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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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  • What we learned at Davos: The economy is a mess, but there’s still hope | CNN Business

    What we learned at Davos: The economy is a mess, but there’s still hope | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Friday marks the end of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, an elite gathering of some of the wealthiest people and world leaders.

    The glitzy retreat into the Swiss Alps looks increasingly out of date as the biggest war in Europe since 1945 deepens splits in the world economy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

    The meetings between CEOs, politicians, and global figures at Davos can help set the tone for the year ahead. Here are some of the key talking points from this week.

    It’s a mess: The big stories coming out of Davos this year are full of phrases like “fragmenting global economy,” “economic uncertainty” and “the year of inflation.”

    While many executives and economists are now striking a more optimistic tone, global leaders are still fretting about the economic outlook. That’s not surprising since they’re contending with worrisome uncertainties — Russia’s war in Ukraine is still raging, inflation and interest rates remain elevated, there are looming energy and food crises, supply chain kinks and the debt limit standoff in the United States, not to mention the threat of global recession.

    The meeting began with a new report by the WEF that dubbed this decade the “turbulent 20s” and the “age of the polycrisis.” Business executives, politicians and academics, the report said, are bracing for a gloomy world battered by intersecting crises, as rising volatility and depleted resilience boost the odds of painful simultaneous shocks.

    Gita Gopinath, the number two official at the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the IMF is worried globalization is in retreat. “We’re very concerned about geoeconomic fragmentation,” she said. The issue had come up a lot in meetings with member countries at the conference, she added.

    CEOs and political officials are also worried about the United States hitting its borrowing cap on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking “extraordinary measures” to keep the government open.

    If an agreement isn’t reached, markets could plunge (like they did the last time this happened in 2011) and the United States risks having its credit rating downgraded again. The situation is a “mess,” said Peter Orszag, CEO of financial advisory at Lazard.

    JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC from Davos on Thursday that the reputation of the United States as creditworthy is “sacrosanct.” To even question it, he said, is the wrong thing to do. “That is just a part of the financial structure of the world. This is not something you should be playing games with at all.”

    But it may not be that bad: Many leaders’ economic forecasts actually struck a semi-positive tone, even as they factored in strong headwinds.

    So far, energy supplies have held up in Europe, and the US and China are engaging in diplomatic relations — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He met in Zurich on Wednesday.

    China’s removal of strict coronavirus restrictions late last year is also expected to unleash a wave of spending that may offset economic weakness in the United States and Europe.

    Climate change was a hot topic: The rich and powerful do love to flock to Davos in their carbon-emitting private jets to discuss climate change. But this year, severe warnings were issued to global leaders.

    The UN Secretary General accused fossil fuel producers and their financial backers of “racing to expand production, knowing full well that their business model is inconsistent with human survival.”

    Speaking at Davos on Wednesday, António Guterres said the commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is “going up in smoke.”

    “We are flirting with climate disaster. Every week brings a new climate horror story,” he said.

    Swedish activist Greta Thunberg also made her way to Switzerland and delivered a “cease and desist letter” to fossil fuel CEOs — signed by more than 800,000 people.

    The AI revolution is here: Some CEOs at Davos admitted that they’re using the revolutionary new AI bot, ChatGPT, to do their work for them, reports my colleague Julia Horowitz.

    Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of online learning provider Coursera, said that he uses the tool to bang out emails.

    “I use it as a writing assistant and as a thought partner,” Maggioncalda told CNN from Davos.

    Christian Lanng, CEO of digital supply chain platform Tradeshift, said he uses the ChatGPT to write emails and claims no one has noticed the difference. He even had it perform some accounting work, a service for which Tradeshift currently employs an expensive professional services firm.

    “I see these technologies acting as a copilot, helping people do more with less,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told an audience in Davos this week.

    There’s a saying on Wall Street that bad news for the economy is actually good news for the stock market and vice versa, reports my colleague Paul R. La Monica.

    That’s because investors often bet that dismal headlines will eventually prompt the Federal Reserve and other central banks to cut interest rates and provide more stimulus that can help boost corporate profits…and stock prices.

    But the debt ceiling debate in Washington is changing all of that.

    Wednesday’s big market sell-off and the continued slide Thursday might represent a turning point for market sentiment. Still, after a promising start to the year, stocks have seemingly taken a turn for the worse. Bad news actually might be bad news.

    “We’ve been snuggled up in expectations of a soft landing for the US economy,” said Kit Juckes, chief global foreign exchange strategist at Societe Generale, in a report Thursday. “Take away the blanket and it feels chilly.”

    Netflix announced Thursday that its founder Reed Hastings is stepping down as co-CEO at the company and will serve as executive chairman. Hastings will be replaced by co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, reports my colleague Clare Duffy.

    Under Hastings’ leadership, Netflix disrupted legacy movie rental companies like Blockbuster and helped shake up Hollywood by kicking off an arms race investing in original content.

    Last year, however, Netflix saw its stock and reputation take a hit after losing subscribers amid heightened competition from rival streaming services. In response, Netflix introduced a lower-priced, ad-supported tier for the first time in its history.

    Those changes may be paying off. In its earnings report on Thursday, the streamer said it added more than 7.6 million subscribers during the final three months of last year, well above the 4.5 million additions it had projected, for a total of more than 230 million paying subscribers worldwide.

    “Reed Hastings stepping down from his current role raises a lot of questions about Netflix’s future strategy,” Jamie Lumbley, analyst at investment firm Third Bridge, said in a statement. “While the subscriber growth numbers are encouraging, revenue growth is sluggish with the backdrop of a potential recession looming on everyone’s mind.”

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  • Davos conspiracy theories used to live on fringe corners of the internet. Now they’ve gone mainstream | CNN Business

    Davos conspiracy theories used to live on fringe corners of the internet. Now they’ve gone mainstream | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos has long been a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. Extremist figures such as Infowars host Alex Jones have reliably used the event to drive up fear and paranoia about sinister schemes the “globalists” are supposedly plotting.

    In the past, however, these farcical conspiracy theories have largely been confined to the fringe corners of the internet — places like Infowars. But in recent years, that has changed. The radical ideas promoted by the likes of Jones have gone mainstream, having been popularized by some of the most influential personalities in right-wing media.

    Take Glenn Beck for example. The right-wing media personality, who wrote a conspiratorial book called “The Great Reset” playing off the WEF’s 2020 Covid theme, mocked the idea on Tuesday that conspiracy theories circulate around the event, while simultaneously giving oxygen to some of those very theories when he interviewed a guest who claimed, unchallenged, that the gathered world leaders “want you to eat insects rather than meat.”

    A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

    It’s not just Beck who is using the event to push this fringe rhetoric. New Twitter owner Elon Musk, who responded on Sunday to a conspiratorial thread about the gathering at Davos, said the “S in ESG,” which stands for WEF’s “environmental, social, and governance” criteria, “stands for Satanic.” (Musk also claimed he was invited to the gathering, but organizers said he was not on the guest list.)

    Alex Friedfeld, associate director with the ADL Center on Extremism, told me Tuesday that the use of extreme rhetoric and the endorsement of conspiracy theories from leading voices on the right has resulted in the outlandish claims reaching far more people than they once did.

