains the biggest investor in the VR industry&#8221; and had &#8220;a robust roadmap of future VR headsets in the works.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/18/meta-horizon-worlds-metaverse-vr.html">CNBC</a>, Reality Labs has reported billions in losses each quarter since its launch, with the most recent figure — $6.02 billion — reported for Q4 in January.
The outlet also noted that Meta has shifted its focus from VR worlds to artificial intelligence. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/technology/mark-zuckerbergs-metaverse-vr-horizon-worlds.html">The New York Times</a>, Zuckerberg mentioned AI 23 times at a recent developer conference, and brought up the metaverse only twice.

Metaverse

If You Were Excited About Facebook’s Big Tech Upgrade — There’s A New Reality

Economy

Virtual Reality

Scammers in Southeast Asia couldn&#8217;t hide behind their online profiles last week when the Royal Thai Police arrested 21 people in Bangkok as part of an international crackdown on scam centers targeting Americans.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, teamed up with the FBI, the Department of Justice&#8217;s Scam Center Strike Force, and Thai authorities to disrupt the networks. The company disabled 150,000 accounts tied to the scam operations.
In videos shared with The Daily Wire, armed Thai officers are seen going door to door, questioning individuals before placing suspects in handcuffs and taking them into custody. The arrests showcase the expanding effort by law enforcement to dismantle global cybercrime operations, a priority highlighted in a recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
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On March 6, Trump signed an executive order on &#8220;Combating Cybercrime and Fraud,&#8221; directing federal agencies to prioritize prosecutions of cyber fraud and strengthen coordination to prevent, disrupt, investigate, and dismantle scam-center networks.
&#8220;This operation is a testament to how sharing information and coordinating our efforts can make real progress in disrupting this criminal activity at its source,&#8221; said Chris Sonderby, Meta&#8217;s vice president and deputy general counsel. &#8220;Our work to combat scams is never done, and we will continue to invest in technology and partnerships to stay ahead.&#8221;
The recent operation in Asia follows a December cybercrime sting in which Meta joined the FBI, Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service, and other agencies to share information on scam networks. That effort resulted in the removal of 59,000 accounts from Meta platforms and six arrest warrants.
Chinese criminal groups run many scam farms operating across Southeast Asia. The region has become a hub for Chinese-linked social media scammers who have stolen tens of billions of dollars from Americans in just the past few years.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent body that provides recommendations to Congress, wrote in a 2025 <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-exploitation-scam-centers-southeast-asia">report</a> that “the spread of China-linked scam compounds in Southeast Asia is fueling corruption and violence, promoting human trafficking, [and] undermining the ability of governments in the region to control what happens in their territory.”
Massive scam farms have set up shop in countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/why-southeast-asias-online-scam-industry-is-so-hard-to-shut-down">reported</a>. The foreign operations often target Americans with fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes, fake work-from-home jobs, and “task scams,” which promise high commissions but require victims to pay upfront fees.
According to the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1140187">United Nations</a>, around 120,000 people are being forced to work for online scam farms in Myanmar, and another 100,000 people are being used as forced labor for the scam industry in Cambodia. Workers are often forced to send scam messages for 12 to 16 hours a day, according to the Associated Press.
The development of artificial intelligence has also aided social media scammers and their ability to target more Americans, <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/research/protecting-americans-china-linked-scam-centers-update-emerging-trends">according</a> to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The commission warned that AI enables scammers to “increase the sophistication of scams,” which can “make it difficult for even the most discerning potential victims to distinguish fact from fraud.”
In addition to using global law enforcement partnerships to battle online crime, a Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire that the company has added extra security measures for its users to fight the elusive scammers. This month, Meta plans to launch an advanced AI-powered scam detection tool for Messenger, allowing users to submit suspicious messages for review.
Meta is also testing a feature that will alert users of potentially suspicious friend requests, such as those from accounts with no mutual connections. On WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, users will receive alerts if an attempt to link their account to another device seems suspicious, a tactic scammers sometimes implement to hijack accounts.
&#8220;These operations cause real harm,&#8221; Meta said in a statement. &#8220;They upend lives, destroy trust, and are deliberately designed to avoid detection and disruption. The work to protect people against scammers is never done, and requires ongoing collaboration with partners across the tech industry and law enforcement to ensure a safer experience for everyone online.&#8221;

Thai Police arrest social media scammers

WATCH: How Facebook Teamed Up With The Trump Admin To Bust Scammers In Thailand

WATCH: Trump DOJ Teams Up With Meta, Thai Police To Bust Scammers Stealing From Americans

