ReportWire

Tag: Business

  • Why are so many Americans unhappy with the state of the US today? Here’s what they said in CNN’s latest poll | CNN Politics

    Why are so many Americans unhappy with the state of the US today? Here’s what they said in CNN’s latest poll | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    It’s one of the most commonly asked poll questions: How do Americans feel about the state of the nation? And recently, the answer has usually been a negative one.

    But figuring out why people are unhappy is complicated. CNN’s latest polling asked Americans whether things in the country were going well or badly – and then, to explain in their own words, why they felt that way.

    Among the 69% who said things were going either pretty or very badly, dim views of the nation’s economic conditions were a top driver. The smaller share who were more positive often cited their own, rosier takes on the economy.

    Other factors that influenced Americans’ outlooks, whether positive or negative, included their views of the current occupant of the White House, opinions on social issues, conclusions drawn from their daily lives or a combination of disparate concerns. Their explanations help shed light on what respondents really mean when they answer the broad, state-of-the-nation questions frequently included on surveys.

    Here’s a look at some common themes that emerged in our latest poll, as well as a sampling of responses from people across the country. Some answers have been lightly edited for length, grammar and clarity.

    Views of the nation and the economy often go hand in hand. Asked to explain their view of how things are going in the US today, both 35% of those who said things were going well and 52% who said things were going badly mentioned economic factors.

    Slightly over half of women, men, Whites, people of color, those younger than 45 and those 45 and older who said things were going badly all mentioned the economy when asked to explain why they felt that way.

    But there were differences both along and within partisan lines among this pessimistic group.

    A 58% majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents cited the economy as a reason for their discontent, with a smaller 42% of Democrats and Democratic leaners saying the same.

    Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents younger than 45 were 11 points likelier than their older counterparts to cite an economic reason. Among Republicans, there was no difference by age in the share citing the economy.

    Beyond general concerns about the economy, issues such as inflation and the cost of living hit home for many Americans who said the country was doing badly.

    • “Cost of living is way too high. Just seems like the economy is not doing very well, but it has been like this for years. Housing market is terrible, gas prices are terrible. Student loan debt is astronomical. Even though I agree students should pay their own loan, it shouldn’t be that expensive in the first place.” – Republican man, 29, from Pennsylvania
    • “A single mother cannot effectively support a household on one income. The price of everything is too high. Rent [is] outrageous while people trying to get a loan to buy a home is also unreachable to most.” – Republican woman, 30, from Iowa
    • “The economy is TERRIBLE. My cost of living is MUCH MUCH MUCH higher. Go to the grocery store and you will find out.” – Republican-leaning man, 71, from Illinois

    By contrast, those in the positive camp largely focused on the availability of jobs and a perception that the economy was improving. Among this group, Americans in households making $50,000 or more annually were 19 percentage points more likely than those in lower-earning households to name economic factors as a reason to say things were going well, 44% to 25%.

    • “The economy is doing well. I’m unhappy with women losing bodily autonomy, and the creeping fascism from the right, but I believe Biden is doing an excellent job with the economy, the environment, and international relations.” – Democratic woman, 65, from North Dakota
    • “There are still changes that I hope will be made, but for the most part we’re heading in the right direction. There is food on the shelves at the grocery stores. There are jobs at slightly better pay than before the pandemic.” – Democratic woman, 52, from Michigan
    • “Unemployment is at a historic low, economy isn’t bad. Inflation is a sign that people have more money.” – Democratic-leaning man, 51, from Massachusetts

    The public’s views of the economy are often deeply polarized, with Americans far more likely to rate conditions as good when their party holds the White House – either because their political beliefs drive them to different conclusions or because they treat survey questions as a way to tout their partisan allegiances.

    Views about the broader state of the US were also deeply polarized in CNN’s latest poll, with a near-unanimous 91% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying things in the US were going badly, a view shared by 48% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

    Among those who said things were going badly, 11% put the blame primarily on President Joe Biden or the Democrats, with smaller shares pointing to Congress or the government as a whole. Among Republicans and Republican leaners in that camp, the share was 17%

    • “My country is having a real rough time under Biden’s presidency. Things have gone downhill the past few years.” – Republican woman, 80, from Pennsylvania
    • “This country is going down the tubes. He has ruined it with everything he’s done. At least Trump was making America great again.” – Republican woman, who did not give her exact age, from New York
    • “Congress is simply not focused on working together to resolve the problems facing our country.” – Republican man, 65, from Colorado

    Among those who said things were going well, 5% credited Biden or the Democratic Party, and 6% offered comments opposing former President Donald Trump, with others citing improvements in government leadership or a general sense of stability.

    • “We have moved out of the dishonest and corrupt shadows of the Trump and ‘conservative’ fascist dominated term of misgovernance.” – Democratic man, 44, from Nebraska
    • “I think it could be so much worse, and the president is doing the best he can do with all the problems we have.” – Democratic-leaning woman, 67, from New Jersey
    • “Democrats are in office. Republicans will NEVER do anything to help the working class and poor.” – Democratic man, 60, from Indiana

    Others saw polarization itself as the issue. Of those who said things in the US were going badly, 7% said it was because they were concerned about political or societal divisions in the country. Democrats (13%) and those with college degrees (12%) were likelier than others to mention the issue as a main reason for their discontent.

    • “We’re more divided than we’ve ever been. The GOP is trying to destroy diversity, take away women’s and LGBTQ rights. It’s a disaster here.” – Democratic woman, 37, from Connecticut
    • “We have never been so divided as a nation on almost every topic and Biden is making it worse.” – Republican man, 60, from Kansas
    • “The division among the citizens continues to grow. Nobody cares about their neighbors and the community.” – independent man, 38, from Texas

    Among those unhappy with the state of the country, a significant share, 16%, cited crime or gun violence. But their precise focus varied widely, spanning everything from concerns about unrest and lawlessness to dismay about school shootings. Women were slightly more likely than men to express such concerns. A smaller share of Americans also mentioned a related constellation of issues, including policing, the criminal justice system, homelessness and drugs.

    Another 10% of those who said things were going badly mentioned immigration or the situation at the border, with that concern relatively high among Republicans (17% of whom cited the issue), those age 45 and older (15%) and White Americans (12%).

    • “The massive amount of senseless gun violence” – Democratic woman, 30, from California
    • “The biggest thing is the violence in major cities.” – Republican woman, 71, from Ohio
    • “Too many people killing kids and adults. Too much aggression and violence.” – independent woman, 40, from Oregon
    • “I say things are going pretty badly because they are not handling the gun violence and school shootings. Children do not feel safe going to schools because they are afraid of someone in their school or someone coming to their school shooting it up, because it’s so easy to buy a gun now, and because most parents have them and are not watching them or locking them up away from their children. … As an African American, I feel scared for my life every time I step out the house, because I never know when something is going to happen or I get into a situation with a cop and it goes badly.” – independent woman, 18, from Texas
    • “Country is headed for a depression with all these illegal immigrants costing us in money, resources, etc. Getting close to World War III. Lawlessness pervades us.” – Republican-leaning woman, 66, from Kansas

    In stark contrast to the widespread discontent with the state of the nation, most Americans tend to be relatively satisfied with the course of their own lives. That shaped the broader outlooks of some of those surveyed – among those who said that things in the country were going well, 8% pointed at least in part to positive aspects of their own lives.

    • “For me, I have a job, a family and have everything that I need.” – Democratic man, 70, from Texas
    • “I’m not living in a box or a tent.” – Republican man, 63, from Pennsylvania
    • “I’m in the military and my life hasn’t been impacted like others have.” – independent woman, 26, from Oklahoma
    • “I’m looking in the mirror. You listen to the news but also to your own world.” – Democratic man, 60, from Pennsylvania
    • “Everything comes down to our individual personal situation, and mine is better than it has been throughout most of my life. … Our environmental issues for future generations do not apply to me as it is highly unlikely there will be a future generation of my family. … Inflation is of little concern to me as I have always waited to buy everything on sale, and I know how to cook economically. My health is excellent. My finances are sound.” – Republican woman, 78, from Nebraska

    The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from March 1 through March 31 among a random national sample of 1,595 adults initially reached by mail. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • AI pioneer quits Google to warn about the technology’s ‘dangers’ | CNN Business

    AI pioneer quits Google to warn about the technology’s ‘dangers’ | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Geoffrey Hinton, who has been called the ‘Godfather of AI,’ confirmed Monday that he left his role at Google last week to speak out about the “dangers” of the technology he helped to develop.

    Hinton’s pioneering work on neural networks shaped artificial intelligence systems powering many of today’s products. He worked part-time at Google for a decade on the tech giant’s AI development efforts, but he has since come to have concerns about the technology and his role in advancing it.

    “I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Hinton told the New York Times, which was first to report his decision.

    In a tweet Monday, Hinton said he left Google so he could speak freely about the risks of AI, rather than because of a desire to criticize Google specifically.

    “I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google,” Hinton said in a tweet. “Google has acted very responsibly.”

    Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google, said Hinton “has made foundational breakthroughs in AI” and expressed appreciation for Hinton’s “decade of contributions at Google.”

    “We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI,” Dean said in a statement provided to CNN. “We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”

    Hinton’s decision to step back from the company and speak out on the technology comes as a growing number of lawmakers, advocacy groups and tech insiders have raised alarms about the potential for a new crop of AI-powered chatbots to spread misinformation and displace jobs.

    The wave of attention around ChatGPT late last year helped renew an arms race among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI tools in their products. OpenAI, Microsoft and Google are at the forefront of this trend, but IBM, Amazon, Baidu and Tencent are working on similar technologies.

    In March, some prominent figures in tech signed a letter calling for artificial intelligence labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.” The letter, published by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit backed by Elon Musk,came just two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, an even more powerful version of the technology that powers ChatGPT. In early tests and a company demo, GPT-4 was used to draft lawsuits, pass standardized exams and build a working website from a hand-drawn sketch.

    In the interview with the Times, Hinton echoed concerns about AI’s potential to eliminate jobs and create a world where many will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” He also pointed to the stunning pace of advancement, far beyond what he and others had anticipated.

    “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” Hinton said in the interview. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

    Even before stepping aside from Google, Hinton had spoken publicly about AI’s potential to do harm as well as good.

    “I believe that the rapid progress of AI is going to transform society in ways we do not fully understand and not all of the effects are going to be good,” Hinton said in a 2021 commencement address at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in Mumbai. He noted how AI will boost healthcare while also creating opportunities for lethal autonomous weapons. “I find this prospect much more immediate and much more terrifying than the prospect of robots taking over, which I think is a very long way off.”

    Hinton isn’t the first Google employee to raise a red flag on AI. In July, the company fired an engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient, saying he violated employment and data security policies. Many in the AI community pushed back strongly on the engineer’s assertion.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access | CNN Business

    Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter has been widely criticized for trying to charge transit agencies, third-party app developers and academics for data access to its platform, a move opponents say has forced independent apps to shut down and threatened research on misinformation and hate speech.

    Now, a similar revolt against Reddit may be gaining steam after a popular app developer said Wednesday the social media company wants to charge him $20 million a year to continue offering software that lets Reddit users view and interact with the platform.

    The newly unveiled pricing of Reddit’s paywall “is close to Twitter pricing” and is not “anything based in reality or remotely reasonable,” said Christian Selig, developer of the Apollo app, in a Reddit post on Wednesday. “It goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.”

    Selig’s post highlights a plan Reddit announced in April to enact a Twitter-like pricing structure for its application programming interface (API) — the software that allows other programs to tap into the company’s data, including posts and comments. Reddit’s API is what allows Reddit content to be displayed to the Apollo app’s 900,000 daily active users.

    Reddit’s initial announcement had been light on pricing details, leaving many to speculate about the future of third-party access to Reddit. As details of its pricing plan trickled out on Wednesday, Reddit did not dispute Selig’s account of his conversations with the company, but said Reddit remains “committed to fostering a safe and responsible developer ecosystem.”

    “Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved, and in terms of safety and privacy we have an obligation to our communities to be responsible stewards of data,” said Tim Rathschmidt, a company spokesperson, in an email.

    Selig’s tweet on the issue has been viewed more than one million times and has led to an outpouring of criticism for Reddit. “Apollo is the only reason I use Reddit,” one fan of the app tweeted. Another said: “Reddit is going full Twitter and it’s a big mistake.” .

    Selig had initially expressed cautious optimism about the company’s plan, saying on the day of the announcement that he had spoken to the company and that if the new moves were implemented reasonably, “this could be a positive change.”

    But now, a month later, Selig’s optimism has deflated. According to Selig’s post Wednesday, Reddit intends to charge $12,000 for every 50 million attempts to access the company’s data.

    “Apollo made 7 billion requests last month,” Selig wrote Wednesdsay, meaning his additional costs simply for running his business as usual would add up to “1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year.”

    “I’d be in the red every month,” he added. Selig didn’t immediately respond to questions from CNN about whether he expects to have to shut down the app.

    Selig isn’t the only app developer crying foul. Some developers have said Reddit’s API changes would also block ads in third-party apps, potentially depriving apps of ad revenue and forcing them to try to convert users to subscription business models.

    Part of the motivation for Reddit’s plan involves the surging popularity of artificial intelligence.

    Large language models such as ChatGPT are developed using training data, which in many cases is sourced from content found across the internet. Reddit should not be expected to provide that data to “some of the largest companies in the world for free,” CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times in a recent interview.

    Meanwhile, Reddit is also widely expected to go public, potentially as soon as this year. The stock offering could add to pressure for Reddit to show revenue growth. Its paid API could help on that front.

    But that could come at the expense of independent apps and, as some pointed out, Reddit users who may experience a loss of choices in ways to access the platform. Some predicted that they might soon have to rely on Reddit’s proprietary app, which has been widely panned by users, if they wish to access the site at all.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

    Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The PGA Tour once advertised its brightest stars with the catch phrase “These guys are good.” A better slogan might now be “These guys are even richer.”

    In a bombshell announcement so staggering that many golf fans thought it was fake at first, the venerable PGA Tour unveiled a partnership Tuesday with Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund, the financier of its sworn rival LIV Golf – a breakaway circuit that split the sport and seeded feuds among its top players.

    The deal means that the PGA Tour – built on the image of quintessentially American Arnold Palmer, who epitomized post World War II US values – will now rest atop a pile of money put up by the regime that the US blamed for the murdering and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, that was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, attack, and that has frequently been condemned by Washington for infringing women’s rights.

    It is beyond doubt that the new reality of pro-golf will mean a better spectacle for fans since it will end the split between the two rival tours and will also fold in the DP World Tour (formerly known as the European tour) and mean the brightest stars will play one another more often.

    For many sports fans in the US and elsewhere, that’s just fine. They like to plop down on the couch and watch their favorite golfer on the back nine on Sunday or their Gulf-owned Premier League team on TV. Who can begrudge them one oasis free from bitter, tribal modern politics?

    And the deal is also undeniably a great piece of business, assuming PGA Tour players accept it. Global golfers stand to win a lot more money, various tours will be invigorated and Saudi Arabia’s government and its ruthless leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), get to be associated with one of the planet’s most prestigious year-round sporting properties. And all pending litigation between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour was also mutually ended under the new agreement.

    But for others, Tuesday’s peace deal on the links raises painful moral issues. It also exposes top PGA leaders – who had blasted golfers who defected to LIV – to accusations of hypocrisy and reflects the way modern professional sports are hostage to the highest bidders. This can only pose uncomfortable questions to fans whose values and history clash with those of distant and sometimes politically dicey entities who effectively own their teams and top stars.

    PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, for instance, had some explaining to do – not least to the tour’s players gathered at the Canadian Open this week after many tweeted that they had no advance notice of the deal. Monahan had played the 9/11 card last year at the same event, saying that two families that were close to him had lost loved ones in the worst terror attack on American soil, adding, “I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

    Now Monahan stands to be the effective supremo of global golf, save for the four majors – the sport’s most prestigious tournaments – aided by a gusher of Saudi cash.

    9/11 Families United effectively accused Monahan of using the tragedy as leverage in a business deal to reunite golf. He “co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the group said in a statement. “But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”

    Monahan was asked about his reversal after what he said was a “heated” meeting with PGA Tour players on Tuesday.

    “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he said. “Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that’s trying to compete for the PGA TOUR and our players.”

    Major champions who jumped to the rival circuit last year like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed and Cam Smith might also now wonder whether their PGA tour brethren will face the same grilling over human rights that they had to endure at the time.

    One very famous golfer was delighted by the deal and seemed keen to claim some reflected credit – former President Donald Trump. The current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination associated himself with LIV after the PGA Tour and other golf governing bodies distanced themselves from him over his radioactive political reputation. Trump has hosted several tournaments at his courses for LIV – a circuit that sits well with his record of refusing to sever links with the Saudis over the murder of Khashoggi in 2018, reasoning that the Saudis were great customers of the US.

    “A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. Congrats to all!!!” Trump wrote in block capital letters on his Truth Social platform.

    Some defenders of LIV golfers have pointed out that the players were only making a choice to prioritize personal interests over moral ones in partnering with the Saudis – a calculus that mirrored decades of US foreign policy. Indeed, President Joe Biden had called on the 2020 campaign trail for the kingdom to be treated as a “pariah” because of Khashoggi’s murder only to travel to the kingdom as president to fist-bump MBS when he needed a spike in oil price production to bring down American gas prices.

    On Tuesday, after the LIV/PGA partnership was announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down for talks with the Crown Prince in Riyadh.

    The idea that politics and sport shouldn’t mix has always been quaint. The Olympics and the World Cup are two of the planet’s most political spectacles after all. And modern sport has long run on money as monster TV rights contracts translate into huge salaries for top soccer players, Formula One Drivers, NBA stars and the top names in other sports.