    “The fact is that these conspiracies have bounced around in more fringe parts of the internet,” Friedfeld said. “But when you have folks like Tucker Carlson or Glenn Beck — they start to normalize these conspiracies, they expose millions of more people to these ideas.”

    In particular, Friedfeld pointed to “The Great Reset” conspiracy theories, noting that the term has “largely been divorced” at this point from its 2020 Covid origins and become “a broad brand for conspiracies” about how global elites are plotting to use the masses for their own benefits. Friedfeld said that, in particular, the use of the term “The Great Reset” by mainstream figures is cause for alarm because it can send people down a rabbit hole.

    “You go searching for whatever version they’re talking about on Fox News and all of a sudden you’re exposed to all these other conspiracies that fall under the same umbrella,” Friedfeld explained.

    The Associated Press’ Sophia Tulp reported this week that use of “The Great Reset” has been on a steady rise at Fox News. Tulp said the term was mentioned on the right-wing talk channel 60 times in 2022, up from 30 mentions in 2021, and 20 in 2020. Tulp added it was most mentioned on Carlson’s show and Laura Ingraham’s.

    The danger of conspiracy theories has not been lost on attendees at Davos. On a Tuesday panel moderated by Brian Stelter, A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, described disinformation as one of the most pressing problems facing society.

    “I think if you look at this question of disinformation, I think it maps basically to every other major challenge that we are grappling with as a society, and particularly the most existential among them,” Sulzberger said. “So, disinformation and in the broader set of misinformation, conspiracy, propaganda, clickbait … the broader mix of bad information that’s corrupting the information ecosystem, what it attacks is trust.”

    “And once you see trust decline, what you then see is a society start to fracture, and so you see people fracture along tribal lines and, you know, that immediately undermines pluralism,” Sulzberger added. “And the undermining of pluralism is probably the most dangerous thing that can happen to a democracy. So I really think if you’re spending this week thinking about the health of democracies and democratic erosion, I think it’s really import to work your way back up to where this starts.”

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  • Social media hunting stars and their company ordered to pay more than $100,000 and probation for illegal hunts | CNN

    Social media hunting stars and their company ordered to pay more than $100,000 and probation for illegal hunts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Josh and Sarah Bowmar, a couple with a strong following on social media for their hunting videos, were sentenced Tuesday as part of a plea agreement for breaking hunting regulations during some of the events they posted online.

    The couple – along with their company, Bowmar Bowhunting – were placed on three years probation and ordered to pay more than $130,000 in fines, restitution and forfeiture.

    The terms of their probation include that the couple “shall not hunt or otherwise engage in any activities associated with hunting, limited to within the District of Nebraska,” according to court documents.

    The Bowmars were accused of conspiring with a hunt guiding and outfitting company in Nebraska to illegally hunt deer using bait traps. Under Nebraska law, it is illegal to set food to attract animals to a hunting site. Prosecutors also alleged Sarah Bowmar killed a wild turkey without a valid permit.

    It is a violation of the federal Lacey Act to break hunting laws in one state and take the illegally obtained game to another state, and federal prosecutors alleged the Bowmars took the deer and turkey they illegally killed in Nebraska out of state.

    The Bowmars and their company entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy and the government dropped four other counts.

    The couple received no jail time.

    In a statement sent to CNN, Josh and Sarah Bowmar said that they felt that the prosecutors’ decision to drop the baiting and poaching charges was “fair and true to what happened with that outfitter 9 years ago.”

    “We did plead guilty to conspiracy, which means we should have known better about hunting at that outfitter and should have paid more attention to what was going on behind closed doors—but we did not, and for that, we take complete responsibility,” their statement said.

    “We’ve learned some very valuable lessons from this experience and our mistakes and we look forward to doing our best to leave a positive footprint on the hunting community and involving our children in the boundless joys of the great outdoors.”

    The Bowmar Bowhunting YouTube channel has more than 300,000 subscribers and its page has more than 340,000 followers on Instagram.

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  • FEC dismisses RNC complaint that Google’s spam filters were biased against conservatives | CNN Business

    FEC dismisses RNC complaint that Google’s spam filters were biased against conservatives | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Election Commission has tossed out claims by the Republican National Committee that Google’s spam filters in Gmail are illegally biased against conservatives, according to an agency letter obtained by CNN.

    The decision resolves a joint FEC complaint filed last year spearheaded by the RNC that alleged Gmail’s automated filters had sent Republican fundraising emails to spam at a higher rate than for Democratic candidates during the 2020 election cycle. The RNC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The FEC decision to dismiss the complaint and close the case is the latest defeat for Republicans who have sought on multiple occasions to bring the agency’s powers to bear against tech platforms over allegations of anti-conservative bias. In 2021, the FEC dismissed a similar RNC claim against Twitter over the company’s decision to temporarily suppress the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop, saying the content moderation decision appeared to have been made “for a valid commercial reason.”

    The FEC took the same stance on the Gmail filtering issue in a letter to Google last week, and which the company provided to CNN on Wednesday.

    In the Jan. 11 letter, the FEC said its review “found no reason to believe that [Google] made prohibited in-kind corporate contributions” to Democrats in the form of more favorable email filtering treatment.

    In order to be considered a violation, the FEC wrote, “a contribution must be made for the purpose of influencing an election for federal office,” adding that Google’s public statements have made clear its spam filtering exists “for commercial, rather than electoral, purposes.”

    Even if it were true that Gmail spam filtering happened to favor Democratic campaigns over Republican ones, the FEC wrote — an allegation the commission neither explicitly endorsed nor rejected — that outcome would not necessarily make Gmail’s underlying conduct an illegal campaign contribution.

    In its letter, the FEC cited Google’s public statements claiming that its reasons for spam filtering include blocking malware, phishing attacks and scams.

    “In sum, Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution within the meaning of the [Federal Election Campaign Act],” it wrote.

    Documents related to the case will be made available to the public by Feb. 10, according to the letter.

    “The Commission’s bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes,” said José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson. “We’ll continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, they’re important to protecting people’s inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous messages.”

    While the FEC did not weigh in directly on Gmail’s practices, the letter highlighted the limitations and context surrounding a 2022 academic study that the RNC had leaned heavily upon in its initial complaint.

    The study by North Carolina State University researchers had involved an experiment testing the spam filters of Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Mail. Its findings suggested that of the three email providers, Gmail was the likeliest to mark emails from Republican campaigns as spam.

    The RNC had cited the study’s findings as evidence of “illegal, corporate in-kind contributions” to Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, and called for an FEC investigation.

    But the FEC’s letter cited several factors that cast doubt on the RNC’s interpretation of the research, including the study’s own statements of limitations and a Washington Post interview with one of the study’s lead authors, who had said Republicans were “mischaracterizing” the paper.

    The study itself acknowledged that it covered a short period of time, and that its findings could have been affected by campaigns’ own tactical decision-making as well as other variables the study did not account for, the FEC wrote, adding that in its response to the RNC allegations Google had said the researchers used a sample of 34 email addresses “when Gmail has 1.5 billion users.”

