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Tag: marketing and advertising

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Biden admin unveils new program to allow private citizen groups to sponsor refugees | CNN Politics

    Biden admin unveils new program to allow private citizen groups to sponsor refugees | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a new program to allow groups of private citizens to sponsor refugees from around the world to live in the United States.

    The program, called the Welcome Corps, was billed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.”

    Under the program, groups of at least five individuals can apply to sponsor refugees and help them acclimate to life in the US, with the help of a consortium of non-profit resettlement organizations.

    The sponsor groups must raise a minimum of $2,275 per refugee, but they will not be required to provide ongoing financial support to the refugees they sponsor.

    That initial amount goes to “provide the initial support for the refugees during their first three months in the country,” a senior State Department official said Thursday, noting that money goes toward things like apartment security deposits, clothing and furniture.

    “The goal is for the refugees to become self-reliant as quickly as possible,” the official said.

    Julieta Valls Noyes, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said that the program requires groups of at least five people, rather than one person who might be able to raise the minimum amount, because the work to help the sponsored refugees is “a lot more than what the average American can do” alone.

    “It’s not about money. It’s about commitment. It’s about the community. It’s about bringing people together and forming a group so that the refugees have more than one person that they can refer to and can work with,” she said at a State Department briefing Thursday.

    “It’s a lot of work involved in sponsoring a refugee – finding schools, helping them find affordable housing, getting their kids signed up for school, helping them find jobs, showing them where the pharmacy is, what bus to take. It’s a lot more than what the average American can do. And so we think that providing a group of five or more Americans is more likely to be successful,” Valls Noyes said.

    She said the groups could be “from all walks of life, including community volunteers, faith and civic groups, veterans, diaspora communities, businesses, colleges, universities.”

    The senior State Department official noted that “all refugees being supported by private sponsors will be cleared through the same extensive security vetting required for all refugees admitted to the United States.”

    The sponsors will be screened, vetted and approved through the consortium of non-profits, which is receiving funding from the State Department. The sponsors will have to provide a detailed “welcome plan” laying out how they plan to receive the refugees and connect them to housing, jobs and schools.

    “The consortium will also provide training to the sponsors before they begin their sponsorship,” and will “check in regularly” with the sponsors and refugees, the official said.

    “There are many, many checkpoints, many, many fail-safes, vetting, all that is part of this program to prevent any abuses. That said I think we’re really excited about the program; we think it’s going to be really successful,” they said.

    Refugee admissions to the US have plummeted in recent years after former President Donald Trump slashed the refugee cap to historic lows. Although the Biden administration has raised the cap to 125,000 for the past two fiscal years, the admissions last year and thus far this year have fallen far short of that.

    “In the program’s first year, our goal is to mobilize at least 10,000 Americans to step forward as private sponsors and offer a welcoming hand to at least 5,000 refugees from around the world,” Blinken said in a statement Thursday.

    The Welcome Corps program is distinct from other programs unveiled by the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security to allow individuals to sponsor refugees from Ukraine and Venezuela.

    “In those programs, sponsors need to show that they can support the parolees financially during a two year parole period. The Welcome Corps, on the other hand, will enable private sponsors to support refugees from all nationalities who are being permanently resettled in the United States … and who ultimately may, and in many cases I am confident, will become US citizens,” the senior State Department official said.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • The best food marketing stunts of the year | CNN Business

    The best food marketing stunts of the year | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Comically oversized snack foods. A cocktail infused with processed cheese. And a fine dining establishment for feline lovers.

    In 2022, there were plenty of restaurants, food manufacturers and at least one artist collective that tried to break through with their shenanigans.

    These food stunts were often outrageous and sometimes regrettable. But only a few unleashed items that made us say, “wait, what? Why would you do that? Who would eat that?” And, occasionally: “that actually sounds pretty good.”

    Here’s what caught our attention this year.

    Over the summer, Kraft Heinz

    (KHC)     introduced a new cocktail: The Veltini, a martini made with Velveeta-infused vodka, olive brine and vermouth, garnished with Velveeta-stuffed olives and Velveeta-stuffed shells. The concoction was available for a limited time at BLT steakhouses in New York, Washington, D.C., Charlotte and elsewhere.

    The drink was part of Kraft Heinz’s broader efforts to reinvigorate the Velveeta brand after it saw sales of the processed cheese jump during the pandemic. To help Velveeta stage a comeback, the brand launched a new ad campaign, made tweaks to its logo and sold a cheese-scented nail polish.

