ReportWire

Tag: iab-social networking

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

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

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • How Google’s long period of online dominance could end | CNN Business

    How Google’s long period of online dominance could end | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    For the better part of 15 years, Google has seemed like an unstoppable force, powered by the strength of its online search engine and digital advertising business. But both now look increasingly vulnerable.

    This week, the Justice Department accused Google of running an illegal monopoly in its online advertising business and called for parts of it to be broken up. The case comes a couple of years after the Trump administration filed a similar suit going after the tech giant’s dominance in search.

    Google said the Justice Department is “doubling down on a flawed argument” and that the latest suit “attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector.” If successful, however, both blockbuster cases could upend a business model that’s made Google the most powerful advertising company on the internet. It would be the most consequential antitrust victory against a tech giant since the US government took on Microsoft more than 20 years ago.

    But even though the lawsuits drive at the heart of Google’s revenue machine, they could take years to play out. In the meantime, two other thorny issues are poised to determine Google’s future on a potentially shorter timeframe: The rise of generative artificial intelligence and what appears to be an accelerating decline in Google’s online ad marketshare.

    Just days before the DOJ suit, Google announced plans to cut 12,000 employees amid a dramatic slowdown in its revenue growth, and as it works to refocus its efforts partly around AI.

    Google has long been synonymous with online searches; it was one of the first modern tech companies whose name would become a verb. But a new threat emerged late last year when OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, publicly released a viral new AI chatbot tool called ChatGPT.

    Users of ChatGPT have showcased the bot’s ability to create poetry, draft legal documents, write code and explain complex ideas, with little more than a simple prompt. Trained on a vast amount of online data, ChatGPT can generate lengthy responses to open-ended questions, though it’s prone to some errors, or answer simple questions – “Who was the 25th president of the United States?” – which one might have previously had to scroll through search results on Google to find.

    ChatGPT is trained on vast amounts of data and uses this to generate responses to user prompts. While ChatGPT’s underlying technology has existed for some time, the fact that anyone can create an account and experiment with the tool has led to loads of hype for generative AI and made the technology’s potential instantly understandable to millions in a way that was only abstract before. It has also reportedly prompted Google’s management to declare a “code red” situation for its search business.

    “Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money,” Paul Buchheit, one of the creators of Gmail, tweeted last year. “Even if they catch up on AI, they can’t fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business!”

    If more users begin to rely on AI for their information needs, the argument goes, it could undercut Google’s search advertising, which is part of a $149 billion business segment at the company. Media coverage of ChatGPT has doubled down on this notion, with some outlets pitting ChatGPT against Google in head-to-head tests.

    There are some reasons to doubt this nightmare scenario might play out for Google.

    For one thing, Google operates at a vastly different scale. In November, Google’s website received more than 86 billion visits, compared to less than 300 million for ChatGPT, according to the traffic analysis website SimilarWeb. (ChatGPT was released publicly in late November.) For another, even in a world where Google provides specific, AI-generated responses to user queries, it could still analyze the queries to provide search advertising, just as it does today.

    Google has its own investments in highly sophisticated artificial intelligence. One of its AI-driven chat programs, LaMDA, even became a flashpoint last year after an engineer at the company claimed it had achieved sentience. (Google has disputed the claim and fired the engineer for breaches of company policy.)

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai has reportedly told employees that even though Google has similar capabilities to ChatGPT, the company has yet to commit to giving out AI-generated search responses because of the risk of providing inaccurate information, which could be detrimental to Google in the long run.

    Google’s stance highlights both its incredible influence, as the most trusted search engine on earth, and one of the core problems of generative AI: Due to the technology’s black-box design, it’s virtually impossible to find out how the technology arrived at a specific result. For many people, and for many years to come, being able to evaluate different sources of information for themselves may trump the convenience of receiving a single answer.

    All this has taken place against the backdrop of what seems to be an extended, multi-year decline in Google’s online advertising marketshare. Google’s position in digital advertising peaked in 2017 with 34.7% of the US market, according to third-party industry estimates, and is on pace to account for 28.8% this year.

    Google isn’t the only advertising giant to experience this trend. One-off factors like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as fears of a looming recession, have broadly affected the online advertising industry. Others, like Facebook-parent Meta, have been particularly susceptible to systemic changes such as Apple’s app privacy updates restricting the amount of information marketers can access about iOS users.

    But the decline also comes as Google faces new competition in the market. Rivals including Amazon, TikTok and even Apple have been attracting an increasing share of the digital advertising pie.

    Whatever the cause, Google’s advertising business, which is still massive, seems to face growing headwinds. And those headwinds could be exacerbated if some of the predictions about generative AI come to pass, or if the Justice Department’s lawsuits ultimately weaken Google’s grip on digital advertising.

    As part of the case, the US government has asked a federal court to unwind two acquisitions that allegedly helped cement a Google monopoly in advertising. Dismantling Google’s tightly integrated ads machine will restore competition and make it harder for Google to extract monopoly profits, according to the US government.

