mark Zuckerberg
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Source: The Washington Post / Getty / Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg told the world how he really feels about Apple as a company and a brand. Spoiler alert: he didn’t have anything nice to say.
Engaging in tech bro-talk with Joe Rogan on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience on Friday, Zuckerberg dropped his opinion on Tim Cook’s Apple.
The Meta CEO criticized Apple for its lack of innovation and criticized the company for what he described as “random rules.”
“On the one hand, [the iPhone has] been great, because now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone, and that’s kind of what enables pretty amazing things,” Zuckerberg said. “But on the other hand … they have used that platform to put in place a lot of rules that I think feel arbitrary and [I] feel like they haven’t really invented anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later.”
Apple’s Lack of Improvements On New iPhone Models Is Hurting Sales According To Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg, who was slammed last week for ending “fact-checking” on Meta and was blessed with a bunch of outrageous fake headlines, continued digging into his rival, sharing he feels customers are no longer rushing to upgrade their iPhones is due to lack new features in new models, resulting in struggling sales of the once mighty smartphone.
“So how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically, like, squeezing people, and, like you’re saying, having this 30% tax on developers by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it,” Zuckerberg added. “You know, they build stuff like Air Pods, which are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way.”
Zuckerberg Feels Apple “Traps” Its Customers In Their Ecosystem
He further explained that the company that Jobs built avoided pushback from other companies by claiming its main goal was not to violate its customers’ privacy and security, a problem he feels could be fixed by Apple fixing its protocol and improving security by using better encryption.
Zuckerberg continued, “It’s insecure because you didn’t build any security into it. And then you’re using that as a justification for why only your product can connect easily.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s take on Apple. A must watch. I love Apple products. Always have. However, his take on how they haven’t come up with something truly innovative is spot on. A few examples:
1) AirPods Max 2 … they just added a USB-C charger. Other than that, it’s the same thing… pic.twitter.com/h6Z0bO2jCQ
— Antonio Reza (@theantonioreza) January 11, 2025
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Mark Zuckerberg Shared His Opinion On The Failed Apple Vision Pro
Zuckerberg had more to say. He also discussed Apple’s current flop, the Apple Vision Pro. He did give them credit for their attempt at entering the VR space with its spatial computing device, but that’s as far as his compliments went.
“I think the Vision Pro is, I think, one of the bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while,” Zuckerberg said. “And I don’t want to give them too hard of a time on it, because we do a lot of things where the first version isn’t that good, and you want to kind of judge the third version of it. But I mean, the V1, it definitely did not hit it out of the park.”
He continued, “I heard it’s really good for watching movies.”
Well, damn.
He also added that “they shipped something for $3,500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400.
Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan podcast, said that Apple Vision Pro is worse than the Meta Quest: ‘They shipped something for $3,500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400.’ pic.twitter.com/W0T4G4gqCC
— Nathie (@NathieVR) January 13, 2025
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Users on X, formerly Twitter, have been reacting to Zuckerberg’s comments. Surprisingly, many agree with him but accuse him of not truly being innovative.
Mark Zuckerberg is correct here and I can also add that Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t created anything at all
He bought Instagram and some other app and stole The Facebook
He’s just Elon Musk that washes up every day https://t.co/Rd8bhhv6yv
— many nigga face god (@brantweezy) January 13, 2025
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You can see more reactions to Zuck’s thoughts on Apple below.
1. Hmmmmmmm
3. Well damn
5. Some folks agree with Mark Zuckerberg
6. Truth hurts sometimes
8. Let Mark know how you really feel
10. S A L T Y
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Source: DREW ANGERER / Getty / Meta
Big tech CEOs continue to look weird and act dumb in the wake of the incoming Trump presidency. In what many see as a sign of capitulation, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company, Meta, will end its fact-checking program and opt to go the X route with “community notes.”
With Elon Musk in his pocket, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon paying $40 million for Melania Trump’s life story, and Tim Cook contributing to the cost of Trump’s inauguration, Donald Trump’s rebranding on social media and in the tech space is well underway.
Today, Zuckerberg, who has taken that AI-generated image of him looking like the ultimate f*** boy very seriously and is now dressing like one in real life, announced the company will no longer be fact-checking content.
“Fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the new heada** policy.” What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
Riiiiiiggghhhttt.
The Meta chief did note that there would be a “tradeoff” with the policy acknowledging that more “harmful” content will make its way onto timelines.
Donald Trump Winning Had Everything To Do With Meta’s Policy Shift
Meta’s newly appointed Chief of Global Affairs, Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, supports him. He adds that Meta’s relationship with third-party fact-checkers was “well-intentioned at the outset, but there’s just been too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check and how.”
Kaplan also admitted that Trump winning the 2024 presidential election was a reason for Meta’s policy shift, adding, “no question that there has been a change over the last four years. We saw a lot of societal and political pressure, all in the direction of more content, moderation more censorship, and we’ve got a real opportunity. Now, we’ve got a new administration, and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression, and that makes a difference.”
Note how Kaplan also throws the Biden administration under the bus here. Not very subtle. https://t.co/pQxlobk1KW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2025
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Sources close to the situation tell CNN that Meta gave Trump’s team a heads-up before announcing the policy change. During an off-the-wall press conference, Orange Mussolini claimed that his bullying of Zuckerberg had influenced the company’s decision.
Q: Do you think Zuckerberg is responding to the threats you’ve made to him in the past?
TRUMP: Probably. Yeah. Probably. pic.twitter.com/1XT01KCDXc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2025
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Another One Kisses The Trump Ring
This latest announcement comes as Zuckerberg has been out here glazing and doing his best to get in the good graces of the Orange Menace before his stench reenters the White House.
UFC CEO and big-time Trump ally Dana White joined the company’s board a day ago. Like Tim Cook, Meta has donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and Zuckerberg expressed a desire to play an “active role” in shaping tech policy in the Trump administration.
Also, like Cook, Zuckerberg is getting fried on social media for bowing down to Donald Trump.
This is 100% capitulation by Mark @finkd Zuckerberg. Just despicable https://t.co/upTKmJ7si8
— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 7, 2025
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Mark Zuckerberg is removing fact-checking from Meta. 👀
I hope most rational people are asking themselves why removing fact-checking is necessary for free speech and expression.
Only liars and con-artists don’t like being fact-checked. pic.twitter.com/RuER0Yhpt5
— Ryan Shead (@RyanShead) January 7, 2025
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This is definitely going to be a spooky four years. You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
2. Follow the money
3. Howling
4. Stay vigilant y’all. Avoid those crazy posts from your aunts and uncles
5. Well damn
7. Don’t fall for the jig
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Source: picture alliance / Getty / Mark Zuckerberg
Nobody asked for this, but it exists. Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg has linked up with T-Pain to do a rendition of Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz’s smash hit “Get Low,” yes, it’s awful.
We had to hear it, so now you do. Z-Pain, AKA Mark Zuckerberg and T-Pain, decided it would be a great idea to turn the bass-heavy club hit that got us extremely crunk, into an acoustic song with mellow singing.
Never in a million years did we think we would hear the tech billionaire sing “Til the sweat drop down my balls,” or “till all these b****es crawl,” and “skeet, skeet.”
T-Pain, a much better singer who would probably do a song like this as some sort of skit, lends his skills to the track.
Now, why does this song even exist? According to The Verge, Zuckerberg did the song for his wife, Priscilla.
Per The Verge:
Apparently, Zuckerberg made the song for his wife, Priscilla. “‘Get Low’ was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary,” Zuckerberg wrote on Instagram. “This year I worked with @tpain on our own version of this lyrical masterpiece. Sound on for the track and also available on Spotify.”
We genuinely hope this is a one-off because we don’t need more songs from Z-Pain.
One of the year’s most unexpected collaborations has come to fruition, with T-Pain teaming up with Mark Zuckerberg to deliver an acoustic version of Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz’s “Get Low”.
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News of the nascent cover broke on Tuesday (Nov. 12) when the Facebook founder took to his Instagram Story to share a picture of the pair together with the caption, “It’s happening guys.” T-Pain later shared the same picture, referring to Zuckerberg as “Z” while claiming, “It is time…”
Now, the fruits of their labor have been revealed, with the pair releasing a cover of “Get Low” under the musical moniker Z-Pain.
