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  • Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

    Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

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    The high-flying tech industry is facing a reckoning as the economy slows and customers pull back on spending.

    In the past month alone, tech companies have cut nearly 60,000 jobs, reversing a hiring spree that surged during the pandemic as millions of Americans moved their lives online. IBM was one of the latest to slash its headcount, announcing 3,900 layoffs in January, or less than 2% of its global workforce. 

    Even with the surge in layoffs, most tech companies are still vastly larger than they were three years ago. But industry analysts expect further industry cuts in 2023 as the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates as it hits the brakes on economic growth. 

    This year, “a major theme will be tech layoffs as Silicon Valley, after a decade of hyper growth, now comes to the reality of cost-cutting mode,” analysts at Wedbush said in a research note Friday.

    As for what that means for tech workers, it’s too soon to tell, experts say. Despite the cascade of layoff announcements, employment in the information sector rose through most of last year, dropping only in December. That suggests demand for talent remains strong enough that many laid-off tech employees will likely be able to find new jobs.

    “While layoffs from high-profile firms make the headlines, plenty of firms are desperate for more workers, especially tech workers. Those workers are in high demand from the auto industry to the Department of Veterans Affairs to not-for-profits,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

    “The labor market is still so tight that many tech workers, and workers with other skills, are snapped up well before they need to collect an unemployment check. And they are more likely to be snapped up by smaller firms, which have a much greater demand for workers than major corporations.

    The tech downturn is an anomaly amid a job market that remains the tightest in decades and has allowed many workers to command higher pay. Across the economy, announced layoffs last year fell to their second-lowest in 30 years of tracking by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, second only to 2021.

    But even as overall layoffs fell, tech layoffs rose, with a record 1 in 4 layoffs last year taking place in the tech sector.

    Here are the largest tech companies to announce cuts since 2022.

    Alphabet   

    The Google parent said on January 20 that it would let go of 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its 186,000-strong global workforce. The cuts apply “across Alphabet — product areas, functions, levels and regions,” CEO Sundar Pichai said.

    Pichai told employees that the Silicon Valley company simply hired too fast during the pandemic. 

    “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote in an email that was also posted on Alphabet’s corporate blog. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

    Amazon

    The e-commerce company is moving to cut about 18,000 positions, a downshift that began in November and that will continue into this year. That’s just a fraction of its 1.5 million-strong global workforce. 

    While the vast majority of the company’s employees work in its vast warehouse and logistics operation — which doubled in size during the pandemic — the cuts mostly affect white-collar employees in some of the company’s less profitable sectors, including the division responsible for its voice assistant, Alexa.

    Carvana

    The online car seller cut about 2,500 workers in May 2022, or 12% of its workforce. The company was widely criticized for its handling of the layoffs, many of which were done via Zoom and email. 

    The Phoenix-based company, which delivers new and used cars to buyers, blamed the cuts on an “automotive recession.”

    Coinbase

    The cryptocurrency trading platform cut roughly 20% of its workforce, or about 950 jobs, in January. It’s the second round of layoffs in less than a year, with 1,100 workers losing their jobs in June.

    Dell

    The computer company in February announced it would slash 5% of its workforce due to a “challenging global economic environment.” The Texas-based company has about 133,000 employees, according to its most recent annual report, putting the layoffs on track to eliminate about 6,600 jobs.

    eBay

    The online marketplace said in February it would cut 500 jobs, or about 4% of its global workforce, according to an internal email included with a securities filing.

    The layoffs allow the company “to invest and create new roles in high-potential areas,” CEO Jamie Iannone said in the message. The will also “[simplify] our structure to make decisions more effectively and with more speed,” he said.

    IBM

    The company plans to cut about 3,900 workers, its chief financial officer told Bloomberg in January. The cuts amount to about 1.5% of the company’s global workforce, and come even as IBM posted better-than-expected revenue for the most recent quarter.

    The Armonk, New York-based firm will continue hiring in what its financial officer called “higher-growth areas.” IBM last year said it would invest tens of billions of dollars across New York’s Hudson Valley to spur semiconductor manufacturing.

    Lyft

    The ride-hailing service said in November it was cutting 13% of its workforce, almost 700 employees. The layoffs affect its corporate employees, since Lyft’s army of drivers are considered independent businesses, not employees of the transportation company. 

    Meta

    The parent company of Facebook in November laid off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce. Meta has struggled more than many tech companies this year; its user base has shrunk, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put billions of dollars into building what he calls the “metaverse,” to the consternation of its investors. The company’s stock has lost two-thirds of its value since peaking in August 2021.

    Microsoft

    The software company in January said it would cut about 10,000 jobs, almost 5% of its workforce, as it refocuses its strategy on artificial intelligence and away from hardware. In the two years ending in June 2022, Microsoft had expanded from 163,000 workers to 221,000.

    PayPal

    The digital payments company said in January it was cutting 2,000 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce, as it contends with what it called “the challenging macro-economic environment.”

    The San Jose, California-based company is the parent of PayPal is the parent of payment apps Venmo and Xoom and the coupon service Honey, among other brands. PayPal said the cuts would affect different brands unequally, although it did not specify further.

    Robinhood

    The company, whose app helped attract a new generation of investors to the market, announced in August that it would reduce its headcount by 23%, or approximately 780 people. That’s the second round of recent layoffs for the company, which last year cut 9% of its workforce.

    Salesforce

    The company cut 10% of its workforce, or about 7,300 employees, in January. It also said it was closing some offices, citing a “challenging” environment and lower customer spending. 

    Snap

    The parent company of social media platform Snapchat said in August that it was letting go of 20% of its staff. Snap’s staff has grown to more than 5,600 employees in recent years, meaning that, even after laying off more than 1,000 people, Snap’s staff would be larger than it was a year earlier.

    Spotify

    The music streaming service said in January it was cutting 6% of its workforce, or roughly 580 jobs, as part of a push to make the company more efficient. In 2022, Spotify’s operating costs grew twice as fast as its revenue, CEO Daniel Ek said, a pace he called “unsustainable.”

    “We still spend far too much time syncing on slightly different strategies, which slows us down,” CEO Daniel Elk said in a January 23 letter to employees posted on the company’s site. “And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance.”

    Stripe

    The payment processor announced layoffs of roughly 1,000 workers in November,  amounting to 14% of its workforce. In an email to employees posted on Stripe’s website, CEO Patrick Collison said the company expected “leaner times” amid worsening economic conditions.

    Twitter

    About half of the social media platform’s staff of 7,500 was let go after the billionaire CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, acquired the service in October. An unknown number have left, with some objecting to the new ownership and Musk’s demand for an “extremely hardcore” attitude.

    Wayfair

    The online shopping company announced in January that it would cut 1,750 workers, or about 10% of its global employees, as it adjusts to falling consumer demand after the home-renovation boom of the pandemic. It’s the second round of layoffs for the Boston-based company, which cut 870 employees in August.

    CEO Niraj Shah said the company “simply grew too big.”

    “In hindsight, similar to our technology peers, we scaled our spend too quickly over the last few years,” Shah said in a statement.

    Zoom

    The video-conferencing company that surged early in the pandemic said it would lay off 1,300 “talented, hardworking colleagues” in early February. The cuts represent about 15% of Zoom’s workforce, according to a company blog.

    The company tripled in size in 2020 as white-collar workers shifted to remote environments, but its user growth then slowed dramatically.

    “We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably,” CEO Eric Yuan said in a post. “[T]he uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard – yet important – look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision,” he added.

    Yuan said he would forgo his entire salary and bonus for the current fiscal year, and that the executive team would see 20% salary cuts and no bonus. Yuan made $320,000 in compensation last year, and also holds about $3.3 million worth of Zoom stock, according to securities filings.

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  • Judge reportedly allows Meta to move forward with VR startup acquisition, in blow to FTC | CNN Business

    Judge reportedly allows Meta to move forward with VR startup acquisition, in blow to FTC | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge will not block Meta from buying a virtual reality tech startup, according to multiple reports, in a setback for the US government, which had alleged the deal would threaten competition in a nascent market.

    Tuesday’s decision, issued by the US District Court for the Northern District of California, is sealed. But according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the contents of the decision dealt Meta a victory by denying the US government’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the acquisition from closing. The New York Times cited two people with knowledge of the matter and the Wall Street Journal cited one person familiar with the ruling.

    CNN has not independently confirmed the contents of the court’s decision. The Federal Trade Commission, which had sued to block the deal last summer, declined to comment. Meta declined to comment, and several outside attorneys for the company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The closely watched case involves Meta’s purchase of Within Unlimited, a virtual reality company and maker of a VR fitness app called “Supernatural.” The FTC’s suit had been seen as a major test for Chair Lina Khan, a critic of large tech platforms, as well as of the FTC’s unusual legal theory alleging that Meta’s deal would harm future competition in a rapidly evolving industry.

    According to the reports, the judge in the case also issued a separate order that delays Meta’s ability to close its deal for another week to allow the FTC to decide whether to appeal the ruling.