    But Tuesday’s LIV/PGA Tour agreement lays bare questions of morality so starkly precisely because of the way golf has sold itself. In a sport where players call penalties on themselves, and commentators idolize top players in whispered tones as paragons of gentlemanly conduct, patriotism and family values, the origin of the sport’s new financial lifeline is glaring.

    The PGA Tour and Saudi partnership may be the most prominent example yet of the phenomenon known as sports washing, whereby an authoritarian nation seeking to buff up its image – despite serious criticism over its political system and human rights performance – woos the world’s top sporting stars. China was accused of such an agenda with its 2008 and 2022 Summer and Winter Olympics, where attempts at political activism largely fizzled under its repressive rule. The Qatar World Cup last year was another example of a nation that used its financial muscle to present a new image to the world. Various controversies during the tournament over LGBTQ rights and the plight of workers who built the stadiums undercut global governing body FIFA’s pretensions to inclusion.

    The Saudis, Qataris and others are using their oil wealth to buy themselves a foothold among the world’s most powerful nations and to create tourism, entertainment and sporting legacies to sustain them when their reserves of carbon energy are depleted.

    This mirrors a global shift in power and especially financial muscle – from the capitals of Western Europe to new epicenters in the emerging economies of the Middle East, India and China. Soccer, like golf, is taking its share of the cash. Traditional working class football clubs knitted into their communities for decades in the UK, for example, now suddenly find themselves owned by foreign energy magnates. Premier League giant Manchester City was bought by a United Arab Emirates-led group. And Newcastle United is owned by a Saudi Arabia-led consortium, forcing fans to consider (or not) the ethical dimensions of their support for their hometown clubs. And global cricket has been transformed by the Indian Premier League, which pays lavish salaries in a shortened form of the game.

    One of the top names in soccer, Cristiano Ronaldo, is playing out the twilight of a glorious career spent at Europe’s top clubs in the up-and-coming Saudi league for a massive salary. And on Tuesday, Saudi team Al-Ittihad announced the signing of Real Madrid and French forward Karim Benzema, completing a sporting double whammy for the kingdom.

    There are as many sporting questions about the PGA Tour/LIV Golf partnership that remain unanswered. The partnership combines the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity. A spokesman for the PGA tour told CNN that the deal is not a merger.

    “After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” Monahan said, describing a “transformational partnership” that would “benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”

    Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, told CNBC he expected the partnership to be finalized within weeks and revealed, in a stunning move, that he had told LIV figurehead and Hall of Famer Greg Norman about the deal only moments before going on air.

    LIV lured some of the PGA Tour’s top stars with massive signing bonuses and huge purses at substantially fewer events than the PGA tour, prompting the premier US circuit to unveil its own select “designated events” with upped prize money. The two sides were locked in bitter legal battles that have now been resolved.

    It remains unclear, however, what steps LIV stars will have to take to potentially be able to return to events like The Players Championship, currently hosted on the PGA tour from which they were banned.

    Then there is the question of how current PGA Tour members will respond.

    Former British Open Champion Collin Morikawa tweeted, “I love finding out morning news on Twitter.”

    The sudden announcement also did not specify what would happen to LIV tour events, which have struggled to draw a strong TV audience, beyond this season. Monahan’s announcement did hint that the new entity was committed to the new format of team events that has been introduced by LIV, to compliment golf’s traditional reliance on individual tournaments.

    The golfer with the widest smile on Tuesday was probably Mickelson. The three-time Masters champion took the most heat for deserting the PGA tour for a reported massive payday, and was one of the most outspoken supporters of LIV – a breakaway he argued was a way to revolutionize the structure of professional golf and to secure more rewards for players.

    Mickelson was also open about the reality of partnering with the Saudis, calling them “scary m*therf**kers to get involved with,” in an interview with golf journalist Alan Shipnuck that he later claimed was off the record. Shipnuck has written that he offered Mickelson no such agreement.

    On Tuesday, Mickelson simply tweeted: “Awesome day today,” with a smiley sunshine emoji.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Miami Mayor Francis Suarez files to run for president in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez files to run for president in 2024 | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Miami GOP Mayor Francis Suarez has filed paperwork to run for president, according to new FEC filings, marking the long-shot candidate’s formal entry to the race.

    Suarez is set to speak Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. During an appearance on Fox News over the weekend, the mayor said he would make a “major announcement” in the coming weeks and pointed to his remarks at the Reagan Library as “one that Americans should tune in to.”

    Suarez, a Cuban American, is currently in his second term as mayor of Miami, Florida’s second-most populous city. Until recently, he also served as the president of the bipartisan US Conference of Mayors.

    Ahead of his filing, a super PAC supporting Suarez on Wednesday released a two-minute video touting his leadership of the Florida city as he teased a longshot bid for the White House.

    “Conservative mayor Francis Suarez chose a better path for Miami,” the video’s narrator says, highlighting his approach to crime and support for law enforcement.

    The first major Hispanic candidate to enter the Republican race, Suarez starts off as a decided underdog in the primary, with former President Donald Trump, a resident of nearby Palm Beach, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis towering over the field in polling. The primary also includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

    Trump’s recent federal indictment over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office has also roiled the Republican contest. The former president remains popular with the party base, and candidates have been split in their reactions to the indictment.

    Suarez, who has previously been critical of Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that the news of the former president’s first federal indictment felt “un-American” and “wrong at some level.”

    In an interview with CBS News last month, Suarez said deciding on a presidential bid was a “soul-searching process.” He also nodded to his lack of national name recognition, saying, “I’m someone who needs to be better known by this country.”

    Suarez’s late entry into the GOP primary, relative to other rivals, could affect his chances of qualifying for the first Republican primary debate, scheduled to take place in Milwaukee on August 23. The Republican National Committee has laid out strict polling and donor thresholds that candidates must meet to make the stage.

    Prior to his first election as mayor in 2017, Suarez served a Miami city commissioner for eight years. His father, Xavier Suarez, also served as mayor of Miami in the 1980s and 1990s, though his last victory in 1997 was overturned following an investigation into voter fraud.

    As mayor, Suarez has sought to bring a new era of technology, innovation and entrepreneurship to his city, including promoting industries such as cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. He has advocated making Miami the new Silicon Valley and even invited Elon Musk to move Twitter headquarters to the city.

    Suarez has also spoken about combating climate change – “It’s not theoretical for us in the city of Miami, it’s real,” he told CBS News last year.

    The mayor has on occasion locked horns with DeSantis, including over the governor’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, his claims of election fraud in the state and, most recently, his feud with Disney.

    Still, Suarez is a proponent of the Florida law championed by DeSantis that critics have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay,” which bans certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. But Disney’s opposition to the measure led DeSantis to plot a takeover of the special taxing district that allowed the entertainment giant to build its iconic theme park empire in Central Florida. The move has alarmed some Republicans, who question whether elected executives should use state power to punish a company.

    Disney announced last month it was scrapping plans to build a $1 billion office campus that is estimated to have created 2,000 white-collar jobs.

    “He took an issue that was a winning issue that we all agreed on,” Suarez told NewsNation in May, “and it looks like now it’s something that’s spite or maybe potentially a personal vendetta, which has cost the state now potentially 2,000 jobs in a billion-dollar investment.”

    When DeSantis proposed a police force to investigate election fraud, Suarez told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year that he didn’t see it “as a major problem in our state, or in our city, frankly.”

    During the pandemic, Suarez opposed DeSantis’ reopening of bars as Covid-19 cases continued to increase in the state. He pointed to “the issue of whether the decisions (made by the state) are data-driven or political.”

    Suarez told the Miami Herald he voted for DeSantis’ Democratic opponent in 2018, but he voted for the governor.

    Suarez’s presidential bid comes as Florida, long a swing state, has been trending red, with Republicans making gains in the past few election cycles, especially among Hispanic voters.

    In 2020, Trump lost Hispanic-majority Miami-Dade County – the state’s most populous county, which includes the city of Miami – by 7 points. Four years earlier, he had lost the county to Hillary Clinton by 30 points. Similarly, last year, DeSantis coasted to reelection, in part due to his success in Miami-Dade, which has historically been a huge source of Democratic votes. DeSantis also won Osceola County in the Orlando area, another recent Democratic stronghold with a large Puerto Rican population.

    In a Fox News op-ed last fall, Suarez said that the GOP success in Miami “can be replicated nationally if Republicans, and all elected officials, learn the lessons we learned about building an inclusive conservative majority.”

    “In Miami, we’ve grown a high-tech economy that delivers results, and voters have responded to our work by voting Republican at all levels, from my nearly 80% re-election results as mayor to the increasing large margins of Republican congressional candidates,” he wrote.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Europe is leading the race to regulate AI. Here’s what you need to know | CNN Business

    Europe is leading the race to regulate AI. Here’s what you need to know | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    The European Union took a major step Wednesday toward setting rules — the first in the world — on how companies can use artificial intelligence.

    It’s a bold move that Brussels hopes will pave the way for global standards for a technology used in everything from chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT to surgical procedures and fraud detection at banks.

    “We have made history today,” Brando Benifei, a member of the European Parliament working on the EU AI Act, told journalists.