    This and other antitrust suits — though threatening in their own right — simply add pressure to the broader dilemma facing Google as it stares down a new era of potentially tumultuous technological change.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Video: How Elon Musk’s Twitter drama impacts Tesla and how ChatGPT can be useful to students on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: How Elon Musk’s Twitter drama impacts Tesla and how ChatGPT can be useful to students on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    [ad_1]

    CNN’s Allison Morrow tells “Nightcap’s” Jon Sarlin that Elon Musk’s Twitter antics are damaging Tesla’s brand. Plus, high school teacher Cherie Shields argues that ChatGPT is an excellent teaching tool and schools are making a mistake if they ban the AI technology. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • UK’s Crown Estate sues Twitter over alleged non-payment of rent in London offices | CNN Business

    UK’s Crown Estate sues Twitter over alleged non-payment of rent in London offices | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    The Crown Estate, a British commercial property portfolio historically belonging to the monarch, began court proceedings against Twitter over the tech giant’s alleged non-payment of rent in its London offices, a spokesperson of the property business told CNN on Monday.

    The Crown Estate is run by an independent board and boasts a collection of commercial buildings and land which generate profits that are collected by the British government for public spending.

    According to the Crown Estate spokesperson, the legal action follows previous contact with Twitter regarding the rental arrears on its office space at 20 Air Street, London. Discussions between the companies are ongoing, the spokesperson added.

    CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment.

    Twitter currently faces at least one other lawsuit over unpaid rent. A commercial landlord is suing Twitter for breach of contract after the company allegedly failed to pay rent for one of its offices in San Francisco.

    The lawsuit concerns Twitter’s office space at 650 California Street, not its main headquarters on Market Street. But it came after media reports said Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, had stopped paying rent on Twitter’s office space globally — including for its headquarters — and had told employees not to pay company vendors, in an apparent effort to cut costs.

    Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, including a substantial amount of debt financing.

    – CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Felix Auger-Aliassime’s loss means every player featured in Netflix’s ‘Break Point’ is no longer in Australian Open | CNN

    Felix Auger-Aliassime’s loss means every player featured in Netflix’s ‘Break Point’ is no longer in Australian Open | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    And then there were none. Felix Auger-Aliassime’s fourth-round loss at the Australian Open means none of the stars of Netflix’s new tennis documentary ‘Break Point’ have made it through to the second week in Melbourne.

    Such poor showing from the series’ stars has led to talk of a ‘Netflix curse’ as player after player crashed out of the tournament.

    Canada’s Auger-Aliassime was the last one standing, but the sixth seed fell 6-4 3-6 6-7 (2-7) 6-7 (3-7) to the Czech underdog Jiri Lehecka.

    The first five episodes of the documentary, which focuses on the next generation of tennis stars, was streamed earlier this month.

    Its aim is to showcase the sport’s younger talent to the world, the ones tipped to step out of the shadows of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic (and, at the time of filming, Roger Federer and Serena Williams as they hadn’t yet retired).

    Maria Sakkari, Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud, Matteo Berrettini, Ons Jabeur, Thanasi Kokkinakis have all been eliminated from the first grand slam of the year – which began on January 16 – while Nick Kyrgios, Ajla Tomljanovic and Paula Badosa withdrew before the start of the tournament because of injuries.

    It means none of the show’s players, who have all featured in the world’s top 10 at some point in their careers, have made it to the quarterfinals.

    Speaking earlier this week, Auger-Aliassime laughed off talk of a so-called curse.

    “I thought it was funny,” he told reporters. “I don’t know; I don’t think it’s connected.

    “Maybe the players that lost, maybe they do feel like it’s connected, somehow. I don’t think they do. I don’t think it’s connected, anyhow. It’s funny how things work out sometimes.”

    The hashtag ‘NetflixCurse’ has been trending on Twitter, with many users writing that the “Netflix curse is now complete” following the Canadian’s exit.

    Earlier this week, Netflix’s UK & Ireland Twitter account tweeted: “To clarify: this is purely a coincidence,” in response to a tweet about the so-called curse.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Teachers are adapting to concerns about a powerful new AI tool | CNN Business

    Teachers are adapting to concerns about a powerful new AI tool | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    When Kristen Asplin heard about a powerful new AI chatbot tool called ChatGPT going viral online recently with its ability to write frighteningly good essays in seconds, she worried about how her students could use it to cheat.

    Asplin, a professor at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, soon joined a new Facebook group for teachers like herself to swap concerns and suggestions on how to restructure their lessons and assignments in response to ChatGPT. The tool, which launched in late November, can create detailed responses to simple prompts like “Who was the 25th president of the United States?” as well as answers to more complex questions like “What political developments led to the fall of the Roman Empire?”

    Asplin eventually decided to tweak her approach to written assignments. Instead of focusing just on the final product, which could potentially be spit out easily by ChatGPT, she’s now asking students to hand in their papers at various stages of the writing process.

    “I am emphasizing and being more vigilant about the early steps in the writing process so I can see their progress,” Asplin said about her new approach to class assignments. “This will give students more confidence in the process of writing so they are less likely to be desperate enough to cheat. It will also show me their work along the way so they can’t just type a prompt in the program and have the computer do their work for them.”