    A separate challenge to Meta’s deal is ongoing before an in-house administrative law judge at the FTC. That proceeding could continue despite Tuesday’s ruling, but whether agency officials intend to press ahead is unclear.

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  • I’m a parent with an active social media brand: Here’s what you need to check on your child’s social media right now | CNN

    I’m a parent with an active social media brand: Here’s what you need to check on your child’s social media right now | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Stress, But Less newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide will inform and inspire you to reduce stress while learning how to harness it.



    CNN
     — 

    If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll know I wear a lot of hats: romance author, parent of funny tweenagers, part-time teacher, amateur homesteader, grumbling celiac and the wife of a seriously outdoorsy guy.

    Because I’m an author with a major publisher in today’s competitive market, I’ve been tasked with stepping up my social media brand: participation, creation and all. The more transparent and likable I am online, the better my books sell. Therefore, to social media I go.

    It’s rare to find someone with no social media presence these days, but there’s a marked difference between posting a few pictures for family and friends and actively creating social media content as part of your daily life.

    With a whopping 95% of teens polled having access to smartphones (and 98% of teens over 15), according to an August Pew Research Center survey on teens, social media and technology, it doesn’t look like social media platforms are going away anytime soon.

    Not only are they key social tools, but they also allow teens to feel more a part of things in their communities. Many teens like being online, according to a November Pew Research Center survey on teen life on social media. Eighty percent of the teens surveyed felt more connected to what is happening in their friends’ lives, while 71% felt social media allows them to showcase their creativity.

    So, while posting online is work for me, it’s a way of life for the tweens and teens I see creating and publishing content online. As a parent of two middle schoolers, I know how important social media is to them, and I also know what’s out there. I see the good, the bad and the viral, and I’ve have put together some guidelines, based on what I’ve seen, for my fellow parents to watch for.

    Here are eight questions to ask yourself as you check out your children’s social media accounts.

    If you don’t, it’s time to start. It’s like when I had to look up the term “situationship,” I saw that ignorance is not bliss in this case. Or really any case when it comes to your children. Both of my children have smartphones, but even if your children don’t have smartphones, if they have any sort of device — phone, tablet, school laptop — it’s likely they have some sort of social media account out there. Every app our children wish to add to their smart devices comes through my husband’s and my phone notifications for approval. Before I approve any apps, I’ll read the reviews, run an internet search and text my mom friends for their experience.

    Most tweens and teens use social media for socializing with local friends.

    If I’m still uncertain about an app, I’ll hold off on approving it until I can sit down with my children and ask them why they want it. Sometimes just waiting and forcing a short discussion is enough to convince them they no longer want it. In our household, I avoid any apps that run social surveys, allow anonymous feedback or require the individual to use location services.

    If you don’t have your family phone plan all hooked together with parental controls, I’d advise setting that up ASAP. Because different devices and apps have different ways to monitor and set up parental controls, it’s impossible to link all the options here. However, a quick search will give you exactly the coverage you are comfortable with, including apps that track your child’s text messages and changing the settings on your child’s phone to lock down at a certain time every night.

    The top social media platforms teens use today are YouTube (95% of teens polled), TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%), according to the Pew Research Center survey on teens and social media tech. Other social media platforms teens use less frequently are Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp and Facebook. Most notably, Facebook is seeing a significant downturn in teen users. This list isn’t exhaustive, however. I would check out your children’s devices for group chat apps (such as Slack or Discord) and also scroll through their sport or activity apps where group chat capabilities exist.

    I’ve seen preteens and teens using their real names, birthdate, home address, pets’ names, locker numbers or their school baseball team. Any of that information could be used to identify your child and location in real life or using a quick Google search. All of that is an absolute “no” in our house.

    I also tell my kids not to answer the fun surveys and quizzes that invite children to share their unique information and repost it for others to see. These can be useful tools for predators and people trying to steal your children’s identity.

    What I do: I made the choice a long ago to withhold the names of my children and partner. It’s not an exact science, and I know some clever digging could find them. For my husband, it’s for the sake of his privacy and also the protection of his professionalism. Just because he’s married to a romance author doesn’t mean he should have to answer for my online antics, whatever they may be. For my children, I want to avoid anything embarrassing that could be traced back to them during their college application season.

    Even if your children keep their social media profiles private (more on that later), their biographical information, screen name and avatar or profile picture are public information.

    Do an internet search of your child’s name to see what’s out there and scroll through images to make sure there isn’t anything you wouldn’t want to be made public. In our household, I’ve asked my children to use generic items or illustrated avatars in their social media bios.

    What I do: Parents who do have active social media accounts may want to do a search of their own names. When my first book was published in 2019, I did a search of my name and images and found many photos of my children that came directly from my social media pages. I hadn’t posted pictures of them, but I did use a family photo as my profile photo and those are public record. Once I deleted them, the photos disappeared.

    Another “no” in our household is posting videos or photos of our home or bedrooms. Something that feels innocent and innocuous to your middle schooler may not feel that way to an adult seeking out inappropriate content.

    I learned this from one of my children’s Pinterest accounts. My kid loves to create themed videos using her own photos and stock pictures, and she’s gained over 500 followers in a short period of time. She has completely followed our rules and I know, because I check and follow her myself — but it hasn’t stopped the influx of adult men following her content.

    What we do: Over the holidays, I sat with her and went through each follower one by one and blocked anyone we decided was there for the wrong reasons. In the end, we blocked close to 30 adult men on her account. (I also know that some predators cleverly disguise themselves as children or teens, and we may not catch them all, but this is still a worthy exercise.)

    We also talk to our children about how to protect themselves. They wouldn’t want those strangers standing in their bedroom; therefore, they don’t want to post videos of their bedroom or bathroom or classroom for strangers to view.

    This is a tricky one for lots of reasons. For content creators to build their following, they need to remain public on social media. If your child is an entrepreneur or artist hoping to grab attention, locking down their account will prevent that from happening.

    That said, a way around this is to have two accounts. First, a private one, locked down and only used for family and close friends, and second, a public one that lacks identifiers but showcases whatever branding the child is hoping to grow. I’ve come across some well-managed public accounts for children who have giant followings and noticed they are usually run by parents, who state that right in the profile. I like this. If your children want public profiles because they are hoping to catch the attention of a talent scout, having the accounts monitored by a responsible adult who has their best interest in mind is a healthy compromise.

    This is the exception, however. Most tweens and teens today use their social media for socializing with local friends. The benefit of keeping their account as private (or as private as can be) is threefold. It allows them to screen who follows their content, thus preventing our Pinterest fiasco. It prevents strangers from accessing their content and making it viral without their permission. And it protects them from unsolicited contact with strangers.

    Not all social media platforms have the option to make your account “private.” For example, YouTube has parental controls that can be adjusted at any time. TikTok and Instagram can be made private (which means users must approve followers) by making the change in the account settings. Once the account is private, a little padlock will show next to the username.

    Snapchat allows users to approve followers on a case-by-case basis as well as turn off features that disclose a user’s location. Notably, Snapchat also informs users when another user takes a screenshot of their story, which is a feature other social media platforms don’t have yet.

    Most group chat apps don’t have the ability to go private so much as they ask users to approve of follower requests. Take time to discuss with your children who they allow to follow them and what personal information they allow those followers to know. It’s also a great time to teach them the art of “blocking” those individuals who are unsafe or unkind.

    My suggestion is to log in, scroll around and even ask your children to teach you about the platforms they use. Then, when they roll their eyes at you, go ahead and tell them about your first Hotmail email address and the way you picked the perfect emo playlist on your Myspace page … and when they’re bent over laughing, sneak a peek at their follower list. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.

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  • Meta shares surge nearly 20% as Zuckerberg pledges to make 2023 a ‘year of efficiency’ | CNN Business

    Meta shares surge nearly 20% as Zuckerberg pledges to make 2023 a ‘year of efficiency’ | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    For years, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg invested heavily in growth, including in areas like virtual reality with unproven potential. But after a brutal year in which the company lost more than $600 billion in market value, Zuckerberg has started speaking Wall Street’s language — and they are rewarding him for it.

    Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday posted its third straight quarterly decline in revenue and a sharp drop in profit for the final three months of 2022, as it confronted broader economic uncertainty, heightened competition in the social media market and incurred significant charges from a recent round of layoffs.

    But the company nonetheless outperformed Wall Street analysts’ expectations for sales. Moreover, it pledged to focus on “efficiency,” lowered its forecast for capital expenditures in the year ahead and announced plans to boost its share repurchase plan by $40 billion. All of that helped send shares of Meta up nearly 20% in after hours trading Wednesday.

    “Our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization,” Zuckerberg said in a statement with the earnings results.

    Meta reported nearly $32.2 billion in revenue for the quarter, down 4% from the year prior but ahead of the $31.5 billion analysts had projected. The social media giant’s quarterly net income was just shy of $4.7 billion, down 55% from the same period in the prior year and below analysts’ expectations.

