Tag: iab-internet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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April 12, 2021
LinkedIn to cut 716 jobs and shut its China app amid ‘challenging’ economic climate | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
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LinkedIn, the world’s largest social media platform for professionals, is cutting 716 positions and shutting down its jobs app in mainland China, the California-based company announced.

The decision was made amid shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth, CEO Ryan Roslansky said Monday in a letter to employees.

“As we guide LinkedIn through this rapidly changing landscape, we are making changes to our Global Business Organization and our China strategy that will result in a reduction of roles for 716 employees,” he said.

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft

(MSFT), has joined a slew of US tech companies that have made significant job cuts this year. Meta announced in March an additional 10,000 layoffs on top of mass layoffs announced in 2022. Amazon also said during the same month it would eliminate 9,000 positions, on the heels of the 18,000 roles the company announced it was cutting in January.

“As we plan for [the fiscal year of 2024], we’re expecting the macro environment to remain challenging,” Roslansky said. “We will continue to manage our expenses as we invest in strategic growth areas.”

As part of the move, LinkedIn will phase out InCareer, its app for mainland China, by August 9.

Roslansky cited “fierce competition” and “a challenging macroeconomic climate” as the reason for the shutdown.

LinkedIn will retain some presence in China, including providing services for companies operating there to hire and train employees outside the country, according to a company spokesperson.

LinkedIn is the last major Western social media app still operating in mainland China. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube have been banned in the country for more than a decade. Google left in early 2010.

LinkedIn first entered China in 2014 by launching a localized version of its main app. But its moves to censor posts in the country, in accordance with Chinese laws, came under criticism.

In March 2021, LinkedIn had to suspend signups in China to ensure it was “in compliance with local law.” A few months later, it replaced that app with InCareer, which was focused solely on job postings, with no social networking features such as sharing or commenting.

The US social media site has faced tough competition in China. By 2021, it had more than 50 million members in the country, making it the company’s third biggest market after the United States and India. But it lagged behind local competitors such as Maimai.

Maimai was launched in 2013 and dubbed the Chinese version of LinkedIn. In a few years it surpassed LinkedIn to become the most popular professional networking platform in the country, with 110 million verified members. A major feature that powered its success was that it allowed users to post anonymously in a chat forum.

The operating environment in China has also become more challenging. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he has tightened control over what can be said online and launched a series of crackdowns on the internet.

“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” LinkedIn wrote in an October 2021 blog post. “We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

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April 12, 2021
Meta threatens to pull news content in California if bill to pay publishers passes | CNN Business

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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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April 12, 2021
The largest newspaper publisher in the US sues Google, alleging online ad monopoly | CNN Business

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Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, is suing Google, alleging the tech giant holds a monopoly over the digital ad market.

The publisher of USA Today and more than 200 local publications filed the lawsuit in a New York federal court on Tuesday, and is seeking unspecified damages. Gannett argues in court documents that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, controls how publishers buy and sell ads online.

“The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits,” the lawsuit states.

Google controls about a quarter of the US digital advertising market, with Meta, Amazon and TikTok combining for another third, according to eMarketer. News publishers and other websites combine for the other roughly 40%. Big Tech’s share of the market is beginning to erode slightly, but Google remains by far the largest individual player.

That means publishers often rely at least in part on Google’s advertising technology to support their operations: Gannett says Google controls 90% of the ad market for publishers.

Michael Reed, Gannett’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement Tuesday that Google’s dominance in the online advertising industry has come “at the expense of publishers, readers and everyone else.”

“Digital advertising is the lifeblood of the online economy,” Reed added. “Without free and fair competition for digital ad space, publishers cannot invest in their newsrooms.”

Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, told CNN that the claims in the suit “are simply wrong.”

“Publishers have many options to choose from when it comes to using advertising technology to monetize – in fact, Gannett uses dozens of competing ad services, including Google Ad Manager,” Taylor said in a statement Tuesday. “And when publishers choose to use Google tools, they keep the vast majority of revenue.”

He continued: “We’ll show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online.”

The legal action from Gannett comes as Google faces a growing number of antitrust complaints in the United States and the European Union over its advertising business, which remains its central moneymaker.

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

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

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April 12, 2021
China-based hackers breached US government email accounts, Microsoft and White House say | CNN Politics

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CNN
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China-based hackers have breached email accounts at two-dozen organizations, including some United States government agencies, in an apparent spying campaign aimed at acquiring sensitive information, according to statements from Microsoft and the White House late Tuesday.

The full scope of the hack is being investigated, but US officials and Microsoft have been quietly scrambling in recent weeks to assess the impact of the hack, which targeted unclassified email systems, and contain the fallout.