Trending on Billboard
Originally released in 2002 as the third single from Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz’s album Kings of Crunk, “Get Low”, it became the breakthrough single for the group, charting internationally, and peaking at No. 2 on both the Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts, and topping the Hot Rap Songs chart.
In a post shared to Instagram, Zuckerberg revealed that he had collaborated with T-Pain on the track to serve as an anniversary present for his wife, Priscilla Chan.
“‘Get Low’ was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This year I worked with @tpain on our own version of this lyrical masterpiece. Sound on for the track and also available on Spotify. Love you P ❤️”
The unlikely relationship between Zuckerberg and T-Pain has been forged over the past few years, with the former even appearing in one of the musician’s livestreams on Instagram in May 2021.
Earlier this year, the Florida singer gifted Zuckerberg a Nappy Boy Meta chain in July. The tech giant posted a video of him putting on the chain and calling it, “a vibe,” and posted a caption, saying: “Thanks @tpain for the epic new chain. Perfect opportunity to show how the new Segment Anything AI research model we’re releasing today can track different objects in the same video. Lots of fun video effects will be possible with this.”
On Sunday (Nov. 10), T-Pain was also honored by his hometown of Tallahassee, with Mayor John Dailey awarding him both the Keys to the City, and cemented the musician’s status as one of the city favorite’s songs by renaming Pasco Street to T-Pain Lane.
Elon Musk says his potential in-person fight with Mark Zuckerberg would be streamed on his social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.
The two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a “cage match” face-off in late June. Zuckerberg is actually trained in mixed martial arts, and the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta posted about completing his first jiu jitsu tournament earlier this year.
“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X,” Musk wrote in a post Sunday (Aug. 5) on the platform. “All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”
Musk said earlier Sunday he was training for the fight by lifting weights.
“Don’t have time to work out, so I just bring them to work,” Musk wrote.
Whether or not Musk and Zuckerberg actually make it to the ring in Las Vegas has yet to be seen — especially as Musk often tweets about action prematurely or without following through. But even if their cage match agreement is all a joke, the banter has gained attention.
It all started when Musk, who owns X, responded to a tweet about Meta preparing to release a new Twitter rival called Threads. He took a dig about the world becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options” — but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu jitsu training.
“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk wrote.
Representatives of X, Meta and Ultimate Fighting Championship, which owns the venue where the fight might take place, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Musk’s push to stream the video live on X comes as he aims to turn the platform into a “digital town square.” However, his much-publicized Twitter Spaces kickoff event in May with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his run for president struggled with technical glitches and a near half-hour delay.
Musk had said the problems were due to “straining” servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio-only event. But even at their highest, the number of listeners listed topped out at around 420,000, far from the millions of viewers that televised presidential announcements attract.
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Source: SOPA Images / Getty / Threads
Is it a wrap for Twitter? Instagram’s Threads swiftly surpassed the 100 million users milestone.
Spotted on The Verge via Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads profile, the platform explicitly created to rival Twitter looks like a massive success for Meta.
The Threads app surpassed 100 million users faster than OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, which accomplished the feat in two months. It only took Instragram’s Threads mere days to reach that goal in a matter of days following its early Wednesday launch last week.
Per The Verge:
Threads proved to be an early hit almost immediately. In the first two hours, it hit 2 million users and steadily climbed from there to 5 million, 10 million, 30 million, and then 70 million. The launch has been “way beyond our expectations,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.
On Monday, Zuckerberg said in a Threads post confirming the milestone that the growth was “mostly organic:”
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, followed Zuckerberg, noting that it only took five days to reach the staggering number of users.
Now, whether that was achieved “organically” is another story. Before its launch, Threads was heavily pushed to the over 1 billion people using Instagram, allowing them to transfer their IG accounts quickly to the new platform. So we are sure that also significantly increased the number of people signing up to use Threads.
Users are also threading it up. According to The Verge, there have “been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app.”
Threads Accomplishing A Goal Adam Mosseri Claims It Doesn’t Want To Do
Despite these impressive numbers, Mosseri stated in a Threads post that his platform is not trying to replace Twitter and will not actively push politics or hard news. But you can’t stop users from talking about what they want to, and hard news is finding its way onto Threads.