    Meta announced plans to lay off around 11,000 employees in November. The company also currently has a broad hiring freeze in place and plans to limit hiring throughout the year, Meta CFO Susan Li said on a call with analysts Wednesday.

    In its earnings report, Meta said it has cut its guidance for capital expenditures for 2023 down slightly to between $30 billion and $33 billion, citing plans for lower data center construction spending. It also added that “substantially all of our capital expenditures continue to support the Family of Apps,” a term that refers to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, perhaps in an effort to reassure investors skeptical of its plan to center its business model around the future version of the internet it calls the metaverse.

    For the first quarter of 2023, Meta expects revenue between $26 and $28.5 billion, the upper end of which would represent an increase from the year-ago quarter and would break Meta’s streak of consecutive quarterly revenue declines. The guidance is somewhat better than Snapchat-parent Snap’s from earlier in the week, which said it expects first quarter revenue to fall between 2% and 10% compared to the previous year.

    Zuckerberg explained the focus on efficiency during the analyst call by acknowledging that for the first 18 years of the company’s history, its revenue grew sharply each year. “And then obviously that changed very dramatically in 2022, where our revenue was negative growth for the first time in the company’s history … and we don’t anticipate that’s going to continue but I don’t necessarily think it’s going to go back to the way it was before.”

    He added: “So I think this is a pretty rapid phase change there that I think just forced us to basically take a step back and say, okay, we can’t just treat everything like it’s hyper-growth,” although Zuckerberg said he thinks the shift in mindset “actually makes us better.”

    Meta’s user numbers also marked a bright spot from Wednesday’s report. Facebook now has 2 billion daily active users, and Meta’s family of apps grew its daily active people by 5% year-over-year to 2.96 billion, a welcome sign for the company following concerns about stagnant user growth last year.

    The company’s core advertising business fell just over 4% to nearly $31.3 billion, a “better-than-expected” result that “should refute concerns over the state of the digital advertising industry,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com. Li said that ad revenue growth from its top advertising verticals, online commerce and consumer packaged goods, remained negative during the December quarter but fell at a slower rate than in the previous quarter.

    Still, Meta’s average price per ad fell 22% year-over-year during the December quarter, and 16% overall in 2022, as the company grapples with Apple’s app tracking changes and increased competition from the likes of TikTok.

    The company also lost a total of more than $13.7 billion in its “Reality Labs” unit which houses its metaverse efforts. Fourth quarter Reality Labs revenue fell 17% to $727 million, due to lower sales of its Quest 2 headset, the company said.

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  • Facebook’s VR Division Lost $13.72 Billion In 2022

    Facebook’s VR Division Lost $13.72 Billion In 2022

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    Image: Kotaku / Shutterstock / Kevin Dietsch (Getty Images)

    Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is having a decent day today after beating revenue and user activity forecasts for its final fiscal quarter of 2022. But its VR division isn’t helping the company make money. In fact, it’s costing the company billions in losses.

    While it’s true that Meta’s stock is rising in after-hours trading today after sharing fairly positive fourth-quarter financial results, its VR division, Reality Labs, didn’t have such positive news to share, as it’s continuing to blow through money at a shocking rate. Today, the company confirmed it lost over $4 billion to VR and metaverse development in its final quarter of 2022. And in total, it lost well over $13 billion in 2022 trying (and failing) to build a metaverse people would flock to.

    In comparison, Meta brought in $32.1 billion in revenue across all departments and apps.

    As reported by Decrypt.co, Meta’s Reality Labs only brought in $727 million in revenue in the closing months of 2022. That’s not great when compared to the billions spent on the division in the same year, but it’s also worse than you might think. That figure is down 17% from the division’s revenue in the same period of 2021. Ouch.

    Remember too that Facebook’s flagship metaverse software, Horizon Worlds, has basically been a giant flop, with reports that most worlds inside of it are empty and barely played. Not only that, but the company’s own employees barely use it, with a leaked internal memo showing that staff at Meta don’t enjoy using Horizons Worlds because it’s riddled with bugs and other quality issues.

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    Really the only big success story from Reality Labs is the Oculus Quest 2 headset, which was seen by many as an affordable alternative to pricey PC and console VR headsets and was also completely standalone. But in July Meta raised the price of that affordable headset by $100, with the 128GB model now costing $400 and the 256GB version now going for $500.

    In November 2022, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, blaming covid, “macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss.” Zuckerberg blamed himself for the layoffs, but conveniently didn’t mention in his announcement of layoffs how much money the company is continuing to spent on VR and metaverse development. Over the past few years the company has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to make a VR-powered metaverse a thing.

    And now, in February 2023, following massive layoffs and continued losses, it only has an unappealing and empty PlayStation Home clone to show for all its troubles.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • GoodRx shared consumer health data with Facebook and Google, FTC says

    GoodRx shared consumer health data with Facebook and Google, FTC says

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    Digital health service GoodRx repeatedly shared sensitive customer information with Facebook, Google and other advertising platforms without its users’ knowledge or consent, the Federal Trade Commission alleged on Wednesday. In doing so, GoodRx allowed those services to tap into sensitive health details about those consumers, according to the complaint.

    In one case, GoodRx allegedly designed campaigns based on its users’ health information to run targeted ads on Facebook, relying on the social media network’s ad-targeting platform and making the information visible to Facebook, the complaint alleges. In that case, the campaigns featured ads focused on specific medications such as Viagra or conditions like erectile dysfunction that then ran on Facebook, the complaint claims.

    GoodRx shared sensitive user information such as personal health conditions and prescription medications with third-party advertisers without notifying its users or seeking their consent, the FTC said. The medication service also exploited its information to provide Facebook with its customers’ personal and health data over a four-year period, the agency claims. 


    Privacy advocates warn about smart toys, urge FTC to do more

    04:45

    Such information could be used to infer or link people to “chronic physical or mental health conditions, medical treatments and treatment choices, life expectancy, disability status, information relating to parental status, substance addiction, sexual and reproductive health, sexual orientation, and other highly sensitive and personal information,” the FTC said in the complaint. 

    Move to protect user privacy

    The Department of Justice, on behalf of the FTC, issued an order that prohibits GoodRx from sharing user health data for advertising purposes, although the order must be approved by the federal court to become effective. GoodRx will also pay a $1.5 million civic penalty, the FTC said in a statement.

    GoodRx said it doesn’t agree with the allegations. 

    “[W]e admit no wrongdoing,” it said in a statement. It added that the settlement “focuses on an old issue that was proactively addressed almost three years ago, before the FTC inquiry began.”

    GoodRx said it resolved the issue three years ago, when it made updates to its service to protect users’ privacy. 

    In a statement emailed to CBS MoneyWatch, Google said it prohibits personalized advertising based on “sensitive data like health conditions or prescription medications.” 

    Meta, Facebook’s parent company, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    GoodRx, which offers a digital service for prescription drug discounts and telehealth appointments, collects personal and health information from consumers and from pharmacy benefit managers when a consumer purchases a prescription through GoodRx. 


    Privacy advocates warn about smart toys, urge FTC to do more

    04:45

    The FTC said the enforcement action represents the first time it has taken such a step under its Health Breach Notification Rule, which requires vendors of personal health records to alert consumers after their data has been breached. The agency claims that GoodRx failed to notify its customers about the unauthorized disclosure of their data to Facebook, Google and others. 

    “Digital health companies and mobile apps should not cash in on consumer’s extremely sensitive and personally identifiable health information,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the statement. 

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  • Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

    Here are the latest tech layoffs as the industry shudders

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    The high-flying tech industry is facing a reckoning as the economy slows and customers pull back on spending.

    In the past month alone, tech companies have cut nearly 60,000 jobs, reversing a hiring spree that surged during the pandemic as millions of Americans moved their lives online. IBM was one of the latest to slash its headcount, announcing 3,900 layoffs in January, or less than 2% of its global workforce. 

    Even with the surge in layoffs, most tech companies are still vastly larger than they were three years ago. But industry analysts expect further industry cuts in 2023 as the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates as it hits the brakes on economic growth. 

    This year, “a major theme will be tech layoffs as Silicon Valley, after a decade of hyper growth, now comes to the reality of cost-cutting mode,” analysts at Wedbush said in a research note Friday.

    As for what that means for tech workers, it’s too soon to tell, experts say. Despite the cascade of layoff announcements, employment in the information sector rose through most of last year, dropping only in December. That suggests demand for talent remains strong enough that many laid-off tech employees will likely be able to find new jobs.

    “While layoffs from high-profile firms make the headlines, plenty of firms are desperate for more workers, especially tech workers. Those workers are in high demand from the auto industry to the Department of Veterans Affairs to not-for-profits,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

    “The labor market is still so tight that many tech workers, and workers with other skills, are snapped up well before they need to collect an unemployment check. And they are more likely to be snapped up by smaller firms, which have a much greater demand for workers than major corporations.

    The tech downturn is an anomaly amid a job market that remains the tightest in decades and has allowed many workers to command higher pay. Across the economy, announced layoffs last year fell to their second-lowest in 30 years of tracking by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, second only to 2021.