    The Veltini made a splash, even though (or perhaps because) those brave enough to try it were unenthused.

    One Washington Post writer said it looked “like a deranged cheese monster, with olives as beady eyes and a dripping Velveeta cheese rim as a lopsided mouth.” The Today Show’s Hoda Kotb tried it on air, reluctantly, and was not a fan. “Yuck,” she said, “No, girl, no.” Her co-host, Jenna Bush Hager, said it wasn’t bad.

    This cereal is supposed to be eaten with orange juice.

    To be clear, this isn’t orange juice cereal: It’s cereal designed to be eaten with orange juice instead of milk. OJ-maker Tropicana sold the honey almond cereal for a limited time in May in honor of National Orange Juice Day.

    The brand acknowledged that people might not be into the combination. “Whether you hate it or love it, you won’t know until you try it,” Tropicana said. “It may not be for everyone.”

    One reviewer who gave the franken-breakfast a shot described it as “​​not bad,” adding “I can’t imagine eating a bowl of this every day.”

    Plus, she said, it didn’t taste like it was supposed to go with orange juice specifically. “There’s absolutely nothing different from other cereals.”

    Oscar Maye's

    In August, Oscar Mayer, also owned by Kraft Heinz, introduced the “Cold Dog”: A hot-dog flavored popsicle. The item was sold for a limited time at Popbar locations in New York City, New Orleans and elsewhere.

    The idea came from a June Instagram post by Oscar Mayer which asked followers whether the idea was “genius” or “stupid.” Comments on the post range from horrified to intrigued. Enough people were interested to give Oscar Mayer the green light.

    “After the overwhelming fan excitement for our beloved Cold Dog, it was a no-brainer to make this hot dog-inspired frozen pop a reality,” Anne Field, an Oscar Mayer spokesperson, said in a press release at the time.

    So how did it taste? In at least one reviewer’s opinion, pretty good.

    “I was beyond skeptical of how they could make a hot dog popsicle taste good. And somehow, they managed to do it!” according to a writer at Delish, who noted that Popbar uses gelato as the base for its pops. “The gelato is extremely creamy and has a strong smokey flavor that balances out the popsicle’s delicate sweetness. The sweet ‘mustard’ drizzle makes it taste more like a proper ice cream.”

    A Big Cheez-It is 16 times larger than a regular Cheez-It.

    In late June, Taco Bell tested out an item called a “Big Cheez-It Tostada.” As the name implies, it’s a tostada which used a Big Cheez-It — specifically, a Cheez-It 16 times larger than a regular one — as its base. The chain also tested out a “Big Cheez-It Crunchwrap Supreme,” which included the giant Cheez-It within the wrap.

    The items were available for a limited-time at one Taco Bell location. On July 3, within a week of the launch, Taco Bell reported that the items had already sold out. “The Big Cheez-It Tostada and Big Cheez-It Crunchwrap are in such Big demand that our limited offer is no longer available,” the chain said.

    Reviewers who tried the item were mixed. “Very cheesy, mmm” said one. Another concluded that “it’s not bad, it’s just weird.” Some noted that the Cheez-It, big though it may be, was not strong enough to maintain the weight of the toppings.

    A large Cheez-It was also utilized by Pizza Hut in 2019, when the pizza chain introduced its stuffed Cheez-It pizza. The limited-time item included “four baked jumbo squares” stuffed with cheese or pepperoni and cheese, and came with a side of marinara sauce for dipping.

    We're gonna need a bigger boat.

    Unlike the Big Cheez-It Tostada, the Big Froot Loop is an unauthorized creation, made by the artist collective MSCHF.

    The loop weighs nearly half a pound, is 930 calories and recently went on sale for $19.99. MSCHF tried to make the big loop taste as much as possible like the real thing, according to MSCHF’s co-founder Daniel Greenberg.

    “We look at things in culture and figure out how to make a twist on it,” Greenberg previously told CNN. The thinking behind the project was straightforward: “Let’s make a big f—ing fruit loop and that was it.” According to the MSCHF site, the item, which went on sale December 19, is already sold out.

    Kellogg’s, which makes actual Froot Loops, was not into it.

    “Kellogg Company does not have a relationship with MSCHF and we were not involved in the creation of the Big Fruit Loop,” Kellogg spokesperson Kris Bahner previously told CNN in a statement. “The campaign does not accurately depict the Kellogg’s brand.”

