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  • Threads now has ‘tens of millions’ of daily users. But its honeymoon phase may be over | CNN Business

    Threads now has ‘tens of millions’ of daily users. But its honeymoon phase may be over | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Two weeks after Meta launched its Twitter competitor Threads and received an unprecedented amount of user signups, the frenzy around the app appears to have come back to Earth.

    After surpassing 100 million user sign-ups in less than a week, user engagement on Threads has slowed. Threads daily active users fell from 49 million on July 7, two days after its launch, to 23.6 million users last Friday, according to a report published this week by web traffic analysis firm Similarweb. The app’s average usage time also fell from 21 minutes to 6 minutes over the same timeframe.

    The slowdown hints at the challenges ahead for Meta as it looks to not only draw users away from Twitter but build a service that reaches a far larger audience. Threads is already facing some of the common issues that often plague social media platforms, including user retention, spam and some early regulatory scrutiny around its approach to content moderation. It’s also not clear yet how much Meta’s investments in building Threads will actually amount to financial returns for the company.

    “I’m very optimistic about how the Threads community is coming together,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the platform Monday. “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily … The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention.”

    Meta executives acknowledged in the early days after Threads’ launch that getting users to sign up for a buzzy new app is much easier than convincing them to continue engaging there long-term. That’s likely even more true for Threads, which launched as a relatively bare-bones app in an effort to capitalize on a moment of weakness at Twitter and also tapped into Instagram’s network to ease the sign-in process.

    Threads on Tuesday rolled out its first batch of updates to the iOS version of the app, including a translation button, a tab on users’ activity feed dedicated to showing who’s followed them and the option to subscribe and receive notifications from accounts a user doesn’t follow.

    Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who is overseeing the Threads launch, has also hinted at plans to add features such as a desktop version of the app, a feed of only accounts a user follows and an edit button. “We’re clearly way out over our skis on this,” Mosseri said in a Threads post the week of the app’s launch.

    In the meantime, Threads is grappling with a common social media issue — spam. Users have complained of replies to posts filling up with spammy links and offering “giveaways” in exchange for new followers. And on Monday, Mosseri said in a Threads post that the platform was “going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits” because “spam attacks have picked up.”

    This “is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives),” Mosseri warned. “If you get caught up [in] those protections let us know.”

    Meta declined to clarify whether Mosseri’s post refers to limits on users’ ability to post or read content, or to provide any additional details. But the comment did prompt some snark from Twitter owner Elon Musk, after backlash to Twitter’s own rate limits — restrictions on how many tweets users can read — helped propel Threads’ early growth.

    Meta shares have jumped more than 6% since the Threads launch, but some analysts who follow the company are skeptical that Threads will quickly contribute to the company’s bottom line, if at all.

    Threads could be a way for Meta to eke additional engagement time out of its massive existing user base. The app could also ultimately supplement Meta’s core advertising business, which could use a boost after facing challenges from a broad decline in the online ad market and changes to Apple’s app privacy practices.

    Meta executives have said they will likely incorporate advertising into the platform, once its user base has reached critical mass. But even if Threads continues to add users, “advertisers could be hesitant and possibly wait before allocating ad dollars to Threads because of their uncertainty about long-run user retention and engagement,” Morningstar senior equity analyst Ali Mogharabi said in a recent investor note.

    Like Twitter, Threads could also struggle to attract advertisers because the nature of a real-time news and public conversations app means the content is sometimes negative or controversial. Even before Musk took over Twitter and alienated advertisers, the platform represented a tiny piece of the ad sales market compared to Meta’s properties.

    Threads, however, likely has a leg up on Twitter because Meta is known as a company that provides clear value for advertisers, said Scott Kessler, global tech sector lead at research firm Third Bridge. If anything, he said, the risk may be that some advertisers may think twice about spending on yet another Meta platform versus diversifying their ad strategy.

    For now, analysts will be awaiting Meta executives’ commentary about Threads during its quarterly earnings call next week, including to see if they offer any hints about whether ads may be rolled out on the app ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.

    “They launched this in July,” Kessler said. “That should give them enough time to build out sufficient tools for holiday shopping season advertising.”

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  • Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

    Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research.

    The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity.

    One of the protests was against a US government ban on goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where US officials have accused the Chinese government of systematic repression of the Uyghurs. The other protest was on the sidelines of a June conference on international religious freedom, Mandiant said.

    One of the protests only attracted roughly a dozen people but it showed the scope and ambition of the pro-China efforts.

    The hired protesters, who included self-proclaimed musicians and actors in the Washington, DC, area, apparently had no idea they were being enlisted in a pro-China influence campaign, the Mandiant researchers said.

    The campaign backed by the Chinese firm, Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd., is “intended to sow discord in US society,” Ryan Serabian, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told CNN.

    In both cases, protesters carry placards and chant slogans about racial discrimination and abortion in the US. Haixun, the Chinese firm, distributed videos of the protesters online to further the influence campaign, according to Mandiant.

    Shanghai Haixun Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

    Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was unaware of the details of the research. “China has always adhered to non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs,” Liu said in an email to CNN.

    The Washington Post first reported on the Mandiant research.

    In the runup to the 2016 US presidential elections, Russian operatives used social media to organize protests on American soil as part of Moscow’s election interference, according to US intelligence officials. Such divisive tactics are no longer confined to the Russians, according to election security experts.