The federal agency where the Chinese hackers were first detected was the State Department, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. The State Department then reported the suspicious activity to Microsoft, the person said.

The Department of Commerce, which has sanctioned Chinese telecom firms, was also breached. The hackers accessed Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s email account, one source familiar with the investigation told CNN. The Washington Post first reported on the access of the secretary’s account.

The Chinese hackers were detected targeting a small number of federal agencies and just a handful of officials’ email accounts at each agency in a hack aimed at specific officials, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

“Microsoft notified the (Commerce) Department of a compromise to Microsoft’s Office 365 system, and the Department took immediate action to respond,” a department spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.

The spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the targeting of Raimondo’s email account.

The hackers targeted email accounts at the House of Representatives, but it was unclear who was targeted and if the breach attempts were successful, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The breaches add to what is already one of the steepest cybersecurity challenges facing the Biden administration: limiting the ability of Beijing’s formidable hacking teams to access US government and corporate secrets.

“Last month, US government safeguards identified an intrusion in Microsoft’s cloud security, which affected unclassified systems,” National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said in a statement to CNN.

“Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in their cloud service,” Hodge said. “We continue to hold the procurement providers of the US Government to a high security threshold.”

The State Department “detected anomalous activity, took immediate steps to secure our systems, and will continue to closely monitor and quickly respond to any further activity,” a department spokesperson said on Wednesday.

US Capitol Police declined to comment, referring CNN to the FBI.

Hodge did not identify who was behind the hack, but Microsoft executives said in a blog post that the hackers were based in China and focused on espionage.

In response to the Microsoft and White House statements, the Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday accused Washington of conducting its own hacking operations.

US officials have consistently labeled China as the most advanced of US adversaries in cyberspace, a domain that has repeatedly been a source of bilateral tension in recent years. The FBI has said Beijing has a larger hacking program than all other governments combined.

China has routinely denied the allegations.

The hacking began in mid-May, when the China-based hackers used a stolen sign-in key to burrow their way into email accounts, according to Microsoft. The tech giant has since blocked the hackers from accessing customer emails using that technique, Microsoft said late Tuesday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in mid-June, but it was not immediately clear if the cyber-espionage campaign was connected to that high-stakes visit.

Some US officials credited the State Department with investing in more cyber-defense capabilities, allowing the agency to detect the suspicious activity earlier than in past advanced hacks.

The number of US organizations, public or private, impacted by the hacking campaign is in the “single digits,” a senior US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official told reporters on Wednesday.

“This appears to have been a very targeted, surgical campaign,” the official said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

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CNN
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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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April 12, 2021
Google-parent stock drops on fears it could lose search market share to AI-powered rivals | CNN Business

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CNN
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Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell more than 3% in early trading Monday after a report sparked concerns that its core search engine could lose market share to AI-powered rivals, including Microsoft’s Bing.

Last month, Google employees learned that Samsung was weighing making Bing the default search engine on its devices instead of Google’s search engine, prompting a “panic” inside the company, according to a report from the New York Times, citing internal messages and documents. (CNN has not reviewed the material.)

In an effort to address the heightened competition, Google is said to be developing a new AI-powered search engine called Project “Magi,” according to the Times. The company, which reportedly has about 160 people working on the project, aims to change the way results appear in Google Search and will include an AI chat tool available to answer questions. The project is expected to be unveiled to the public next month, according to the report.

In a statement sent to CNN, Google spokesperson Lara Levin said the company has been using AI for years to “improve the quality of our results” and “offer entirely new ways to search,” including with a feature rolled out last year that lets users search by combining images and words.

“We’ve done so in a responsible and helpful way that maintains the high bar we set for delivering quality information,” Levin said. “Not every brainstorm deck or product idea leads to a launch, but as we’ve said before, we’re excited about bringing new AI-powered features to Search, and will share more details soon.”

Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google’s search engine has dominated the market for two decades. But the viral success of ChatGPT, which can generate compelling written responses to user prompts, appeared to put Google on defense for the first time in years.

In March, Google began opening up access to Bard, its new AI chatbot tool that directly competes with ChatGPT and promises to help users outline and write essay drafts, plan a friend’s baby shower, and get lunch ideas based on what’s in the fridge.

At an event in February, a Google executive also said the company will bring “the magic of generative AI” directly into its core search product and use artificial intelligence to pave the way for the “next frontier of our information products.”

Microsoft, meanwhile, has invested in and partnered with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to deploy similar technology in Bing and other productivity tools. Other tech companies, including Meta, Baidu and IBM, as well as a slew of startups, are racing to develop and deploy AI-powered tools.

But tech companies face risks in embracing this technology, which is known to make mistakes and “hallucinate” responses. That’s particularly true when it comes to search engines, a product that many use to find accurate and reliable information.