China

Department of Justice

Donald Trump

Meta Platforms on Monday named former Trump administration official Dina Powell McCormick as its president and vice chairman, boosting the company&#8217;s lobbying efforts in the U.S. capital.
President Donald Trump congratulated Powell McCormick in a <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115882511750475574">post</a> on his Truth Social account minutes after the company announced her promotion.
&#8220;Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!! She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction!&#8221; the president wrote.
Her appointment is the latest in a series of changes Meta has made in the last year that more closely align the company with the Trump administration. Meta is accelerating investments in frontier AI and personal superintelligence. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seeking Trump&#8217;s support to build data centers and energy capacity for those projects.
Zuckerberg, ahead of Trump&#8217;s second inauguration, visited him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His company also scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program, elevated Republican Joel Kaplan as the company&#8217;s new chief global affairs officer, and ended its diversity programs, all moves that appealed to Trump. Meta in early January hired former Trump trade adviser C.J. Mahoney to lead its legal team, replacing general counsel Jennifer Newstead, who served in former President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration.
Meta declined to comment on whether Powell McCormick&#8217;s appointment is intended to appeal to Trump.
She will help Meta expand its data centers, build new strategic capital partnerships, and increase the company&#8217;s &#8220;long-term investment capacity,&#8221; according to a company statement.
Powell McCormick spent 16 years in senior leadership roles at Goldman Sachs. She served as deputy national security adviser to Trump in his first term, and as a senior White House adviser under former President George W. Bush. Her husband is U.S. Senator David McCormick, a Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Senate subcommittee responsible for energy policy &#8211; an area in which she will be involved at Meta.
The senator will &#8220;continue to comply with all U.S. Senate ethics rules,&#8221; his spokesperson Katy Montgomery said by email.
&#8220;Senator McCormick should recuse himself from every vote or committee action that involves Meta&#8217;s business,&#8221; said Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project, a group that has criticized the industry.
Powell McCormick&#8217;s role echoes efforts by previous Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who, during her tenure, leveraged deep ties to the Washington establishment and the Democratic Party to help the company navigate scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators.
Powell McCormick resigned from Meta&#8217;s board in December, just eight months after joining.
Meta has been scrambling to stay relevant in Silicon Valley&#8217;s artificial-intelligence race after its Llama 4 model met with a poor reception. It committed as much as $72 billion in 2025 capital spending.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru and Courtney Rozen in Washington; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Chris Reese and Matthew Lewis)

VivaTech conference dedicated to innovation and startups in Paris

Former Trump Adviser Named Meta’s President

Meta promoted its artificial intelligence&#8217;s new “free AI creator tools” on Instagram with a piece of content that appears to show an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump kneeling before a demon.
A screenshot of the AI-generated video, showcased in an advertisement for the tool, showed what looked like Trump shaking hands with a Satan-like figure before kneeling before it, according to a video captured on the platform that was reviewed by The Daily Wire.
The promotion read: “Meta AI: Try free AI creation tools” and featured a “Get app” button. Meta AI launched “Vibes” in September, which the company describes as “a new feed in the Meta AI app and on <a href="http://meta.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">meta.ai</a> where you can create and share short-form, AI-generated videos.”
A Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire that the video in question was &#8220;user-generated content&#8221; that &#8220;has been removed from this recommendation surface as it violated our protocols for promotions.&#8221;
It is unclear how user-generated videos are selected for the promotion, nor if there are any safeguards in place to ensure content that violates &#8220;protocols for promotions&#8221; is weeded out. The Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire that the company is &#8220;taking additional steps to prevent this from happening moving forward,&#8221; but would not specify how.
<div id="attachment_1001683" style="width: 952px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-of-Instagram-.tiff"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1001683" class="wp-image-1001683 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-of-Instagram-.tiff" alt="" width="942" height="877" /></a>Screenshot of an ad promoting Meta AI via The Daily Wire</div>
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump at the White House in<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/president-trump-tech-leaders-unite-american-ai-dominance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> September</a> to discuss “harnessing artificial intelligence to propel the U.S. to the forefront of global innovation.” During the meeting, Zuckerberg told reporters the company is investing at least $600 billion in the United States through 2028.
The Daily Wire uploaded a screenshot of the image to the Meta AI app to ask it who appears in the ad and what is happening in the image.
The response said the image depicts a “manipulated photo of Donald Trump kneeling and adjusting his tie while interacting with a large, black horned creature, likely a satanic or demonic figure.”
Although the image captured only a screenshot of the AI-generated video, the response added that the image is “likely a satirical or humorous representation, rather than a real event.”
<div id="attachment_1001611" style="width: 411px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1001611" class="wp-image-1001611 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-401x576.jpeg" alt="Screenshot of The Daily Wire's conversation with Meta AI" width="401" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-401x576.jpeg 401w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-209x300.jpeg 209w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-768x1102.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705-1070x1536.jpeg 1070w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/signal-2025-11-13-195705.jpeg 1179w" sizes=" (max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px" />Screenshot of The Daily Wire&#8217;s conversation with Meta AI</div>
“The ad is from Meta AI, promoting their free AI creation tools,” the response from Meta&#8217;s AI read.
The Daily Wire asked Meta to clarify which specific protocol the imagery may have violated; whether the material was user-generated content incorporated into the promotion; whether it was deliberately selected or randomly populated; and whether Meta has systems in place to prevent protocol-violating content from appearing in this manner. The company did not provide further details.
Meta and Trump have had a tumultuous relationship over the years. The company “indefinitely” suspended the president after the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021, but Facebook&#8217;s Oversight Board reinstated his accounts in 2023, Business Insider<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-comments-about-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-feud-history-2024-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reported</a>.
The president accused Zuckerberg of undermining him in the 2020 election, and ahead of the 2024 election, he wrote in a new book. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” the New York Post<a href="https://nypost.com/2024/08/28/us-news/trump-warns-zuckerberg-could-spend-the-rest-of-his-life-in-prison/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reported</a>.
Zuckerberg congratulated Trump on his win in 2024 and Meta donated $1 million to his inauguration fund. The pair have had at least two meetings since the election, including Zuckerberg&#8217;s participation at the White House dinner in September.

