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Sunday, April 20, 2025

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We've wrapped up the first week of Meta's antitrust trial, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accusing Facebook's parent company of anticompetitive behavior. If the FTC wins, it might even force Meta to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.

Even more revealing than what's been said in the courtroom (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the first witness called to take the stand) were the internal emails that the FTC shared as evidence. Some, for example, showed how aware Zuckerberg and other executives were of the potential threat posed by Instagram. At one point, while discussing what the company might do if it acquired the photo-sharing app, Zuckerberg outlined a scenario where the company kept the Instagram app running but "all future development would go toward [Facebook's] core products."

Other emails, meanwhile, showed how concerned executives were about Facebook losing cultural relevance.

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

OpenAI hallucinations are on the upswing: The company's recently launched o3 and o4-mini models might represent the cutting edge, but internal testing found that they actually hallucinate more than its previous reasoning models. OpenAI says "more research is needed" to understand why this is happening.

A new kids' show will come with a crypto wallet: The show, "Owen Nowhere," comes from We Ghosted Media and Lamina1, a web3 startup founded by "Snow Crash" author Neal Stephenson. The wallet will allow viewers to interact with the show and even make key story decisions.

Techstars increases startup funding to $220,000: That's $100,000 more than the accelerator offered each participating startup previously, with the terms of the deal mirroring those offered by Y Combinator.

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What else we're reading 📗

Vulture worked with analytics firm Two Cents Insights to survey more than 2,000 U.S. adults about their streaming TV habits. Among the findings: Almost no one says they like cliffhangers, and almost everyone partakes of both binge-watching and following shows on a fixed release schedule.

Also, the Voice of San Diego examines how community colleges are struggling to respond to a flood of bot students trying to access financial aid.