    Bahner added that “given the trademark infringement and unauthorized use of our brand, we have reached out to the company seeking an amicable resolution.”

    A dish at

    Over the summer, Fancy Feast invited people to answer the question: What does cat food taste like? Well, sort of.

    The cat food maker briefly opened a restaurant called “Gatto Bianco by Fancy Feast” in New York City in August. Gatto Bianco was open for just two nights, with four seatings per night.

    The restaurant dishes drew inspiration from Fancy Feast Medleys, cat food that is itself inspired by human food like salmon primavera and turkey florentine. The restaurant’s menu was created by Amanda Hassner, in-house chef for Fancy Feast, as well as restaurateur Cesare Casella, a Michelin star winner, according to a Fancy Feast press release.

    “Food has the power to connect us to others in meaningful ways and take us to places we have never been,” Hassner said in a statement at the time. “The same is true for our cats.”

    Hassner added that “the dishes at Gatto Bianco are prepared in ways that help cat owners understand how their cats experience food — from flavor, to texture, to form.” On the menu, according to OpenTable, were baked sea bass, spare ribs, salmon, braised beef and for dessert, panna cotta, almond cake and affogato.

    A Mashable reporter dined at the exclusive restaurant and reported that “the food is tasty,” and the atmosphere feline. “The design of the restaurant itself is practically an Instagram installation for the cat-obsessed, complete with ornate cat wallpaper, gold-embellished Fancy Feast cloth napkins, and cat art (as in, artwork of cats, not art made by cats).”

    Papa Bowls are all topping, no crust.

    As a permanent addition to the Papa Johns menu, the no-crust, toppings-only Papa Bowls are technically not a stunt.

    But the menu offering was so polarizing when it launched in August that we had to give it a nod.

    The bowls were devised to help combat pandemic-induced pizza fatigue by giving Papa Johns customers an option that was, let’s say, pizza adjacent. The company also hoped that the bowls would eliminate the “veto vote,” when a restaurant is ruled out because it doesn’t have enough options for everyone in the dining party.

    The bowls come in three varieties: Chicken Alfredo; Italian Meats Trio with pepperoni, sausage and meatballs; and Garden Veggie. There’s also a build-your-own option.

    The announcement made quite a splash. Comedian Jon Stewart, who has made repeated jabs at Arby’s, said he owed an apology to the chain upon seeing news of the Papa Bowl. At least one YouTube reviewer panned the bowls, saying it was gross and slimy. But some people thought it was a good idea.

    And during a November analyst call, Papa Johns CEO Rob Lynch said the bowls are “performing well and in line with our expectations.”

    — Zoe Sottile and CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.

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  • Washington moved fast to crack down on TikTok but has made little progress with Big Tech | CNN Business

    Washington moved fast to crack down on TikTok but has made little progress with Big Tech | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    In a matter of days, the United States is expected to ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on government-issued phones or tablets, marking the country’s broadest crackdown on the short-form video app to date.

    The looming ban is the result of a bill that’s moved through Congress in the final days of the year with lightning-fast speed and bipartisan support. It’s gone from being just another proposal from a Republican lawmaker to being unanimously adopted in the Senate, backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and added to a massive year-end congressional spending package. The proposed ban has support from the White House, which already blocks TikTok on its devices.

    The TikTok measure, while limited in its impact on the app’s wider US user base, highlights how quickly lawmakers can act when a combination of national security fears, bipartisan anti-China suspicions, and more targeted proposals cause the legislative stars to align.

    But in fast-tracking the bill, Congress can’t help but draw attention to its notable lack of progress on regulating American tech giants more broadly — despite years of reports, hearings and proposed legislation.

    The stark difference between the two illustrates how simple narratives, well-funded lobbying and genuinely thorny policy questions can make or break a bill. It also hints at how a select few Big Tech companies continue to maintain their dominance in the market and their centrality in the lives of countless US households.

    The tech industry’s largest players have faced a kitchen sink of allegations in recent years. From knee-capping nascent rivals; to harming children and mental health; to undermining democracy; to spreading hate speech and harassment; to censoring conservative viewpoints; to bankrupting local news outlets; Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains.

    But over the course of this year, TikTok has once again emerged as an even bigger target, two years after the Trump administration threatened to ban the application in the United States amid rising tensions with China. And one reason why is the relatively straightforward case that US policymakers have put forward for banning the app.

    The central allegation against TikTok is that the company poses a potential national security risk. US officials have worried that the Chinese government could pressure TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, into handing over the personal information of its US users, which could then be used for Chinese intelligence operations or the spreading of Chinese-backed disinformation.