    But even as overall layoffs fell, tech layoffs rose, with a record 1 in 4 layoffs last year taking place in the tech sector.

    Here are the largest tech companies to announce cuts since 2022.

    Alphabet   

    The Google parent said on January 20 that it would let go of 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its 186,000-strong global workforce. The cuts apply “across Alphabet — product areas, functions, levels and regions,” CEO Sundar Pichai said.

    Pichai told employees that the Silicon Valley company simply hired too fast during the pandemic. 

    “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote in an email that was also posted on Alphabet’s corporate blog. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

    Amazon

    The e-commerce company is moving to cut about 18,000 positions, a downshift that began in November and that will continue into this year. That’s just a fraction of its 1.5 million-strong global workforce. 

    While the vast majority of the company’s employees work in its vast warehouse and logistics operation — which doubled in size during the pandemic — the cuts mostly affect white-collar employees in some of the company’s less profitable sectors, including the division responsible for its voice assistant, Alexa.

    Carvana

    The online car seller cut about 2,500 workers in May 2022, or 12% of its workforce. The company was widely criticized for its handling of the layoffs, many of which were done via Zoom and email. 

    The Phoenix-based company, which delivers new and used cars to buyers, blamed the cuts on an “automotive recession.”

    Coinbase

    The cryptocurrency trading platform cut roughly 20% of its workforce, or about 950 jobs, in January. It’s the second round of layoffs in less than a year, with 1,100 workers losing their jobs in June.

    IBM

    The company plans to cut about 3,900 workers, its chief financial officer told Bloomberg in January. The cuts amount to about 1.5% of the company’s global workforce, and come even as IBM posted better-than-expected revenue for the most recent quarter.

    The Armonk, New York-based firm will continue hiring in what its financial officer called “higher-growth areas.” IBM last year said it would invest tens of billions of dollars across New York’s Hudson Valley to spur semiconductor manufacturing.

    Lyft

    The ride-hailing service said in November it was cutting 13% of its workforce, almost 700 employees. The layoffs affect its corporate employees, since Lyft’s army of drivers are considered independent businesses, not employees of the transportation company. 

    Meta

    The parent company of Facebook in November laid off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce. Meta has struggled more than many tech companies this year; its user base has shrunk, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put billions of dollars into building what he calls the “metaverse,” to the consternation of its investors. The company’s stock has lost two-thirds of its value since peaking in August 2021.

    Microsoft

    The software company in January said it would cut about 10,000 jobs, almost 5% of its workforce, as it refocuses its strategy on artificial intelligence and away from hardware. In the two years ending in June 2022, Microsoft had expanded from 163,000 workers to 221,000.

    PayPal

    The digital payments company said in January it was cutting 2,000 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce, as it contends with what it called “the challenging macro-economic environment.”

    The San Jose, California-based company is the parent of PayPal is the parent of payment apps Venmo and Xoom and the coupon service Honey, among other brands. PayPal said the cuts would affect different brands unequally, although it did not specify further.

    Robinhood

    The company, whose app helped attract a new generation of investors to the market, announced in August that it would reduce its headcount by 23%, or approximately 780 people. That’s the second round of recent layoffs for the company, which last year cut 9% of its workforce.

    Salesforce

    The company cut 10% of its workforce, or about 7,300 employees, in January. It also said it was closing some offices, citing a “challenging” environment and lower customer spending. 

    Snap

    The parent company of social media platform Snapchat said in August that it was letting go of 20% of its staff. Snap’s staff has grown to more than 5,600 employees in recent years, meaning that, even after laying off more than 1,000 people, Snap’s staff would be larger than it was a year earlier.

    Spotify

    The music streaming service said in January it was cutting 6% of its workforce, or roughly 580 jobs, as part of a push to make the company more efficient. In 2022, Spotify’s operating costs grew twice as fast as its revenue, CEO Daniel Ek said, a pace he called “unsustainable.”

    “We still spend far too much time syncing on slightly different strategies, which slows us down,” CEO Daniel Elk said in a January 23 letter to employees posted on the company’s site. “And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance.”

    Stripe

    The payment processor announced layoffs of roughly 1,000 workers in November,  amounting to 14% of its workforce. In an email to employees posted on Stripe’s website, CEO Patrick Collison said the company expected “leaner times” amid worsening economic conditions.

    Twitter

    About half of the social media platform’s staff of 7,500 was let go after the billionaire CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, acquired the service in October. An unknown number have left, with some objecting to the new ownership and Musk’s demand for an “extremely hardcore” attitude.

    Wayfair

    The online shopping company announced in January that it would cut 1,750 workers, or about 10% of its global employees, as it adjusts to falling consumer demand after the home-renovation boom of the pandemic. It’s the second round of layoffs for the Boston-based company, which cut 870 employees in August.

    CEO Niraj Shah said the company “simply grew too big.”

    “In hindsight, similar to our technology peers, we scaled our spend too quickly over the last few years,” Shah said in a statement.

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  • Meta and Twitter decided to restore Trump’s account. Will other platforms follow suit? | CNN Business

    Meta and Twitter decided to restore Trump’s account. Will other platforms follow suit? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Former president Donald Trump could soon make a return to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and reach the massive audiences on each, now that the companies behind those platforms have restored access to his accounts.

    But that could just be the start. The decisions by Twitter and now Facebook-parent Meta to bring back Trump could push — or at least provide cover for — a number of other platforms to make similar moves. 

    Facebook and Twitter restricted Trump’s accounts in the aftermath of the January 6 attack. The bans were seen as necessary by tech executives, and indeed many on Capitol Hill, believing Trump could use their platforms to incite further violence.

    Many other platforms followed suit by banning or restricting Trump, including YouTube, Snapchat and game streaming platform Twitch. Shopify, an e-commerce company, removed two stores associated with Trump, and digital payments provider Stripe said it would stop processing payments for Trump’s campaign. In some cases, platforms restricted channels or content that was associated with the then-president, if not directly affiliated — Reddit and Discord, for example, banned pro-Trump groups on their platforms.

    The net effect was that Trump, or at least his accounts, essentially vanished or went silent across the mainstream internet. Trump’s digital exile pushed him to launch his own social media platform, Truth Social. His media company even teased plans to create rivals to other online services, including Stripe. (Trump has not said whether he will resume posting from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram; he is believed to have some form of an exclusivity deal with Truth Social’s parent company to post there.)

    For now, some of these other companies appear to be sticking with their policies. On Wednesday, Snapchat parent Snap indicated that it is not planning to revisit its decision to ban Trump’s account two years ago.

    “In January 2021, Donald Trump’s Snapchat account was terminated for violating our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “According to our Community Guidelines, if your account is terminated for violating our Terms of Service or the Guidelines, you are not allowed to use Snapchat again.”

    But for other platforms, Meta’s ruling this week could add to the pressure many had already been facing to reconsider their bans after Trump announced he’d seek a third bid for the White House in 2024 and new Twitter owner Elon Musk gave him back his account.

    “Usually these companies do fly in a flock and whoever makes the first movements, other companies do tend to try to, in succession, follow behind because the initial company takes the biggest media hit and then the rest of them don’t suffer the reputational hit of being the first technology company to make a decision,” Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, told CNN earlier this month.

    A YouTube spokesperson told CNN Wednesday that the company currently had “nothing to share” on whether the company is or plans to consider reversing its suspension. Shopify, Stripe, Discord and Reddit did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the possibility of following Meta and Twitter’s leads and reversing their bans.

    When Musk announced the decision to reinstate Trump’s Twitter account in November, shortly after completing his acquisition of the company, it came with little explanation beyond Musk’s previously stated desire for freer speech on the platform. Musk conducted an informal poll of his followers and more voted in favor of restoring the account than not.

    Meta’s decision, by contrast, could provide a new set of precedents for platforms on how to handle Trump and other world leaders who violate their rules.

    In announcing its decision on Wednesday, Meta laid out “new guardrails” for how it will handle possible rules violations by Trump if he opts to return to Meta’s platforms. In short: yes, Trump can get suspended again, but a permanent ban no longer appears to be on the table.

    “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. He added that the new, harsher penalties for repeat violations will also apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated following suspensions related to civil unrest.

    For content that doesn’t violate its rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon,” Meta may limit distribution of the posts, Clegg said. The company could, for example, remove the reshare button or keep the posts visible on Trump’s page but not in users’ feeds, even for those who follow him, he said. For repeated instances, the company may restrict access to its advertising tools.

    If Trump again posts content that violates Meta’s rules but the company determines “there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm,” Meta may similarly restrict the posts’ distribution but leave them visible on Trump’s page.

    The new policy may still require Meta’s leadership to make significant, subjective decisions about what content is potentially harmful public safety at large, but the rules could act as a model for how other platforms could bring back the former president without appearing reckless.

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  • Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

    Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

    That was the warning from Twitter staff at an internal meeting on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the deadly attack on the US Capitol. It wasn’t the only stark warning Twitter management received ahead of the insurrection, according to two former Twitter employees who spoke to the House Jan. 6 Committee.