Google was called out after a demo of Bard provided an inaccurate response to a question about a telescope. Shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet fell 7.7% that day, wiping $100 billion off its market value.

Microsoft’s Bing AI demo was also called out for several errors, including an apparent failure to differentiate between the types of vacuums and even made up information about certain products.

In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai stressed the need for companies to “be responsible in each step along the way” as they build and release AI tools.

For Google, he said, that means allowing time for “user feedback” and making sure the company “can develop more robust safety layers before we build, before we deploy more capable models.”

He also expressed his belief that these AI tools will ultimately have broad impacts on businesses, professions and society.

“This is going to impact every product across every company and so that’s, that’s why I think it’s a very, very profound technology,” he said. “And so, we are just in early days.”

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April 12, 2021
Jack Dorsey no longer thinks Elon Musk is the right person to run Twitter | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
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Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey backtracked Saturday on his earlier endorsement of Elon Musk as the right choice to lead the company, speaking out against the billionaire who, for the past six months, has led Twitter through a series of largely self-inflicted crises.

Asked on Bluesky, Dorsey’s new Twitter-like social media venture, whether he believed Musk has been the best possible steward of Twitter, Dorsey said flatly: “No.”

Dorsey added that Musk “should have walked away” from acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, and faulted Twitter’s board in hindsight for trying to compel Musk to follow through with the deal despite Musk’s attempts to back out of the purchase last year.

“It all went south,” Dorsey said. “But it happened and all we can do now is build something to avoid that ever happening again.”

Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under Musk, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under Musk, Twitter has slashed most of its staff, suffered frequent service disruptions and made a number of controversial changes to its policies and features, including a recent decision to remove blue checks from VIP users who don’t pay to be verified.

Dorsey’s reflections, outlined in Bluesky posts reviewed by CNN, highlight the Twitter founder’s growing disillusionment with Musk. They also come after numerous exchanges in recent months where Dorsey has publicly questioned some of Musk’s decision-making.

A year ago, Dorsey was quick to heap praise on Musk. When Musk’s deal to purchase Twitter was first announced, Dorsey said that so long as Twitter had to be owned by a single person or company, “Elon is the singular solution I trust.”

“I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” Dorsey proclaimed at the time.

Dorsey also rolled over his more than 18 million shares in Twitter (a roughly 2.4% stake) into the new Musk-owned company as an equity investor, rather than receiving a cash payout, according to a securities filing after the deal was completed.

Now, though, Dorsey appears to believe Musk was an imperfect choice. Confronted by criticism from other Bluesky users that Twitter could have gone in a different direction, Dorsey argued that there was nothing stopping someone else from outbidding Musk.

“If Elon or anyone wanted to buy the company, all they had to do was name a price that the board felt was better than what the company could do independently,” he said. “This is true for every public company.”

Asked whether he felt any responsibility for the role he played in the transaction, Dorsey, who served on Twitter’s board at the time, said he was not the only person who authorized the deal and that Twitter’s “only alternative” to Musk was an acquisition by “hedge funds and Wall Street activists.”

“The company would have never survived as a public company,” Dorsey claimed, adding: “I wish it were different,” but that some of Twitter’s revenue initiatives prior to Musk’s takeover “would not have mattered given market turn.”

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April 12, 2021
Chinese police detain man for allegedly using ChatGPT to spread rumors online | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
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Police in China have detained a man they say used ChatGPT to create fake news and spread it online, in what state media has called the country’s first criminal case related to the AI chatbot.

According to a statement from police in the northwest province of Gansu, the suspect allegedly used ChatGPT to generate a bogus report about a train crash, which he then posted online for profit. The article received about 15,000 views, the police said in Sunday’s statement.

ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft

(MSFT)-backed OpenAI, is banned in China, though internet users can use virtual private networks (VPN) to access it.

Train crashes have been a sensitive issue in China since 2011, when authorities faced pressure to explain why state media had failed to provide timely updates on a bullet train collision in the city of Wenzhou that resulted in 40 deaths.

Gansu authorities said the suspect, surnamed Hong, was questioned in the city of Dongguan in southern Guangdong province on May 5.

“Hong used modern technology to fabricate false information, spreading it on the internet, which was widely disseminated,” the Gansu police said in the statement.

“His behavior amounted to picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” they added, explaining the offense that Hong was accused of committing.

Police said the arrest was the first in Gansu since China’s Cyberspace Administration enacted new regulations in January to rein in the use of deep fakes. State broadcaster CGTN says it was the country’s first arrest of a person accused of using ChatGPT to fabricate and spread fake news.

