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    Iceland Ice Wall Collapse: 1 Tourist Is Dead and 2 Are Trapped

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    The tourists were part of a group exploring a glacier in southeastern Iceland when an ice canyon wall collapsed. A fourth tourist was rescued, officials said.One person has died, two people remain trapped and one person was injured after an ice canyon wall collapsed Sunday during a group tour of a glacier in southeastern Iceland, the authorities said.Emergency responders received a call at about 3 p.m. local time that a group of about 25 tourists with a tour guide were exploring ice caves and canyons on the glacier, Breidamerkurjokull, when the side of an ice canyon gave way, said Jón Þór Víglundsson, a spokesman for ICE-SAR, a volunteer search-and-rescue association.The glacier is part of Vatnajökull National Park, one of Europe’s largest, spread across nearly 5,460 square miles.Four people were hit by the falling ice, Lögreglan á Suðurlandi, the local police force, said on Facebook. Two of them were rescued, the police said.One victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other was airlifted to Landspitalinn, the National University Hospital of Iceland, and is in stable condition, the agency said on Facebook late Sunday evening.Two people remain trapped, the agency said, and their conditions were unclear. A search-and-rescue effort that was underway to find the missing tourists was suspended late on Sunday, the authorities said.“Conditions during the search are difficult and darkness is now upon us,” the agency said, adding that it was dangerous to continue the search through the night. The search will resume in the morning, the police said.Others in the group remained uninjured, according to the police.It was unclear on Sunday evening where the tourists were from, what tour company organized the expedition or how many guides were on the trip.At least 150 people are involved in the search-and-rescue efforts, Mr. Víglundsson said. Crews have a “good feeling” on where the two trapped tourists might be, he said, but the operation is complicated.“Although we think we know the location of the two missing, it is hard to say what amount of ice is between them and the rescuers,” Mr. Víglundsson said. “It is a difficult situation.”Because of the precarious location on the glacier, teams cannot use heavy equipment and are instead using hacks, chain saws and ice picks to move the ice by hand to “clear a path” forward, Mr. Víglundsson said.Crews are working in teams of 12 and in shifts, he said.According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Breidamerkurjokull is an outlet glacier that extends from Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier, into the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.Breidamerkurjokull is famous for its ice caves. The best time to visit is in winter, according to Adventures.is, an Icelandic tour operator.Vísir reported that tourism companies that have signed a contract with the national park are authorized to organize ice cave trips and glacier walks year-round, and that the park “trusts companies to assess the conditions.”Amanda Holpuch More

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      How Section 230 Is Being Used Against Tech Giants Like Meta

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      A Massachusetts professor has filed a lawsuit against Meta using a novel interpretation of Section 230, a law known primarily for shielding social media companies from liability.Facebook, X, YouTube and other social media platforms rely on a 1996 law to insulate themselves from legal liability for user posts. The protection from this law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, is so significant that it has allowed tech companies to flourish.But what if the same law could be used to rein in the power of those social media giants?That idea is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in May against Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The plaintiff in the suit has asked a federal court to declare that a little-used part of Section 230 makes it permissible for him to release his own software that lets users automatically unfollow everyone on Facebook.The lawsuit, filed by Ethan Zuckerman, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the first to use Section 230 against a tech giant in this way, his lawyers said. It is an unusual legal maneuver that could turn a law that typically protects companies like Meta on its head. And if Mr. Zuckerman succeeds, it could mean more power for consumers to control what they see online.“I see and appreciate the elegance of trying to use a piece of law that has made user generated content possible, to now give users more control over those experiences and services,” he said.Section 230, introduced in the internet’s early days, protects companies from liability related to posts made by users on their sites, making it nearly impossible to sue tech companies over defamatory speech or extremist content.Mr. Zuckerman has focused on a part of Section 230 that spells out protection for blocking objectionable material online. In 2021, after a developer released software to purge users’ Facebook feeds of everyone they follow, Facebook threatened to shut it down. But Section 230 says it is possible to restrict access to obscene, excessively violent and other problematic content. The language shields companies from liability if they censor disturbing content, but lawyers now say it could also be used to justify scrubbing any content users don’t want to see.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meta in Talks to Use Voices of Judi Dench, Awkwafina and Others for A.I.