    But now these witnesses, along with some committee staff, are frustrated, saying the committee failed to adequately hold major social media companies to account for the role they played in the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years.

    It was a “real missed opportunity,” Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower who gave evidence to the committee, told CNN in an interview last week. “I risked a lot to come forward and speak to the committee and to share the truth about these momentous occasions in history,” Navaroli said.

    CNN spoke to half a dozen people who interacted with and were familiar with the Jan. 6 Committee’s so-called “purple team” – a group that included staff with expertise in extremism and online misinformation. Some witnesses and staff said the committee pulled its punches when it came to Big Tech, failing to include critical parts of the team’s work in its final report. The discontent has poured into public view, with an unpublished draft of the team’s findings leaked and obtained by multiple news organizations, including CNN.

    One source familiar with the probe acknowledged that the committee obtained evidence that social media companies like Twitter largely ignored concerns that were raised internally prior to Jan. 6, but while those platforms should have done something at the time, the panel was limited in its ability to hold them accountable. A lawyer who worked on the committee said the panel did its job and focused on the unique and malign role of then-President Donald Trump in an unprecedented attack on American democracy. They also said the final report outlines structural issues across social media and society that need to be studied further.

    Disagreement about social media companies’ role in the Jan. 6 attack comes as 2023 looks to be a pivotal year for Silicon Valley firms in Washington, DC. Spurred in part by the release of Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files,” House Republicans are set to investigate purported Big Tech censorship, particularly as it pertains to social media companies’ handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. Facebook parent company Meta’s high-stakes decision Wednesday to reinstate Trump on its platforms is also expected to stoke further scrutiny of tech companies’ influence in elections. At the Supreme Court, justices are set to rule this year on a case that could strip key protections afforded to tech companies moderating online speech.

    It isn’t just Navaroli who has taken issue with the committee’s findings. Three of the committee’s own staff members, part of the so-called purple team, published an article earlier this month, sharply criticizing the decisions made by social media companies in the lead up to the attack.

    The final report’s “emphasis on Trump meant important context was left on the cutting room floor,” they wrote.

    “Indeed, the lack of an official Committee report chapter or appendix dedicated exclusively to these matters does not mean our investigation exonerated social media companies for their failure to confront violent rhetoric,” they wrote.

    In wake of the decision, CNN has reviewed thousands of pages of deposition transcripts and other supporting documents the committee has publicly released that provide insight into Silicon Valley’s action and inaction in the critical period between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.

    Navaroli, who worked on Twitter’s safety policy team, told the committee she had repeatedly warned Twitter’s leadership in the lead-up to Jan. 6 about the dangers of not cracking down on what she said was violent rhetoric.

    Navaroli pointed to Trump’s infamous “stand back and stand by” message to the Proud Boys at the first 2020 presidential debate as one instance that incited more violent rhetoric on Twitter.

    Navaroli initially appeared before the committee as an anonymous whistleblower. Part of her testimony was played during the public committee hearings last summer, with her voice distorted to protect her identity. However, she later decided to go public, testifying before the committee for a second time, and speaking to The Washington Post.

    In an interview with CNN, Navaroli said she is speaking out now because she believes it is important for the “truth to be on the record.” She warned that without a full reckoning of social media’s role in the Capitol attack, political violence could once again ignite in the United States and elsewhere around the world, pointing to recent unrest in Brazil where supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s top government offices.

    The final report from the Jan. 6 Committee stated, “Social media played a prominent role in amplifying erroneous claims of election fraud.”

    But a far more blistering assessment was laid out in an unpublished draft document prepared by committee staff that was obtained by several news organizations, including CNN. Its key findings included:

    • “Social media platforms delayed response to the rise of far-right extremism—and President Trump’s incitement of his supporters—helped to facilitate the attack on January 6th.”
    • “Fear of reprisal and accusations of censorship from the political right compromised policy, process, and decision-making.”
    • “Twitter failed to take actions that could have prevented the spread of incitement to violence after the election.”
    • “Facebook did not fail to grapple with election delegitimization after the election so much as it did not even try.”

    Tech companies would broadly dispute these findings and have repeatedly said they are working to keep their platforms safe.

    Twitter’s previous management repeatedly outlined steps it said it was taking to crack down on hateful and violent rhetoric on its platform prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but stressed it didn’t want to unnecessarily limit free expression. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter no longer has a responsive communications team, and the company did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, pointed to an earlier statement from the company where it said it was cooperating with the committee.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel, conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli's.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel who conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli’s, told CNN he believes the committee did its job to show “the American public the dangers posed by President Trump’s multilayered attack on our democracy.”

    He said the lack of awareness he believes tech companies have shown about their role in the attack was “stark.”

    “I don’t think social media companies recognize they were dealing with a sustained threat to American democracy,” he said.

    Glick, who now works at the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said the purple team’s report had not been fact-checked, contains some errors, and should not have been leaked.

    Another source familiar with the committee’s work told CNN, “It couldn’t be clearer that Trump was at the center of this plot to overturn the election. Not everything staff worked on could fit into this extensive report and hearings, including some who wanted their work to be the center of the investigation.”

    How social media platforms write and enforce their rules has become a central and ongoing debate, raising the key question of what power the companies should wield when it comes to politicians like Trump.

    While some, including Navaroli, insist Trump repeatedly broke social media platforms’ rules by inciting violent rhetoric that should have resulted in his removal before Jan. 6, others including Musk and Twitter’s previous management, argue that what politicians say should be made available to as many people as possible so they can be held to account.

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

    “We’re moving backwards and it’s concerning to me,” Navaroli said of the return of prominent election conspiracy theorists to major tech platforms. “History has taught us what happens when political speech on social media companies is allowed to fester unchecked.”

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  • George Conway Rakes Meta For Welcoming Trump Back On Facebook

    George Conway Rakes Meta For Welcoming Trump Back On Facebook

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    Conservative lawyer George Conway sounded the alarm on Thursday over tech giant Meta’s decision to allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram even though he still has a figurative “cache of matches and gasoline” to ignite another insurrection — and has “lost touch with reality.”

    “It’s an absolutely mystifying decision” after Facebook banned Trump two years ago for his role in the violent Capitol insurrection, Conway said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

    “They think, ‘Well, the fire is out … Let’s just let him play with matches again,’” Conway added.

    “It’s ridiculous because if you look at just what he says day in and day out on his Truth Social website, he’s in a lot of ways worse than he was a couple of years ago. He’s lost touch with reality,” said Conway.

    Trump was bounced off Facebook “indefinitely” after violence erupted as Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement then that it was “clear” Trump “intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”

    The “risks of allowing the [then] President to continue to use our service … are simply too great,” Zuckerberg added.

    Now, Trump’s ban will be lifted in the “coming weeks,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement on Wednesday. He claimed the risk Trump poses to public safety has “sufficiently receded.”

    Clegg promised that Trump’s future posts will be constrained by “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses” of policies.

    “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg added.

    Check out the full MSNBC story, with Conway’s remarks at the 3:20 mark:

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  • Facebook, Instagram to reinstate Trump accounts

    Facebook, Instagram to reinstate Trump accounts

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    Facebook, Instagram to reinstate Trump accounts – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    Former President Trump will soon be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram. A spokesperson for Meta, the social media platforms’ parent company, said Trump’s two-year suspension is over and his accounts will be reinstated in the coming weeks.

    Be the first to know

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  • Meta says it will restore Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts | CNN Business

    Meta says it will restore Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta said on Wednesday that it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

    “Our determination is that the risk [to public safety] has sufficiently receded,” Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post. “As such, we will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. However, we are doing so with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

    Trump could be suspended for as much as two years at a time for violating platform policies in the future, Clegg said.

    With his Facebook and Instagram accounts reactivated, Trump will once again gain access to huge and powerful communications and fundraising platforms just as he ramps up his third bid for the White House.

    The decision, which comes on the heels of a similar move by Twitter, could also further shift the landscape for how a long list of smaller online platforms handle Trump’s accounts.

    It was not immediately clear whether Trump will seize the opportunity to return to the Meta platforms. Trump’s reps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a post on his own platform, Truth Social, Trump acknowledged Meta’s decision to reverse its suspension of his account and said “such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution.”

    Former President Trump’s team was not given advance notice of Meta’s decision, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Many of his aides and advisers learned of the decision from media reports. Shortly before the announcement, Meta asked for a last-minute meeting with Trump’s lawyers this evening to discuss his possible reinstatement, but were not told what the final decision was. They were still in the meeting when Meta released the news, the source said.

    Twitter restored Trump’s account in November following its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk, but the former president has not yet resumed tweeting, opting instead to remain on Truth Social.

    But Trump’s campaign earlier this month sent a letter to Meta petitioning the company to unblock his Facebook account, a source familiar with the letter told CNN, making his return more likely. Although Twitter was always Trump’s preferred platform, he has a massive reach on Facebook and Instagram — 34 million followers and 23 million followers, respectively, ahead of his reinstatement. Previous Trump campaigns have lauded the effectiveness of Facebook’s targeted advertising tools and have spent millions running Facebook ads.

