Meta is rolling out paid Instagram Plus, Facebook Plus, and WhatsApp Plus plans worldwide as of today.


Instagram Plus is priced at $3.99 per month, Facebook Plus is priced at $3.99 per month, and WhatsApp Plus is priced at $2.99 per month. According to TechCrunch, the paid plans provide features like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights.

Instagram Plus lets users see how many people have rewatched a Story, and it adds unlimited audience lists for Stories for creating groups other than Close Friends. Users can spotlight a story once a week for extra views, use Super Heart animated reactions, choose custom app icons, add customized fonts to a profile bio, extend a story beyond 24 hours, and search a story viewer list to see who is watching. Subscribers will also be able to post straight to their profiles without having the post show up in their followers' feeds, and they will be able to stealthily "preview" Instagram stories without showing up as a viewer.

Facebook Plus includes most of the same features as Instagram Plus, while WhatsApp Plus includes app themes, custom ringtones, more pinned chats, list customization, and premium stickers.

Meta head of product Naomi Gleit said the company is also exploring new subscription plans for creators and businesses, along with plans for AI users. The new plans are being offered under "Meta One" branding that combines subscription offerings from multiple Meta platforms.

The $7.99 Meta One Plus plan and the $19.99 Meta One Premium plan are aimed at Meta AI users. Both plans unlock higher compute queries, reasoning, and image/video generation, but Premium offers more capacity, including deeper reasoning for complex tasks.

A Meta One Essential plan priced at $14.99 per month is designed for creators and businesses. It includes a verified badge, impersonation protection, better analytics, and a linksheet that lets users link to their online profiles on the web and on other social media networks. The $49.99 Meta One Advanced plan includes the Essential options plus features in the Facebook feed, optimized scheduling tools, notifications when others reuse a creator's content, higher rankings in Instagram and Facebook search, a bolder Follow button on Reels, and automatic follow invitations for people who engage with a creator or brand's content.

Meta is going to start testing the AI Meta One plans in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia next month. The business plans will be tested in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand, and Bangladesh starting later this week.

Gleit described Meta One as a place that brings Meta subscriptions "together" across all Meta apps. She said Meta's new plans were "just the beginning with a lot more value to come."
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Meta today launched a new standalone app called "Forum" that brings Facebook Groups into a dedicated feed separate from the main Facebook experience.


The app was spotted by Matt Navarra without any formal announcement from the company. Its App Store listing describes Forum as "a dedicated space for the conversations that matter most to you," built for the groups users already belong to and those they have yet to discover.

Forum's feed surfaces conversations from a user's existing Groups instead of mixing them with posts from friends, Pages, and algorithmically recommended content. When logging in for the first time, users are asked what they want to see more of, suggesting the app will also surface posts from other Groups aligned with their interests. Any post made through Forum syncs back to the main Facebook app, and vice versa.

Users will need an existing Facebook account to sign in. The app supports anonymized usernames for public interactions, similar to the option already available on Facebook, though group administrators can still see the real identities behind those accounts.

Two AI features are available in Forum. The first, called "Ask," is said to pull answers from across a user's Groups so they don't have to search each community individually. The second is an AI-powered assistant for group moderators to help manage administrative tasks.

This is not Meta's first attempt at a standalone Groups product. The company launched a dedicated Facebook Groups app years ago before discontinuing it in 2017.

A comparison to Reddit has been drawn given the app's focus on niche community discussions, real-people recommendations, and question-and-answer style content. Forum is available on the App Store now.
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The Meta AI app and Meta AI on WhatsApp have a new "incognito chat" option, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said is a "completely private way to interact with AI."


Zuckerberg also said that Meta AI's incognito mode is the first major AI product where there is no log of conversations stored on servers. Zuckerberg likened the feature to end-to-end encryption, and said no one will be able to read the AI conversations, not even Meta or WhatsApp.

AI inference for incognito chat is done in a Trusted Execution Environment that Zuckerberg said is not accessible to Meta. Conversations also disappear from the phone when exiting a chat session, and nothing is saved or logged. Web searches are conducted privately, with no search information linked to the user.

"To get the most from personal superintelligence, we'll all need ways to discuss sensitive topics in ways that no one else can access," Zuckerberg said.