    In the weeks since the artificial intelligence research group OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which is trained on a massive trove of information online to create its responses, the tool has been used to write articles (with more than a couple factual inaccuracies) for at least one news publication; penned lyrics in the style of various artists (one of whom later responded, “this song sucks”) and drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists.

    But while many may view the tool as a novelty with unknown long-term consequences, a growing number of schools and teachers are concerned about its immediate impact on students and their ability to cheat on assignments. The Facebook group that Asplin joined, for example, has added more than 800 members in just the few weeks since it was created.

    Some educators are now moving with remarkable speed to rethink their assignments in response to ChatGPT, even as it remains unclear how widespread use is of the tool among students and how harmful it could really be to learning. In interviews with CNN, some college instructors said they are shifting back to in-classroom essays for the first time in years, and others are requiring more personalized essays. Some teachers said they’ve also heard of students being required to film short videos that elaborate on their thought process. Public schools in New York City and Seattle, meanwhile, have already banned students and teachers from using ChatGPT on the district’s networks and devices.

    While there have been some anecdotes of cheating cases circling the internet and stirring fears of more to come, some teachers are urging their peers not to overreact to a new technology.

    “There’s been a mass hysteria response to ChatGPT potentially ruining writing, while other people think it’s actually a good thing,” said Alan Reid, an associate professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. “We have to try to straddle the two sides and recognize the drawbacks alongside the positives.”

    In recent weeks, Kevin Pittle, an associate professor at Biola University in California, has found himself thinking about what ChatGPT knows.

    “Before assigning materials, I thoroughly interrogate ChatGPT to see what it does or does not ‘know’ about the material or have access to,” he said. With that in mind, he said he’s now requiring his students to show citations of specific sources that are unavailable to ChatGPT, including textbooks, articles behind paywalls, and materials produced after ChatGPT was trained on internet data available as of 2021.

    And he’s not stopping there.

    “ChatGPT doesn’t ‘have soul’ – its fictional reflections are generally pretty lifeless – so in one course I am requiring much more ‘soul-searching’ and reflective journaling than ChatGPT seems able to fake,” he said.

    OpenAI previously told CNN it made ChatGPT available as a preview to learn from real world use. A spokesperson called that step a “critical part of developing and deploying capable, safe AI systems.”

    “We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system,” the spokesperson said. “We look forward to working with educators on useful solutions, and other ways to help teachers and students benefit from artificial intelligence.”

    Some companies such as Turnitin are already actively working on ChatGPT plagiarism detection tools that could help teachers identify when assignments are written by the tool. (Turnitin already works with 16,000 schools, publishers and corporations with its other plagiarism detection tools). Princeton student Edward Tuan told CNN more than 95,000 people have already tried the beta version of his own ChatGPT detection feature, called ZeroGPT, noting there has been “incredible demand among teachers” so far.

    The concern extends beyond the United States. Alex Steel, the director of teaching strategy and a professor of law at the University of New South Wales, said a number of universities across Australia have announced a move back to closed book exams.

    “There is an increasing number of academics concerned that they will not be able to detect AI-written answers,” he told CNN. “Partly the concerns are driven by a lack of understanding from teachers of what sort of questions might be susceptible … so staff may push for return to exams until [these issues] can be addressed.”

    Not all teachers are looking for ways to crack down on ChatGPT. Reid, the professor at Coastal Carolina University, believes teachers should work with ChatGPT and teach best practices in the classroom.

    Reid said teachers could encourage students to plug an assignment question into the tool and have them compare that result to what they personally wrote. “This could also allow a teaching opportunity for students to see what they missed, analyze the various approaches they could have taken or use it as a starting point to help with an outline,” Reid said.

    He argued there will always be ways for students to cheat online, so teaching them how ChatGPT may improve their own writing could be a practical step forward.

    “The burden falls onto the educators – and many don’t want to be police in the classroom,” he said. “The way to handle it is for teachers to examine their own practices and think about how it can be used positively. If they ignore this thing and don’t know anything about it, that leaves the door open for students to use it to cheat and get away with it.”

    The OpenAI website ChatGPT about page on laptop computer arranged in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023.

    Leslie Layne, an English and linguistics professor at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, agrees. She now plans to teach students how ChatGPT could improve their writing.

    “ChatGPT can give students a running start, so they’re not starting on a blank page. But it doesn’t come close to a finished product,” she said. “We want students to include more sourcing and evidence, so it could be used as something to build on.”

    She likened ChatGPT to the outcry around calculators when they first came out. “People were very concerned we would lose the ability to do basic math,” she said. “Now we carry one wherever we go with our phones, and it is so helpful.”

    Layne said teachers could consider having students critique how ChatGPT handled an assignment question, teach students how to find the best prompt for the best response, and have ChatGPT argue one side of a topic and a student argue the other side.

    “Like with other new technologies, this could be a tool instructors use to help students express their ideas,” she said. “Students just have to learn how to improve its writing and adapt it to their own voice.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]


    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]


    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]


    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.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]


    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.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]


    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link