    “Though the NCSU Study appears to demonstrate a disparate impact from Google’s spam filter, it explicitly states that its authors have ‘no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters,’” the FEC added.

    Meanwhile, a separate RNC lawsuit against Google over the same Gmail filtering issue is still ongoing. And Google has continued with an FEC-approved pilot project that allows political campaigns to bypass Gmail’s spam filters. More than 100 political entities are participating in that program, a Google spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.

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  • Netflix plans its biggest-ever slate of Korean content | CNN Business

    Netflix plans its biggest-ever slate of Korean content | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Netflix is planning its largest-ever lineup of South Korean content, with 34 new and returning titles set to roll out this year.

    The streaming giant made the announcement Tuesday. It said that audience data showed “over 60% of all Netflix members” watched Korean titles last year.

    The nearly three dozen new programs include a range of television series and films, which run the gamut from thrillers to dramas. The company declined to disclose how much it planned to spend.

    In 2021, company executives said Netflix

    (NFLX)     planned to invest about $500 million into Korean content, on top of $700 million already spent since 2016.

    The move underscores how Netflix is increasingly doubling down on Korean content as fans worldwide continue to buzz over it.

    Last year, the California giant announced the launch of approximately 25 Korean titles — at the time “our largest number to date,” it said in a statement then. The previous year, the company unveiled 15.

    “The global popularity of K-content has continued apace over 2022,” Don Kang, the company’s vice president of Korean content, said in a brief statement.

    “Over the last year, Korean series and films have regularly featured in our Global Top 10 list in more than 90 countries, and three of Netflix’s most-watched shows ever are from Korea.”

    One of those shows is “Squid Game,” which shows contestants playing deadly children’s games to win cash prizes. The survival drama became the company’s top show worldwide in 2021.

    Last year, “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” a series that followed titular character Woo Young-woo as “a newbie at a top law firm and a woman on the autism spectrum,” also shot to the top of the streaming platform’s charts for several weeks.

    The forthcoming titles for 2023 include six Korean movies, starting with the debut of a sci-fi thriller, “JUNG-E,” on Friday, according to Netflix.

    It will also include new shows such as “Destined With You,” a romance between a hotshot lawyer and a civil servant, as well as the latest installment of returning series “Sweet Home,” which depicts a teen’s fight to survive as humans turn into monsters.

    Netflix is increasingly producing original international content and leaning on prospects overseas as its growth in North America slows.

    Netflix added 1.4 million paid subscribers in the Asia Pacific in the third quarter, making it the company’s fastest growing region, according to its most recent earnings.

    Other media behemoths, such as Disney

    (DIS)    , are also betting big on Korean content. The company has recently greenlit scores of new titles from South Korea, including a slate of original shows with K-pop band BTS.

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  • Damar Hamlin tweets he will watch Bills playoff game from home | CNN

    Damar Hamlin tweets he will watch Bills playoff game from home | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin tweeted Sunday that he will be watching from home as the Bills open their playoff campaign against the Miami Dolphins in Orchard Park, New York.

    “My heart is with my guys as they compete today!” Hamlin tweeted. “Supporting from home as I focus on my recovery. Nothing I want more than to be out there with them! LFG #BillsMafia”

    The tweet comes a day after Hamlin reportedly visited the team’s facility at Orchard Park in New York, according to ESPN and the Associated Press.

    The daughter of Bills offensive line coach Aaron Kromer, Brooke, wrote on Twitter that Hamlin was at practice.

    “I saw Damar today & bawled my eyes out! What a miracle to see him walking. We are blessed!,” she wrote. “More prayers are needed! It was a beautiful moment for the guys!”

    Hamlin was seen smiling while greeting another person not on camera in a photo posted on Instagram by Bills linebacker Matt Milano.

    Neither Hamlin’s representatives nor the Bills have responded to CNN’s request for comment.

    The 24-year-old was discharged from Buffalo General Medical Center on Wednesday after spending more than a week hospitalized after suffering an on-field cardiac arrest during a road game against the Cincinnati Bengals on January 2.

    Hamlin was initially hospitalized in Cincinnati but was transferred to the Buffalo facility Monday after doctors determined his critical condition had improved enough for the move.

    The Bills are scheduled to play the Miami Dolphins in the NFL Wild Card round Sunday.

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  • Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A law firm representing dozens of former UK Twitter employees is accusing the company of “unlawful, unfair and completely unacceptable treatment” of workers following recent mass layoffs, which the firm referred to as a “sham redundancy process.”

    In a letter sent to the company on Monday, law firm Winckworth Sherwood alleged that Twitter violated UK law by cutting off terminated employees’ access to internal systems without engaging in the required warning and consultation period. The letter also said Twitter has failed to provide information about the selection criteria used to determine the layoffs.

    The letter states that 43 affected UK employees are prepared to take the issue to an Employment Tribunal, a UK system for employees to bring legal disputes against their employers, if the company does not agree to cooperate with negotiations over the layoff process.

    The warning marks the latest challenge to Twitter from former employees affected by mass layoffs that took place after Elon Musk acquired the company in October. Twitter laid off half of its global staff in early November, and has continued to fire and push out additional employees in the months since, including through an ultimatum to work “hardcore.”

    More than 300 former US employees have filed demands for arbitration against the company, according to attorneys representing them. Twitter is also facing four proposed class action lawsuits in the United States related to the layoffs. Now, the backlash to the layoffs may be escalating in the UK.

    “Our clients have been aghast at the direction taken by their employer, whose mission they have genuinely believed in and, in a number of cases, whose growth and transformation they have supported for many years,” lawyers for Winckworth Sherwood wrote in the letter. “They remain resolved to protect their positions, professional reputations and legal claims against the Company should it now proceed to dismiss them unlawfully and unfairly.”

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations team as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

    UK trade union Prospect, which represents more than 100 UK Twitter employees, also wrote to the company this week raising concerns about its layoff process, including claims that Twitter is “choosing not to honor” its promise that employees laid off following Musk’s acquisition would receive severance with terms no less favorable than prior to his takeover.

    Prospect also said the company has given workers “an arbitrary date to sign their rights away” in order to receive better separation terms, although negotiations over the layoffs are ongoing. (Typically, negotiations over mass layoffs by UK companies involve discussions of the reasons for terminations and how to minimize their size and impact.)

    “It is to be celebrated that in the UK it is not possible to simply fire employees en masse at will as Twitter has done in other countries,” Prospect, said in the letter. “Rest assured, Prospect will continue to lobby the Government and raise public awareness about employers who treat their workers like commodities to be discarded on a whim.”

    In the United States, there have also been concerns among Twitter employees after they began receiving their severance packages last weekend. The offers promise one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, raising concerns about the terms and saying it falls short of what the company has previously promised to provide to affected employees.

    The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

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  • Google claims a Supreme Court defeat would transform the internet — for the worse | CNN Business

    Google claims a Supreme Court defeat would transform the internet — for the worse | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    An unfavorable ruling against Google in a closely watched Supreme Court case this term about YouTube’s recommendation engine could have sweeping unintended consequences for much of the wider internet, the search giant argued in a legal filing Thursday.