    During the 2022 US midterm elections, pro-China propagandists showed signs of engaging in “Russia-style influence activities” that stoke American divisions, FBI officials told reporters last year. The FBI pointed to Facebook’s shutdown of accounts originating in China that posted memes mocking President Joe Biden and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

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  • Republican lawmaker calls TikTok ‘an immediate threat’ and calls for app to be banned | CNN Politics

    Republican lawmaker calls TikTok ‘an immediate threat’ and calls for app to be banned | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said Sunday that TikTok represents “an immediate threat” from China and called for the short-form video app to be banned in the US.

    The chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Congress should pass a data privacy law and ban TikTok in the US after the company’s CEO Shou Chew testified in front of her committee on Thursday.

    McMorris Rodgers said Chew’s testimony “made clear” that TikTok is a threat to the US.

    “What the hearing made clear to me was that TikTok should be banned in the United States of America to address the immediate threat and we also need a national data privacy law,” McMorris Rodgers told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

    The Republican lawmaker cited TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, being connected to China as evidence of the national security risk.

    While many nations have imposed bans on official government devices out of national security concerns, there is currently no public evidence the Chinese government has spied on people through TikTok.

    The company told CNN in a statement, “The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent US-based protection of US user data and systems with robust third-party monitoring, vetting and verification, which we are already implementing.”

    On Sunday, McMorris Rodgers responded to criticism from TikTok users, many of whom mocked lawmakers for their lack of familiarity with the app and questioned why Congress would spend time regulating social media. She noted the rare bipartisan agreement on the national security risks the app presents.

    “I would say there is an immediate threat via TikTok from the Chinese Communist Party. That is the reason that I believe we need to ban TikTok immediately. It is a national security threat,” McMorris Rodgers said. “It united Republicans and Democrats on the committee as to the urgent need for us to take action.”

    Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, also shared concerns over the app’s connection to China on Sunday.

    “At the end of the day, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, and by Chinese law, that company has to be willing to turn over data to the Communist Party or, one of my bigger fears, we have 150 million Americans on TikTok, average of about 90 minutes a day, and how that channel could be used for propaganda purposes or disinformation by the Communist Party,” Warner said in an interview with CBS News.

    McMorris Rodgers also emphasized the need to pass a national data privacy law to restrict all social media platforms from collecting user data, including those based in the US.

    “We need to take action whether it’s TikTok, big tech or other data brokers to restrict the amount of data that they’re collecting to begin with,” she said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Arkansas sues TikTok, ByteDance and Meta over mental health claims | CNN Business

    Arkansas sues TikTok, ByteDance and Meta over mental health claims | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The state of Arkansas has sued TikTok, its parent ByteDance, and Facebook-parent Meta over claims the companies’ products are harmful to users, in the latest effort by public officials to take social media companies to court over mental-health and privacy concerns.

    All three lawsuits claim the companies have violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and seek millions, if not billions, in potential fines. The suits were filed in Arkansas state court.

    The complaints come amid mounting pressure in Washington on TikTok for its ties to China and as states have grown more aggressive in suing tech companies broadly, particularly on mental health claims. Suits by school districts or county officials in California, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington state have targeted multiple social media platforms over addiction allegations.

    The suit against Meta particularly zeroes in on the company’s impact to young users’ mental health, alleging that Meta’s implementation of like buttons, photo tagging, an unending news feed and other features are addictive and “intended to manipulate users’ brains by triggering the release of dopamine.”

    In a statement, Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said the company has invested in “technology that finds and removes content related to suicide, self-injury or eating disorders before anyone reports it to us.”

    “We want to reassure every parent that we have their interests at heart in the work we’re doing to provide teens with safe, supportive experiences online,” Davis said in the statement. “These are complex issues, but we will continue working with parents, experts and regulators such as the state attorneys general to develop new tools, features and policies that meet the needs of teens and their families.”

    The remaining two suits, both naming ByteDance and TikTok as defendants, target TikTok’s alleged shortcomings in content moderation and also reiterate claims about TikTok’s alleged threat to US national security.

    The first suit alleges that TikTok has misled users by identifying its app as suitable for teens on app stores because of the “abundant” presence of content showing profanity, substance use and nudity. The suit further alleges that TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, does not make such content available within China.

    “TikTok poses known risks to young teens that TikTok’s parent company itself finds inappropriate for Chinese users who are the same age,” the complaint said. “Yet TikTok pushes salacious and other mature content to all young U.S. users age 13 and up.”

    The second suit against ByteDance and TikTok accuse the companies of having made misleading statements about the reach of Chinese government officials and their purported inability to access TikTok user data. TikTok has migrated US user data to servers operated by the American tech giant Oracle and has established organizational controls intended to prevent unauthorized data access. But, the suit alleges, that does not mean the data is necessarily protected.

    “Neither TikTok’s data storage practices, nor its data security practices, negate the applicability of Chinese law to that data or to the individuals and entities who are subject to Chinese law and have access to that data, or the risk of access by the Chinese Government or Communist Party,” the complaint said.

    The suit also claims TikTok has misrepresented its approach to privacy and security by omitting the potential risks of Chinese government access from its privacy policies and in its statements to app store operators.

    TikTok and ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a statement announcing the lawsuits, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the suits reflect a “failed status quo.”