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      If deals are struck, Meta may incorporate the actors’ voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, people with knowledge of the effort said.Meta is in discussions with Awkwafina, Judi Dench and other actors and influencers for the right to incorporate their voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, according to three people with knowledge of the talks, as the company pushes to build more products that feature artificial intelligence.Apart from Ms. Dench and Awkwafina, Meta is in talks with the comedian Keegan-Michael Key and other celebrities, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. They added that all of Hollywood’s top talent agencies were involved in negotiations with the tech giant.The talks remain fluid, and it is unclear which actors and influencers, if any, may sign on to the project, the people said. If the parties come to an agreement, Meta could pay millions of dollars in fees to the actors.A Meta spokesman declined to comment. The discussions were reported earlier by Bloomberg.Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has invested heavily in artificial intelligence, which the biggest tech companies are racing to develop and lead. Meta has plowed billions into weaving the technology into its social networking apps and advertising business, including by creating artificially intelligent characters that could chat through text across its messaging apps.On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, increased how much his company would spend on A.I. and other expenses this year to at least $37 billion, up from $30 billion at the beginning of 2024. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would rather build too fast “rather than too late” to prevent his competitors from gaining an edge in the A.I. race.One area of A.I. that is rapidly emerging are chatbots with voice abilities, which act as virtual assistants. In May, OpenAI, a leading A.I. company, unveiled a version of its ChatGPT chatbot that could receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos. It was part of a wider effort to combine conversational chatbots with voice assistants like the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Shares Manipulated Harris Video, in Seeming Violation of X’s Policies

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      Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has waded into one of the thorniest issues facing U.S. politics: deepfake videos.On Friday night, Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, reposted an edited campaign video for Vice President Kamala Harris that appears to have been digitally manipulated to change the spot’s voice-over in a deceptive manner.The video mimics Ms. Harris’s voice, but instead of using her words from the original ad, it has the vice president saying that President Biden is senile, that she does not “know the first thing about running the country” and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the “ultimate diversity hire.”In addition, the clip was edited to remove images of former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, and to add images of Mr. Biden. The original, unaltered ad, which the Harris campaign released on Thursday, is titled “We Choose Freedom.”The version posted on X does not contain a disclaimer, though the account that first uploaded it Friday morning, @MrReaganUSA, noted in its post that the video was a “parody.” When Mr. Musk reposted the video on his own account eight hours later, he made no such disclosure, stating only, “This is amazing,” followed by a laughing emoji.Mr. Musk’s post, which has since been viewed 98 million times, would seem to run afoul of X’s policies, which prohibit sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meta Rolls Back Restrictions on Trump’s Instagram and Facebook Accounts

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      Meta on Friday said it was rolling back some restrictions to former President Donald J. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts so people on its services could hear from those running for the presidency “on the same basis.”Under the restrictions on Mr. Trump’s accounts, he could have been suspended from Meta’s services — which also include Threads and WhatsApp — if he had posted content that sought to delegitimize this November’s election, among other things. But Meta said it was now relaxing those restrictions, reducing the potential for a suspension if Mr. Trump violated the company’s terms of service.The move further returns Mr. Trump’s social media accounts to what they had been before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. At the time, Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were indefinitely suspended on the grounds that his posts ran the risk of inciting more violence. Last year, Meta reinstated Mr. Trump’s accounts, but with the restrictions.As of Friday, those penalties are no longer applicable.“We believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement. He said the penalties placed on Mr. Trump’s accounts had been “a response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances” after Jan. 6, and were no longer needed.Presidential nominees still need to abide by Meta’s terms of service, however, the company said.In a statement, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, said that removing the restrictions on Mr. Trump’s accounts was “a direct attack on our safety and our democracy,” adding that the decision “will allow Trump and his MAGA allies to reach more Americans with their fundamentally undemocratic, un-American misinformation.”At the Republican National Convention next week, Mr. Trump is expected to accept the party’s nomination for president. The Democratic National Convention is in August, though calls from prominent Democrats for President Biden to step aside as the nominee have complicated that process. Mr. Biden has maintained that he has no plans to drop out.Axios previously reported on Meta’s policy update. More

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      Meta’s Ad-Free Subscription Violates Competition Law, E.U. Says