    Google, which owns YouTube, is fighting a high-stakes court battle over whether algorithmically generated YouTube recommendations are exempt from Big Tech’s signature liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

    Section 230 broadly protects tech platforms from lawsuits over the companies’ content moderation decisions. But a Supreme Court decision that says AI-based recommendations do not qualify for those protections could “threaten the internet’s core functions,” Google wrote in its brief.

    “Websites like Google and Etsy depend on algorithms to sift through mountains of user-created content and display content likely relevant to each user,” the company wrote. “If plaintiffs could evade [Section 230] by targeting how websites sort content or trying to hold users liable for liking or sharing articles, the internet would devolve into a disorganized mess and a litigation minefield.”

    In the face of such a ruling, websites could have to choose between intentionally over-moderating their websites, scrubbing them of virtually everything that could be perceived as objectionable, or doing no moderation at all to avoid the risk of liability, Google argued.

    Driving the case are claims that Google violated a US antiterrorism law with its content algorithms by recommending pro-ISIS YouTube videos to users. The plaintiffs in the case are the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris.

    In the filing, Google said “YouTube abhors terrorism” and cited its “increasingly effective actions” to limit the spread of terrorist content on its platform, before insisting that the company cannot be sued for recommending the videos due to its Section 230 liability shield.

    The case, Gonzalez v. Google, is viewed as a bellwether for content moderation, and one of the first Supreme Court cases to consider Section 230 since its passage in 1996. Multiple Supreme Court justices have expressed interest in weighing in on the law, which has been broadly interpreted by the courts, defended by the tech industry, and sharply criticized by politicians in both parties.

    The Biden administration, in a legal brief last month, argued that Section 230 protections should not extend to recommendation algorithms. President Joe Biden has long called for changes to Section 230, saying tech platforms should take more responsibility for the content that appears on their websites. As recently as Tuesday, Biden published a Wall Street Journal op-ed that urged Congress to amend Section 230.

    But in a blog post Thursday, Google General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado argued that narrowing Section 230 would increase the threat of litigation against online and small businesses, chilling speech and economic activity on the internet.

    “Services could become less useful and less trustworthy — as efforts to root out scams, fraud, conspiracies, malware, violence, harassment, and more are stifled,” DeLaine Prado wrote.

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  • Misogynistic ‘alpha male’ influencer Andrew Tate’s deal with the right-wing social media site Rumble is worth millions, he has privately said | CNN Business

    Misogynistic ‘alpha male’ influencer Andrew Tate’s deal with the right-wing social media site Rumble is worth millions, he has privately said | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Andrew Tate has been lining his pockets via right-wing social media.

    The 36-year-old former pro kickboxer turned misogynistic “alpha male” influencer, who Romanian authorities took into custody in late December as they pursue allegations of human trafficking and rape, signed deals in 2022 with Rumble and GETTR to exclusively post content on their platforms.

    Those agreements were not a secret. In fact, as you might imagine, both right-wing social media companies at the time were proud to tout their relationship with Tate, who has been banned from YouTube and TikTok. But what has not been publicly known, until now, is just how lucrative the deals were for the influencer.

    Tate has privately boasted that his deal with Rumble, the video-based social media site popular with conservatives that markets itself as “immune to cancel culture,” was worth a staggering $9 million.

    CNN could not independently confirm the valuation of the deal. But asked for comment, Rumble did not deny the price of the agreement, acknowledging in a statement that it does have deals with its creators and has “offered incentives” to them. The company went on to call for Tate to be rigorously investigated over the sex crimes he’s alleged to have committed.

    A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

    “Rumble strongly condemns human trafficking and sexual abuse, and our platform prohibits pornography and all forms of illegal activity. At the same time, every accused deserves due process,” Rumble said Thursday evening. “The allegations against Andrew Tate, which do not appear to involve any content on Rumble, should be investigated promptly and thoroughly, and we will not prejudge that investigation.”

    It’s not clear precisely how much Tate’s deal with GETTR was worth; the company did not comment on Thursday. Neither did Tate, who remains in custody in Romania, and a representative for him could not be reached for comment.

    Million-dollar deals are not necessarily unprecedented in the right-wing social space. Axios reported earlier this month that Donald Trump Jr. had struck a multiyear, seven-figure agreement with Rumble. And other personalities, such as Russell Brand and Glenn Greenwald, have struck their own deals with the platform. Rumble, which went public last year via a SPAC, was reportedly valued at over $2 billion and has received financial backing from billionaire Peter Thiel.

    The distribution agreements underscore how profitable it can be to work as an influencer in right-wing media. And they show how financially rewarding deals with upstart social media companies can be as they work to draw users to their platforms while competing with far more established technology giants, such as Twitter and YouTube.

    Despite being banned by the vast majority of mainstream social media platforms, Tate remains influential among young men. His rants claiming most of society supposedly remains locked in “The Matrix,” which he describes as a world governed by shadowy elites hellbent on compelling the masses to work for them, rack up millions of views. And he has, in particular, grown a big following with younger men through his commentary on male supremacy. Before his TikTok account was banned, he amassed 11.6 billion views.

    The deals with Tate seemed to work well for both parties. Tate drove significant engagement to both platforms. Sky News reported in September, for instance, that daily active users on Rumble surged 45.3% the week Tate slashed onto the platform. And GETTR credited Tate in a press release for helping drive engagement.

    CNN was told that his deal with GETTR ended when he rejoined Twitter in late November after Elon Musk lifted the ban previously held on his account. But with Tate in custody facing serious charges, the fate of his lucrative deal with Rumble remains to be seen.

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  • Why experts worry TikTok could add to mental health crisis among US teens | CNN Business

    Why experts worry TikTok could add to mental health crisis among US teens | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Jermone Yankey said he used to pull all-nighters when he was in college – not studying or partying, but scrolling on TikTok until the sun came up.

    “I saw me not putting the effort into my own life, rather just trying to live vicariously through what I’m seeing,” said 23-year old Yankey. He said he lost sleep, his grades suffered, and he fell out of touch with friends and himself.

    In 2021, he deleted the app. The positive impact, he said, was obvious. “It’s so great to be able to be sleeping again starting at midnight,” he said. “It’s great to be able to be up early and be more productive with the sun.”

    In recent months, TikTok has faced growing pressure from state and federal lawmakers over concerns about its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. But some lawmakers and researchers have also been scrutinizing the impact that the short-form video app may have on its youngest users.

    GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, the incoming chairman of a new House select committee on China, recently called TikTok “digital fentanyl” for allegedly having a “corrosive impact of constant social media use, particularly on young men and women here in America.” Indiana’s attorney general filed two suits against TikTok last month, including one alleging that the platform lures children onto the platform by falsely claiming it is friendly for users between 13 to 17 years old. And one study from a non-profit group claimed TikTok may surface potentially harmful content related to suicide and eating disorders to teenagers within minutes of them creating an account.