WhatsApp head Will Cathcart told reporters that the AI has safety guardrails, and it will refuse to answer questions that could be interpreted as harmful or illegal, steering conversations in a different direction. The mode also only supports text, and users are unable to upload images.

Incognito chat for Meta AI comes as OpenAI is facing a lawsuit for allegedly causing a teen's drug overdose. The teen asked ChatGPT for information on whether it was safe to take two drugs together, and was provided with an incorrect answer that led to his death. OpenAI has been sued several times by the families of people who used ChatGPT before dying by suicide.

Lawsuits against OpenAI have involved chat logs recovered by the plaintiffs, and without those logs, there would be far less evidence for a legal complaint over AI actions and advice.

Google and OpenAI also offer temporary chat options, but messages are still stored on remote servers. Google keeps data for up to three days, and OpenAI keeps logs for 30 days.

Meta's private chat option is rolling out in the coming months in the Meta AI app and WhatsApp.
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Meta today announced the launch of Instants, a new image sharing option on the Instagram social network. Instants are ephemeral photos that disappear from Instagram after they're viewed by a user's friends or after a 24-hour period.


Reactions and replies to Instants images show up in DMs instead of on the post. Instants photos are only displayed for a short period, but they are saved to a user's archive for a year and can be reshared to Stories. Instants cannot be edited, with no option for filters, stickers, or modifications beyond captions. That sets them apart from Stories, which is already an Instagram feature.

Instants is an Instagram feature, but Meta has also developed a standalone Instants companion app "for quicker camera access." The standalone app is a direct competitor to Snapchat, the original ephemeral image social network. The new app can be used for sharing Instants, but on Instagram, users can also share Instants from a new camera option in the Direct Messages section of the app.

Instants can be viewed on Instagram by opening up DMs and tapping on the new Instants box in the bottom right corner of the inbox. Photos can be shared with friends set as close friends, or as mutuals, aka followers that an Instagram user follows back. Instants are not able to be screenshotted or screen recorded, providing privacy features not available with other Instagram image types.

Meta says that Instants are designed for casual, everyday photos. The standalone app is limited to select countries, as Meta says that it is an experiment. Images shared on the Instants app will show up for friends on Instagram, and images shared on Instagram will show up in the Instants app.

Instants on Instagram is available globally starting today, and the app is also available for download in countries where it is supported.
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Meta plans to add a facial recognition feature to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, reports The New York Times ($).


According to people involved in the plans who spoke to the publication, the feature is internally called "Name Tag," and would let wearers identify people and get information about them via Meta's artificial intelligence assistant. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly wants the feature to differentiate the devices and to make the AI assistant in the glasses more useful.

According to an internal document seen by NYT, Facebook's parent company has been in discussions since early last year about releasing the feature, which carries obvious civil liberty and privacy risks. Based on the document, dated to last May, the company originally planned to release Name Tag to attendees of a conference for the blind – which did not happen – before releasing it to the general public.

The internal memo also said the "political tumult" in the United States was good timing for the feature's release. NYT quoting from the document out of Meta's Reality Labs:

"We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns."

The plan is a turnaround for the company – five years ago, Facebook shut down its facial recognition system for tagging people in photos on its social network, citing a need to find "the right balance" for a technology that raises privacy and legal concerns.

This isn't the first time it has considered adding facial recognition to a consumer product either. Technical challenges and ethical concerns reportedly prevented the feature from making it into Meta's first version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, which have proven successful since they debuted in 2021. EssilorLuxottica, which works with Meta to make the glasses, said this week that it sold more than seven million units in 2025.

Meta is still said to be exploring who should be recognizable through the technology. Possible options reportedly include recognizing people a user knows via a Meta platform, and identifying people whom they may not know but who have a public account on a Meta site like Instagram. What Name Tag reportedly won't allow users to do is look up literally anyone they encounter.

In a statement given to NYT, Meta said:

"We're building products that help millions of people connect and enrich their lives. 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 and will take a thoughtful approach if and before we roll anything out."

Meta's smart glasses have already been used to identify people in public. In 2024, two Harvard students used Ray-Ban Meta glasses alongside the facial recognition service PimEyes to identify strangers on the Boston subway, and later posted a video of the experiment that went viral. Meta responded by emphasizing that the glasses included a small white LED on the top-right corner of the frame to signal when recording is taking place.