Formally known as deep synthesis, deep fake refers to highly realistic textual and visual content generated by artificial intelligence.

The new legislation bars users from generating deep fake content on topics already prohibited by existing laws on China’s heavily censored internet. It also outlines take down procedures for content considered false or harmful.

The arrest also came amid a 100-day campaign launched by the internet branch of the Ministry of Public Security in March to crack down on the spread of internet rumors.

Since the beginning of the year, Chinese internet giants such as Baidu

(BIDU) and Alibaba

(BABA)have sought to catch up with OpenAI, launching their own versions of the ChatGPT service.

Baidu unveiled “Wenxin Yiyan” or “ERNIE Bot” in March. Two months later, Alibaba launched “Tongyi Qianwen,” which roughly translates as seeking truth by asking a thousand questions.

In draft guidelines issued last month to solicit public feedback, China’s cyberspace regulator said generative AI services would be required to undergo security reviews before they can operate.

Service providers will also be required to verify users’ real identities, as well as providing details about the scale and type of data they use, their basic algorithms and other technical information.

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April 12, 2021
Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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April 12, 2021
Twitter accused of failing to pay millions in employee bonuses after Musk takeover | CNN Business

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CNN
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Twitter failed to pay out annual bonuses to staff after its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk despite repeated assurances from executives in the lead-up to the deal closing that the company would do so, according to a new lawsuit filed on behalf of employees.

The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday by Mark Schobinger, who was a senior director of compensation at Twitter until he left the company late last month. The suit is seeking class action status for former and current Twitter employees who did not receive their 2022 bonus.

“We estimate about a couple thousand employees would have been eligible for the bonuses,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing Schobinger, said in a statement to CNN. “While I don’t have an exact number, we expect the amount owed is in the tens of millions.”

Twitter, which has cut much of is public relations team, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The complaint states that after it was announced that Musk was acquiring the social media company last April, “many employees raised concerns” over the fate of “their compensation and annual bonus” if and when the deal closed.

In the months leading up to Musk completing his acquisition of Twitter, company executives repeatedly promised employees that 2022 bonuses would be paid out at 50% of the target, according to the complaint. “The promise was repeated following Musk’s acquisition,” the complaint said.

Despite the promises, however, Twitter has yet to pay out bonuses, the lawsuit says. Schobinger left the company last month following “Twitter’s reneging on various promises it had made to employees, including its failure to pay promised bonuses,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions taken by former Twitter employees after Musk’s acquired the company and slashed 80% of the staff in an urgent bid to cut costs.

Liss-Riordan previously brought multiple proposed class action suits against Twitter, including on behalf of female employees and disabled employees. Another suit was filed by a group of former employees who accused Twitter of breach of contract because it allegedly failed to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits after the acquisition.

Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit brought by former employees about remote work and severance. The proposed class action suits on behalf of female and disabled employees were dismissed by federal judges last month. The suits were later refiled.

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April 12, 2021
Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

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CNN
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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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April 12, 2021
Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say | CNN Business

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Nairobi, Kenya
CNN
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Former employees of Twitter Africa who were laid off as part of a global cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk’s acquisition have not received any severance pay more than seven months since leaving the company, several sources told CNN.

In late May, the former employees, who were based in the Ghanaian capital Accra, accepted Twitter’s

(TWTR) offer to pay them three months worth of severance, the cost of repatriating foreign staff and legal expenses incurred during negotiations with the company, but they have not received the money or any further communication, the sources said.

“They literally ghosted us,” one former Twitter Africa employee told CNN.

“Although Twitter has eventually settled former staff in other locations, Africa staff have still been left in the lurch despite us eventually agreeing to specific negotiated terms.”

The former employees say they reluctantly agreed to the severance package without benefits, even though it was less than what colleagues elsewhere received.

“Twitter was non-responsive until we agreed to the three months because we were all so stressed and exhausted and tired of the uncertainty, reluctant to take on the extra burdens of a court case so we felt we had no choice but to settle,” another former employee told CNN.

The former employees spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because they said they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of their exit terms.

According to Carla Olympio, an attorney who is representing the former employees, the last communication from Twitter or its lawyers was in May, shortly after settlement was agreed.

CNN reached out to Twitter for comment on the status of the severance package for the former employees in the Ghana office but received an automated response – a poop emoji. It’s unclear whether Twitter still has a media relations department.

In March, Musk tweeted that Twitter would respond to all press inquiries with the poop emoji. He completed a deal to buy the social media platform in October.

CNN also asked Ghana’s Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations for comment. A spokesperson said they are investigating the claims.

Whether Ghanaian authorities can compel Twitter to comply with the settlement is uncertain. The former employees and their attorney say the offer was never finalized.