    TikTok is far from the only social platform to be scrutinized by lawmakers and mental health experts for its impact on teens. Top execs from several companies, including TikTok, have been grilled in Congress on the matter. And this week, Seattle Public Schools sued social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube alleging the platforms have been “causing a youth mental health crisis,” making it hard for the school system “to fulfill its educational mission.”

    But psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge said TikTok’s algorithm in particular is “very sophisticated” and “very sticky,” which keeps teens engaged on the platform longer. TikTok has amassed more than one billion global users. Those users spent an average of an hour and a half per day on the app in last year, more than any other social media platform, according to the digital analytics platform SensorTower.

    “A lot of teens describe the experience of going on TikTok and intending to spend 15 minutes and then they spend two hours and or more. That’s problematic because the more time a teen spends on social media, the more likely he or she is to be depressed. And that’s particularly true for at the extremes of use,” said Twenge.

    That may only compound a longer-term rise in mental health issues, partly fueled by technology. Psychologists say as smartphones and social media grew around 2012, so did the rate of depression among teens. Between 2004 and 2019 the rate of teen depression nearly doubled, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And for teen girls its worse. By 2019, one in four US girls have experienced clinical depression, according to Twenge.

    TikTok said it has tools to help users set limits for how long they spend on the app each day. TikTok also continues to roll out other safeguards for its users, including ways to filter out mature or “potentially problematic” videos and more parental controls.

    “One of our most important commitments is supporting the safety and well-being of teens, and we recognize this work is never finished. We continue to focus on robust safety protections for our community while also empowering parents with additional controls for their teen’s account through TikTok Family Pairing,” TikTok said in a statement to CNN.

    The company said between April and June of 2022 it removed 93.4% of videos on self-harm and suicide from the app before they were ever viewed. But teens say it’s not the most egregious videos that keep them engaged. It’s the content programmed to them in the “For You” section of the app.

    “It’s so curated to you,” said Angelica Faustino, an 18-year-old sophomore at the University at Buffalo, who says she spends 3 to 4 hours a day on TikTok.

    “There is a lot of body checking on TikTok – a lot of people showing off things about themselves that are maybe unachievable. You see if enough times you are like maybe I should be that way,” said Faustino.

    For all the concerns, however, there are signs that TikTok and other social networks can have a positive impact on younger users, too.

    The majority of teens say social media can be a space for connection and creativity, according to Pew Research. Eight in 10 teens ages 13-17 say social media makes them feel more connected to what’s going on in their friends lives and 71% say social media is a place they can be creative, according to Pew.

    And some in Gen Z, the generation that has been raised on TikTok, have found unique opportunities on the platform.

    Hannah Williams spends her time on TikTok running her business, Salary Transparent Street. She interviews everyday Americans about the salary they make at their jobs, providing pay transparency to her nearly 1 million followers.

    “I quit my job in May of 2022 to work on my social media page on Tik Tok full time because I saw a great opportunity to do something with my career,” said 26 year-old Williams.

    “I think it’s interesting that we can try to use social media to really impact the world for good,” she said, “and I’m hoping that’s what happens.”

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  • House Oversight chairman seeks Biden family financial transaction data | CNN Politics

    House Oversight chairman seeks Biden family financial transaction data | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rep. James Comer, in one of his first moves as House Oversight Chairman, is seeking information from the Treasury Department about the Biden family’s financial transactions and calling on a handful of former Twitter executives to testify at a public hearing.

    The new round of letters from the committee come as House Republicans are looking to flex their investigative might and make good on promises to delve into the Biden family finances and alleged political influence over technology companies after Twitter temporarily suppressed a 2020 story about Hunter Biden and his laptop.

    “Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Comer said of his panel’s investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s business dealings. “This investigation is a top priority for House Republicans during the 118th Congress.”

    Comer requested Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen provide his panel with bank activity reports for Hunter Biden, President Biden’s brother James Biden and several Biden family associates and their related companies.

    “The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating President Biden’s involvement in his family’s foreign business practices and international influence peddling schemes,” Comer wrote to Yellen.

    Comer tried to acquire these bank activity reports, known as Suspicious Activity Reports, repeatedly when Republicans were in the minority but was largely unsuccessful. Comer has said he has only seen two and did not reveal the source of those reports.

    Comer has previously pointed to the bank activity reports – known as Suspicious Activity Reports – as evidence of potential wrongdoing by Joe Biden’s family members. But such reports are not conclusive and do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing. Each year, financial institutions file millions of suspicious activity reports and few lead to law enforcement inquiries.

    The White House accused Republicans of engaging in “political stunts” following Comer’s request Wednesday.

    “In their first week as a governing majority, House Republicans have not taken any meaningful action to address inflation and lower Americans’ costs, yet they’re jumping out of the gate with political stunts driven by the most extreme MAGA members of their caucus in an effort to get attention on Fox News,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office, said in a statement. “The President is going to continue focusing on the important issues the American people want their leaders to work together on, and we hope House Republicans will join him.”

    Comer also is seeking communications within the Treasury Department, its financial crimes enforcement division and the White House regarding those family members and related businesses and associates, all of which he wants to be returned by January 25.

    The letters to former Twitter officials offer a path to Comer’s investigative schedule ahead. The letters to former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde; former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth; and former deputy general counsel James Baker call on the trio to appear in a public hearing the week of February 6. They come after Comer sent an earlier round of letters in December requesting their testimony.

    “Your attendance is necessary because of your role in suppressing Americans’ access to information about the Biden family on Twitter shortly before the 2020 election,” each of the letters to the former Twitter employees states.

    Republicans have seized on the so-called Twitter files as evidence of government censorship, although none of the messages released so far show the FBI explicitly telling Twitter to suppress a story that included material from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. An FBI agent at the heart of the controversy as well as several federal officials and tech executives have all denied there was any such order, CNN previously reported.

    Roth, meantime, has said publicly that the Hunter Biden story appeared as though it could be the product of a hack-and-leak operation, but he has denied that he personally tried to censor the story.

    “It’s widely reported that I personally directed the suppression of the Hunter Biden story. That is not true. It is absolutely, unequivocally untrue,” Roth told tech journalist Kara Swisher in a podcast interview last year.

    Comer’s demands come as both he and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan have vowed to investigate the federal government’s influence over tech companies.

    In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Comer suggested that Judiciary staff could sit in on some of his committee’s interviews if there are common areas of interest, like with Twitter.

    “There is some overlap but that won’t be a problem for Jim and I,” Comer said in the interview. “He knows who we’re bringing in. We know who he’s bringing in.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

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  • Musk’s Twitter restores accounts of prominent election deniers two years after Jan. 6 attack | CNN Business

    Musk’s Twitter restores accounts of prominent election deniers two years after Jan. 6 attack | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk’s Twitter has restored the accounts of two prominent election deniers who were banned from the platform following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

    “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander’s account was restored on Monday. Alexander assumed a leadership role in the movement that discredited the 2020 election in the weeks leading up to January 6.

    Asked by the January 6 Committee what platform he used to promote events in the lead-up to that day, Alexander responded, “Primarily Twitter,” according to his deposition to the committee made public last month. He has not been charged with a crime.