    “We have to hold Big Tech companies accountable for pushing addictive platforms on our kids and exposing them to a world of inappropriate, damaging content,” Sanders said. “These actions are a long time coming. We have watched over the past decade as one social media company after another has exploited our kids for profit and escaped government oversight.”

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  • TikTok banned from school-owned devices at all Florida state universities | CNN Business

    TikTok banned from school-owned devices at all Florida state universities | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The State University System of Florida Board of Governors has banned the social media app TikTok, along with some other software, applications, and developers, from use on university-owned devices “due to the continued and increasing landscape of cyber threats.”

    In a memo sent to state university system presidents on Wednesday, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said, “This regulation requires institutions to remove technologies published in the State University System (SUS) Prohibited Technologies List from any university-owned device and to block network traffic associated with these technologies.”

    The ban is effective immediately, the memo said.

    “Data privacy, particularly concerning student data and faculty research, is a critical priority for the State University System of Florida,” the Board of Governors said in a statement to CNN.

    “Therefore, at a March 29 meeting of the Florida Board of Governors, the Board unanimously approved an emergency regulation prohibiting the use of TikTok and other foreign actors identified as an immediate national security risk, across our 12 public university campuses,” according to the Board of Governors.

    In addition to TikTok, the prohibited technologies include Kaspersky, VKontakte, Tencent QQ, WeChat and any subsidiary or affiliate.

    CNN reached out to them for comment.

    TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide said “TikTok has taken unprecedented actions to address national security concerns by securing U.S. user data on U.S. soil. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”

    McQuaide added “TikTok is enjoyed by more than 150 million Americans including university and college students and teachers to engage in the classroom.”

    Bans and regulations of TikTok in particular, and of social media sites in general, have been increasing in the US and Europe as concerns over privacy, national security and child safety mount.

    Late last month, the governor of Utah signed a bill which requires teens to get parental approval to use social media. Earlier this week, the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates data, fined TikTok for a number of breaches of data protection law. Italy is investigating TikTok for “dangerous content.”

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

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

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • New York MTA resumes transit alerts on Twitter | CNN Business

    New York MTA resumes transit alerts on Twitter | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would resume posting automated transit alerts to Twitter on Thursday after the social media company backtracked on a plan to charge public service accounts for access to the platform.

    In a statement Thursday, MTA Acting Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara said Twitter had tried to charge the MTA more than $500,000 a year for access to its platform, but that the MTA refused.

    “We’re glad that Twitter has committed to offering free API access for public service providers,” the MTA tweeted, referring to the software interface that enables third parties to create automated posts on Twitter.

    In another tweet, it added: “We know that customers missed us, so starting today, we’ll resume posting service alerts on @NYCTSubway, @NYCTBus, @LIRR, and @MetroNorth.”

    In recent weeks, Twitter has sought to charge businesses for the ability to access its platform. Its paid plans cost as much as $2.5 million a year for top-tier access. The paywall’s introduction in March prompted widespread warnings by public services of possible disruptions to weather and transit alerts.

    Amid the outcry, Twitter changed course on Tuesday and said that verified government accounts would once again be able to post automated tweets for free.

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  • EU approves Microsoft’s deal to buy Activision Blizzard | CNN Business

    EU approves Microsoft’s deal to buy Activision Blizzard | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    European regulators have approved Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, handing the technology giant a victory at a time when the deal is being challenged in other countries.

    While the merger could harm competition in some respects, particularly in the fast-growing market for cloud gaming services, concessions by Microsoft were enough to mitigate antitrust concerns stemming from the deal, the European Commission said in a statement.

    Among Microsoft’s offers were a 10-year commitment letting European consumers play Activision titles on any cloud gaming service. Microsoft also committed that it would not downgrade the quality or content of its games made available on rival streaming platforms.

    “These commitments fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission and represent a significant improvement for cloud game streaming compared to the current situation,” the Commission said.

    The Microsoft deal, which would make the company the third largest game publisher in the world after Tencent and Sony, is being challenged in the United States and the UK.

    In a statement, Microsoft said its commitment on game streaming would go beyond the European Union.

    “The European Commission has required Microsoft to license popular Activision Blizzard games automatically to competing cloud gaming services,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith. “This will apply globally and will empower millions of consumers worldwide to play these games on any device they choose.”

    Activision CEO Bobby Kotick called the requirements “stringent” and pledged to expand investments in EU workers.

    “Our talented teams in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Romania, Poland and many other European countries have the skills, ambition, and government support needed to compete effectively on a global scale,” Kotick said in a statement. “We expect these teams to grow and prosper given their governments’ firm but pragmatic approach to gaming.”

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  • Meta threatens to pull news content in California if bill to pay publishers passes | CNN Business

    Meta threatens to pull news content in California if bill to pay publishers passes | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, threatened to remove news from its social media sites in California if the state passes a bill requiring big tech companies to pay news outlets for their content.

    In a statement posted on Twitter, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, called California’s Journalism Preservation Act “a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers.”

    “The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used,” Stone said.

    The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, requires digital companies such as Google and Facebook to pay local news publishers a “journalism usage fee” whenever their news content is used or posted on those platforms. The bill also requires news publishers to invest 70% of usage fee profits into journalism jobs.