The dozen or so team members were laid off just four days after the social network opened a physical office in Accra last November.

Some of them said they had moved to Ghana from other African nations, and depended on their jobs at Twitter to support their legal status in the country.

“Unfortunately, it appears that after having unethically implemented their terminations in violation of their own promises and Ghana’s laws, dragging the negotiation process out for over half a year, now that we have come to the point of almost settlement, there has been complete silence from them for several weeks,” Olympio said.

Twitter and Musk face multiple lawsuits where plaintiffs are claiming the company has failed to pay former staffers what they are owed.

Last week, a former US employee filed a proposed class action lawsuit claiming the company didn’t pay the full amount of severance benefits it promised last November prior to mass layoffs.

The plaintiff said Twitter promised senior employees severance of six months of base pay plus one week for every year of service, in addition to other benefits. Instead, the plaintiff said they received a total of three months of pay, according to the lawsuit. In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, Twitter sent CNN an automated poop emoji.

In April, Musk told the BBC more than 6,000 people had been laid off since he completed his acquisition of the company in late October.

“We’re exploring our options with respect to causes of action against Twitter in various jurisdictions including Ghana,” Olympio told CNN.

Twitter did not open negotiations with the African team until after CNN reported in November that they had been offered separation terms that differed from those offered to departing staff in Europe and North America.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
—

Elon Musk’s move over the weekend to rebrand Twitter and replace its iconic bird logo with an X is just the latest step in his effort to make over the billionaire’s longtime favorite platform in his image.

When Musk bought Twitter late last year, he laid out a vision for an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more. Last June — prior to his takeover — Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like China’s WeChat, where he said users “basically live on” the app because “it’s so usable and helpful to daily life.”

The vision for the rebrand may go all the way back to Musk’s creation of the original X.com in 1999, which Musk hoped would be an all-in-one financial platform and which eventually became PayPal.

Despite Musk’s longstanding ambitions — and the heightened stakes since he shelled out $44 billion to purchase the social network — ditching Twitter’s branding in service of a future super app is a significant risk.

Twitter still has a long way to go if Musk wants to build out the kind of services WeChat is known for — everything from ordering groceries and booking yoga classes to paying bills and chatting with friends. And that’s not to mention the financial and competitive challenges the company faces merely existing in its current form, let alone launching a massive expansion. It’s also not clear how much demand there is for such a super app outside of China, given that efforts by other platforms to simply sell users on added shopping features have been slow to take off.

“While Musk’s vision is to turn ‘X’ into an ‘everything app,’ this takes time, money, and people -— three things that the company no longer has,” Mike Proulx, research director and vice president at Forrester, said in an investor note. By ditching Twitter’s name, Proulx added, Musk “will have singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” leaving him to start fresh at a precarious time for the company.

The X branding has already started taking over Twitter.

Musk — who bought Twitter with a company called X Corp. — tweeted on Sunday that X.com now redirects to Twitter. (Musk reportedly bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017.)

On Sunday night, the new stylized X logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters. And by Monday, the bird logo had been replaced by an X on Twitter’s website. Musk even told followers that tweets should instead be called “x’s.”

On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to confirm Musk’s vision for the company. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

Walter Isaacson, the legendary tech journalist who has been shadowing Musk to write his biography, tweeted on Sunday that Musk told him even before the Twitter acquisition that he wanted to use the social platform to fulfill his original, decades-old vision for X.com. “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” Musk texted Isaacson at 3:30 a.m. one morning last October, just ahead of his takeover, according to the writer.

On Monday, Musk explained the move in a tweet saying, “The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.”

“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context.”

(The rebrand also seems to be a continuation of a sort of obsession with the letter “X,” which also features in the name of one of Tesla’s cars, the Model X; the name of his rocket company, SpaceX; the name of his new artificial intelligence firm, xAI; and the name of two of his children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl.)

In recent weeks, Twitter has quietly begun its effort to build out a payments business called Twitter Payments — the company was granted money transmitter licenses in four US states since last month, including Arizona and Michigan. Musk has discussed his desire to promote longer videos on Twitter. And he’s tried to shift Twitter’s business model away from advertising by allowing users to pay for verification, a strategy that has resulted in some chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

Still, Musk faces obvious hurdles to turning Twitter into a fully-developed super app. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has fired around 80% of its staff, scared away many of the advertisers that made up its core user base and frustrated many of its users with controversial policy decisions. And now, Twitter faces steep competition from Meta’s rival app Threads, which launched to stunning success, although its usage has petered off slightly in recent days.

Musk last week also said that Twitter still has negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in ad revenue.