    In the months since Musk took ownership of Twitter, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” has restored the accounts of high-profile figures who were banned from the platform following the January 6 attack, including former President Donald Trump, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and others.

    As unrest unfolded in Brazil on Sunday, Alexander appeared to cheer on the attack, posting on his Truth Social account a Brazilian flag emoji and the message, “I do NOT denounce unannounced impromptu Capitol tours by the people.”

    Overnight on Monday, Twitter also restored the account of Ron Watkins – a prominent conspiracy theorist who then-President Trump retweeted multiple times in the days before the assault on the Capitol.

    Watkins played a central role in spreading conspiracy theories about voting machine and the 2020 election.

    Watkins’ father, Jim, is the owner of the hate-filled online message board 8kun that is home to the QAnon conspiracy theory. An HBO documentary in 2021 identified Ron as potentially being the anonymous figure behind the conspiracy theory, an assertion that Ron has denied.

    Jim Watkins was interviewed by the January 6 committee last year, where he denied under oath that he or his son Ron posed as “Q.”

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  • Seattle public schools sue social media companies for allegedly harming students’ mental health | CNN Business

    Seattle public schools sue social media companies for allegedly harming students’ mental health | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Seattle’s public school system on Friday filed a lawsuit against several Big Tech companies alleging their platforms have a negative impact on students’ mental health and claiming that has impeded the ability of its schools “to fulfill its educational mission.”

    The lawsuit was filed against the parent companies of some of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.

    The school district, which is the largest in the state of Washington with nearly 50,000 students, alleges in the suit that the companies “have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth” to maximize how much time users spend on their platforms in order to boost profits. The actions taken by the platforms, according to the suit, have “been a substantial factor in causing a youth mental health crisis, which has been marked by higher and higher proportions of youth struggling with anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and suicidal ideation.”

    The school district said students experiencing anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues perform worse in school, are less likely to attend school, more likely to engage in substance use, and to act out. The district said it continues to take additional steps to train teachers and screen students for mental health symptoms who may need further support but it needs a comprehensive, long-term plan and funding amid the growing mental health crisis today’s “youth are experiencing at [the companies’] hands.”

    The school district is seeking unspecified monetary damages.

    The lawsuit comes more than a year after executives from social media platforms faced tough questions from lawmakers during a series of congressional hearings over how their platforms may direct younger users – and particularly teenage girls – to harmful content, damaging their mental health and body image. While a growing number of families have filed lawsuits against social media companies for their alleged impact on the mental health of their children, it’s unusual to see a school district take such a step.

    In a statement sent to CNN on Monday, Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said it continues to pour resources into ensuring its young users are safe online. She said the platforms have more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences.

    “We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues,” she said.

    The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    In the past year, a number of prominent social media platforms have introduced more tools and parental control options aimed at better protecting younger users amid mounting scrutiny.

    TikTok, which has faced pressure from lawmaker both for its potential impact on younger users and its ties to China, announced in July that it would introduce new ways to filter out mature or “potentially problematic” videos. The added safeguards allocate a “maturity score” to videos detected as potentially containing mature or complex themes. TikTok also rolled out a tool that aims to help people decide how much time they want to spend on the app.

    Snapchat, meanwhile, has introduced a parent guide and hub aimed at giving guardians more insight into how their teens use the app. That includes more information about who their kids have been talking to over the last week, without divulging the content of those conversations.

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  • Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

    Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    After months of uncertainty and feeling left in the dark, many former Twitter employees impacted by a mass layoff in early November began receiving their severance offers over the weekend. But some are frustrated by the offer and the conditions attached to it.

    The severance offer promises one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, saying it falls short of the “3 months of severance” that new owner Elon Musk had previously promised would be provided. (That time period appeared to include pay for the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide under various state laws.) The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

    The former Twitter employees are now stuck deciding whether to accept the money or join the hundreds of others who have already filed arbitration demands or lawsuits against the company.

    “We’ve been hearing from hundreds of Twitter employees who are considering their options and not happy about only being offered one month severance, after they were promised much more,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, another lawyer working on behalf of former Twitter employees, told CNN in a statement Monday. “We have filed hundreds of arbitration claims already and will continue to file them.”

    The severance fight comes as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    Twitter’s trust and safety team experienced at least a dozen additional cuts on Friday, according to a report from Bloomberg over the weekend.

    Bloom, who said she has also filed dozens of demands for arbitration on behalf of former Twitter employees, said the severance offer does not include pro-rated bonuses or accelerated stock vesting for eligible employees, which could amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost funds for some affected workers. The company typically provided such benefits to laid-off employees prior to Musk’s acquisition, she said.

    The severance offer would also require that employees who sign agree not to cooperate as a witness in any legal actions brought by third parties against Twitter. But they would also have to agree to cooperate on behalf of Twitter in its defense to “provide truthful information” as a witness in any legal action against the company, according to the attorneys.

    One Twitter employee laid off during the early November mass layoffs tweeted over the weekend urging fellow affected employees not to “click or accept ANYTHING in that package” without first speaking to an attorney. “For me personally, the money is one component,” they said. “It’s about principle. I strongly believe that we should be keeping people accountable for the promises that they make and failing to deliver on them.”

    To add insult to injury, at least one former employee claimed on Twitter that the severance offer went to their email’s spam folder.

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  • Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

    Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formal severance offer or separation agreement.

    One former Twitter employee told CNN that they had expected to receive some information from the company by Wednesday, the last official employment date for many workers affected by the first wave of layoffs under Musk based on state and federal notice period regulations.

    As of early Thursday, however, the former employee said they had yet to receive any documents related to a severance agreement or offer. Other laid-off employees tweeted similar remarks this week, including one who said they had “never even seen a severance letter let alone been offered severance.”

    A spokesperson for Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing hundreds of former Twitter employees, confirmed that her clients who were hit by the Twitter layoffs in early November also had yet to receive any severance information as of Thursday. “There was some anticipation that they would be sent yesterday, but we haven’t seen that,” Kevin Ready, the spokesperson, said of the severance agreements.

    “Yesterday was the official separation date for thousands of Twitter employees, and after months of chaos and uncertainty created by Elon Musk, these workers remain in the lurch,” Liss-Riordan said in a Thursday statement.

    The employee concerns come as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    The company was recently sued by a commercial landlord and a private flight company alleging Twitter has failed to pay bills. And The New York Times last month reported that Twitter was considering denying laid off employees their severance as a cost-cutting measure, citing people familiar with the talks among company leadership, adding to the sense of uncertainty for affected workers.

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations department as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the claims it has not offered or paid any severance. At the time of the layoffs, Musk promised that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance,” a time period that appears to include the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide.

    A report by Fortune on Thursday afternoon, citing an unnamed source familiar with the situation and screenshots viewed by the publication, said that Twitter planned to send severance agreements to affected employees on Thursday, although it was unclear exactly when they would go out. The severance agreements were set to provide laid off US employees with one month’s base pay and would include a provision requiring employees to waive participation in pending lawsuits against the company, according to the report.