    Lawmakers have agreed a draft version of the Act, which will now be negotiated with the Council of the European Union and EU member states before becoming law.

    “While Big Tech companies are sounding the alarm over their own creations, Europe has gone ahead and proposed a concrete response to the risks AI is starting to pose,” Benifei added.

    Hundreds of top AI scientists and researchers warned last month that the technology posed an extinction risk to humanity, and several prominent figures — including Microsoft President Brad Smith and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — have called for greater regulation of the technology.

    At the Yale CEO Summit this week, more than 40% of business leaders — including Walmart chief Doug McMillion and Coca-Cola

    (KO)     CEO James Quincy — said AI had the potential to destroy humanity five to 10 years from now.

    Against that backdrop, the EU AI Act seeks to “promote the uptake of human-centric and trustworthy artificial intelligence and to ensure a high level of protection of health, safety, fundamental rights, democracy and rule of law and the environment from harmful effects.”

    Here are the key takeaways.

    Once approved, the Act will apply to anyone who develops and deploys AI systems in the EU, including companies located outside the bloc.

    The extent of regulation depends on the risks created by a particular application, from minimal to “unacceptable.”

    Systems that fall into the latter category are banned outright. These include real-time facial recognition systems in public spaces, predictive policing tools and social scoring systems, such as those in China, which assign people a “health score” based on their behavior.

    The legislation also sets tight restrictions on “high-risk” AI applications, which are those that threaten “significant harm to people’s health, safety, fundamental rights or the environment.”

    These include systems used to influence voters in an election, as well as social media platforms with more than 45 million users that recommend content to their users — a list that would include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

    The Act also outlines transparency requirements for AI systems.

    For instance, systems such as ChatGPT would have to disclose that their content was AI-generated, distinguish deep-fake images from real ones and provide safeguards against the generation of illegal content.

    Detailed summaries of the copyrighted data used to train these AI systems would also have to be published.

    AI systems with minimal or no risk, such as spam filters, fall largely outside of the rules.

    Most AI systems will likely fall into the high-risk or prohibited categories, leaving their owners exposed to potentially enormous fines if they fall foul of the regulations, according to Racheal Muldoon, a barrister (litigator) at London law firm Maitland Chambers.

    Engaging in prohibited AI practices could lead to a fine of up to €40 million ($43 million) or an amount equal to up to 7% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.

    That goes much further than Europe’s signature data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, under which Meta was hit with a €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) fine last month. GDPR sets fines of up to €10 million ($10.8 million), or up to 2% of a firm’s global turnover.

    Fines under the AI Act serve as a “war cry from the legislators to say, ‘take this seriously’,” Muldoon said.

    At the same time, penalties would be “proportionate” and consider the market position of small-scale providers, suggesting there could be some leniency for start-ups.

    The Act also requires EU member states to establish at least one regulatory “sandbox” to test AI systems before they are deployed.

    “The one thing that we wanted to achieve with this text is balance,” Dragoș Tudorache, a member of the European Parliament, told journalists. The Act protects citizens while also “promoting innovation, not hindering creativity, and deployment and development of AI in Europe,” he added.

    The Act gives citizens the right to file complaints against providers of AI systems and makes a provision for an EU AI Office to monitor enforcement of the legislation. It also requires member states to designate national supervisory authorities for AI.

    Microsoft

    (MSFT)     — which, together with Google, is at the forefront of AI development globally — welcomed progress on the Act but said it looked forward to “further refinement.”

    “We believe that AI requires legislative guardrails, alignment efforts at an international level, and meaningful voluntary actions by companies that develop and deploy AI,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

    IBM

    (IBM)    , meanwhile, called on EU policymakers to take a “risk-based approach” and suggested four “key improvements” to the draft Act, including further clarity around high-risk AI “so that only truly high-risk use cases are captured.”

    The Act may not come into force until 2026, according to Muldoon, who said revisions were likely, given how rapidly AI was advancing. The legislation has already gone through several updates since drafting began in 2021.

    “The law will expand in scope as the technology develops,” Muldoon said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • EU officials accuse Google of antitrust violations in its ad tech business | CNN Business

    EU officials accuse Google of antitrust violations in its ad tech business | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Google’s advertising business should be broken up, European Union officials said Wednesday, alleging that the tech giant’s involvement in multiple parts of the digital advertising supply chain creates “inherent conflicts of interest” that risk harming competition.

    The formal accusations mark the latest antitrust challenge to Google over its sprawling ad tech business, following a lawsuit by the US Justice Department in January that also called for a breakup of the company.

    The EU Commission has submitted its allegations to Google in writing, officials said, kicking off a legal process that could potentially end in billions of dollars in fines in addition to a possible breakup that could impact part of its core advertising business.

    The commission alleges that since 2014, Google has unfairly boosted its own proprietary ad exchange — the online auction house known as AdX that matches advertisers and publishers — through its simultaneous ownership of some of the most popular ad tools for publishers and advertisers.

    For example, the commission claims, advertisers who used Google’s ad buying tools frequently had their purchases routed to AdX instead of to rival ad exchanges.

    Meanwhile, Google’s publisher-facing tools unfairly gave AdX a leg up over rival ad exchanges, the commission alleged, because Google’s publisher tools gave AdX competitive bidding information that the exchange could use to help advertisers win an auction.

    One proposed solution by the commission would spin off Google’s ad exchange and publisher tools from the ad-buying tools it provides to advertisers.

    “@Google controls both sides of the #adtech market: sell & buy,” tweeted Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s top competition official. “We are concerned that it may have abused its dominance to favour its own #AdX platform. If confirmed, this is illegal.”

    In a statement, Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, said the EU’s probe “focuses on a narrow aspect of our advertising business,” that the company opposes the commission’s preliminary conclusions and that Google plans to “respond accordingly.”

    “Our advertising technology tools help websites and apps fund their content, and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach new customers. Google remains committed to creating value for our publisher and advertiser partners in this highly competitive sector,” Taylor said.

    A Google spokesperson told CNN Wednesday that the company has only just received the commission’s complaint and that it will take time to review the commission’s claims. Google also added that it will oppose calls for a breakup.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Italy ties China’s hands at Pirelli over fears about chip technology | CNN Business

    Italy ties China’s hands at Pirelli over fears about chip technology | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Italy has imposed several curbs on Pirelli’s biggest shareholder, Sinochem, in a move aimed at blocking the Chinese government’s access to sensitive chip technology.

    The Italian government decided last week to make use of its so-called “Golden Power” regulations, designed to protect assets of strategic importance to the country, Pirelli said in a statement Sunday.

    The government order risks inflaming tensions between Europe and Beijing, and follows similar intervention by Germany and the United Kingdom to protect their semiconductor technology.

    Earlier this year, Europe joined a US-led effort to restrict China’s access to the most advanced chipmaking technology when the Netherlands — home to ASML Holding, a key supplier to the global semiconductor industry — said it would introduce export controls.

    Italy’s move comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wraps up a high-stakes visit to China aimed at repairing strained relations between the world’s two biggest economies.

    Sinochem, owned by the Chinese government, is Pirelli’s biggest single shareholder, with a 37% stake, and has 60% of seats on the board of the Italian tire maker. CNN has contacted Sinochem for comment.

    In a statement Friday, the Italian government said Pirelli’s Cyber Tyre, which uses chip technology to collect vehicle data, is “configured as a critical technology of national strategic importance.”

    “Improper use of this technology can pose significant risks not only to the confidentiality of user data, but also to the possible transfer of information relevant to security,” the statement added.

    The order sets a host of limitations on Sinochem’s involvement in Pirelli, including a bar on it devising the company’s strategy and financial plans, or appointing a CEO.

    The government said these curbs would protect the “autonomy” of Pirelli and its management, as well as “information of strategic importance.”

    Europe is heavily reliant on China for trade and investment, but relations have come under strain from ideological differences, including over Russia’s war in Ukraine, and recent moves by European Union regulators and governments to limit China’s access to sensitive technology.

    The order takes a page out of this playbook. It requires that Pirelli refuse any requests from Sinochem’s owner — China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council — for information sharing, including any information connected to the “know-how” of proprietary technologies.

    The government said “some” strategic decisions would require approval from at least 80% of board directors, a further limitation on Sinochem’s influence.

    Separately, Rome is also assessing whether to renew its partnership with Beijing on the Belt and Road Initiative — China’s global infrastructure and investment megaproject. Italy is the only Group of Seven nation to have joined the initiative.

    In a further sign of the steps multinational companies are beginning to consider to protect their operations from growing geopolitical friction, drugmaker AstraZeneca

    (AZN)     has drawn up plans to spin off its China business and list it separately in Hong Kong, according to the Financial Times. AstraZeneca

    (AZN)     declined to comment.

    Earlier this month, Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley venture capital group, said it would separate its China investments into an independent unit.

    On Tuesday, the European Commission will unveil measures — possibly including screening of outbound investments and export controls — to keep prized EU technology from countries such as China, Reuters reported.