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      Regulators said the subscription service introduced last year is a “pay or consent” method to collect personal data and bolster advertising.When Meta introduced a subscription option last year that would allow users in the European Union to pay for an advertising-free experience of Instagram and Facebook, it was meant to fix regulatory problems the company faced in the region.The plan created new legal headaches instead.On Monday, European Union regulators said Meta’s subscription, which costs up to 12.99 euros a month, amounted to a “pay or consent” scheme that required users to choose between paying a fee or handing over more personal data to Meta to use for targeted advertising.Meta introduced the subscription last year as a way to address regulatory and legal scrutiny of its advertising-based business model. Of most concern was the company’s combination of data collected about users across its different platforms — including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — along with information pulled from other websites and apps.Meta argued that by offering a subscription, users had a fair alternative.But regulators on Monday said the system was no choice at all, forcing users to pay for privacy. The authorities said Meta’s policy violated the Digital Markets Act, a new law aimed at reining in the power of the biggest tech companies.The law, known as the D.M.A., is intended to prevent large tech companies from using their size to coerce users into accepting terms of service they would otherwise reject, including the collection of personal data. The concern was platforms like Instagram and Facebook are so widely used that people have to choose to either hand over their data or not join at all.Regulators said the law required companies to allow users to opt out of having their personal data collected while still getting a “less personalized but equivalent alternative” of the service.“Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ business model is in breach of the D.M.A.,” said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner who helped draft the law. “The D.M.A. is there to give back to the users the power to decide how their data is used and ensure innovative companies can compete on equal footing with tech giants on data access.”In a statement, Meta said that the subscription service complied with the Digital Markets Act and that it would work with European regulators to resolve the investigation.Last week, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president, said that Europe was falling behind economically because of overregulation. “Europe’s regulatory complexity and the patchwork of laws across different member states often makes companies hesitant to roll out new products here,” he said.The announcement on Monday is one step in a longer process. The European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-nation bloc, has until March to complete its investigation. If found guilty, Meta could face fines of up to 10 percent of its global revenue and up to 20 percent for repeat offenses.Meta is the second company to face charges under the Digital Markets Act. Last week, the commission brought charges against Apple for unfair business practices related to the App Store. More

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      R.F.K. Jr. Claims Censorship After Facebook and Instagram Briefly Block New Ad

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made censorship — specifically, claims that the government, news media and tech platforms have tried to stifle his message — a cornerstone of his independent presidential campaign.This weekend, Mr. Kennedy got more fodder for his argument when Facebook and Instagram blocked a link to a new, sleekly produced 30-minute ad supporting his candidacy. The link appeared to have been blocked from Friday late afternoon until Saturday around midday.Meta, which owns both platforms, called the episode a mistake. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, said the link had been incorrectly flagged as spam. “It was mistakenly blocked, and it was corrected within a few hours” after the issue was discovered, Mr. Stone said.Tony Lyons, a founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC that paid for the ad, said that the group planned to sue Meta in federal court, accusing the company of censorship and of violating First Amendment rights to free speech.“When social media companies censor a presidential candidate, the public can’t learn what that candidate actually believes and what policies they would pursue if elected,” Mr. Lyons said. “We are left with the propaganda and lies from the most powerful and most corrupt groups and individuals.”The ad, which is narrated by the actor Woody Harrelson and takes the form of an infomercial, was produced by Jay Carson, an informal adviser to Mr. Kennedy who is also a Hollywood screenwriter and a former top aide to Hillary Clinton.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Instagram and Facebook Subscriptions Are a New Focus of Child Safety Suit

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      New Mexico’s attorney general has accused Meta of not protecting children from sexual predators on its platforms. He now wants to know how it polices subscribers to accounts featuring children.The New Mexico attorney general, who last year sued Meta alleging that it did not protect children from sexual predators and had made false claims about its platforms’ safety, announced Monday that his office would examine how the company’s paid-subscription services attract predators.Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he had formally requested documentation from the social media company about subscriptions on Facebook and Instagram, which are frequently available on children’s accounts run by parents.Instagram does not allow users under 13, but accounts that focus entirely on children are permitted as long as they are managed by an adult. The New York Times published an investigation on Thursday into girl influencers on the platform, reporting that the so-called mom-run accounts charge followers up to $19.99 a month for additional photos as well as chat sessions and other extras.The Times found that adult men subscribe to the accounts, including some who actively participate in forums where people discuss the girls in sexual terms.“This deeply disturbing pattern of conduct puts children at risk — and persists despite a wave of lawsuits and congressional investigations,” Mr. Torrez said in a statement.Mr. Torrez filed a complaint in December that accused Meta of enabling harmful activity between adults and minors on Facebook and Instagram and failing to detect and remove such activity when it was reported. The allegations were based, in part, on findings from accounts Mr. Torrez’s office created, including one for a fictitious 14-year-old girl that received an offer of $180,000 to appear in a pornographic video.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More