    Liss-Riordan has filed four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter on behalf of employees affected by layoffs, with claims including that Twitter backtracked on promises to allow remote work and consistent severance benefits, as well as complaints related to alleged disability and gender-based discrimination. She has also filed three claims against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of former employees. Liss-Riordan said Thursday that she has also filed another 100 demands for arbitration against Twitter on behalf of former employees, after filing an initial 100 last month.

    Last month, the employees represented by Liss-Riordan scored an early win in court when a judge ordered Twitter to inform laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before asking them to sign any separation agreements that include a release of legal claims.

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  • Hackers post email addresses linked to 200 million Twitter accounts, security researchers say | CNN Business

    Hackers post email addresses linked to 200 million Twitter accounts, security researchers say | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Email addresses linked to more than 200 million Twitter profiles are currently circulating on underground hacker forums, security experts say. The apparent data leak could expose the real-life identities of anonymous Twitter users and make it easier for criminals to hijack Twitter accounts, the experts warned, or even victims’ accounts on other websites.

    The trove of leaked records also includes Twitter users’ names, account handles, follower numbers and the dates the accounts were created, according to forum listings reviewed by security researchers and shared with CNN.

    “Bad actors have won the jackpot,” said Rafi Mendelsohn, a spokesman for Cyabra, a social media analysis firm focused on identifying disinformation and inauthentic online behavior. “Previously private data such as emails, handles, and creation date can be leveraged to build smarter and more sophisticated hacking, phishing and disinformation campaigns.”

    Some reports suggested the data was collected in 2021 through a bug in Twitter’s systems, a flaw the company fixed in 2022 after a separate incident in July involving 5.4 million Twitter accounts alerted the company to the vulnerability.

    Troy Hunt, a security researcher, said Thursday that his analysis of the data “found 211,524,284 unique email addresses” that had been leaked. The Washington Post earlier reported a forum listing promoting the data of 235 million accounts.

    Hunt did not immediately respond to a question from CNN asking whether the records would be added to his website, haveibeenpwned.com, which allows users to search hacked records to determine if they have been affected. CNN has not independently verified the records’ authenticity.

    Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Its communication team, along with roughly half of Twitter’s overall workforce, was gutted after billionaire Elon Musk completed his acquisition the company in late October. The significant staff reductions could now add to concerns about the company’s ability to respond to security threats.

    The breadth of the leaked data could allow malicious actors or repressive governments to connect anonymous Twitter handles with the real names or email addresses of their owners, potentially unmasking dissidents, journalists, activists or other at-risk users around the world, security researchers warn.

    “For those people, this is a very consequential breach,” said John Scott-Railton, a security researcher at The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

    The account data could also be valuable to hackers who can use the information as part of password-reset attempts and account takeovers. The risk is particularly high for individuals who use the same account credentials on Twitter as they do for other digital services such as banks or cloud storage, researchers said, because hackers could take information gleaned from the leak to pry open user accounts elsewhere.

    Verified Twitter users caught up in the apparent leak, or users with particularly large followings, will be particularly valuable targets as a result of the leak, security experts warned, as those account holders may be especially influential celebrities or susceptible to extortion.

    To protect themselves from phishing attempts, internet users should use unique passwords for each online service and keep track of them using a digital password manager, security researchers say. They should also enable multi-factor authentication for each of their accounts, and exercise caution when opening unsolicited email or links.

    According to the cybersecurity news outlet BleepingComputer, which did claim to test the data, the latest dump appears similar to a leaked dataset advertised on hacking forums in November containing an alleged 400 million records, but slimmed down to eliminate some duplicate records. Twitter has not commented on that leak.

    Reports of the leak could expand Twitter’s already significant legal and regulatory risk.

    In December, Twitter’s main European privacy regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission, said it is investigating the July 2022 leak as a possible violation of Europe’s signature privacy law, known as GDPR.

    Last summer, the company’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, filed a whistleblower report to the US government alleging long-ignored security vulnerabilities in Twitter’s operations. Zatko claimed that Twitter’s shortcomings on security reflected a breach of Twitter’s binding commitments to the Federal Trade Commission, a serious offense. (Twitter broadly and repeatedly pushed back at Zatko’s allegations.)

    Successive incidents at Twitter have led to the company signing two consent orders with the FTC since 2011 to improve its cybersecurity posture. Violations of FTC orders can lead to fines, business restrictions and even sanctions targeting individual executives.

    In November, top Twitter officials responsible for privacy and security resigned from the company, just days after Musk closed his purchase of the platform and amid the mass layoffs that in some cases cut whole departments.

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  • Delta Air Lines is rolling out free Wi-Fi | CNN Business

    Delta Air Lines is rolling out free Wi-Fi | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Delta Air Lines is rolling out free Wi-Fi to most of its planes beginning February 1.

    “It’s going to be free, it’s going to be fast and its going to be available for everyone,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Thursday at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He added that the airline invested more than $1 billion in Wi-Fi technology over the past few years.

    Passengers will need to be a member of its free SkyMiles loyalty program to access the on-board internet. Customers who aren’t members will have to pay a flat fee of $10.

    More than 500 of Delta’s domestic narrow-body planes serving the airline’s “most popular routes” will be ready for free Wi-Fi at launch, the company said. Wide-body international and smaller regional jets will be coming online by the end of 2024.

    Customers will know if their flight has free Wi-Fi by a decal noting it near the boarding door. They also can connect multiple devices at one time.

    The announcement, made Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show, is several years in the making. Bastian said in 2018 that offering free Wi-Fi across its fleet was a priority, but needed time to improve the technology so passengers wouldn’t have to struggle with sluggish speeds.

    Delta currently charges nearly $50 per month for Wi-Fi on its flights within North America and $70 on international flights. It has been testing free Wi-Fi over the past several years, and made messaging free in 2017.

    In-flight internet on any airline has been long plagued by complaints for its inconsistent speeds. However, efforts by a host of satellite providers and airlines have helped the technology evolve significantly in the past decade — though it still has some catching up to do to compare to home and office networks.

    Delta is the first of the “Big Three” airlines to offer free Wi-Fi: United Airlines and American Airlines

    (AAL)     both charge varying rates for access. JetBlue

    (JBLU)     has offered free Wi-Fi since 2017.

    The airline is beting that adding free W-Fi could make passengers more loyal to Delta and further grow its loyalty program, which has about 100 million members. In October 2022, Delta partnered with Starbucks

    (SBUX)     and began awarding 1 mile for every $1 spent at the coffee chain.

    Bastian predicted that partnership would add 1 million SkyMiles members within a year. However, Delta ended up adding 1 million new members within two weeks of its launch.

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  • LinkedIn is having a moment thanks to a wave of layoffs | CNN Business

    LinkedIn is having a moment thanks to a wave of layoffs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In a normal year at this time, a typical LinkedIn feed might be full of posts about year-end reflections on leadership and professional goals and suggested lifehacks for the year ahead — possibly with a few posts from CMOs offering tips on brand strategy, for good measure.

    Those posts are still there. But mixed in are many others about job hunts, offers of support for laid off friends and colleagues, and advice for coping with career hurdles in an uncertain economic environment.