    — Laura He in Hong Kong contributed to this article.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Malaysia to take legal action against Meta over ‘undesirable’ content | CNN Business

    Malaysia to take legal action against Meta over ‘undesirable’ content | CNN Business

    [ad_1]

    Malaysia said Friday it would take legal action against Facebook parent company Meta for failing to remove “undesirable” posts, the strongest measure the country has taken to date over such content.

    Last year’s closely fought national election has led to a rise in ethnic tensions, and since coming to power in November, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration has vowed to curb what it calls provocative posts that touch on race and religion.

    Facebook

    (FB)     has recently been “plagued by” a significant volume of undesirable content relating to race, royalty, religion, defamation, impersonation, online gambling and scam advertisements, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement.

    It also said Meta had failed to take sufficient action despite the body’s repeated requests and that legal action was necessary to promote accountability for cybersecurity and protect consumers.

    Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The commission also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what legal action might be taken.

    Race and religion are thorny issues in Malaysia, which has a majority of Muslim ethnic Malays alongside significant ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian minorities.

    Commentary on the country’s revered royals is also a sensitive issue, and negative remarks toward them can be tried under sedition laws.

    The action against Facebook comes just weeks ahead of regional elections in six states that are expected to pit Anwar’s multi-ethnic coalition against a conservative Malay Muslim alliance.

    Facebook is Malaysia’s biggest social media platform, with an estimated 60% of its population of 33 million having a registered account.

    Globally, big social media firms that include Meta, Google’s

    (GOOGL)     YouTube, and TikTok are often under regulatory scrutiny over content posted on their platforms.

    Some Southeast Asian governments have frequently requested that content be taken down.

    In 2020, Vietnam threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it did not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform. The authorities said last year that social media platforms operating in Vietnam removed more than 3,200 posts and videos in the first quarter that contained false information and violated the country’s law.

    In Indonesia in 2019, Facebook took down hundreds of local accounts, pages and groups linked to a fake news syndicate.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, hit with proposed class action lawsuit alleging it stole people’s data | CNN Business

    OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, hit with proposed class action lawsuit alleging it stole people’s data | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI, the company behind the viral ChatGPT tool, has been hit with a lawsuit alleging the company stole and misappropriated vast swaths of peoples’ data from the internet to train its AI tools.

    The proposed class action lawsuit, filed Wednesday in a California federal court, claims that OpenAI secretly scraped “massive amounts of personal data from the internet,” according to the complaint. The nearly 160-page complaint alleges that this personal data, including “essentially every piece of data exchanged on the internet it could take,” was also seized by the company without notice, consent or “just compensation.”

    Moreover, this data scraping occurred at an “unprecedented scale,” the suit claims.

    OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment Wednesday. Microsoft, a major investor into OpenAI, was also named as a defendant in the suit and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “By collecting previously obscure personal data of millions and misappropriating it to develop a volatile, untested technology, OpenAI put everyone in a zone of risk that is incalculable – but unacceptable by any measure of responsible data protection and use,” Timothy K. Giordano, a partner at Clarkson, the law firm behind the suit, said in a statement to CNN Wednesday.

    The complaint also claims that OpenAI products “use stolen private information, including personally identifiable information, from hundreds of millions of internet users, including children of all ages, without their informed consent or knowledge.”

    The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on further commercial use of OpenAI’s products. It also seeks payments of “data dividends” as financial compensation to people whose information was used to develop and train OpenAI’s tools.

    OpenAI publicly launched ChatGPT late last year, and the tool immediately went viral for its ability to generate compelling, human-sounding responses to user prompts. The success of ChatGPT spurred an apparent AI arms race in the tech world, as companies big and small are now racing to develop and deploy AI tools into as many products as possible.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Meta releases clues on how AI is used on Facebook and Instagram | CNN Business

    Meta releases clues on how AI is used on Facebook and Instagram | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    As demand for greater transparency in artificial intelligence mounts, Meta released tools and information Thursday aimed at helping users understand how AI influences what they see on its apps.

    The social media giant introduced nearly two dozen explainers focused on various features of its platforms, such as Instagram Stories and Facebook’s news feed. These describe how Meta selects what content to recommend to users.

    The description and disclosures came in the face of looming legislation around the world that may soon impose concrete disclosure requirements on companies that use AI technology.

    Meta’s so-called “system cards” cover how the company determines which accounts to present to users as recommended follows on Facebook and Instagram, how the company’s search tools function and how notifications work.

    For example, the system card devoted to Instagram’s search function describes how the app gathers all relevant search results in response to a user’s query, scores each result based on the user’s past interactions with the app and then applies “additional filters” and “integrity processes” to narrow the list before finally presenting it to the user.

    Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, tied the company’s new disclosures to a global debate about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence that range from the spread of misinformation to a rise in AI-enabled fraud and scams.

    “With rapid advances taking place with powerful technologies like generative AI, it’s understandable that people are both excited by the possibilities and concerned about the risks,” Clegg wrote in a blog post Thursday. “We believe that the best way to respond to those concerns is with openness.”

    A longer blog post describing how Facebook content ranking works, meanwhile, identifies detailed factors that go into determining what information the platform presents first.

    Those factors include whether a post has been flagged by a third-party fact checker, how engaging the account that posted the material may be, and whether you may have interacted with the account in the past.

    Meta’s new explainers coincide with the release of new tools for users to tailor the company’s algorithms, including the ability to tell Instagram to supply more of a certain type of content. Previously, Meta had only offered the ability for users to tell Instagram to show less, not more, Clegg wrote.

    On both Facebook and Instagram, he added, users will now be able to customize their feeds further by accessing a menu from individual posts.

    Finally, he said, Meta will be making it easier for researchers to study its platforms by providing a content library and an application programming interface (API) featuring a variety of content from Facebook and Instagram.

    Meta’s announcement comes as European lawmakers have swiftly advanced legislation that would create new requirements for explanation and transparency for companies that use artificial intelligence, and as US lawmakers have said they hope to begin working on similar legislation later this year.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Meta could become even more dominant in social media with Threads | CNN Business

    Meta could become even more dominant in social media with Threads | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    In less than 48 hours, Meta’s Twitter rival Threads has surpassed 70 million sign-ups, upended the social media landscape and appears to have rattled Twitter enough that it is now threatening legal action against Meta.

    But even as users signed up for Threads in droves, with some clearly eager to flee the chaos of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the sudden success of Meta’s app could raise a new set of concerns.

    Meta has long been criticized for its market dominance, and for allegedly trying to choke off competition by copying and killing rival applications. Now, some competition experts and even some Threads users worry that if the new app’s traction continues, it may simply lead to the accumulation of even more power and dominance for Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

    “The prospect of total monopoly by Meta, yikes,” wrote one user. “It’s a real problem for society when a few dozen people and companies own every single thing so that no alternative paradigms can exist that they don’t co-opt from the cradle,” replied another.

    Twitter had always been much smaller than Meta’s platforms, but it had an outsized influence in tech, media and politics. As Twitter faltered under Musk, though, a cottage industry emerged of smaller apps trying to capture some of its magic. Now more than any of them, Meta seems best positioned to claim the crown.

    Threads’ blockbuster launch this week highlights the uncomfortable reality of the modern digital economy: To potentially beat some of the biggest players in the industry, you might have to be a giant yourself.

    The overnight success of Threads is a testament both to the dissatisfaction with Musk’s ownership of Twitter and to the unique power and reach of one of Meta’s most important properties: Instagram.

    Instagram has more than two billion users, far more than the 238 million users Twitter reported having in the months before Musk took over. When new users sign up for Threads, which they do using an Instagram account, the app prompts them to follow all of their existing Instagram contacts with a single tap. It’s optional, but is easy to accept, and it takes a conscious decision to decline.

    By promoting Threads through Instagram, and by sharing Instagram user data with Threads to let people instantly recreate their social networks, Meta has significantly greased the onboarding process. That frictionless experience has allowed Threads to leapfrog what’s known in the industry as the “cold start” problem, in which a new platform struggles to gain new users because there are no other users there to attract them.

    Thanks to the Instagram integration, “that biggest problem, the chicken-egg problem, has been solved from the jump,” Reddit co-founder and venture investor Alexis Ohanian said in a video Thursday (posted, naturally, on Threads).

    That Threads appeared to clear that hurdle easily, Ohanian said, makes him “bullish” on the new app.

    But that same innovation that made signing up so many users so quickly may raise competition concerns, particularly in Europe where new antitrust rules for digital platforms are set to go into effect in a matter of months.

    “From a competition perspective this can be problematic because Meta can use it to leverage its market power and raise barriers to entry, as other rivals would not have the customer base Meta has via Instagram,” said Agustin Reyna, director of legal and economic affairs at the Brussels-based consumer advocacy organization BEUC.

    Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), “digital gatekeepers” — a term that’s expected to cover Meta and/or its subsidiaries — will be prohibited from combining a user’s data from multiple platforms without consent, Reyna said. Another restriction forbids requiring users to sign up for one platform as a condition of using another.

    Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri appeared to acknowledge those issues this week in an interview with The Verge. Threads won’t be launching in the EU for now, he said, because of “complexities with complying with some of the laws coming into effect next year” — a statement The Verge suggested was a reference to the DMA.

    The DMA was passed specifically to deal with the antitrust concerns raised by large tech platforms. That Threads apparently cannot (yet) comply with rules designed to protect competition underscores uncertainty about the app’s potential competitive impact.

    Meta’s approach to Threads could also revive longstanding criticisms about the company’s alleged practice of copying and killing rivals, particularly as Twitter has warned Meta it may sue over claims of trade secret theft (an allegation Meta denies).

    The issue isn’t limited to the realm of social media. As the world races to develop artificial intelligence, Threads represents a huge new opportunity for Meta to gather training data for its own AI technology, in a way that could help it catch up to industry leaders such as OpenAI and Google. That could complicate any attempt at a comprehensive analysis of what Threads means for competition in tech.

    Part of what makes the debate so complicated is Threads’ seemingly very real threat to Twitter.

    If Threads puts pressure on Twitter to improve its service, that is a form of competition between apps, said Geoffrey Manne, founder of the Portland, Oregon-based International Center for Law and Economics.

    But, he added, if it leads to a concentration of power in the social media industry more broadly, it could mean a reduction in competition overall. It all depends on how you define the market.

    “I’m inclined to say it does both simultaneously, and the ultimate consequences aren’t so clear,” Manne said.

    Rather than viewing it through the lens of a social media market, one helpful way to look at the issue is from the perspective of the advertising market, he said. It’s possible that once Threads introduces advertising — which Zuckerberg has said won’t happen until the app has increased to significant scale — Threads simply reinforces Meta’s advertising market power, Manne said. That could lead to further antitrust scrutiny for Meta even if the question about competition in social media is ambiguous.

    Jeff Blattner, a former DOJ antitrust official, said it can only benefit consumers to have Threads as a rival to Twitter.

    “Two platforms run by maniac billionaires are better than one,” he wrote on Threads — though if Threads is so successful as to effectively knock out Twitter altogether, then in some ways the original question about Meta’s dominance will still stand.

    Threads has one thing going for it that may nip any competition concerns in the bud: A commitment to integrate with the same open protocols used by other distributed social media alternatives, such as Mastodon.

    That would give users the option to migrate their accounts, along with all their follower data intact, to a rival like Mastodon that isn’t controlled by Meta.

    While that interoperability isn’t available yet, Mosseri has repeatedly highlighted it as a priority on his to-do list.

    When and if it happens, that could be a significant step. What may appear now as an audience grab by Meta could someday wind up being how millions of people were onboarded to a massive, decentralized social networking infrastructure that is not controlled by any single company, individual or organization.

    “This is why we think interoperability requirements are so important,” said Charlotte Slaiman, a competition expert at the Washington-based consumer group Public Knowledge. If users could port their entire social graph from one rival to another whenever they wanted, she said, “we could have more fair competition based on the quality of the product, not just incumbency advantage.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What is Threads? Here’s what you need to know about the potential ‘Twitter Killer’ | CNN Business

    What is Threads? Here’s what you need to know about the potential ‘Twitter Killer’ | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday officially launched its Twitter competitor, Threads, after first confirming its plans for the app just three months ago.

    Threads is already off to a strong start: the app received 30 million sign-ups as of Thursday morning, according to the company, including a large number of brands, celebrities, journalists and many other prominent accounts.

    The mood on Threads Wednesday night felt a bit like the first day of school, with early adopters rushing to try out the app and write their first posts — and some questioning whether the app could end up being the “Twitter killer.” As of Thursday morning, Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store and a top trending topic on Twitter.

    Threads could pose a serious threat to Twitter, which has faced backlash since Elon Musk took over the platform in October 2022 and has run it with a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. But Twitter has become particularly vulnerable in recent days, angering users over a temporary limit on how much content users can view each day. And for Meta, Threads could further expand its empire of popular apps and provide a new platform on which to sell ads.

    Here is everything we know so far about Meta’s Threads:

    Threads is a new app from the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The platform looks a lot like Twitter, with a feed of largely text-based posts — although users can also post photos and videos — where people can have real-time conversations.

    Meta said messages posted to Threads will have a 500-character limit. Similar to Twitter, users can reply to, repost and quote others’ Threads posts. But the app also blends Instagram’s existing aesthetic and navigation system, and offers the ability to share posts from Threads directly to Instagram Stories.

    Thread accounts can also be listed as public or private. Verified Instagram accounts are automatically verified on Threads.

    “The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post following the launch. “We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”

    Some users did experience occasional glitches and issues getting content to load in the early hours after Threads launched, but that is to be expected when millions of users are joining and using an app at once.

    Users sign up through their Instagram accounts and keep the same username, password and account name, although they can edit their bio to be unique to Threads. Users can also import the list of accounts they follow directly from Instagram, making it super easy to get up and running on the app.

    But it’s not quite so easy to leave Threads. While users can temporarily deactivate their profiles via the settings section on the app, the company says in its privacy policy that “your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” Some users have also raised concerns about the amount of data that the Threads, like Instagram, can collect about users, including location, contacts, search history, browsing history, contact info and more, according to the Apple App Store.

    Threads is available in 100 countries and more than 30 languages via Apple’s iOS and Android, according to the company.

    Threads is just the latest platform launched in recent months in hopes of unseating Twitter as the go-to app for real-time, public conversations. But it may have the greatest chance at success.

    Many Twitter users have expressed desire for an alternative since Musk took over the platform late last year. Frequent technical issues and policy changes have sent some noteworthy Twitter users heading for the exits.

    Meta has at least one significant leg up on Twitter: the size of its existing user base. Meta is hoping to capture at least some of its more than 2 billion global active Instagram users with the new app. That’s compared to Twitter’s active user base, which is somewhere around 250 million.

    “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it,” Zuckerberg said in a Threads post. “Twitter has had the opportunity do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

    In a tweet on Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared to acknowledge the rival app’s launch, calling Twitter “irreplaceable.”

    “We’re often imitated – but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” she said.

    Meta’s existing scale and infrastructure could play to its advantage. Whereas many of the other Twitter competitors rolled out in recent months have required users to join waitlists or receive invitations to sign up, only to have to work to recreate their network on the new site, Threads makes it remarkably easy for users to get started.

    But Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri noted in a video posted to the platform that the challenge for new social media platforms often is not getting users to sign up, but rather keeping them engaged long-term.

    In particular, Meta will have to work to prevent spam, harassment, conspiracy theories and false claims on Threads, issues that have caused many users to sour on Twitter. The new platform’s launch comes after Meta laid off more than 20,000 workers starting last November, including user experience, well-being, policy and risk analytics employees. It also comes as campaign season for the 2024 US Presidential election ramps up, with some experts warning of an incoming wave of misinformation. Meta says its Community Guidelines will apply to Threads, just like its other apps.

    For Meta, Threads could be a way of eking additional engagement time out of its massive existing user base.

    Although there are no ads on the platform just yet, Threads could also ultimately supplement Meta’s core advertising business. Meta’s ad business could use a boost after facing challenges from a broad decline in the online ad market and changes to Apple’s app privacy practices, although, if Twitter’s history is any guide, the format is unlikely to attract as many ad dollars as Meta’s other platforms.

    For Zuckerberg, though, the real draw may be in attempting to best his rival, Musk, with whom he has in recent weeks been making plans to engage in a cage fight. Perhaps winning in the battle of social networks is even better.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • WhatsApp unveils new video messaging feature | CNN Business

    WhatsApp unveils new video messaging feature | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    WhatsApp will now let you record and send video clips directly in the messaging app, the Meta-owned platform announced this week.

    The instant video messages can be up to 60 seconds long, and are similarly protected with the app’s end-to-end encryption service.

    “We think these will be a fun way to share moments with all the emotion that comes from video, whether it’s wishing someone a happy birthday, laughing at a joke, or bringing good news,” the company said Thursday in a blog post.

    The new feature will be similar to sending a voice message on the platform, the company added, and there will also be a way to record the video hands-free.

    The company said the new update has begun rolling out on the app and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

    Earlier this year, WhatsApp rolled out an update that lets users edit messages in the app (as long as it’s within 15 minutes after sending).

    The latest product update for WhatsApp comes on the heels of a better-than-expected earnings report from Meta. The company said Wednesday that revenue surged 11% year-over-year to $32 billion for its quarter ending in June, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” appears to be paying off for the social media giant.

    After a bruising 2022, shares of Meta stock have jumped more than 150% in 2023.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Italy blocks ChatGPT over privacy concerns | CNN Business

    Italy blocks ChatGPT over privacy concerns | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Regulators in Italy issued a temporary ban on ChatGPT Friday, effective immediately, due to privacy concerns and said they had opened an investigation into how OpenAI, the US company behind the popular chatbot, uses data.

    Italy’s data protection agency said users lacked information about the collection of their data and that a breach at ChatGPT had been reported on March 20.