Untitled design (68)

Instagram Promoted New AI Creation Tool With Video Of Trump Kneeling Before Satanic Demon

satanic

The aftermath of Charlie Kirk&#8217;s assassination has been very revealing.
Conservatives have long understood themselves scorned by leftists dominating mainstream media, Hollywood, education, and most major industries in the United States. But the cold-blooded murder of one of the most promising voices on the right inspired reactions that were unprecedented.
One unlikely place where Kirk’s assassination became a hot topic of conversation? Hollywood&#8217;s stunt community.
A stunt coordinator is responsible for designing, choreographing, and safely executing all stunt sequences in film and television, from fight scenes to high-risk action sequences. With people’s lives literally on the line, their jobs are no joke.
That’s what makes it especially chilling that several members of the stunt coordinator community were publicly celebrating Kirk’s assassination, seemingly without consequence.
Professional stunt coordinator Erik Audé told The Daily Wire that he’s being harassed and blacklisted by his colleagues for speaking out against this despicable behavior. While other stunt coordinators cheered Kirk’s death on social media, he fought back, commenting that their statements could, and should, lead to losing work and their reputations.
He mentioned a private Facebook page for the stunt community where most of these posts were circulating, pointing to popular stunt coordinator Andy Rusk as one of the biggest offenders who “really went out of his way” to smear Kirk’s legacy.
“This is deplorable. How did the assassin miss his big ass head?” a screenshot showing one of Rusk’s Facebook comments said.
“If you’re somebody who agrees with the awful stuff Charlie Kirk had to say about minorities, black women, gays, trans people, immigrants, etc… I can’t imagine how I could ever trust you on a movie set… People who share white supremacist and misogynist views have no place in our business,” another comment from Rusk said.
He wrote in a third comment, “The future is gay, black, female, and immigrant… and no matter how much CK and others like him punch down on those communities, they can’t stop it.”
Audé says he couldn&#8217;t believe the types of comments Rusk was willing to publish on Facebook.
“Rather than just saying, you know what, I didn’t like him and leaving it at that, he doubled down, tripled down. ‘I’m sorry, your friends are racist and [bigoted] and I don’t think I can hire conservatives.’ And that’s when I chimed in saying, ‘It’s funny that you think you’re gonna have a lot of jobs to offer people after your words get out there.’”
According to Audé, Rusk bragged that he couldn’t be canceled.
“Andy Rusk literally said, ‘Go ahead, try to cancel me. Many have tried and it’s never gonna happen.’ The stunt industry feels like they’re a bubble and that nothing can touch them. They think that they’re the only ones that can police themselves.”
What most shocked Audé most was the number of people taking Rusk&#8217;s side.
“He’s got over 260 people now, and these are all stunt professionals who are loving his post, who are in solidarity with him, who are definitely openly hating the right and Christians and conservatives and for sure Charlie Kirk,” he continued.
Audé said the page admin removed most of the offensive posts and updated the page rules to say no politics were allowed. But before that, he took screenshots of the most alarming posts.
“Sorry not sorry, Charlie. Karma,” a post from Bobby C. King, a stunt coordinator for both independent films and performer for major blockbusters like “Spiderman” (2002), wrote.
“F*** Charlie Kirk&#8230; 1 less,” Neal Chandler agreed.
“The guy was an open racist hate monger. The thing about hate, you can try to direct it, but you can’t [&#8230;] control it. He was a product of his own demise. It is what it is,” actor Shaheed Malik wrote.
“F*** that racist b****. Is his wife available yet? She’s getting all the money from you right wing losers. I want to destroy each one of you!” stunt actor Troy Brenna chimed in.
Reached for comment, Malik said “Oh, I definitely stand by that.”
“When you do good, generally people don’t try to kill you,” Malik said, before adding, “I am indifferent on the whole situation. Whoopdee friggin do.”
Rusk and King did not respond to requests for comment. Brenna could not be reached for comment.