    “This threat from Meta is a scare tactic that they’ve tried to deploy, unsuccessfully, in every country that’s attempted this,” Wicks said in a statement. “It’s egregious that one of the wealthiest companies in the world would rather silence journalists than face regulation.”

    According to a spokesperson for Wicks, the bill is due for a vote in the California State Assembly on Thursday.

    The bill has garnered praise from some of the largest journalism unions in California, including Media Guild of the West and Pacific Media Workers Guild. In a joint letter, the two unions called Meta and Google “powerful landlords overseeing an ever-expanding slum of low-quality information, happy to collect advertising rents from struggling tenants while avoiding paying for upkeep.”

    However, the bill also has its detractors. Free Press Action, a non-profit media advocacy organization, has criticized the bill as doing “nothing to support trustworthy local reporting and would instead pad the profits of massive conglomerates.”

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  • On Trump indictment, Senate GOP leaders silent while top House Republicans vow payback | CNN Politics

    On Trump indictment, Senate GOP leaders silent while top House Republicans vow payback | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The top two Republican leaders in the Senate remain silent a day after former President Donald Trump, the current GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, was indicted by the federal government.

    While the charges have yet to be unsealed, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Whip John Thune have not put out statements, a stark contrast to the swift reaction among House GOP leaders who quickly rushed to Trump’s defense.

    “Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Thursday night. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

    The third ranking GOP senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, put out a statement Friday, saying, “This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice.”

    “Nobody is above the law,” Barrasso tweeted. “Yet it seems like some are.”

    House and Senate Republican leaders have diverged for years on how and whether to even respond to Donald Trump’s legal woes. During Trump’s first indictment this spring, McConnell didn’t jump in to defend Trump and when he returned in April after a fall and was asked at a news conference by CNN’s Manu Raju about the indictment, he dodged.

    “I may have hit my head, but I didn’t hit it that hard,” McConnell said at the time. “Good try.”

    For McConnell, who has not maintained a relationship with Trump since January 6, 2021, the former president could be viewed as a distraction from his ultimate goals of recapturing the Senate. But for McCarthy, an alliance to Trump is an important factor for assuaging those in his right flank, especially at a moment when the House speaker has come under fire for a deal he cut with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling.

    There are still a number of Senate Republicans who have come out backing Trump including Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and who is backing the former president. Daines has stayed in touch with Trump, as he’s sought to recruit candidates in primaries across the country. He tweeted Friday, “The two standards of justice under Biden’s DOJ is appalling. When will Hunter Biden be charged?”

    Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, was asked multiple times during an interview on Fox News on Thursday night about the lack of response from Senate leadership. Hawley’s only response was he did not know why leadership had not weighed in yet, and, “I can’t speak for anyone else.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also a member of the GOP Senate leadership team, tweeted Friday that the presumption of innocence in America should also apply to Trump and attacked Democrats who cheered the news.

    “It is sad to see some Democratic politicians cheering this indictment and presuming guilt for sheer political gain, despite the fact that President Biden himself is under federal investigation for mishandling classified documents,” Tillis said in his statement.

    Several Republican senators, many of whom have already endorsed Trump in the upcoming presidential election, were quick to jump to Trump’s defense and attacked the Department of Justice.

    But in stark contrast to the silence from Senate Republican leadership and staunch support from House GOP members, Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski stressed the severity of the charges Friday.

    Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, said, “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others.”

    In a statement, Romney added, “These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection.”

    Murkowski, who also voted to convict Trump in an impeachment trial after the insurrection, said Friday evening that the charges against the former president are “quite serious.”

    “Mishandling classified documents is a federal crime because it can expose national secrets, as well as the sources and methods they were obtained through. The unlawful retention and obstruction of justice related to classified documents are also criminal matters,” she said on Twitter.

    “Anyone found guilty – whether an analyst, a former president, or another elected or appointed official – should face the same set of consequences,” she added.

    GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, meanwhile, called the obstruction allegations against Trump “inexcusable.”

    “As a retired brigadier general who worked with classified materials my entire career, I am shocked at the callousness of how these documents were handled,” Bacon told CNN on Friday. The congressman has long been critical of Trump and represents a swing state in Nebraska.

    “The alleged obstruction to the requests of the National Archives and FBI, if true, is inexcusable,” he said in the statement, adding: “No one is above the law, and we demand due process and expect equality under the law.”

    Meanwhile, top House Republicans took swift aim at the Department of Justice, special counsel Jack Smith, the FBI and Attorney General Merrick Garland in the wake of the indictment.

    “We ought to defund and dismantle the DOJ,” ultra-conservative Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted shortly after Trump announced the news on Truth Social.

    House Majority Leader Steve Scalise immediately rushed to Trump’s defense, attacking the Justice Department over his indictment and vowing to hold the administration accountable.

    “Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival. This sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump,” Scalise tweeted.

    House Majority Whip Tom Emmer echoed that sentiment Friday morning, tweeting, “This is the ultimate abuse of power, and they will be held accountable.”

    Some House Republicans, going much further than the speaker, called for the impeachment of Biden, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray before seeing the details of the indictment.