    “There appears to be no legal basis underpinning the massive collection and processing of personal data in order to ‘train’ the algorithms on which the platform relies,” the agency said.

    The Italian regulator also expressed concerns over the lack of age verification for ChatGPT users. It argued that this “exposes children to receiving responses that are absolutely inappropriate to their age and awareness.” The platform is supposed to be for users older than 13, it noted.

    The data protection agency said OpenAI would be barred from processing the data of Italian users until it “respects the privacy regulation.”

    OpenAI has been given 20 days to communicate the measures it will take to comply with Italy’s data rules. Otherwise, it could face a penalty of up to €20 million ($21.8 million), or up to 4% of its annual global turnover.

    Since its public release four months ago, ChatGPT has become a global phenomenon, amassing millions of users impressed with its ability to craft convincing written content, including academic essays, business plans and short stories.

    But concerns have also emerged about its rapid spread and what large-scale uptake of such tools could mean for society, putting pressure on regulators around the world to act.

    The European Union is finalizing rules on the use of artificial intelligence in the bloc. In the meantime, EU companies must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, as well as the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, which apply to tech platforms.

    Meanwhile, so-called “generative AI” tools available to the public are proliferating.

    Earlier this month, OpenAI released GPT-4, a new version of the technology underpinning ChatGPT that is even more powerful. The company said the updated technology passed a simulated law school bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers; by contrast, the prior version, GPT-3.5, scored around the bottom 10%.

    This week, some of the biggest names in tech, including Elon Musk, called for AI labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

    — Julia Horowitz contributed reporting.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification | CNN Business

    Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter users awoke Friday morning to even more chaos on the platform than they had become accustomed to in recent months under CEO Elon Musk after a wide-ranging rollback of blue check marks from celebrities, journalists and government agencies.

    The end of traditional verification marked the beginning of a radically different information regime on Twitter, one highlighted by almost immediate impersonations of government accounts; the removal of labels previously used to identify Chinese and Russian propaganda; and a scramble by the company to individually re-verify certain high-profile figures such as Pope Francis.

    A broad array of media organizations lost the gold verification badges Musk’s team had developed months earlier as an alternative to traditional brand verification, reflecting those organizations’ apparent refusal to pay for the badges that now cost $1,000 a month.

    Several prominent Twitter users including LeBron James, William Shatner and Stephen King also refused to pay to keep their verification badges, prompting Musk to personally intervene. Appearing to sense the problems that might ensue if those users went unverified, Musk said Thursday he would pay out of his own pocket to ensure James, Shatner and King’s profiles continued to be verified.

    “My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t,” King tweeted.

    “You’re welcome namaste,” Elon replied, adding a prayer emoji.

    Though some of the most visible issues with the rollout could be ironed out in the coming days, the broader impact of the change has been to make it more difficult for users to determine an account’s authenticity and potentially to undermine Twitter’s central role as a hub for news. Twitter verification is no longer an indicator that an account represents who it claims to represent; instead, it reflects that a user – or, apparently, the owner of Twitter – paid for Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.

    Earlier experiments with changes to verification had led to similar chaos, prompting Twitter to postpone the rollout multiple times. Twitter continued to move forward with its paid verification strategy, however, with the hope of bolstering subscription revenue after seeing a sharp decline in its core ad sales business.

    After Thursday’s change removed verification from New York City’s official government account, the account tweeted Thursday evening: “This is an authentic Twitter account representing the New York City Government.”

    Later, another Twitter account bearing the same profile image and a slight variation on the official account’s username replied to that tweet.

    “No, you’re not,” the impostor account said. “THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government.”

    By Friday morning, the city’s verification had been restored with a gray check mark indicating it was a “government or multilateral organization account.” The same had occurred with Pope Francis, who had also lost his blue check mark Thursday.

    In a seemingly unrelated and coincidental change, Twitter also stripped the “government-funded media” label from accounts belonging to Canada’s CBC and NPR, the latter of which had quit Twitter over the labeling because NPR said the label misrepresented the news organization’s editorial independence from the US government.

    Twitter also removed the “state-affiliated media” labels from accounts belonging to China’s Xinhua News and Russia’s RT.

    According to NPR, Musk dropped all media labeling on Twitter following a suggestion from the author Walter Isaacson, who is writing a biography of Musk. Isaacson, who is verified on Twitter as a subscriber to Twitter Blue, tweeted a photo of Musk on Thursday from SpaceX’s Starship launch site. The rocket exploded in midair.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Snapchat rolls out chatbot powered by ChatGPT to all users | CNN Business

    Snapchat rolls out chatbot powered by ChatGPT to all users | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Snapchat is about to give new meaning to the “chat” part of its name.

    Snap, the company behind Snapchat, announced on Wednesday that its customizable My AI chatbot, is now accessible to all users within the app. The feature, which is powered by the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, was previously only available to paying Snapchat+ subscribers.

    The tool offers recommendations, answers questions, helps users make plans and can write a haiku in seconds, according to the company. It can be brought into conversation with friends when it’s mentioned with “@MyAI.” Users can also give it a name and design a custom Bitmoji avatar for it to personalize it more.

    The move comes more than a month after ChatGPT creator OpenAI opened up access to its chatbot to third-party businesses. Snap, Instacart and tutor app Quizlet were among the early partners experimenting with adding ChatGPT.

    Since its public release in November 2022, ChatGPT has stunned many users with its impressive ability to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts. The initial wave of attention on the tool helped renew an arms race among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI tools in their products.

    The initial batch of companies tapping into ChatGPT’s functionality each have slightly different visions for how to incorporate it. Taken together, however, these services may test just how useful AI chatbots can really be in our everyday life and how much people want to interact with them for customer service and other uses across their favorite apps.

    Adding ChatGPT features also may come with some risks. The tool, which is trained on vast troves of data online, can spread inaccurate information and has the potential to respond to users in ways they might find inappropriate.

    In a blog post on Wednesday, Snap acknowledged “My AI is far from perfect but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

    It said, for example, about 99.5% of My AI responses conform to its community guidelines. Snap said it has made changes to “help protect against responses that could be inappropriate or harmful.” The company also said it has added moderation technology and included the new feature to its in-app parental tools.

    “We will continue to use these early learnings to make AI a more safe, fun, and useful experience, and we’re eager to hear your thoughts,” the company said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Meta stock jumps after company reports first revenue growth in nearly a year | CNN Business

    Meta stock jumps after company reports first revenue growth in nearly a year | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday reported that it grew sales by 3% during the first three months of the year, reversing a trend of three consecutive quarters of revenue declines and far exceeding Wall Street analysts’ expectations.

    Meta shares jumped as much as 12% in after-hours trading following the report, continuing the company’s strong trajectory since Zuckerberg announced that 2023 would be a “year of efficiency.”

    Another bright spot: user growth was relatively strong compared to recent quarters. The number of monthly active people on Meta’s family of apps grew 5% from the prior year to more than 3.8 billion and Facebook daily active users increased 4% to more than 2 billion.

    “We had a good quarter and our community continues to grow,” Zuckerberg said in a statement Wednesday. “We’re also becoming more efficient so we can build better products faster and put ourselves in a stronger position to deliver our long term vision.”

    But Meta has a long hill to climb.

    The company also reported that profits declined by nearly a quarter compared to the same period in the prior year to $5.7 billion. Price per advertisement — an indicator of the health of the company’s core digital ad business — also decreased by 17% from the year prior.

    Meta has been in the midst of a massive restructuring, as it attempts to recover from a perfect storm of heightened competition, lingering recession fears resulting in fewer ad dollars and a multibillion dollar effort to build a future version of the internet it calls the metaverse. Meta said in November it would eliminate 11,000 jobs, the single largest round of cuts in its history. And in March, Zuckerberg announced Meta would lay off another 10,000 employees. All told, the cuts will shrink Meta’s workforce by a quarter.

    Meta took a hit of more than $1 billion related to the restructuring in the March quarter, and said it will realize additional charges of around $500 million related to 2023 layoffs by the end of the year.

    Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts Wednesday that when Meta started its “efficiency work” late last year, “our business wasn’t performing as well as I wanted, but now we’re increasingly doing this work from a position of strength.”

    The company said it expects revenue to grow again in the current quarter compared to the prior year. And it slightly lowered its expectations for full-year expenses, potentially buoying investor optimism.

    “The year of efficiency is off to a stronger than expected start for Meta,” Insider Intelligence principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson said in a statement. But she added that the company “can’t afford to sit still in this environment.”

    Like other tech companies, Meta has recently read investor cues and taken to playing up its focus on artificial intelligence rather than the metaverse. The shift comes as Meta contends with the popularity of AI tools from tech firms like Microsoft and OpenAI.