Also, if its mission is not to replace Twitter, it seems to be failing at that mission. With some help from Elon Musk, Twitter’s traffic is reportedly “tanking,” according to CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince.
Twitter has been telling whatever advertisers it has left, probably Cheech and Chong, whose gummy ads are flooding Twitter users’ timelines, that it has “535 million monetizable monthly active users,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Prince’s claims say otherwise.
Right now, it’s looking like Twitter is dying a slow death. Twitter better hope that the lawsuit bears fruit. But we are here for anything hurting Elon Musk’s pockets.
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Photo: SOPA Images / Getty / Threads
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Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / Threads / Twitter
Elon Musk and his hot mess of a social media platform, Twitter, are looking salty in these digital streets after threatening to sue Meta for allegedly biting Twitter with Threads.
Spotted on The Verge, it looks like Elon Musk is shaking in his Allbirds following Threads’ successful launch and looks to be a strong contender to knock out the bird app.
In a letter addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg obtained by Semafor, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro alleges that Meta is using te company’s trade secrets and intellectual property when making bringing Threads to life and is threatening legal action in “both civil remedies and injunctive relief.”
Per The Verge:
Spiro, who is also Elon Musk’s personal lawyer and a partner at the Quinn Emanuel law firm, claims that Meta hired “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees to develop Threads, which wouldn’t be all that surprising given just how many people were fired following Musk’s takeover.
But according to Twitter, many of these former workers still have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other confidential information. Twitter alleges that Meta took advantage of this and tasked these employees with developing a “copycat” app “in violation of both state and federal law.”
In response to the claims, the communications director for Meta, Andy Stone, said, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
Meta also doesn’t seem phased by Musk’s threat to sue, being that is usually the course of action the company seems to take, most recently threatening Microsoft with a lawsuit for allegedly abusing Twitter’s API.
In response to the letter, Musk said, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Threads Is Winning Out The Gate
Musk and his company’s lawsuit comes on the heels of Thread’s incredible launch that saw over 10 million users eager to ditch Musk’s platform signup.
According to The Verge, Threads has over 30 million registered users, including big names like Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, J.Lo, and more already on board with the app.
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Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Instagram Threads
Wednesday, Instagram decided to “shock drop” its answer to Twitter to strike while the iron is still hot as the mass exodus from Elon Musk is underway. So far, Mark Zuckerberg and co’s decision to hit the launch button was brilliant and is paying off.
Spotted on Engadget, Threads, Meta’s rival to Twitter is off to an impressive start and has already exceeded ten million signups in just seven hours after going live, according to a Thread from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The massive signup number was a testament to the platform’s ability to handle the rapid signup rate, which could also be a direct result of Instagram successfully luring some of its 2 billion users over to Threads.
Zuckerberg wasn’t done egging on his rival, Elon Musk, whom he could fight in a cage match. No, we’re not kidding about that. In his first tweet in over a decade, the Meta chief used the classic Spider-Man meme signaling a standoff between the two billionaires.
While this is a solid start for Threads, the platform’s launch is not without issues. Users are enjoying their time with Threads, but complaints are coming in. One of the main issues is the lack of chronological or following-only feed options, which both Twitter and Instagram are still dealing with to some extent.
Current Threads users are stuck with the current algorithm throwing random users on their feeds, directly resulting from seeing posts other users are replying to.
Threads also lack a post-editing feature, something both Facebook and IG users enjoy, hashtags, account switching, a dedicated button to insert GIFS, and more.
Adam Mosseri Spoke About Instagram Threads’ Issues
In a Threads post, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said that a following-only feature, post-editing, and account switching are “on the list,” and hashtags will be tappable “in time.”
In a recent update from his Broadcast channel, Mosseri admits things are “hectic” behind the scenes.
“Things have been hectic behind the scenes this week, most of the Threads team is focused on keeping the app up and fixing all the bugs we’re finding it,” Mosseri begins. “It feels a little bit like what working at this company felt like ten years ago, everyone’s rolling up their sleeves, hustling and trying to help the best they can.”