    “It is time for Congress to rein in the FBI and DOJ, and impeach President Biden, Attorney General Garland, and Director Wray,” Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Meta lowers the minimum age for its Quest headsets from 13 to 10 | CNN Business

    Meta lowers the minimum age for its Quest headsets from 13 to 10 | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta plans to lower the minimum age for its virtual reality headsets from 13 years old to 10 years old, despite pressure from lawmakers not to market its VR services to younger users.

    Parents will be able to set up accounts for children as young as 10 years old on Meta’s Quest 2 and Quest 3 headsets starting later this year, the company said in a blog post Friday.

    Preteens will be required to get a parent’s approval to set up an account and download apps onto the device, according to the company. Meta said it will also use children’s ages to “provide age-appropriate experiences” such as recommending suitable apps.

    “There’s a vast array of engaging and educational apps, games, and more across our platform, the majority of which are rated for ages 10 and up,” Meta said in the post.

    The company’s push to lower the minimum age comes as Meta and other social media companies face growing scrutiny over their impact on young users, including their potential to harm teens’ mental health or lead them down harmful content rabbit holes.

    Parents and lawmakers have also specifically raised alarms about the use of VR — and the future version of the internet Meta calls the “metaverse” — by teens and children.

    Earlier this year, two Democratic senators urged Meta to suspend a plan to offer Horizon Worlds, the company’s flagship VR app, to teens between the ages of 13 and 17, arguing the technology could harm young users’ physical and mental health. The lawmakers, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, called Meta’s plan “unacceptable” in light of the company’s “record of failure to protect children and teens,” in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

    But in April, Meta forged ahead with its plan to allow teens as young as 13 in the United States and Canada to use Horizon Worlds, prompting additional outcry from lawmakers and civil society groups.

    Parents told CNN last year about instances of discovering their children were viewing violent and disturbing content in VR and struggling to come up with ways to keep their kids safe.

    Meta is attempting to address some of parents’ concerns.

    In its Friday blog post, Meta said parents will be able to set time limits and enforce breaks for their preteens on the headsets. The accounts of users under 13 will be set to private and have their active status hidden on apps by default unless parents choose to change those settings. Meta also makes it possible to cast content from its VR headsets to a TV or phone screen, so parents can watch what their kids are seeing.

    Meta said it will not serve ads to users in this age group, and that parents can choose whether their child’s data can be used to improve the company’s services. Meta added on Friday that Horizon Worlds will remain restricted to users 13 and older in the United States and Canada (and 18 and older in Europe) when it allows preteens to create parent-manged accounts on the headsets later this year.

    Meta’s headset and Horizon Worlds represent Zuckerberg’s vision for a next-generation internet, where users can interact with each other in virtual spaces resembling real life. The company has so far struggled to attract a mainstream audience for these products.

    Update: This story has been updated to reflect Meta’s plan to continue restricting Horizon Worlds to users 13 and older.

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  • First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

    First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Three US senators are pressing Facebook-parent Meta, Google-parent Alphabet and Twitter about whether their layoffs may have hindered the companies’ ability to fight the spread of misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections.

    In a letter to the companies dated Tuesday, the lawmakers warned that reported staff cuts to content moderation and other teams could make it harder for the companies to fulfill their commitments to election integrity.

    “This is particularly troubling given the emerging use of artificial intelligence to mislead voters,” wrote Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Democratic Sen. Peter Welch and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by CNN.

    Since purchasing Twitter in October, Elon Musk has slashed headcount by more than 80%, in some cases eliminating entire teams.

    Alphabet announced plans to cut roughly 12,000 workers across product areas and regions earlier this year. And Meta has previously said it would eliminate about 21,000 jobs over two rounds of layoffs, hitting across teams devoted to policy, user experience and well-being, among others.

    “We remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and continue to invest in teams and technologies to protect our community – including our efforts to prepare for elections around the world,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a statement to CNN about the letter.

    Alphabet and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The pullback at those companies has coincided with a broader industry retrenchment in the face of economic headwinds. Peers such as Microsoft and Amazon have also trimmed their workforces, while others have announced hiring freezes.

    But the social media companies are coming under greater scrutiny now in part due to their role facilitating the US electoral process.

    Tuesday’s letter asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino how each company is preparing for the 2024 elections and for mis- and disinformation surrounding the campaigns.

    To illustrate their concerns, the lawmakers pointed to recent changes at Alphabet-owned YouTube to allow the sharing of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, along with what they described as content moderation “challenges” at Twitter since the layoffs.

    The letter, which seeks responses by July 10, also asked whether the companies may hire more content moderation employees or contractors ahead of the election, and how the platforms may be specifically preparing for the rise of AI-generated deepfakes in politics.

    Already, candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appear to have used fake, AI-generated images to attack their opponents, raising questions about the risks that artificial intelligence could pose for democracy.

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  • Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

    Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    In a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty, the judge ordered a slew of federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech” that’s posted on the platforms.

    The injunction notes that the government can still communicate with the companies as part of efforts to curb illegal activity and address national security threats.

    The order applies to agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department and FBI as well as officials such as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

    The agencies and officials, Doughty said, are prohibited from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

    Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, noted in the lawsuit that social media companies “include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok,” as well as a number of other online platforms.

    CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

    Meta declined to comment. CNN also reached out to Twitter, Google and TikTok for comment.

    The lawsuit brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general in 2022 represents a novel way to pursue “censorship” claims accusing the Biden administration of effectively silencing conservatives by leaning on the private social media companies.