    In his statement with the results Wednesday, Zuckerberg said: “Our AI work is driving good results across our apps and business.” He added in the call that the company’s AI work includes efforts to build AI chat experiences in WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as visual creation tools for posts on Facebook and Instagram and advertisements.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • North America’s largest transportation network suspends use of Twitter for service alerts | CNN Business

    North America’s largest transportation network suspends use of Twitter for service alerts | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    North America’s largest transportation network suspended the use of Twitter for service alerts Thursday, saying the “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”

    The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which serves 15.3 million passengers across a 5,000 square-mile area surrounding New York City, Long Island, New York State and Connecticut, also said their access to Twitter through its Application Programming Interface (API) was involuntarily interrupted twice over the last two weeks.

    “The MTA does not pay tech platforms to publish service information and has built redundant tools that provide service alerts in real time,” MTA’s Acting Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara said in a statement. “Those include the MYmta and TrainTime apps, the MTA’s homepage at MTA.info, email alerts and text messages.”

    “Service alerts are also available on thousands of screens in stations, on trains and in buses,” Rieara said. “The MTA has terminated posting service information to Twitter, effective immediately, as the reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”

    The @MTA app will remain active and customers will still be able to tweet at MTA accounts, including @nyct_subway, and get responses, according to the MTA.

    – CNN’s Julian Cummings contributed to this report

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • How Elon Musk upended Twitter and his own reputation in 6 months as CEO | CNN Business

    How Elon Musk upended Twitter and his own reputation in 6 months as CEO | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    When Elon Musk first agreed to buy Twitter, he promised to make the company “better than ever,” with greater transparency, fewer bots, a stronger business and more of what he called “free speech.”

    But six months after Musk took control of Twitter, the future of the company and the platform have never been less certain.

    After acquiring the social media platform for $44 billion in late October, Musk reportedly now values Twitter at around $20 billion — and some who track the company believe even that estimate is likely high. Musk repeatedly warned that Twitter could be at risk of filing for bankruptcy only to claim he had brought it back from the brink thanks to his slashing costs, both by laying off 80% of Twitter’s staff and allegedly by failing to pay some of its bills, according to multiple lawsuits. But it’s not clear just how and when Musk might return Twitter to growth.

    He has antagonized journalists and news outlets that have long been central to the platform’s success, overseen policy changes that threaten to make Twitter less safe or reliable, made the platform less transparent to researchers and scared away many top advertisers. Musk’s primary plan to grow Twitter’s business through an overhauled subscription strategy has resulted in much chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

    In the process, Musk has also upended his own reputation. Once known by much of the public primarily for his innovative efforts to launch rockets and build electric cars, Musk has instead spent much of the past six months in the headlines for controversial policy and feature changes at Twitter, draconian cuts to staff resulting in frequent service disruptions, and briefly banning several prominent journalists. He’s also tweeted a long list of eccentric remarks from his personal Twitter account, including sharing conspiracy theories and publicly mocking a Twitter worker with a disability who was unsure whether he’d been laid off.

    “If he had done nothing except cut costs, then Twitter would have been okay,” said Leslie Miley, a former Twitter engineering manager who started its product safety and security team and left the company in 2015. He has since held roles at Google, Microsoft and the Obama Foundation. “If you had just let everyone go, treated them with respect, and just let the service run for two years, you probably would be okay.”

    Now, though, Miley said he expects Twitter will “eventually go down the road of MySpace.”

    “It’s going to take a little bit longer … [but] I think Twitter is on its way to irrelevance,” he said, “there is no strategy to acquire or retain users because you are offering them no value.”

    Twitter, which has slashed much of its public relations team under Musk, responded to CNN’s request for comment on this story with the auto-reply from its press email that it has used for weeks: a poop emoji.

    For years, what differentiated Twitter from other social platforms was that it served as a central hub for real-time news. It was a place for ordinary people to read and even engage in conversation with celebrities, business leaders and other newsmakers.

    Many of Musk’s recent moves at the platform threaten to undermine that purpose, not to mention the larger information ecosystem — and it’s not clear the efforts will improve the company’s business.

    “Twitter has never been perfect, it had a lot of problems but it was critical global infrastructure for information that Elon Musk is now systematically, frankly, vandalizing,” former Twitter chair of global news Vivian Schiller told CNN in a recent interview.

    Most recently, Musk removed the legacy blue check marks that verified the identities of prominent users, saying he would instead make the checks available only to those who pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue in the interest of “treating everyone equally.”

    “There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities,” Musk said in a tweet earlier this month.

    But the move may make it easier for bad actors to impersonate high-profile people and harder for users to trust the veracity and authenticity of information on the platform. What’s more, Musk then decided to sponsor the blue checks for certain celebrities, including Stephen King and LeBron James, in effect creating exactly the “different standard” for famous users he’d professed to want to avoid.

    Now, Musk says content from verified users will be promoted on the platform, potentially making it harder for users who can’t afford a subscription, or simply don’t want to pay Musk for one, to find an audience on the platform. And the new paid verification system won’t necessarily rid the platform of bots, an issue Musk spent months railing on while trying to get out of the acquisition deal last year, according to Filippo Menczer, a computer science professor at Indiana University and director of the Observatory on Social Media.

    “You can create fake accounts and pay $8 [for a blue check] … so if you are a well-funded bad actor, you can do more damage now than you could before,” Menczer said. “And if you are a reliable source and you’re not well-funded, your information will not be as visible as before.”

    Menczer added that the result could be “less free speech, because you’re drowning out the speech of regular people [with speech] by people who either have the technical skills or the money to manipulate the system.”

    Twitter’s move to charge users of its API will also make it harder for researchers to identify and warn the platform about inauthentic activity, Menczer said, and could disrupt other positive uses of the platform that contributed to its reputation as a news hub. Weather agencies, for example, have warned that the change could make it harder for them to release automated emergency weather alerts.

    Any social network lives or dies based on its ability to retain and attract users — and there’s real reason for Twitter to be worried.

    A number of users, celebrities and media organizations have said they plan to leave Twitter over Musk’s recent policy changes — which often appear to be made on a whim without any real principles.

    NPR, BBC and CBC left Twitter after opposing a controversial new “government-funded media” label that they say was misleading. CenterLink, a global nonprofit that represents hundreds of centers providing services to LGBTQ communities, said it would no longer use Twitter after the platform removed protections for transgender users from its hateful conduct policy. And some high-profile users, such as bullying activist Monica Lewinsky, have threatened to exit the platform over the blue check change, now that they may be at greater risk of impersonation on Twitter.

    There remain few alternatives that offer similar features and scale to Twitter, but a growing list of upstart competitors has emerged since Musk’s takeover. At least one large rival, Facebook-parent Meta, has also confirmed it’s working on a service that sounds a lot like Twitter.

    “Almost everything he said he was going to do, he has screwed up in any number of ways,” Miley said. “If it weren’t so damaging to people and organizations who have depended upon the platform, it would be funny. But it’s not actually funny because it has degraded people’s ability to communicate effectively.”

    All of the chaos has made it difficult to convince advertisers, which previously made up 90% of Twitter’s revenue, to rejoin the platform, after many halted spending in the wake of Musk’s takeover over concerns about increased hate speech, as well as confusion about layoffs and the platform’s future direction.

    Just 43% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers as of September — the month before Musk’s takeover — were still advertising on the platform in April, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

    Musk, for his part, has said that Twitter’s usage has increased since his takeover and that advertisers are steadily returning to the platform. But because he took the company private, he is not obligated to make financial disclosures and followers of the company are left to take him at his word.

    Musk built his reputation by overhauling Tesla, helping to launch a widespread shift away from gas cars to electric vehicles and growing SpaceX into a space transport juggernaut. Now, he appears to be attempting a similar overhaul at Twitter — upending the tried-and-true digital advertising business in favor of a subscription model that no other social media platform has yet been able to find large scale success with.

    “I give him some credit for trying a different business model, I think the business model based on user data is quite abusive,” said Luigi Zingales, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, although Musk has also attempted to improve Twitter’s targeted advertising business.

    Some other tech companies have followed his lead in some places. Facebook-parent Meta copied Twitter by launching a paid verification option. And Meta, along with a number of other tech companies, have undergone multiple rounds of cost-cutting since last fall. Twitter appears to have given cover for some of these ideas, and other firms’ somewhat more principled approaches made them look better by comparison.

    For Twitter and Musk, the stakes for success are high: Musk’s relationships with banks and investors for future endeavors could hinge in part on his performance at the social media firm, which he took on billions of dollars in debt to purchase. Banks “will sit down and say, what kind of cred does this guy have? Will we find him making these shoot-from-the-lip sort of dictates that, in fact, throw our money down a hole?” said Columbia Business School management professor William Klepper.

    Any change to Musk’s reputation from his time leading Twitter could also ultimately have ripple effects for his broader business empire, causing potential investors, recruits and customers to think twice about betting on one of his companies. Tesla

    (TSLA)     shareholders recently complained to the company’s board that Musk appears “overcommitted.”

    “His reputation has been diminished significantly with Twitter … and once you lose it, it’s very difficult to recover,” Klepper said. “It would be a good opportunity for [Musk] to rethink whether or not … he’s really leadership material.”

    Musk in December pledged to step down as Twitter CEO after millions of users voted in favor of his exit in a poll he posted to the platform. But for now, he remains “Chief Twit.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link