    There’s no evidence yet that that has actually happened. Still, policymakers and security experts have said China’s national security laws make it a possibility — identifying a kernel of risk that fits into a broader anti-China narrative linked to issues including trade, human rights and authoritarianism. Those concerns were renewed after a report this year suggested US user data had been repeatedly accessed by China-based employees. TikTok has disputed the report.

    In recent weeks, numerous states have leapt on the bandwagon, further increasing the pressure on Congress to act. More than a dozen states have now banned TikTok on state government devices, from Maryland to South Dakota.

    TikTok has insisted it maintains robust security controls on its data and that it prioritizes user privacy. It has also taken steps in recent months to wall off US user data from other parts of its business, both technologically and organizationally. But earlier this year, it acknowledged that China-based employees can access TikTok user data and declined to commit to cutting off those data flows in general.

    Since 2020, TikTok has been negotiating with the US government on a possible deal to keep the app running in the United States. But those talks have so far proven fruitless, giving an opening to policymakers in Congress and at the state level to seek restrictions on TikTok.

    “We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices—a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests—rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” said Brooke Oberwetter, a TikTok spokesperson.

    TikTok’s head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, has called the ban affecting government devices a “political approach that doesn’t have any real impact on national security.”

    “We think a lot of the concerns are maybe overblown,” Beckerman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “but we do think these problems can be solved” through the ongoing government negotiations.

    TikTok has significantly expanded its Washington presence in recent years.

    In 2019, ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on lobbying, according to public records gathered by the transparency group OpenSecrets. By the end of last year, its lobbyist count had more than doubled and the company had spent nearly $5.2 million on lobbying.

    That pales in comparison, however, to the full force of Big Tech’s lobbying machine, which has become one of the largest in Washington.

    Meta was the biggest internet industry lobbying giant last year, spending upward of $20 million. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. Combined, that’s roughly $49 million in lobbying — almost 10 times what was spent by TikTok’s parent, which nevertheless clocked in at number four on the list.

    Tech giants have repeatedly deployed their CEOs to Capitol Hill, who in some cases have made arguments citing the threat of Chinese competition. They’ve also leaned on help from trade associations they’re members of and relied on advertising campaigns to make the case against some of the biggest legislative threats to their business.

    One of those bills, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), would erect new barriers between tech platforms’ various lines of business, preventing Amazon, for example, from being able to compete with third-party sellers on its own marketplace. That legislation was a product of a 16-month House antitrust investigation into the tech industry that concluded, in 2020, that many of the biggest tech companies were effectively monopolies.

    For much of this year, supporters of AICOA insisted the legislation had enough votes to pass, and they called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring it to a floor vote. But between intense tech lobbying and doubts about whether the bill did in fact have the votes, it never received the floor time its supporters wanted. The same fate awaited other tech-focused antitrust bills, such as one that would have forced Apple to allow users to download iPhone apps from any website, not just its own app store.

    For a brief moment this month, lawmakers seemed poised to pass a bill that could force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. But the legislation stumbled after Meta warned it could have to drop news content from its platforms altogether if the bill passed.

    Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

    But it isn’t just lobbying that has made some of these bills difficult to pass. It’s much more challenging to impose sweeping regulations on an entire industry than it is to pass a bill governing how the US government handles its own technology.

    The TikTok bill banning the app from government devices is seen as having a limited potential impact on the company’s wider US user base, which skews younger. A ban on public employees’ use of the app likely wouldn’t reach the many teens or other young people with whom the app has grown increasingly popular.

    With at least 100 million US users as of 2020, and likely more by now, TikTok has become almost “too big” to ban outright, some analysts have said.

    Politically speaking, in light of TikTok’s deep foothold among US consumers, a ban affecting government devices also represents low-hanging fruit for policymakers who enjoy clear legal authority over official devices and don’t have to worry about triggering a consumer backlash that a broader ban might invite.

    By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

    In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less content.

    The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

    It’s no wonder, then, that when Congress sees an easier victory within its grasp, lawmakers take it.

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  • Foreign college athletes chase endorsement money outside US

    Foreign college athletes chase endorsement money outside US

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    PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas — Marta Suarez stepped in front of the white backdrop, rotated the basketball to put the logo forward and propped it against her hip. She looked into the camera and smiled, her head tilting slightly to the right.