He continues, “We didn’t expect 10s of millions of people to sign up in less than a day, but supporting that is the definition of a champagne problem.”
Well, Rome was not built in a day. We only expect Threads to come into form over time. Plus, you can still spend time on Spill as Threads continues to figure things out.
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Photo: NurPhoto / Getty
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Source: MANDEL NGAN / Getty / Mark Zuckerberg / Elon Musk
I don’t think anyone had this possible PPV event on their digital bingo cards.
Twitter’s incompetent owner, Elon Musk, and Meta’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, have been virtually jabbing each other for months. Now it seems the two tech giants could square off in a cage match, and we’re not talking virtually either.
This all stemmed from Twitter users and Musk responding to a report about Instagram’s “Twitter-like” platform, Threads.
“I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,” Musk cheekily tweeted.
In response to Musk’s tweet, a user warned the Tesla chief that Zuckerberg is trained in Ju Jitsu, with Musk responding, “I’m up for a cage match if he is, lol.”
Musk might have been joking with his comment, but apparently, Zuckerberg is not, and he let the Phony Stark know he wants all the smoke by responding via his Instagram Stories, “Send me the location.”
Musk continued to egg on the situation by tweeting out a possible venue for the match, the “Vegas Octagon,” of course, and letting off a fire emoji when someone suggested that UFC’s Joe Rogan could be a referee.
He also claims he has a great move called “the walrus,” whatever the hell that means.
Tale of The Tape
Elon Musk, on paper, is the bigger person, but he also admits he “almost never” goes to the gym, and the only exercise he gets is “picking up my kids and throwing them in the air.”
It’s an entirely different story for Zuckerberg. Per ESPN, he won a no-gi white belt in the 149-pound division at a Silicon Valley tournament and placed second in a gi category on the same day.
The Zuck has also trained BJJ for about a year under Dave Camarillo who has also mentored former UFC titleholders like Cain Velasquez, Jon Fitch, and Josh Koscheck.
Camarillo had high praise for the Meta CEO, telling ESPN:
“He’s amazing. He is an extremely hard worker, as everybody knows. But a lot of people have a business, and they’re successful, and they have that side of their life, and rarely do they dip into the physical side, especially with something like jiu-jitsu and MMA, and have the same amount of success or even go past Day 1 or Month 1.”
Twitter, of course, has thoughts about this possible fight between the tech titans. You can see them in the gallery below.
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Photo: MANDEL NGAN / Getty
1. LOL, accurate
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Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / Meta Verified
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Mark Zuckerberg has been catching nothing but Ls since he announced he was changing the name of Facebook to Meta and was going all in on the VR market. Now he’s taking a page out of Elon Musk’s book with his latest move.
Rumors began circulating on Elon Musk’s Twitter and Beyoncé’s internet that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta would unveil its own Twitter Blue clone to give Facebook and Instagram users verification badges for a price.
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That rumor was accurate, and the new subscription service is called Meta Verified Engadget reports. Mark Zuckerberg announced his new broadcast channel (Instagram’s latest feature) that Meta Verified is coming whether we care for it or not.
According to Zuckerberg, those who cough up the money will get a verification badge, increased profile visibility, additional impersonation protection, and direct access to customer support.
“This feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuck said in his post. He also revealed that Meta Verified would be tested in Australia and New Zealand before the company rolls it out to other countries.
The service will also cost iOS and Android users $15 and $12 on the web minus the app store commission fees.
Unlike Twitter Blue’s sloppy rollout, Meta hopes to curb people from making fake accounts for notable companies. Potential Meta Verified users must be 18 or older and present a valid government-issued ID matching their name and profile photo on their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Once you get verified, you can’t change your profile name, username, date of birth, or photo and must repeat the verification process.
Already verified accounts before the announcement will keep their status due to their notability.
Some Other Ridiculous Meta Verified Perks
Engadget also reports subscribers will receive 100 free stars, a digital currency we have never heard of, to tip content creators on Facebook.
Meta Verified subscribers could access exclusive stickers and reels for their Instagram Stories and Reels.
Will you sign up? Or is this a hard pass?
It sounds like another bad idea from the mind of Mark Zuckerberg.
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Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty
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