Even if Musk does add new features to Twitter, many US tech platforms have struggled to succeed in imitating WeChat. Deloitte said in a report published last year that Western markets are unlikely to see “a single, dominant super-app like WeChat in the near term” because the services such apps would aim to bundle together, such as digital payments and ride hailing, already “have too many well-established players.”

A 2019 effort by the social media giant then known as Facebook to create its own digital currency and payments system that the company said would make it easier to buy things online officially flopped last year following intense regulatory scrutiny. And both TikTok and Instagram have reportedly scaled back their ambitions to incorporate e-commerce onto their platforms after their shopping features failed to gain significant traction with users.

And until Musk rolls out significant changes to the platform, observers of the company say ditching Twitter’s well-known brand is a risky move.

“To rebrand without significant new features seems like a desperate attempt for attention,” especially in the wake of Meta’s launch of Threads, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University. “This is akin to buying Coke and changing the bottle and name without changing the formula — likely a mistake.”

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April 12, 2021
Pentagon investigating alleged classified documents circulating on social media of US and NATO intelligence on Ukraine | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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The Pentagon is investigating what appear to be screenshots of classified US and NATO military information about Ukraine circulating on social media, a Pentagon official told CNN.

CNN has reviewed some of the images circulating on Twitter and Telegram but is unable to verify if they are authentic or have been doctored. US officials say the documents are real slides, part of a larger daily intelligence deck produced by the Pentagon about the war, but it appears the documents have been edited in some places.

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh would not weigh in on the documents’ legitimacy but said in a statement that the Defense Department is “aware of the reports of social media posts, and the Department is reviewing the matter.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said on his Telegram channel he believes the Russians are behind the purported leak. Podolyak said the documents that were disseminated are inauthentic, have “nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans” and are based on “a large amount of fictitious information.”

The emergence of the documents, whether genuine or not, has heightened focus on when the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive will begin and what, if anything, either side knows about the other’s preparations for it.

One image that has been circulating on Russian Telegram channels and was reviewed by CNN is a photo of a hard copy of a document titled “US, Allied & Partner UAF Combat Power Build.” The document, which is from February and marked as secret, lists the amounts of certain Western weapons systems that Ukraine currently has on hand, estimated delivery of additional systems and the training Ukraine has or is expected to complete on the systems.

Another is titled “Russia/Ukraine Joint Staff J3/4/5 Daily Update (D+370)” and is listed as secret. J3 refers to the operations directorate of the US military’s joint staff, J4 deals with logistics and engineering, and J5 proposes strategies, plans and policy recommendations. “D+370” refers to the date the document was produced: 370 days after the first day of the Russian invasion.

A third document is a map, listed as top secret, that shows the status of the conflict as of March 1. The map shows Russian and Ukrainian battalion locations and sizes, as well as total assessed losses on both sides. The casualty numbers on this document are what officials believe was doctored – the Russian losses are actually far higher than the “16,000-17,500 killed in action” listed on the document, officials said.

The document also says that 61,000-71,500 Ukrainians have been killed in action, a number that officials said also appeared edited to be higher than actual Pentagon estimates.

A fourth document is a weather projection from February, listed as Secret, that assesses where the ground may freeze in Ukraine in a way that would be favorable for vehicle maneuver.

The New York Times, which first disclosed the Pentagon investigation, reported that some of the images circulating online describe intelligence that could be useful to Russia, such as how quickly the Ukrainians are expending munitions used in US-provided rocket-systems.

Podolyak called the documents “a bluff, dust in your eyes” and said that “if Russia really did receive real scenario preparations, it would hardly make them public.”

“Russia is looking for any way to seize the information initiative, to try to influence the scenario plans for Ukraine’s counteroffensive,” he said. “To raise doubts, compromise previous ideas and frighten with their ‘awareness.’ But these are just standard elements of the Russian intelligence’s operational game and nothing more. It has nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans.”

Podolyak added that Russian troops “will get acquainted” with Ukraine’s real counteroffensive plans “very soon.”

Asked about the images circulating on Twitter and Telegram, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a statement that “we don’t have the slightest doubt about direct or indirect involvement of the United States and NATO in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”

“This level of involvement is rising, is rising gradually,” he said. “We keep our eye on this process. Well, of course, it makes the whole story more complicated, but it cannot influence the final outcome of the special operation.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

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April 12, 2021
FTC says Meta should be barred from monetizing data from younger users | CNN Business

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CNN
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The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Facebook-parent Meta of violating its landmark $5 billion privacy settlement and called for toughening up restrictions on the company, after alleging Meta has improperly shared user data with third parties and failed to protect children as it has promised.

The proposal to update the binding 2020 settlement with Meta marks a new front in the FTC’s long-running battle with the social media company, which has included multiple lawsuits aimed at breaking up the tech giant or preventing it from growing larger.