    Though Doughty hasn’t yet ruled on the merits of the two states’ claims, his order Tuesday represents their most significant victory yet in the ongoing lawsuit. The judge had previously ordered the administration to produce documents identifying government officials and the nature of their communications with social media platforms.

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  • Foxconn pulls out of $19 billion chipmaking project in India | CNN Business

    Foxconn pulls out of $19 billion chipmaking project in India | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Foxconn says it is exiting an ambitious project to help build one of India’s first chip factories.

    The world’s largest contract electronics maker will “no longer move forward” with its $19.4 billion joint venture with Vedanta

    (VEDL)    , an Indian metals and energy conglomerate, in Asia’s third largest economy, it said Monday.

    The news was seen as a blow to the Indian government’s plans to turn the country into a tech manufacturing powerhouse, even as officials have sought to counter that view.

    In a statement to CNN, Foxconn, a Taiwanese tech giant best known for being one of Apple

    (AAPL)    ’s top suppliers, said the decision was based on “mutual agreement” and allowed the company “to explore more diverse development opportunities.”

    The joint venture will now be wholly owned by Vedanta.

    In a followup statement Tuesday, Foxconn reaffirmed its commitment to invest in Indian chipmaking, saying it will apply for a government program that subsidizes the cost of setting up semiconductor or electronic display production facilities in the country.

    “Building fabs from scratch in a new geography is a challenge, but Foxconn is committed to invest in India,” the company said, referring to fabrication plants, the technical term for semiconductor factories.

    “There was recognition from both sides that the project was not moving fast enough, there were challenging gaps we were not able to smoothly overcome, as well as external issues unrelated to the project,” it said.

    Since announcing the deal in February 2022, Foxconn said it had worked with Vedanta on plans to set up a semiconductor plant in the country that would support a wider ecosystem for manufacturers.

    It did not provide an investment figure for the facility, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted in September that the total investment would amount to 1.54 trillion rupees, which was then equivalent to $19.4 billion.

    Foxconn said last year it was actively scouting for locations for the plant and held discussions with “a few state governments.”

    Foxconn CEO Young Liu has in recent months courted Indian partners, having traveled there in February to seek new collaborators.

    The company, which already has factories in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, is one of many global tech firms looking for opportunities in the country, particularly as multinationals seek to diversify their supply chains beyond China.

    On Monday, India’s electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told Indian news outlet and CNN affiliate News18 that both Vedanta and Foxconn are “completely committed to India’s semiconductor mission.”

    Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the country’s minister of state for electronics and IT, also tweeted that the news “changes nothing about” India’s semiconductor manufacturing goals, adding that the decision would still allow “both companies to independently pursue their strategies” in India.

    The project had been hailed as a milestone in India’s campaign to attract more investment in manufacturing, a sector sorely needed to help ease unemployment.

    Prime Minister Modi had framed the project as a significant boost for the economy and jobs.

    Foxconn shares rose 1.3% in Taipei on Tuesday following its announcement, while Vedanta’s shares fell 1.4% in Mumbai. The latter has not responded to a request for comment.

    Other prominent tech companies have moved to expand production in India recently.

    Last month, US chipmaker Micron

    (MICR)     announced a new factory in the western state of Gujarat, calling it the country’s first semiconductor assembly and test manufacturing facility.

    The venture will see Micron invest up to $825 million, and create “up to 5,000 new direct Micron jobs and 15,000 community jobs over the next several years,” according to the company.

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  • Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works | CNN Business

    Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Thousands of published authors are requesting payment from tech companies for the use of their copyrighted works in training artificial intelligence tools, marking the latest intellectual property critique to target AI development.

    The list of more than 8,000 authors includes some of the world’s most celebrated writers, including Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult and Philip Pullman, among others.

    In an open letter they signed, posted by the Authors Guild Tuesday, the writers accused AI companies of unfairly profiting from their work.

    “Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” the letter said. “You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited.”

    Tuesday’s letter was addressed to the CEOs of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Facebook-parent Meta, Google, Stability AI, IBM and Microsoft. Most of the companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta, Microsoft and Stability AI declined to comment.

    Much of the tech industry is now working to develop AI tools that can generate compelling images and written work in response to user prompts. These tools are built on large language models, which are trained on vast troves of information online. But recently, there has been growing pressure on tech companies over alleged intellectual property violations with this training process.

    This month, comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Meta, while a proposed class-action suit accused Google of “stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans,” including copyrighted content. Google has called the lawsuit “baseless,” saying it has been upfront for years that it uses public data to train its algorithms. OpenAI did not previously respond to a request for comment on the suit.

    In addition to demanding compensation “for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs,” the thousands of authors who signed the letter this week called on AI companies to seek permission before using the copyrighted material. They also urged the companies to pay writers when their work is featured in the results of generative AI, “whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.”

    The letter also cites this year’s Supreme Court holding in Warhol v Goldsmith, which found that the late artist Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer’s copyright when he created a series of silk screens based on a photograph of the late singer Prince. The court ruled that Warhol did not sufficiently “transform” the underlying photograph so as to avoid copyright infringement.

    “The high commerciality of your use argues against fair use,” the authors wrote to the AI companies.

    In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to acknowledge more needs to be done to address concerns from creators about how AI systems use their works.

    “We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that,” he said at an event.

    – CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

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  • OpenAI’s Sam Altman launches Worldcoin crypto project | CNN Business

    OpenAI’s Sam Altman launches Worldcoin crypto project | CNN Business

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    Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched on Monday.

    The project’s core offering is its World ID, which the company describes as a “digital passport” to prove that its holder is a real human, not an AI bot. To get a World ID, a customer signs up to do an in-person iris scan using Worldcoin’s ‘orb’, a silver ball approximately the size of a bowling ball. Once the orb’s iris scan verifies the person is a real human, it creates a World ID.

    The company behind Worldcoin is San Francisco and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity.

    The project has 2 million users from its beta period, and with Monday’s launch, Worldcoin is scaling up “orbing” operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an enticement, those who sign up in certain countries will receive Worldcoin’s cryptocurrency token WLD.

    WLD’s price rose in early trading on Monday. On the world’s largest exchange, Binance, it hit a peak of $5.29 and at 1000 GMT was at $2.49 from a starting price of $0.15, having seen $25.1 million of trading volume, according to Binance’s website.

    Blockchains can store the World IDs in a way that preserves privacy and can’t be controlled or shut down by any single entity, co-founder Alex Blania told Reuters.

    The project says World IDs will be necessary in the age of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce remarkably humanlike language. World IDs could be used to tell the difference between real people and AI bots online.

    Altman told Reuters Worldcoin also can help address how the economy will be reshaped by generative AI.

    “People will be supercharged by AI, which will have massive economic implications,” he said.

    One example Altman likes is universal basic income, or UBI, a social benefits program usually run by governments where every individual is entitled to payments. Because AI “will do more and more of the work that people now do,” Altman believes UBI can help to combat income inequality. Since only real people can have World IDs, it could be used to reduce fraud when deploying UBI.

    Altman said he thought a world with UBI would be “very far in the future” and he did not have a clear idea of what entity could dole out money, but that Worldcoin lays groundwork for it to become a reality.

    “We think that we need to start experimenting with things so we can figure out what to do,” he said.

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  • Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

    Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk has called himself a free-speech absolutist and has praised “even my worst critics.” But now Twitter has threatened to sue a nonprofit known for sharply criticizing the platform for its handling of hate speech and misinformation.

    In a July 20 letter shared publicly Monday, Twitter threatened to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accusing the group of a campaign to hurt Twitter by driving away its advertisers. The CCDH has published numerous reports about various social media companies’ approach to everything from vaccine misinformation to online racism and antisemitism.

    The letter by Alex Spiro, an outside attorney representing Twitter owner Musk, alleges that CCDH has made “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and its operations” through its reports, which he argued lack scientific rigor.

    To back up his claim, Spiro cited one report in which CCDH staff flagged tweets from 100 Twitter Blue subscribers to the platform as being harmful and found that after several days, the company had not taken action on the vast majority of it. The resulting CCDH report said Twitter had failed to act on “99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate.”

    “This article leaves no doubt that CCDH intends to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims,” Spiro wrote to CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, adding that Twitter is investigating whether it can sue the nonprofit for making false descriptions of the company.

    CCDH tweeted Spiro’s July 20 letter along with the organization’s reply to Twitter — which Musk has since rebranded as X — that called the legal threat “ridiculous.”

    “These allegations not only have no basis in fact (your letter states none), but they represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online, to conduct research and analysis regarding the drivers of such disinformation, and to publicly release the findings of that research, even when the findings may be critical of certain platforms,” wrote CCDH’s attorneys in a response dated Monday.

    Spiro didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Since taking over Twitter, Musk has slashed roughly 80% of the company’s staff, including many working on the platform’s content moderation teams.

    In December, Twitter shuttered its Trust and Safety Council comprised of outside experts on online safety, human rights, mental health, suicide prevention and child sexual exploitation.

    Reports from multiple groups, including CCDH but also the Anti-Defamation League as well as researchers from Tufts University and the University of Southern California, have pointed to observed increases in hate speech.

    Musk claimed that impressions of hate speech — which he described as based on a list of “bad words” — declined in the month following his takeover.

    But concerns about the platform’s handling of hateful content under Musk last year have persisted, prompting many brands to pause their advertising on Twitter and contributing to sharp financial losses at the company.

    Despite claiming in April that most of Twitter’s advertisers had returned, Musk acknowledged this month that Twitter’s ad revenue remains down by 50% and that the company is still cash-flow negative.

    In addition, Twitter has made changes to its platform restricting how third parties can access its data, a move that has drawn widespread criticism from academic researchers who study extremism and other online harms. The changes, which require researchers to pay hefty fees, could inhibit studies on how misinformation, harassment and spam spread on Twitter, experts have said.

    Threatening lawsuits has become a favored tactic for Musk as Twitter faces continued pressure. Earlier this month, Twitter threatened to sue Facebook-parent Meta over the launch of its competing app, Threads, accusing the company of copying Twitter’s product through trade secret theft. In May, Spiro sent a letter to Microsoft accusing it of over-using its ability to download tweets from the platform as Musk stepped up his criticism of the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant as a perceived rival in artificial intelligence technology.

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  • Pay $84 a year for Twitter Blue or lose your checkmark beginning April 1, Twitter says | CNN Business

    Pay $84 a year for Twitter Blue or lose your checkmark beginning April 1, Twitter says | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter’s free blue “verified” checkmarks for notable users may finally be coming to an end.