    Some LinkedIn users affected by recent layoffs have formed groups on the site aimed at providing assistance, coordinating around signing exit paperwork and aiding with connections for new jobs. One LinkedIn group of employees affected by the November layoffs at Facebook-parent Meta, for example, now has more than 200 members. Even bosses who are doing the laying off have turned to LinkedIn to explain themselves and seek support or advice, as one marketing CEO did in a post alongside a tearful selfie last year (to mixed results).

    If the first year of the pandemic was marked by widespread layoffs in lower paying retail and services jobs, the past few months have been defined by something different: the prospect of a white-collar recession. Even as the overall job market remains strong, there has been a wave of recent layoffs in the tech and media industries — which just so happen to make up a core part of LinkedIn’s user base. Suddenly, the normally staid professional network has become both a vital lifeline for recently laid off workers and a surprisingly lively social platform.

    The LinkedIn mobile app was downloaded an estimated 58.4 million times worldwide in 2022 across the Google Play and Apple app stores, up 10% from the prior year, according to research firm Sensor Tower.

    The number of posts on LinkedIn mentioning “open to work” were up 22% during November compared to the same period in the prior year, according to data provided by the company. LinkedIn says it also saw a steady increase in the rate of users adding connections last year compared to the year prior, a sign that users were more active on the platform.

    The uptick in use appears to have been good for LinkedIn’s business. The platform posted 17% year-over-year revenue growth in the three months ended in September, according to parent company Microsoft’s most recent earnings report. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts in the October earnings call that LinkedIn was seeing “record engagement” among its 875 million members, with growth accelerating especially in international markets.

    Some of LinkedIn’s momentum may predate the wave of layoffs. “There’s been an uptick in [LinkedIn use] since the pandemic,” said Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor and social media expert at Syracuse University. “You had to do social distancing and we were quarantining and people were working remotely so there was a shift in real-life networking possibilities.”

    LinkedIn rose to the occasion — and now it may be rising to another one.

    Even apart from the layoffs, the social media landscape has been through a volatile year. Facebook and Instagram have been criticized by users for racing to turn their services into TikTok. TikTok has been criticized over concerns that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. And after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter late last year, the platform has been criticized for morphing into a possible haven for its most incendiary users.

    But LinkedIn remains, as ever, LinkedIn — and at this moment, with fears of a looming recession and career concerns top of mind, LinkedIn may be just what the digital world needs.

    Grygiel said many people working in media or academia are likely now looking for somewhere to build and engage in professional communities other than Twitter. And while upstart Twitter alternatives like Mastodon have experienced a surge in growth, they still don’t have the same sort of network effect that comes with a legacy platform’s broad user base.

    LinkedIn in recent years has leaned into courting influencers who regularly post content to the site, potentially giving users more reasons to visit. And the platform has been growing its “learning” section, which provides video courses taught by various industry experts and which the company says experienced a 17% increase in hours spent as of November compared to the year prior. But lately it appears users have more than enough reason to use LinkedIn amid a wave of thousands of layoffs.

    Perhaps the clearest and most public examples of LinkedIn’s new centrality came from rival social networks like Twitter.

    In the wake of Twitter’s November mass layoffs — in which half the company was terminated, followed by additional firings and exits — many former and remaining employees took to LinkedIn, rather than the platform they had built, to seek support, community and new opportunities.

    One group of Twitter employees created a spreadsheet of laid-off workers from the company alongside recruiters hiring for other firms, and used LinkedIn to help facilitate sign-ups. Another pair of former Twitter employees set up a system to connect job hunters with recruitment professionals open to volunteering to provide free resume review and interview prep services, which they promoted through LinkedIn.

    “We completely understand how the job-hunting process can be scary and overwhelming … While we can’t guarantee where your next opportunity will be or when it will come, we can offer guidance, so you will be ready for that opportunity when it arrives,” Darnell Gilet, a former Twitter senior technical recruiter who helped coordinate the effort, said in a LinkedIn post.

    Gilet, who was affected by the mass layoffs at Twitter in November following Elon Musk’s takeover, told CNN last month that around 28 different recruiters and talent acquisition professionals had agreed to participate in the system, and that he himself had spoken to nearly two dozen job seekers since shortly after he was laid off to offer advice and support. He said LinkedIn seemed like the obvious place to promote the service.

    “Chaos creates opportunity for somebody, right?” Gilet said. “People are getting laid off and you have this recession that’s looming, the ideal place … that would have the greatest growth opportunity from that would be a platform that’s focused on careers like LinkedIn. So it makes perfect sense.”

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  • With its advertising business in crisis, Twitter eases ban on political ads | CNN Business

    With its advertising business in crisis, Twitter eases ban on political ads | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    More than three years ago, Twitter prohibited political and issue-based ads amid broader concerns that politicians could pay to target social media users with false or misleading information.

    Now, under its new owner Elon Musk, the company is easing that ban, in a move that could provide Twitter a much-needed sales boost at a time when Musk is urgently searching for new revenue streams. But it comes with some risks: the policy change could expose users to threats the company has previously said it may not be able to address, including spreading AI-created deep fakes and other sophisticated attempts to manipulate the platform.

    On Tuesday, Twitter announced it would relax its ban on issue ads, saying “cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics.” Twitter added that it would “expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks,” with a pledge to share “more details as this work progresses.” The company said its advertising policies going forward would resemble those of other media, including television.

    Political advertising has never been a significant source of revenue for the company — it made less than $3 million from political ads in 2018, the year before the ban took effect. But Musk needs every little bit of revenue he can find.

    Since his takeover of the company in October, numerous brands have paused their advertising on Twitter amid fears that Musk’s approach to content moderation could lead to ads appearing beside hate speech and other incendiary content. In November, as the company underwent mass layoffs to cut costs, Musk claimed that Twitter was losing $4 million a day.

    Musk, who has previously expressed his dislike of advertising generally, has tried to improve Twitter’s financial position by rushing out a controversial subscription option to pay for a verified account, among other paid perks. But advertising has historically made up nearly all of Twitter’s revenue, and replacing it could take a long time.

    Welcoming paid issue advocacy and political advertising to the platform once more could ease some of the effects of the advertiser revolt. It could also give new political candidates a leg up against established incumbents by allowing them to increase their exposure through paid promotion.

    But it may also lead to some of the unintended consequences former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey warned about when he first announced the advertising restrictions in 2019.

    At the time, Dorsey said internet advertising is not at all like traditional forms of advertising because it enables new ways to target individuals with specific messages. It also opens up new opportunities for malicious actors to use technology to game the system.

    “Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale,” Dorsey said.

    Until now, Twitter’s approach to political advertising diverged from that of Facebook, which has attracted widespread criticism for its policy exempting political ads from fact-checking — effectively allowing politicians to lie in ads. Now Twitter’s change could create an environment that’s more similar to Facebook’s.

    Misinformation and platform manipulation are not unique to social media or to political messaging, Dorsey previously argued, but allowing money into the equation will complicate efforts to limit the impact of those harms.

    Now, after Twitter has laid off big chunks of its staff, including those who handle trust, safety and content moderation, the company may be even less equipped to deal with the potential fallout.

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