    Meta’s decision was quickly criticized by a number of online safety advocates and democratic lawmakers. Congressman Adam Schiff said in a tweet that restoring Trump’s “access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous,” noting that Trump has shown “no remorse” for his actions around the January 6 attack. NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the decision “a prime example of putting profits above people’s safety.”

    But ACLU Director Anthony Romero called the decision “the right call,” joining several other groups in praising the move. He added: “The biggest social media companies are central actors when it comes to our collective ability to speak — and hear the speech of others — online. They should err on the side of allowing a wide range of political speech, even when it offends.”

    The company made the landmark decision to bar Trump from posting on Facebook and Instagram the day after the January 6 attack, in which his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

    Many other platforms did the same in quick succession, but Facebook was clear that it planned to revisit the decision at a later date. After Facebook’s independent Oversight Board recommended that the company clarify what was initially an indefinite suspension, Facebook said the former president would remain restricted from the platform until at least January 7, 2023.

    Meta earlier this month was considering whether to restore Trump’s accounts with the help of a specially formed internal company working group made up of leaders from different parts of the organization, a person familiar with the deliberations told CNN. The group included representatives from the company’s public policy, communications, content policy, and safety and integrity teams, and was being led by Clegg, who previously served as UK Deputy Prime Minister.

    The company said in June 2021 that it would “look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded” in January 2023 to make a determination about the former president’s account.

    “If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded,” Clegg, then-vice president of global affairs at Meta, said in a statement at the time.

    Clegg said in his Wednesday post that the company believes “the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.” But, he said, “that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform.”

    In light of his previous violations, Trump will now face “heightened penalties for repeat offenses,” Clegg said, adding that the policy will also apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated following suspensions related to civil unrest.

    Clegg told Axios in an interview published Wednesday that the company does not “want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election.”

    “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. However, the possibility of permanent removal of Trump’s accounts — which Clegg had previously indicated could be a consequence of future violations if his account were to be restored — no longer appears to be on the table.

    For content that doesn’t violate its rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon,” Meta may limit distribution of the posts, Clegg said. The company could, for example, remove the reshare button or keep the posts visible on Trump’s page but not in users’ feeds, even for those who follow him, he said. For repeated instances, the company may restrict access to its advertising tools.

    If Trump again posts content that violates Meta’s rules but “we assess there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm” under the company’s newsworthiness policy, Meta may similarly restrict the posts’ distribution but leave them visible on Trump’s page.

    –CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Kaitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.

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  • Meta to reinstate Trump on Facebook, Instagram

    Meta to reinstate Trump on Facebook, Instagram

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    Former President Donald Trump’s two-year suspension from Meta’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be lifted “in the coming weeks,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a post Wednesday.

    Calling the decision to suspend Trump from the platforms the product of “extreme and highly unusual circumstances,” Clegg reminded users that the then-president’s accounts were indefinitely suspended “following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021.

    He noted that Meta’s independent oversight board had upheld the decision but criticized the open-endedness of the suspension and “the lack of clear criteria for when and whether suspended accounts will be restored.” The board directed Meta to come up with “a more proportionate response.”

    Earlier this month, Trump’s campaign asked Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to reinstate the former president on the social media platform.  

    Clegg suggested that social media’s origins are rooted in open, democratic debate, and Meta’s platforms should not obstruct that, “especially in the context of elections.” But he warned there will still be limits.

    “The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying – the good, the bad and the ugly – so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” Clegg said. “But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm – a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse – we act.”

    Trump posted Wednesday afternoon on his social media platform Truth Social alleging that Meta had lost “Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me” and “such a thing should never gain happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” 

    Musadiq Bidar

    CBS News reporter covering the intersection between politics and tech.

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  • How to Create a Facebook Ad Strategy That Actually Works

    How to Create a Facebook Ad Strategy That Actually Works

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Every business owner, entrepreneur and social influencer understands the importance of branding and marketing for profitability. If you don’t have eyeballs on your business, you aren’t getting traffic and converting consumers into clients.

    Still, it isn’t only about getting people to look at your ads or website; you must also find the right audience and connect with the correct message on the most appropriate platform. While traditional and modern media provide various outlets for marketing efforts, few compare to the power and prevalence of the humble Facebook Ad — when done correctly.

    Related: Facebook Ads: The Complete, Always-Updated Guide

    Facebook: the social empire

    Facebook, despite frequent controversies, is the most popular social media platform. As one of the few founding platforms to survive countless reiterations, profitability challenges, and privacy battles, Facebook developed from a typical friend-sharing site to a marketing powerhouse.

    The platform delivers metrics, capabilities and audience numbers far exceeding any other. To capitalize on the advantages of the social media juggernaut, you must learn the art of creating appealing Facebook ads and campaigns.

    It is not enough to produce an enticing image and bold messaging. To stand out from the crowd — the competition in the Facebook arena is undeniable — and leverage the social media empire, you must create compelling media that speaks to your target consumer.

    Related: Improve the Power of Your Facebook Ads With These Small Tweaks

    Ad leakage: understanding and correcting marketing loss

    Every ad campaign costs a percentage of profits. The costs should account for an acceptable loss. Unfortunately, because many business owners and entrepreneurs are unfamiliar with optimization strategies, Facebook Ads can quickly envelop profits and marketing budgets.

    Correcting marketing losses is about identifying a campaign’s leaks or weak points. The only way to identify ineffective ads is to compare advertisements. Still, it is only possible to identify and correct potential errors if you know the right design, implementation, and measurement strategies.

    Social media strategy: building a better foundation for advertising success

    As easy as it is to create social media ads, rushing the design process is a mistake. By approaching Facebook ads strategically, you can develop a measurable and changeable foundation, allowing you to weigh the cause and effect of various decisions.

    – The importance of research

    Many professionals underestimate the significance of market research. They assume, as the creators of a product or service, they automatically understand the mindset of their target consumer. Realistically, consumers buy products or invest in services for many reasons. While a professional’s motivation for creating the business might be valid, it might not be the most profitable.

    Before developing ads, consider your audience, motivations, and needs. Do not allow bias to motivate your marketing decisions. Hire a research team to survey the market, or invest in market research on your own.

    – The significance of building blocks

    When talking to marketing experts, you will hear them talk about five aspects of ad design: image, headline, text, call to action, and value proposition. While important, the fundamentals of ad design are only one element of the building blocks of marketing. The other blocks include target audience, testing, and optimization.

    Even a tiny Facebook advertisement requires planning. You must know which ad type is best for your target demographic and where the ad should appear for the most success. With no clear foundation, the ads will probably fail.

    – The value of clear objectives

    One critical but oft-forgotten element of advertisement prep is creating and identifying clear and measurable objectives. Every advertisement must have a purpose. For example, do you need a Facebook campaign to increase brand awareness or improve sales of a specific product or service?

    Knowing what you expect from an ad campaign will help you identify its performance. Clear expectations will also limit the risk of spending more than you want for a particular campaign effort.

    Budget and costs: creating enticements and measuring success

    The success of every Facebook or marketing effort comes down to original budgets and costs. After the campaign, you want to make more money than you spent, hopefully, a lot more. Your profits will stem from your ability to create ads with appealing offers, measurable performance, and a genuine understanding of a customer’s lifetime value.

    – Making appealing offers

    An effective ad makes an appealing offer without selling. The best-performing Facebook ad offers are those that appeal to people’s psyches. You need to use the power of influence and navigate the sales process with a lighter approach. For example, if your consumer is charitable, consider donating a portion of every purchase to a specific and related charity and specifying that in the ad.

    Related: How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value And Boost Profits

    – Letting metrics guide decisions

    While intuition and willpower might have motivated your entrepreneurial ambitions, they should not guide marketing decisions. Facebook offers ad metrics for a reason; use them, but focus on hard data, not vanity. Sales, not clicks or social engagement, are the objective measure of ad success.

    Also, consider customer lifetime value when weighing metrics. Sure, if it costs you $80 to convert a customer for an initial $50 sale, that seems like a significant loss. However, if the customer represents an LTV of $300, the initial loss is worth it.

    Facebook represents a significant marketing opportunity if you know how to construct, implement, and measure ad success. As a business owner, entrepreneur, or social influencer, understanding the tools at your fingertips is the key to future growth and profitability.

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    Adam Petrilli

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  • DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market | CNN Business

    DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department and eight states sued Google on Tuesday, accusing the company of harming competition with its dominance in the online advertising market and calling for it to be broken up.

    The move marks the Biden administration’s first blockbuster antitrust case against a Big Tech company. The eight states joining the suit include California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.

    The fresh complaint significantly escalates the risks to Google emanating from Washington, where lawmakers and regulators have frequently raised concerns about the tech giant’s power but have so far failed to pass new legislation or regulations that might rein in the company or its peers.

    For years, Google’s critics have claimed that the company’s extensive role in the ecosystem that enables advertisers to place ads, and for publishers to offer up digital ad space, represents a conflict of interest that Google has exploited anticompetitively.

