Good morning. It’s Thursday, February 19. Today we are covering:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg set to testify in LA social media safety trial
iOS 26.4 Brings CarPlay Support for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
Microsoft’s Glass Chip Holds Terabytes of Data for 10,000 Years
X’s ‘For You’ Algorithm May Be Able to Shift Political Views Permanently, New Study Finds
US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
Let’s dive in
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg set to testify in LA social media safety trial
By Jonathan Vanian via CNBC
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a major Los Angeles social media safety trial, saying he personally emailed Apple CEO Tim Cook in 2018 to discuss the “wellbeing of teens and kids,” as the defense sought to portray him as proactive on youth safety.
Under questioning, Zuckerberg defended Meta’s decision to lift a temporary ban on certain cosmetic surgery/beauty filters, acknowledging internal and external concerns but saying the call ultimately leaned toward free expression and insufficient causal evidence of harm.
Zuckerberg pushed back on claims that boosting time spent on Instagram was a company goal, while lawyers highlighted internal engagement milestones and raised issues around under-13 users and age verification, with Zuckerberg arguing app-store operators like Apple and Google are better positioned to verify ages.
𝕏: zuckerberg testifying in court today about instagram destroying kids’ mental health. only took a decade and thousands of lawsuits - Phil Labonte (@philthatremains)
iOS 26.4 Brings CarPlay Support for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
By Juli Clover via MacRumors
iOS 26.4 adds CarPlay support for third-party voice chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, making them accessible through CarPlay for the first time.
Apple’s updated CarPlay Developer Guide lists voice-based conversational apps as a supported category and introduces a new voice control screen that lets these apps provide vehicle-friendly visual feedback while voice is active.
Chatbot makers will need a specific CarPlay entitlement and app updates to enable support, and while users can ask questions hands-free, the apps won’t be able to control vehicle or iPhone functions and there’s no wake word, meaning users must open the app first.
𝕏: Now official - Mark Gurman (@markgurman)
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Microsoft’s Glass Chip Holds Terabytes of Data for 10,000 Years
By Gayoung Lee via Gizmodo
Microsoft Research’s Project Silica detailed a laser-modified glass storage system in a Nature paper that encodes data inside a ~2 mm-thick borosilicate glass chip designed for ultra-long-term archival use.
The system writes information as layered “phase voxels” (3D voxels plus light-phase encoding), and the prototype glass chip is described as capable of storing about 4.8 TB in a durable medium that could theoretically last 10,000 years.
Microsoft positions Silica as a way to preserve high-value archives against decay, malware, and tampering with “write once, store forever” media, with remaining engineering hurdles centered on scaling and improving femtosecond laser hardware for industrial throughput.
𝕏: Breakthrough research by Microsoft, the most durable archival storage for data centers. 4.8TB inside a glass platter that could last 10,000 years. In this work the platter is about 120mm by 120mm and about 2mm thick. Archives today usually use magnetic tape or disks, and those slowly degrade, so big organizations have to keep copying data forward to new media every few years to avoid losing it… - Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai)
X’s ‘For You’ Algorithm May Be Able to Shift Political Views Permanently, New Study Finds
By Tim McMillan via The Debrief
A Nature field experiment with 4,965 US-based X users found that switching from the chronological “Following” feed to the algorithmic “For You” feed over seven weeks increased engagement and measurably shifted political attitudes toward more conservative policy priorities.
Participants exposed to the algorithm became more likely to emphasize immigration, inflation, and crime, view Trump-related criminal investigations as less acceptable, and hold less favorable views of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, with many of these changes persisting even after returning to a chronological feed.
Researchers link the effect to content exposure: the algorithm amplified conservative and activist posts while reducing traditional news visibility, prompting users to follow new conservative accounts and creating a lasting feedback loop that outlived the experimental feed setting.
𝕏: Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper “The Political Effects of X’s Feed Algorithm” is out today in @Nature and answers “Yes”. - Philine Widmer (@phinifa)
US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
By Simon Lewis via Reuters
The U.S. government is reportedly developing an online portal called freedom.gov designed to help users in Europe and other regions bypass national content blocks and censorship by routing traffic through a VPN-like service.
The site would also enable access to material some governments label hate speech or terror propaganda, with plans said to be led by Sarah Rogers, the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, though the planned rollout has been delayed.
The initiative is described internally as a push for “digital freedom,” but it has raised legal and diplomatic concerns and could further strain U.S.-EU relations amid stricter EU online rules such as the Digital Services Act.
𝕏: The State Dept is planning to launch a website, http://freedom.gov, to help users circumvent content bans in Europe and elsewhere. Comes as admin officials have criticized Europe’s speech laws. DOGE’s “Big Balls” involved, per sources - Gram Slattery (@G_Slattery)
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