The FTC said Meta should be banned from monetizing data it collects from younger users. It added that the company should be barred from releasing any new features or products until a third-party auditor determines the company’s privacy policies do enough to protect users. It also called for new limitations on how Meta can use facial recognition technology.

If approved, the sweeping proposal could threaten the future of Meta’s business, including its expansion into virtual reality.

In a statement on Wednesday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the FTC proposal “a political stunt” and vowed to contest the effort.

“Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory,” Stone said. “FTC Chair Lina Khan’s insistence on using any measure – however baseless – to antagonize American business has reached a new low.”

The FTC proposal comes as policymakers at all levels of government have increasingly blamed social media for furthering a mental health crisis among young people, prompting calls for strict regulations on how tech platforms can use the personal information of users under 18, target them with automated recommendations or seek to boost their engagement in other ways. Many of those proposals have taken the form of broad-based legislation, but the FTC proposal would represent a novel approach by amending a past consent order in connection with a single company that influences more than a billion users.

As part of the FTC’s call for changes, the agency said Meta had misled the public about its compliance with the historic settlement that resolved allegations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica data fiasco, as well as prior agreements with the agency.

Meta had allowed personal information to leak to apps that users of the platform were no longer using, the FTC alleged. That data sharing, the FTC claimed, contrasted with Meta’s public statements about how it cuts off a third-party app’s access to Facebook users’ information if the users stop using the third-party app for 90 days.

The FTC also alleged that multiple coding errors in a messaging app marketed to children, Messenger Kids, allowed users to connect to “unapproved contacts” in group video calls, and that the flaws went unresolved for weeks.

Those flaws meant parents could not control who their kids were speaking to on the app, in contrast to claims by Meta that they could, according to the FTC.

In addition to being a breach of Meta’s prior settlements, the alleged violations surrounding Messenger Kids also ran afoul of a federal children’s privacy law known as COPPA, the FTC said, because parents were not provided an opportunity to give Meta their consent before the company collected information on their kids.

Meta will have 30 days to respond to the proposed findings and changes, the FTC said, before the commission votes to finalize them. The FTC can unilaterally approve updates to the settlement, but Meta would have the opportunity to appeal that move in federal court, according to an agency fact sheet.

The FTC voted 3-0 to issue the proposed findings and changes, but one commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, questioned whether the agency has the authority to impose such sweeping restrictions on Meta in light of the alleged violations.

In a statement, Bedoya said he was skeptical whether there was enough of a connection between Meta’s alleged harms and the proposed remedies to legally sustain a complete ban on monetizing the data of young users.

“I look forward to hearing additional information and arguments and will consider these issues with an open mind,” Bedoya said.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter is adding calls and encrypted messaging | CNN Business

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London
CNN
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Twitter is adding encrypted messaging to the platform Wednesday, and calls will follow shortly, CEO Elon Musk tweeted late Tuesday.

“Release of encrypted DMs [direct messages] V1.0 should happen tomorrow. This will grow in sophistication rapidly. The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head,” he said.

“Coming soon will be voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform, so you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number.”

The move comes as Musk, who took control of Twitter six months ago, looks for ways to return the platform to growth. Its future looks increasingly uncertain in the face of dwindling advertising revenue and increased competition from rivals such as Mastodon and BlueSky, developed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.

Adding calls and encrypted messaging could allow Twitter to compete with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook

(FB) Messenger and WhatsApp. Billions of people around the world use those platforms to communicate daily with family and friends, including in groups. Twitter, meanwhile, reported 238 million monetizable daily users last July.

Since taking the company private in October, Musk has turned Twitter on its head. A number of users, celebrities and media organizations have said they plan to leave the platform over recent policy changes, which they say threaten to make it less safe and reliable.

Right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday he would relaunch his program on Twitter, which he praised as the only remaining large free-speech platform in the world after Fox News fired him last month.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s head of trust and safety says she has resigned | CNN Business

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Twitter’s head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media company.

In the role, Irwin oversaw content moderation, but the company has faced criticism for lax protections against harmful content since billionaire Elon Musk acquired it in October.

Irwin’s departure also comes as the platform has struggled to keep advertisers on it, mainly as brands have been wary of appearing next to unsuitable content.

Musk announced earlier this month that he hired Linda Yaccarino, former NBCUniversal advertising chief, to become Twitter’s new CEO.

Fortune earlier reported that Irwin’s internal Slack account appeared to be deactivated.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter isn’t letting users view the site without logging in | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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Twitter appears to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account.

People without a Twitter account or who weren’t logged in used to be able to scroll the platform’s homepage and view public accounts and tweets. But as of this week, when such a user opens the platform they are met with a screen prompting them to sign up or sign in to Twitter.