    In Tuesday’s complaint, a copy of which was viewed by CNN, the Justice Department alleged that Google actively and illegally maintained that dominance by engaging in a campaign to thwart competition. Google gobbled up rivals through anticompetitive mergers, the US government said, and bullied publishers and advertisers into using the company’s proprietary ad technology products.

    As part of the lawsuit, the US government called for Google to be broken up and for the court to order the company to spin off at least its online advertising exchange and its ad server for publishers, if not more.

    Google, the US government alleged, “has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising. Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.”

    The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

    Tuesday’s suit marks the federal government’s second antitrust complaint against Google since 2020, when the Trump administration sued over Google’s alleged anticompetitive harms in search and search advertising. That case is still ongoing. Google has also been the target of antitrust litigation by state and private actors.

    In a statement, Google said the DOJ suit “attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector.”

    “DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow,” a Google spokesperson said, adding that a federal judge last year knocked down a claim that Google colluded with Facebook in a separate antitrust suit led by the state of Texas. That judge also ruled, however, that a number of monopolization claims in the Texas case could move forward.

    The lawsuit is a frontal assault against Google’s massive, primary business of advertising. Google generated $209 billion in advertising revenue in 2021, according to its annual report, a figure representing more than 80% of its total revenue. By comparison, the next largest giant in online advertising, Facebook-parent Meta, generated $115 billion in 2021.

    Third-party estimates suggest that Google and Facebook accounted for the majority of US digital ad revenues, hitting a peak around 2017, with Google taking about a third of the market. Since then, however, others including Amazon have begun encroaching on that business.

    The US complaint echoes concerns that have prompted similar antitrust investigations in the United Kingdom and in the European Union.

    Google not only controls the platform publishers use to sell online ad inventory, the Justice Department alleged Tuesday, but also the advertising tools marketers use to claim that inventory and the exchange that facilitates those transactions.

    “Google’s pervasive power over the entire ad tech industry has been questioned by its own digital advertising executives,” the complaint said, “at least one of whom aptly begged the question: ‘[I]s there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.’”

    Tuesday’s complaint marks an opening salvo against Big Tech by DOJ’s antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter. Kanter has spent months laying the groundwork for a broader offensive against the tech industry’s most dominant companies, reflecting commitments by President Joe Biden and others in the US government to hold powerful firms accountable. Under Kanter, Justice Department antitrust officials have pushed to bring more cases to trial as well as to prosecute cases involving unconventional legal theories.

    In 2020, House lawmakers released a 450-page report finding that Google, along with Amazon, Apple and Facebook, hold “monopoly power” in key business segments. The report was the result of a 16-month investigation in which congressional staff reviewed corporate documents and interviewed the tech industry’s many customers and rivals. It concluded, among other things, that Google was uniquely positioned to benefit from its powerful role in the online ad industry.

    “With a sizable share in the ad exchange market and the ad intermediary market, and as a leading supplier of ad space, Google simultaneously acts on behalf of publishers and advertisers, while also trading for itself,” the report said.

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  • Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms | CNN Business

    Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A wide range of businesses, internet users, academics and even human rights experts defended Big Tech’s liability shield Thursday in a pivotal Supreme Court case about YouTube algorithms, with some arguing that excluding AI-driven recommendation engines from federal legal protections would cause sweeping changes to the open internet.

    The diverse group weighing in at the Court ranged from major tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and Microsoft to some of Big Tech’s most vocal critics, including Yelp and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Even Reddit and a collection of volunteer Reddit moderators got involved.

    In friend-of-the-court filings, the companies, organizations and individuals said the federal law whose scope the Court could potentially narrow in the case — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — is vital to the basic function of the web. Section 230 has been used to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content.

    The question at the heart of the case, Gonzalez v. Google, is whether Google can be sued for recommending pro-ISIS content to users through its YouTube algorithm; the company has argued that Section 230 precludes such litigation. But the plaintiffs in the case, the family members of a person killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, have argued that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm can be held liable under a US antiterrorism law.

    In their filing, Reddit and the Reddit moderators argued that a ruling enabling litigation against tech-industry algorithms could lead to future lawsuits against even non-algorithmic forms of recommendation, and potentially targeted lawsuits against individual internet users.

    “The entire Reddit platform is built around users ‘recommending’ content for the benefit of others by taking actions like upvoting and pinning content,” their filing read. “There should be no mistaking the consequences of petitioners’ claim in this case: their theory would dramatically expand Internet users’ potential to be sued for their online interactions.”

    Yelp, a longtime antagonist to Google, argued that its business depends on serving relevant and non-fraudulent reviews to its users, and that a ruling creating liability for recommendation algorithms could break Yelp’s core functions by effectively forcing it to stop curating all reviews, even those that may be manipulative or fake.

    “If Yelp could not analyze and recommend reviews without facing liability, those costs of submitting fraudulent reviews would disappear,” Yelp wrote. “If Yelp had to display every submitted review … business owners could submit hundreds of positive reviews for their own business with little effort or risk of a penalty.”

    Section 230 ensures platforms can moderate content in order to present the most relevant data to users out of the huge amounts of information that get added to the internet every day, Twitter argued.

    “It would take an average user approximately 181 million years to download all data from the web today,” the company wrote.

    If the Supreme Court were to advance a new interpretation of Section 230 that safeguarded platforms’ right to remove content, but excluded protections on their right to recommend content, it would open up broad new questions about what it means to recommend something online, Meta argued in its filing.

    “If merely displaying third-party content in a user’s feed qualifies as ‘recommending’ it, then many services will face potential liability for virtually all the third-party content they host,” Meta wrote, “because nearly all decisions about how to sort, pick, organize, and display third-party content could be construed as ‘recommending’ that content.”

    A ruling finding that tech platforms can be sued for their recommendation algorithms would jeopardize GitHub, the vast online code repository used by millions of programmers, said Microsoft.

    “The feed uses algorithms to recommend software to users based on projects they have worked on or showed interest in previously,” Microsoft wrote. It added that for “a platform with 94 million developers, the consequences [of limiting Section 230] are potentially devastating for the world’s digital infrastructure.”

    Microsoft’s search engine Bing and its social network, LinkedIn, also enjoy algorithmic protections under Section 230, the company said.

    According to New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, it is virtually impossible to design a rule that singles out algorithmic recommendation as a meaningful category for liability, and could even “result in the loss or obscuring of a massive amount of valuable speech,” particularly speech belonging to marginalized or minority groups.

    “Websites use ‘targeted recommendations’ because those recommendations make their platforms usable and useful,” the NYU filing said. “Without a liability shield for recommendations, platforms will remove large categories of third-party content, remove all third-party content, or abandon their efforts to make the vast amount of user content on their platforms accessible. In any of these situations, valuable free speech will disappear—either because it is removed or because it is hidden amidst a poorly managed information dump.”

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  • How Big Tech’s pandemic bubble burst | CNN Business

    How Big Tech’s pandemic bubble burst | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In January 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke in lofty terms about how the first year of the pandemic had sparked a staggering shift toward online services, benefiting his company in the process. “What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry,” he said.

    Two years later, the situation appears much more stark. This week, Microsoft said it planned to lay off 10,000 employees as businesses rethink their pandemic-era digital spending and confront broader economic uncertainty. Microsoft’s customers, Nadella said, are now trying “to do more with less.”

    Microsoft isn’t the only company experiencing such a dramatic reversal. Days later, Google-parent company Alphabet followed suit, saying it plans to cut around 12,000 jobs, amounting to more than 6% of its staff.

    Over the past three months, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook-parent Meta have announced plans to cut more than 50,000 employees from their collective ranks, a stunning reversal from the early days of the pandemic when the tech giants were growing rapidly to meet surging demand from countless households living, shopping and working online. At the time, many tech leaders seemed to expect that growth to continue unabated.

    By September of 2022, Amazon

    (AMZN)     had more than doubled its corporate staff compared to the same month in 2019, hiring more than half a million additional workers and vastly expanding its warehouse footprint. Meta nearly doubled its headcount between March 2020 and September of last year. Microsoft

    (MSFT)     and Google

    (GOOGL GOOGLE)     also hired thousands of additional workers, as did other tech firms like Salesforce

    (CRM)    , Snap

    (SNAP)     and Twitter, all of which have announced layoffs in recent weeks, too.

    But many of those same leaders appear to have misjudged just how much growth spurred by the pandemic would continue once people returned to their offline lives.

    In recent months, higher interest rates, inflation and recession fears causing a pullback in advertising and consumer spending have all weighed on tech companies’ profits and share prices. Wall Street analysts now project single-digit revenue growth during the all-important December quarter for Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and declines for Meta and Apple, when they report earnings in the coming weeks, according to Refinitiv estimates.

    The recent cuts in most cases amount to a relatively small percentage of each company’s overall headcount, essentially erasing the last year of gains for some but leaving them with tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of remaining workers. But it nonetheless upends the lives of many workers now left to search for new jobs after their employers exit a period of seemingly limitless growth.