    Ever since Elon Musk took control of the company in October, he’s been threatening to remove the “legacy” checkmarks that confirmed the identities of users like government officials, corporations, journalists, celebrities and other high-profile tweeters.

    Now Musk may follow through: “On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks,” the company wrote in a tweet Thursday.

    A caveat, however: Twitter says this policy will go into effect starting on April Fool’s Day. Musk in particular has been known for April 1 trolling, including in 2018 when he falsely tweeted that his electric vehicle company Tesla

    (TSLA)     had gone bankrupt.

    “To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue,” the company’s tweet continued.

    Twitter Blue is a subscription service that Musk relaunched late last year that costs individuals $84 a year or $8 a month. Charging fees provides a revenue stream for Twitter — and a needed one, as Twitter currently collects virtually all of its revenue from advertisers, who have been fleeing the social media platform since he took over.

    Charging for Twitter verification provides both additional revenue to Twitter and a way for Musk to show his disdain for government agencies, journalists and others. Yet building a replacement for the legacy verification program has proved to be fraught.

    Twitter Blue first launched in the pre-Musk days of 2021, as a subscription service offering “power features” like undoing a tweet and saving bookmarks to folders. Musk relaunched the program in November 2022, including a blue checkmark in the features for paying users.

    Immediately the program was flooded with users who paid for counterfeit accounts pretending to be users such as former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, LeBron James and Nintendo.

    Before being suspended, the impostor Nintendo account tweeted an image of video game character Mario giving the viewer the middle finger. The LeBron James account falsely claimed the athlete had requested a trade. The fake Trump account tweeted, “This is why Elon Musk’s plan doesn’t work.”

    Musk pulled the Twitter Blue program for a few weeks and relaunched it yet again in December, with additional steps for reviewing and approving subscribers. Beyond the checkmark, Blue also lets paying users edit a tweet up to 5 times within 30 minutes, create tweets up to 4,000 characters long and post HD videos.

    The company also says Twitter Blue users will see 50% fewer ads in their home timelines, and that their tweets will be prioritized among replies, mentions and searches.

    For companies and other organizations, Twitter Blue costs $1,000 a month for the main account and $50 a month for each additional related account.

    – CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report.

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  • Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

    Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    After Twitter announced in February it would begin charging third parties to access its platform data, academic researchers warned that the vaguely worded plan could threaten important studies about how misinformation, harassment and other malicious activity spreads online.

    Now, as Twitter has released more pricing information, many of those same academics are saying their fears were well-founded, complaining that Twitter’s new tiered paywall not only charges “outrageously expensive” prices but that it also restricts the amount of accessible data so heavily that what little researchers can see, even on the most expensive tiers, is not useful for studies at any rigorous level.

    Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under CEO Elon Musk, automatically responded to a request for comment with an email containing a poop emoji.

    In an open letter this week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research — a group representing dozens of researchers and civil society organizations — said free and open access to Twitter data has historically enabled systematic, large-scale research on social media’s role in public health initiatives, foreign propaganda, political discourse, and even the bots and spam that Musk has blamed for ruining Twitter.

    But Twitter’s new tiered access system undercuts all of that, the researchers said. The company’s pricing that launched last week, starting at $100 per month for a “basic” amount of data, does not provide nearly enough volume for users at the low end, while the high end “ranges from $42,000 to $210,000 per month [and] is unaffordable for researchers,” the letter said.

    The new basic tier limits users to reading just 10,000 tweets per month. That represents 0.3% of what researchers used to be able to collect in a single day, the letter said.

    Even under the most expensive “enterprise” tier costing upwards of $2.5 million a year, Twitter is offering only a fraction of the tweets it used to, the letter continued. Before the change, researchers could pay about $500 a month for the ability to access up to 10% of the roughly 1 billion tweets a month that flow across Twitter’s platform.

    Now, though, “the most expensive Enterprise tier would cut that by 80% at about 400 times the price,” the researchers’ letter said.

    Asking researchers to pay orders of magnitude more for a fifth of the access they once had represents a barrier to accountability and transparency, the letter added.

    “Under the new pricing plans, studying the communications and interactions of even a small population—such as the 535 Members of the U.S. Congress or the 705 Members of the European Parliament—will be unfeasible,” the letter said. “The new pricing plans will also end at least 76 long-term efforts, including dashboards, tools, or code packages that support other researchers, journalists, first-responders, educators, and Twitter users.”

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  • Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

    Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Nima Momeni, the suspect in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, appeared in a San Francisco court Friday morning for an arraignment, one day after police announced his arrest.

    When Momeni entered the courtroom, members of his family sitting in the front row held up heart signs with their hands. Momeni, who was not cuffed, acknowledged them and smiled back.

    Momeni’s arraignment is set to continue on April 25. He will be held without bail in the meantime.

    Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.

    The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”

    In announcing his arrest Thursday, law enforcement described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California and said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but didn’t provide further details about their connection.

    California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.

    Lee’s family issued a statement Thursday thanking the San Francisco Police Department “for bringing his killer to Justice” after Momeni’s arrest.

    “Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the statement said.

    In the statement, the family described Lee’s upbringing, his career, and the impact of the technology he helped create.

    “Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.

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