Internet users began noticing the change late this week, and on Friday, multiple CNN reporters were unable to access Twitter without logging in.

It was not immediately clear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch, both of which have been common at Twitter since Musk took over the platform. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

The change comes as billionaire owner Elon Musk attempts to revamp Twitter’s business following months of challenges since his takeover late last year — now with the help of new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

Twitter’s leadership is urging advertisers to return to the platform after many fled over concerns about increased hate speech, layoffs and general questions about the company’s direction. Musk has also sought to grow subscription revenue by offering a blue verification checkmark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue service.

The restriction on public access to Twitter could be an effort to grow the platform’s user base, which has always been significantly smaller than social media rivals like Facebook and Instagram.

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April 12, 2021
DeSantis and his team unleash on Rep. Donalds for questioning Florida’s new Black history standards | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused Rep. Byron Donalds – the only Black Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation – of aligning himself with Vice President Kamala Harris by critiquing the state’s new standards for teaching Black history.

Donalds tweeted Wednesday that the new standards are “good, robust, & accurate.” But the two-term congressman added that a new requirement for middle school students to be taught that slaves learned skills they later benefited from “is wrong & needs to be adjusted.” He added that he has “faith that (Florida Department of Education) will correct this.”

In the face of that seemingly gentle criticism, DeSantis’ administration and online allies unloaded on Donalds, who has backed former President Donald Trump over his home state governor for the 2024 nomination. Jeremy Redfern, the spokesman for the governor’s office, called Donalds a “supposed conservative.” Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, replied to Donalds’ tweet: “Did Kamala Harris write this tweet?” DeSantis’ Education Commissioner Manny Diaz tweeted that Florida would “not back down … at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.”

DeSantis joined the pile on during his Iowa bus tour, telling Donalds to “stand up for your state.”

“You got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you doing to side with the state of Florida?” he said.

Responding to the blowback to his remarks, Donalds on Twitter called the online attacks aimed at him “disingenuous” and said DeSantis supporters were “desperately attempting to score political points,” adding that that is why he is “proud to have endorsed” Trump.

“What’s crazy to me is I expressed support for the vast majority of the new African American history standards and happened to oppose one sentence that seemed to dignify the skills gained by slaves as a result of their enslavement,” he wrote on Twitter.

This week’s clash with Donalds is the latest example of how the DeSantis campaign’s failure to win support from key members of his state’s GOP has come back to bite him as he runs against Trump. Last week, Rep. Greg Steube, who has also endorsed Trump, put DeSantis on blast over property insurance rates in the state continuing to soar.

“The result of the state’s top elected official failing to focus on (and be present in) Florida,” Steube said, tweeting out a headline that linked the sharp rise in premiums to DeSantis’ time in office.

The war of words between two Florida Republicans this week is all the more remarkable because of how closely aligned Donalds and DeSantis once appeared.

Donalds introduced DeSantis and his family at the governor’s election night victory party last year, heaping praise on the man he called “America’s governor.” He played DeSantis’ 2018 election opponent, Democrat Andrew Gillum, during debate preparation. DeSantis had also formed a close alliance with Donalds’ wife, a school choice advocate who received a plum appointment to the Florida Gulf Coast University board of trustees.

But there was a notable break in their relationship in April when Donalds endorsed Trump over DeSantis. Donalds had previously stated publicly he would wait on an announcement until the field was set. The decision stunned DeSantis’ political operation, which had clearly underestimated the governor’s failures to build a rapport with fellow Republicans. Ultimately most Florida Republicans in the House lined up behind Trump.

The back and forth with Donalds stems from the new standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, which were approved earlier this month by the Florida Board of Education. While education and civil rights advocates have decried many elements of the new standards as whitewashing America’s dark history, much of the national attention has focused on one passage that clarifies middle school students should learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Amid intense objections to the language, Harris responded by holding a press conference in Jacksonville where she accused Florida’s leaders of “creating these unnecessary debates.”

“This is unnecessary to debate whether enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said. “Are you kidding me? Are we supposed to debate that?”

DeSantis and state education officials have fiercely defended the new standards in recent days. Redfern and others have pointed to similar language that appeared in the course framework for a new Advanced Placement African American Studies course piloted by the College Board. Florida was widely criticized by Democrats for blocking the course from being taught in state public schools.

According to one document, the AP course intended to teach students: “In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”

The College Board said Thursday it “resolutely” disagrees with the notion that enslavement was beneficial for African Americans after some compared the content of its course to Florida’s recently approved curriculum.

On Thursday, DeSantis said the state standards are “very clear about the injustices of slavery in vivid detail.”

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April 12, 2021