Meta’s AI agent is building a dossier on you

Plus: Should fraternities be banned?  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Richard Hall | October 07, 2026     Hello there. A woman’s lawsuit against Cornell University over an alleged sexual assault by seven members of a fraternity has drawn national attention in the last week. As the university and local authorities face questions over their handling of the case, some are calling for greater scrutiny of fraternities. Today in The Brief, we talk to a historian of fraternities to figure out what that might look like. We also bring you images from the French student protests, including a remarkable video of a local mayor protecting a group of young people from police. IN TODAY’S BRIEF The AI agent keeping a file on you Trump’s denaturalization surge Don’t cancel your plans Should fraternities be banned? U.S. citizens detained by ICE Paris protests         READ THIS FIRST Meta’s Muse AI agent is building a dossier on you Smith Collection—Gado/Getty Images Muse, the popular new AI personal assistant from Meta, is building continuously updated dossiers on its 4 million users, focusing on who matters to you, what you desire, and what kind of nudges shape your behavior, a TIME analysis of Muse’s internal instructions found. Each hour, Muse updates its dossiers on you and the people you’ve mentioned in chats, messages, and emails that Muse has read. These pages amount to a map of each user’s social relationships. They record details of how you and your contacts met, your shared interests, your disputes, and “tensions and alliances” within your social group. Even people who don’t use Muse are subject to this mapping process by other people’s Muse agents. Muse is told to “strengthen your relationship” with users by adapting how it talks, noticing “inside jokes, memorable phrasing, and shared context that makes the relationship feel continuous,” according to the internal instructions TIME reviewed. The level of insight in the resulting dossiers makes social-media algorithms that study your likes and clicks look quaint. Muse is designed to infer users’ goals, including those you “have not said out loud.” —Harry Booth Read the full story here.         SPONSORED REVERB Live concerts bring millions of fans together through music. Behind the scenes, REVERB channels that energy into environmental action. See how REVERB has helped eliminate 4.6 million single-use bottles and is driving an entire industry to make sustainability part of every show. Watch the episode         IN THE NEWS Trump Administration mounts ‘largest denaturalization effort in modern history’ John Tlumacki—The Boston Globe/Getty Images Forty naturalized citizens may lose their U.S. citizenship after the Justice Department filed multiple lawsuits across the country seeking their denaturalization, in the latest instance of Donald Trump’s Administration seeking to remake what it means to be a U.S. citizen. The Justice Department announced Monday that the denaturalization petitions were lodged against the 40 individuals between Aug. 10 and Oct. 2. They have been accused of a range of “serious offenses,” including child sexual abuse, fraud, and tax evasion. “Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the announcement. More than half of the cases the Justice Department cited involved immigration or identity fraud. —Chad de Guzman Read the full story here.         HEALTH CHECK Don’t cancel your plans. Shrink them Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: Pexels via Canva) When you said yes to dinner at that new sushi place last week, it sounded like a great idea. Now that the agreed-upon day has arrived, you’re exhausted. Yet before you send a cancellation text, consider a smaller proposition: Could your friend come over for takeout? Could you catch up in the clothes you’re already wearing, without making “getting ready” a production? Jana Rundle, a clinical psychologist in Austin, regularly helps her clients make these adjustments. When people are overwhelmed, she says, they tend to think they either have to follow through on a planned elaborate outing or skip it altogether. Shrinking the plan gives them another option. “Let’s identify what’s hard about this and solve that problem so we can still get the connection we need,” she says. “The goal is just to get together.” —Angela Haupt Read the full story here.         SPONSORED SEABOUND Nearly 90% of the world’s goods travel by ship. From the food on our shelves to the packages at our doors, shipping touches nearly every part of our lives, and so does its carbon footprint. Seabound is betting on an unexpected solution: a box of rocks. By turning limestone into a sponge that captures CO₂ emissions, the company is proving that small innovations can help change the course of global shipping. Watch the episode         IN FOCUS Should fraternities be banned? Adrian Kraus—Associated Press A lawsuit alleging the drugging and gang rape of a student by seven members of Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity in 2024 has led to calls for greater scrutiny of fraternities—and even for banning them. TIME spoke to Nick Syrett, author of The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities and professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about the case, what makes fraternities unique, and why they have proved so hard to rein in. TIME: You've written a book about white college fraternities. What about this case shocked or surprised you? There's a long history of events like this happening in fraternities. Since at least the 1970s and 1980s, there have been incidents of gang rape of intoxicated, incapacitated women in fraternity houses. So it is not surprising that it has happened once again. Is there something unique about fraternities that encourages this kind of behavior? I do think there is something particular about fraternities. One of the things is the single-sex nature of the organization. The men who join them have decided that they want to be in a single-sex organization that allows them to live out their masculinity in particular kinds of ways. The pressure ratchets up because there is an emphasis upon sex and dating and hooking up. It's a way to enhance masculinity. The other thing is fraternities just have lots of power on campus. Most of them own their own houses, which means they don't have lots of oversight from university officials. In the wake of the Cornell case, there have been calls for greater regulation and even bans on fraternities. What do you think those regulations would look like, or should look like? The difficulty here is that when a university does the ultimate thing, which is to ban an organization from campus altogether, it loses any ability to regulate, because now they're not an official organization. But by and large, the fraternities own their own houses, and so young men who are students at any university can still choose to become members of that fraternity and live in that house if they want to, if that chapter remains recognized by its national organization. There's a fraternity right here at my school, the University of Wisconsin, that two weeks ago the police busted for illegal hazing. That fraternity hasn't been recognized by the university for 10 years, but it's still admitting members, having them pledge, hazing them, and breaking the law. Read the full interview here.         ONE NUMBER 506 At least 506 American citizens have been detained by federal immigration agents in President Donald Trump’s second term, according to an investigation by ProPublica. SOURCE: PROPUBLICA         A VIRAL MOMENT A mayor in the line of fire Of all the images from the student protests in France, this video stands out. It shows Bally Bagayoko, the mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, standing between police and student protesters. TIME’s photo editors have collected some of the most striking photographs of the demonstrations here.         SPONSORED AMINI Across the Global South, Amini is working to ensure nations are not left out of their digital future. From climate intelligence to sovereign AI, Amini is building the infrastructure countries need to own their data, strengthen public services and create economic opportunity on their own terms. Watch the episode       Linked In this addictive word-association game, find the steps that will unite two seemingly unrelated words in just four moves. PLAY NOW       ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME IDEAS The Ghosts That Haunt Egypt       More Newsletters from Click to sign up. D.C. BRIEF +FUTURE PROOF +HEALTH MATTERS +INSIDE TIME +IN THE LOOP +WORTH YOUR TIME + Subscribe to TIME Email us: thebrief@time.com Received this from a friend? 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