Meta is apparently also working on so-called "super-sensing" glasses that continually run cameras and sensors to keep a record of someone's day.

According to a Bloomberg report last year, Apple is planning to launch a set of smart glasses by the end of this year. The glasses will be comparable to Meta's Ray-Bans and Google's Android XR glasses, "but better made."

Apple's smart glasses are expected to include cameras, microphones, and AI capabilities, and will have the ability to take photos, record video, provide translations, give turn-by-turn directions, and more. However, they won't have augmented reality capabilities.
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Apple is nearing a settlement with the European Commission to resolve multiple antitrust investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), in a move aimed at averting escalating daily fines that could reach up to 5% of its average global revenue, the Financial Times reports.


Both Apple and Meta are reportedly in the final stages of talks with European regulators following a combined €700 million in fines issued in April 2025 for breaching the EU's flagship digital competition law. According to officials briefed on the discussions, both companies are negotiating changes to their business practices to ensure full compliance and avoid further penalties.

For Apple, the settlement discussions center on the European Commission's ongoing investigations into the App Store. Regulators previously found that Apple restricted developers from directing users to offers outside its platform, in violation of the DMA's anti-steering provisions. The company was fined €500 million in April and ordered to amend its practices.

In June, Apple announced several modifications to its ‌App Store‌ framework for the European Union, including allowing developers to promote alternative payment options and distribute iOS apps via external marketplaces for the first time.

European Commission officials told the Financial Times that talks with Apple remain ongoing over the company's new contractual terms for developers and whether they sufficiently remove barriers to fair competition. The Commission has sought assurances that developers are free to communicate directly with users about external pricing or promotions without facing additional fees or restrictions from Apple.

Under the DMA, designated "gatekeepers" such as Apple must not favor their own services over rivals and must allow fair access to their platforms. The law represents one of the European Union's most far-reaching efforts to curb the power of large technology companies. Violations can trigger substantial daily fines, potentially reaching billions of euros for repeat offenses.

Apple maintains that it is already in compliance with EU law and appealed the Commission's initial decision, arguing that the regulator's interpretation goes beyond what the DMA requires. The Commission is still collecting input from developers and other stakeholders on Apple's proposed adjustments.

Officials close to the discussions expressed optimism that a resolution could be reached soon. The outcome of the case is expected to have wide-ranging implications for the company's operations in Europe, influencing how it manages the ‌App Store‌ and more.
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Apple has had yet another AI executive poached by Meta, despite reports that the social networking company is slowing hiring (via Bloomberg).


Frank Chu, one of Apple's team leaders focused on cloud infrastructure, training, and search, will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs, a division tasked with building advanced AI systems capable of performing at or beyond human-level intelligence.

Chu was involved with managing Apple's cloud-based large language models (LLMs), and was also influential in developing search features for Siri and Apple's entertainment services. For Meta, Chu will work on a new team called MSL Infra, responsible for AI infrastructure development.

Meta has spent billions of dollars on recruitment for its Superintelligence group in recent months, but the company is said to be slowing down hiring over concerns of an overheated market. The pause went into effect last week amid a broader restructuring of the group.

Fears that investments in AI are moving too fast weren't helped by reports earlier this week that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a group of journalists that he believes AI is in a bubble. There was a broader sell-off of U.S. technology stocks following the news.

Apple has hemorrhaged around a dozen artificial intelligence staff to rivals since January. The exodus of staff from Apple's AI team over the last seven months has seen senior researchers leave variously for Meta, OpenAI, xAI, Cohere, and others.

One of the most notable recent departures was Ruoming Pang, head of Apple's Foundational Models team, who joined Meta last month after being lured by CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a $200 million pay package.

The talent drain coincides with Apple's struggle to update Siri by integrating LLMs. A chatbot-like version of the virtual assistant was one of the key Apple Intelligence features that Apple promoted at last year's WWWDC, but it has yet to arrive.

Apple is said to be considering using third-party AI models for Siri rather than its in-house technology, following an executive restructuring. During Apple's recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is "making good progress on a more personalized Siri" that is powered by Apple Intelligence, and he reiterated that the features will be available next year.
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