    “They went from being on top of the world to having to make some really tough decisions,” said Scott Kessler, global sector lead for technology, media and telecommunications at investment firm Third Bridge. “To see this dramatic reversal of fortunes… it’s not just the magnitude of these moves but the speed that they’ve played out. You’ve seen companies make the wrong strategic decisions at the wrong times.”

    Apple

    (AAPL)     remains an outlier as the one major tech company that has yet to announce layoffs, although the iPhone maker has reportedly instituted a hiring freeze of all areas except research and development. Apple

    (AAPL)     grew its staff by 20% from 2019 through last year, markedly less than some of its peers.

    “They’ve taken a more seemingly thoughtful approach to hiring and overall managing the company,” Kessler said.

    Tech CEOs, from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, have blamed themselves for over-hiring early on in the pandemic and misreading how a surge in demand for their products would cool once Covid-19 restrictions eased. Pichai on Friday also took the blame for Alphabet’s cuts, and said he plans to return the company’s focus to its core business and “highest priorities.”

    “The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Pichai said in an email to employees that was posted to the company’s website Friday.

    Notably, however, none of the Big Tech company CEOs now overseeing layoffs appear to have been hit with any change to their compensation or title.

    The tech layoff announcements are likely to continue into the upcoming earnings season, Kessler said, amid ongoing economic warning signs. And even companies that might not yet be feeling the pain may follow their peers’ lead in trimming their workforces.

    “I think there is an element of [some companies saying], ‘We might not see this right now but all these other big companies, these companies that we compete with, that we know, that we respect, are taking these kinds of actions, so maybe we should be thinking and acting accordingly,” Kessler said.

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  • Instagram rolls out ‘quiet mode’ for when users want to focus | CNN Business

    Instagram rolls out ‘quiet mode’ for when users want to focus | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Instagram on Thursday announced a new feature called “quiet mode,” which aims to help users focus and set boundaries with friends and followers.

    When the option is enabled, all notifications will be paused and the profile’s activity status will change to ‘In quiet mode.” If someone sends a direct message during this time, Instagram will automatically send an auto-reply notifying the sender that “quiet mode” is activated.

    While the feature applies to all users, Instagram appears to be focusing on teens. Instagram is pitching it as a tool to help with studying and prompting teens to turn on the feature “when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night.”

    The tool will roll out to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and plans to add it to more countries in the future.

    The tool is the latest example of instagram offering users more ways to manage their usage, after years of scrutiny over how much time people – and especially teens – spend on various social media applications, and the harms it can pose to their mental health.

    “These updates are part of our ongoing work to ensure people have experiences that work for them, and that they have more control over the time they spend online and the types of content they see,” the company said in a blog post.

    As part of that effort, the platform is also introducing features to give users more control over what shows up in their Explore feed. For example, it’s now possible to mark content with a “Not Interested” label to prevent similar content from showing up in the future. Instagram is also introducing an option to block words or lists of words, emojis or hashtags, such as #fitness or #recipes, from being recommended in the Explore feed.

    Instagram is updating its parental supervision tools, too. When a teen updates a setting, parents can receive a notification so they can talk to their teen about the change. Parents will also be able to view accounts their teen has blocked.

    In a series of congressional hearings in 2021, executives from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat faced tough questions from lawmakers over how their platforms can lead younger users to harmful content, damage mental health and body image (particularly among teenage girls), and lacked sufficient parental controls and safeguards to protect teens.

    The social media companies vowed to make changes, and Instagram in particular has made many. It has since introduced an educational hub for parents with resources, tips and articles from experts on user safety, and rolled out a tool that allows guardians to see how much time their kids spend on Instagram and set time limits.

    Another Instagram feature encouraged users to take a break from the app, such as suggesting they take a deep breath, write something down, check a to-do list or listen to a song, after a predetermined amount of time. The company has also said it’s taking a “stricter approach” to the content it recommends to teens and actively nudges them toward different topics, such as architecture and travel destinations, if they’ve been dwelling on any type of content for too long.

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  • Report: Trump Is Begging Facebook to Bring Him Back

    Report: Trump Is Begging Facebook to Bring Him Back

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    January 6, 2021, was undoubtedly one of the worst days in the history of the United States, but the one bright spot that came out of it was that it resulted in Donald Trump’s banning  and suspensions from Twitter and Facebook, which he’d previously used to both terrorize the nation on an hourly basis and win the 2016 election. Unfortunately, that two-year reprieve may not last much longer.

    While Twitter boss Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account back in November—thanks to the new owner’s laissez-faire approach to hate speech and history of doing terrible things—Facebook parent company Meta had suspended the ex-president for two years, after which it would review the situation. That two-year period was up on January 7, 2023, and the former guy is, not surprisingly, getting antsy.

    NBC News reports that Trump’s 2024 campaign sent a letter to Meta on Tuesday in which it wrote: “We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse.” It reportedly went on to talk about free speech—conservatives’ favorite topic that they don’t actually understand—and request a “meeting to discuss President Trump’s prompt reinstatement to the platform.”

    The day Facebook suspended Trump’s account, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” adding that Trump’s “decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world.” Zuckerberg also said the company “removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect—and likely their intent—would be to provoke further violence.”

    And while there’s no reason to believe Trump has changed in any way—and wouldn’t use Facebook to do the exact same thing should he lose in 2024—an adviser told NBC that the campaign expects Facebook will lift the two-year ban and reinstate the ex-president. (A Meta spokesperson said the company “will announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.”) And if Trump isn’t let back on? You better bet his lackeys in Congress are prepared to go to battle on his behalf.

    As for Trump’s return to Twitter, which is complicated by the fact that he owns a crappier version of the site called Truth Social, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News, “Trump is probably coming back to Twitter. It’s just a question of how and when.” Another said the former guy has been soliciting “input for weeks about hopping back on Twitter,” adding that “his campaign advisers have also workshopped ideas for his first tweet.” Which we assume entailed mocking up badly photoshopped images of him and asking one another, “Which sounds better: ‘Your favorite president is back’ or ‘I bet you’ve been missing your favorite president’?”

    If you thought Ron DeSantis wasn’t going to wade into the ridiculous gas-stoves war, you absolutely thought wrong

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    Bess Levin

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  • Tech giants are shedding workers and real estate. Employees-turned-entrepreneurs could win big—and snag sweet offices

    Tech giants are shedding workers and real estate. Employees-turned-entrepreneurs could win big—and snag sweet offices

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    Tech giants are busy laying off workers and reducing office space. In the process, they might also be setting in motion the emergence of new entrepreneurs and startups—who will be able to collaborate in suddenly affordable prime commercial real estate.

    Angel investor Jason Calacanis predicted on the All-In podcast that the big business winners of 2023 will be “laid-off tech workers who choose to take control of their destiny and start companies.”

    “I think laid-off tech workers who get together in groups of two, three, or four—developers, product managers, people who actually build stuff—and start companies together are going to become extremely successful, and they’re going to make incredible lemonade from these lemons of these big tech layoffs,” he said earlier this month.

    From employee to entrepreneur

    Some of those employees-turned-entrepreneurs might come for example from Meta, which recently laid off about 11,000 workers. The Facebook owner is also shedding office space, both to reduce costs and because it’s embraced remote work. On Friday, it confirmed it will sublease office space in Seattle it no longer needs, according to the Seattle Times. It also recently gave up real estate in New York City. 

    Subleased office space is typically rented out at a discount, which could allow startups who otherwise couldn’t afford it to move in, noted Colliers leasing expert Connor McClain to the Seattle Times.

    It isn’t just Meta that has recently both laid off workers and let go of real estate. So have plenty of other major tech companies, among them Microsoft, Salesforce, and Twitter.

    Salesforce recently announced layoffs—about 10% of its staff—while also indicating it will shed real estate. CEO Marc Benioff said in an all-hands meeting.

    Office rents ‘will go lower’

    “This is a larger moment for cost restructuring, we want to take…somewhere between $3 to $5 billion out of the business,” he said. “When we look at how are we going to do that, real estate is going to be a major part of it.”

    The company is headquartered in San Francisco. A Jan. 7 exchange between PayPal co-founder David Sacks and Tesla CEO Elon Musk highlighted the commercial real estate situation there. Sacks tweeted, “Just got offered office space in San Francisco (SOMA) for the same price as 2009. Yikes.”

    Musk replied, “It will go lower.” 

    As it does, entrepreneurs emerging from the tech layoffs could take advantage of the cheaper real estate to house new businesses. 

    Of course, some startups might choose to save money by not renting commercial real estate and having everyone work from home. But as CEOs at large companies like Disney and Starbucks have recently indicated—while insisting remote workers return to the office—there are clear business advantages to collaborating face to face.  

    As Disney CEO Bob Iger wrote to employees in a recent memo, “In a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together.” 

    That might be especially true for tech entrepreneurs determined to make lemonade from the lemons of being laid off. 

    Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.

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    Steve Mollman

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