TL;DR: For the first time, Meta is asking its Oversight Board to craft clearer rules on when the company should hand out permanent bans—the most serious penalty Meta can impose on users who break rules—after it disabled a high-profile Instagram account last year. The move could harden Meta’s enforcement playbook, while users and digital rights groups warn that bans carry financial, political, and social consequences.

What happened: Meta asked its Oversight Board to weigh in on when permanent bans should apply to users across its platforms—and it’s doing so through a specific case.

The company asked the board to consider a “high profile” Instagram account that was permanently disabled last year for repeated severe violations, including threats and harassment against a female journalist and “anti-gay slurs against prominent politicians.” The account hadn’t racked up enough strikes for an automatic ban, but Meta made the call anyway. Today, the board announced it would review the case and make its recommendations within the next few weeks.

Right now, Meta already permanently bans users—but it’s usually done quietly and after multiple strikes for violations of Meta’s Community Standards. There isn’t a public checklist for what leads to a permanent ban, though accounts tied to terrorism, organized hate, child exploitation, or repeated violent threats can be disabled outright without a buildup of strikes.

The semi-independent Oversight Board, often described as the platform’s internal supreme court, can issue recommendations that Meta publicly commits to considering but isn’t required to implement.

Who cares?: Pressure is rising for Meta to explain how it decides who gets permanently removed from its platforms. Creators, activists, and small businesses have long complained that accounts can disappear overnight with little explanation or room to appeal.

A permanent ban across Meta platforms can be the digital equivalent of exile: cut off from friends, family, and neighborhood communities, and losing access to potentially decades’ worth of photos and posts. The Oversight Board was created after years of backlash over opaque moderation decisions, including cases where users lost access to their accounts or had content removed without explanation, and longstanding accusations that Instagram has inconsistently enforced political speech rules. Being banned from a major platform can mean losing access to essential communication tools, community networks, or even a primary source of income.

Why now: Meta is punting a crucial policy framework over to the Oversight Board at a moment when it’s under sustained scrutiny over moderation. AI-generated deepfakes and impersonation scams are exploding faster than enforcement tools can keep up, while governments are ramping up pressure around teen safety, including age restrictions on social media. At the same time, Meta uses AI to automatically moderate content, which can act quickly but also make sweeping mistakes.

Adding to the tension: Just last year, Meta said it would be loosening moderation so users could enjoy “more speech,” swapping third-party fact-checking for community notes and lifting restrictions on some categories of content. The shift drew cautious applause from some free speech advocates—and sharp criticism from lawmakers and civil liberties groups who warned it could weaken guardrails right as online harm is intensifying.

What’s next: The Oversight Board’s recommendations could make ban enforcement more consistent and transparent. Or they could codify and legitimize Meta handing out more permabans, giving it stronger cover to remove accounts while offering users little recourse. —WK

Ben Affleck isn't buying Hollywood's AI panic—and he's done his homework

Sometimes you just need to rant. Here, we give voice to a tech-related issue that's been bugging us.

Ben Affleck has thoughts on AI in Hollywood—and he’s not holding back. "I actually don't think it's very likely that [...] it's going to be able to write anything meaningful, or in particular, that it's going to be making movies like from whole cloth, like Tilly Norwood," he said on Joe Rogan’s podcast, dismissing the idea as "bullshit."

It’s a bold take, with the actor and director spending several minutes breaking down why he thinks generative AI will be "a tool, just like visual effects"—not a replacement for human creativity.

His reasoning? AI is a little… well, basic. “If you try to get ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something, it’s really shitty [...] because, by its nature, it goes to the mean, to the average, and it’s not reliable." Where it could be useful, he says, is in a writer’s brainstorming process—like coming up with options for a delayed letter plotline, for example. Or in production, where crews could shoot a scene locally with actors in parkas and use AI to make it "appear very realistically as if we're in the North Pole." He says it could also streamline graphics rendering for superhero movies, handling work that would otherwise require massive teams.

Affleck, who clearly knows his way around the technology, also pushed back on the AI hype cycle itself. Much of the existential panic, he argued, is driven by companies trying to justify massive data center investments. “ChatGPT-5 is about 25% better than ChatGPT-4 and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data,” he says.

It's a refreshingly grounded take in an industry that's been in full-on panic mode about AI. Writers went on strike partly over fears that studios would use chatbots to churn out first drafts. Actors worry deepfakes will replace them entirely. And yet here's Affleck—someone who actually makes movies—saying the existential threat is overblown. Of course, it's easy enough to dismiss AI anxiety when you're already a two-time Oscar winner. —SM

If you have a funny, strange, or petty rant about technology or the ways people use (and misuse) it, fill out this form and you may see it featured in a future edition of the newsletter.

The first rule of posting on social media is knowing how to read the virtual room. Over the weekend, Disney asked users on Instagram’s Threads to post Disney quotes showing how they’re feeling right now. It probably expected heartwarming affirmations of love, kindness, bravery, that one Lilo & Stitch quote about family, and a million GIFs of Dory swimming. What it got instead was a hornet's nest.

Hundreds of people responded using famous scenes as political messages that appeared to critique the Trump administration, fascism, and the general state of the world. A few examples: Captain von Trapp ripping apart the Nazi flag in The Sound of Music. Sebastian from The Little Mermaid telling Ariel, “The human world is a mess.” Barbie from Toy Story 3 sagely opining, “Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force.” This Barbie believes in democracy!

To make matters worse, Disney then violated the second cardinal rule of social media: Instead of waiting for the drama to fade, it ensured its posterity by deleting the post. The third rule of social media, of course, is to never ask the internet for input if you want brand-safe answers. In the best case, you get a ship named Boaty McBoatface. In the worst, you get hateful, lewd, and absurd names for your new soda flavor. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: /5

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