It wasn’t all negative, however. He described how Eddie Conna, a former liberal who works as an actor and producer, spoke up against the vitriol. “I was very happy to see that he was actually standing up for [Kirk],” Audé noted.
It’s well-documented that A-list celebrities tend to lean left and aren’t afraid to spout political opinions. But among the crews working behind the scenes in the entertainment business, including the people building sets, rigging lights, and otherwise making productions run smoothly, politics are more likely to be mixed or even lean conservative.
Audé said the harassment became personal when he acknowledged knowing Kirk.
“I met him. We only had lunch one time, but we were friends. He always responded. He downloaded my book and I supported him. I’m a Christian. I’m a conservative. And I’ve always kind of kept my beliefs – I mean, I’ve been outspoken –  but after this and seeing the open mockery and hatred and people laughing … just like my God, it’s no longer left and right, it’s evil and good.”
The fallout from voicing his views and his willingness to speak up online has already cost Audé work.
“I literally just lost a job that would have started working Sunday to Friday on a show out in Utah,” he said during a phone interview in late September.
“The assistant called me and said, ‘Erik, I’m sorry. I think this is messed up. But they were worried that people might have an issue with you being an open conservative, Charlie Kirk supporter on set.’ And I’m like what? When I get on set I keep my mouth shut. I do my job. I keep people safe. And if I work for people that I know think differently than me, I’m still there to keep them safe because that’s my job. And then here these guys are saying, well, I don’t think I can trust a conservative. Well, it’s not us hurting people. Your side is hurting people.”
Audé says the stunt community is in a “full-on civil war” as leftist members continue saying “the most vile, disgusting stuff” without being held accountable.
He added: “It’s never been friendly to conservatives. But we’ve always been told to never talk politics…people can walk around set with [Black Lives Matter] on their face mask or rainbow stickers everywhere and Kamala support. But if I had the balls to walk around with a Trump hat, I’d be kicked off set that very second.”
Despite intimidation, Audé says Kirk’s death has woken people up, and he’s glad to be on the front lines.
“People are stepping up more…I’m getting a lot of support. Unfortunately the support comes in DMs and text messages…There needs to be more,” he said, adding that the leftists only feel emboldened because “they stupidly think that they are actually the majority when they are not.”
He also blasted the hypocrisy of accountability in Hollywood.
“I wouldn’t go around and openly mock Biden or Kamala if something bad happened to them because that’s still disgusting behavior. But for some reason it’s only one side that’s ever held accountable and that needs to change. Once this all gets out there, it’s gonna hopefully be a wake-up call that this isn’t okay.”
When asked what he hopes comes of exposing the harassment, Audé said, “I want everyone to see what’s happening over here because this is not okay. I don’t want these guys who think they’re untouchable to know that they are not untouchable. I want them to be held accountable for their words, and I hope they change.”
For Audé, it’s not about revenge but about justice. “Silence isn’t gonna get us through this. Even the smallest light shines bright in the darkest room….It really does because this can’t happen again. People need to start speaking up. I know a lot of people have been, but I still think it’s not enough.”
Audé also knows that coming forward with his story could mean he never works again in Hollywood. But he said he doesn’t care anymore. “Sacrificing my career, so be it. I wish I could have done more, I really do,” he told The Daily Wire.
“I’d rather be able to look at myself in the mirror and respect who I am…I’m pissed about all this,” Audé said. “He was the nicest one of us, and they killed him.”
Editor&#8217;s Note: After publication of this article, a representative of Rusk provided a statement clarifying his stance.
&#8220;I have never stated that I would not hire conservatives, only that I would not hire bigots or racists,&#8221; said the statement from Rusk. &#8220;Further, I have never claimed that I &#8216;could not be canceled,&#8217; only that persons &#8216;smarter and more talented&#8217; have attempted to blacklist me in the past and that, despite their efforts, I remain both gainfully employed and an outspoken anti-racist.”

Director Chairs

‘Full-On Civil War’: Stuntman Exposes Hollywood Crew Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Murder

'Full-On Civil War': Stuntman Exposes Hollywood Crew Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Murder

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Facebook Community Notes slapped Hillary Clinton with a correction on a post she made last month on the anniversary of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade.
&#8220;Three years ago today, Trump&#8217;s far-right Supreme Court majority ended Americans&#8217; federal right to abortion under Roe v. Wade,&#8221; Clinton posted on Facebook.
&#8220;Since then, over 100 women have been denied emergency abortion care. One of them, Amber Nicole Thurman, was only 28 and left behind a son,&#8221; the former Secretary of State continued. &#8220;Today, share her story — which you can find at ProPublica — and keep fighting for reproductive freedom for all.&#8221;
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Facebook&#8217;s new community note system, which replaced its heavily criticized fact-check system, did not let Clinton get away with that claim. Facebook users added a community note explaining that Thurman&#8217;s death, which went viral on social media shortly before the presidential election in November, was not due to Georgia&#8217;s abortion ban.
&#8220;Amber Thurman, 28, died from infection after taking abortion pills in NC. She went to a Georgia hospital when she became seriously ill,&#8221; Facebook&#8217;s community note read.
&#8220;Doctors delayed a needed D and C for nearly 20 hours despite Georgia law allowing emergency care,&#8221; the note said. &#8220;Her death was ruled preventable. Her family is suing for wrongful death and medical malpractice.&#8221;
Thurman had been pregnant with twins. She took the abortion pill, but her body failed to expel all fetal tissue, which caused sepsis, a deadly infection. The babies were already dead by the time she ended up at the hospital, and she was not seeking an abortion there. 
However, for some reason, doctors took 20 hours to do the life-saving dilation and curettage procedure to clear out her uterus.
Georgia&#8217;s abortion law defines “abortion” as an act that “will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of an unborn child.” Removing the tissue of babies that had already died is not illegal.
Even ProPublica, the left-leaning outlet that published the original story, admitted in paragraph 57 that it is &#8220;not clear from the records available why doctors waited to provide a D&amp;C to Thurman.&#8221;
The Facebook community note on Clinton&#8217;s post also noted that attorney Ben Crump, who represented Thurman&#8217;s family, blamed doctors for her &#8220;preventable&#8221; death, not the Georgia abortion law.
“Even under Georgia law, the doctors had a duty to act to save Amber,” Crump <a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/us/snplus/news/2024/10/01/lawsuit-amber-thurman-death-emergency-abortion">said</a>. “She had taken the abortion pills and there were tissues left. There was no viable fetus or anything that would have prevented them from saving her life while she suffered.&#8221;
In the weeks leading up to the 2024 election, Democrats and liberal activists hammered the stories of women who had supposedly died because of red state abortion bans. They warned that President Donald Trump wanted a national abortion ban even though he had specifically said he would not sign one.
However, those alarming stories <a href="https://x.com/MorningWire/status/1858250428774846723" target="_blank" rel="noopener">turned out</a> to be full of misinformation, and in the most viral cases, hospital malpractice, not GOP-led abortion bans, were the more likely cause of the women&#8217;s deaths.
Facebook announced in March that it would follow X&#8217;s lead and implement a community notes fact-checking feature. The social media giant said the goal was for the new system to be &#8220;less biased&#8221; than the previous third-party fact check system that critics said censored conservatives.
However, Facebook&#8217;s community notes does not appear to be as active in correcting misinformation on Facebook as X&#8217;s community notes is on X. The community note on Clinton&#8217;s post is one of the first high-profile corrections since the system was rolled out.

Former Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton’s Portrait Unveiled At The State Department

Facebook Community Note Bangs Hillary Clinton For Spreading Fake News Abortion Post

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