    Flashes came in quick succession. Music streamed from a nearby Bluetooth speaker. Suarez lifted the ball onto her right shoulder and smiled again, and soon was spinning the ball on her finger from a squatted pose.

    “Get the bruises,” she quipped, pointing to a knee exposed by her cutoff jeans.

    Only a few hours had passed since the third-year forward from Spain had helped Tennessee win its Battle 4 Atlantis tournament opener. This part of the trip — in a foyer outside the Atlantis resort’s Grand Ballroom — was for herself, available only because the Lady Vols were in the Bahamas.

    College athletes from foreign countries have been left out of the rush for endorsement deals because student visa rules largely prohibit off-campus work while in the U.S. But a growing number are using a loophole when they leave the country, doing the legwork needed — but not allowed on U.S. soil — to eventually profit from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).

    At holiday tournaments in the Bahamas this fall, startup company Influxer worked with about three dozen international athletes to create photos, videos and introductory podcasts that could be used for potential deals.

    Founder and chief executive Tyler Jaynes said the sessions are something Influxer wants “to repeat over and over.” There’s no guarantee they will lead to deals for international athletes, but it’s an avenue for them to find what might be out there.

    “Having fun?” Jaynes asked Suarez during a pause in her shoot.

    “Yeah,” she said, nodding back to the speaker. “The music.”

    “Yes,” Jaynes said, “we’ve thought of everything.”

    That’s the hope for international athletes hoping to cash in on their fame like their American teammates.

    “I’m just glad right now we at least get a chance to do something, even if it’s just outside the U.S.,” said DePaul’s Brendan Favre, a graduate student guard from Switzerland. “It’s still nice to be able to do something.”

    International athletes account for roughly 14,000 of the more than 113,000 athletes across Division I, according to NCAA data. The obstacle for them to make NIL money is federal immigration law, not NCAA rules.

    The NCAA largely cleared the way in July 2021 for athletes to earn NIL money and deals worth millions have been struck across the country. But the majority of international athletes are on F-1 student visas prohibiting off-campus work except in rare exceptions such as internships or work-study programs. Violations could lead to the visa’s termination, and deportation.

    Blake Lawrence, co-founder/CEO of athlete-marketing platform Opendorse, said it is unclear exactly how much international athletes are missing out. But with their presence in men’s and women’s basketball, two of the most marketable and compensated sports, he said it takes merely “deductive reasoning” to know there is an impact.

    Now the market is evolving to address it.

    “Administrators and coaches are trying to solve this problem, and it will be solved,” Lawrence said. “It will not be as convenient as driving down the street and signing autographs. But international student-athletes that are having an impact from their community will benefit from NIL. They just might have to take a flight or a longer drive.”

    Influxer launched late last year to connect athletes with companies, with a goal of becoming a full-service NIL company with merchandising and consulting. It’s led by people familiar with college sports, including Jaynes, a former Baylor football player.

    Jaynes said Influxer has spent months talking with school compliance staffers and immigration attorneys to ensure nothing jeopardizes athlete visas. They’ve also studied state NIL laws.

    “We understand it’s a very sensitive subject with a lot of potential ramifications if not done the right way,” Jaynes said.

    Influxer paid athletes the same, unspecified amount for their time at the Bahamas sessions, Jaynes said. After creating the marketing materials, Influxer can sell them to brands for use in a brokered endorsement deal. Athletes could then receive royalties as permissible “passive” income, meaning it came through signing a licensing agreement for existing materials as opposed to a work activity such as making a commercial.

    Influxer’s first offshore shoot came in August when Kentucky big man Oscar Tshiebwe — last season’s Associated Press men’s college basketball player of the year, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — visited the Bahamas for the Wildcats’ exhibition tour.

    The company replicated that on a broader scale last month as teams arrived for the Battle 4 Atlantis men’s and women’s tournaments as well as games at the Baha Mar resort in Nassau. Players came and went between meals, shootarounds and games.

    Suarez and Australian teammate Jessie Rennie arrived carrying their jerseys. Favre and Canadian teammate Nick Ongenda soon followed from Baha Mar, carrying their own DePaul jerseys. Influxer staffers briefly introduced themselves, then the athletes got to work.

    Rennie sat down for a podcast focused on her background. Suarez headed to a director’s chair for a stylist to freshen her makeup and hair ahead of her photo shoot.

    Ongenda and Favre were soon joking and mugging together at the photo set before breaking off for their own sessions.

    “I love being in front of the camera on and off the court,” Ongenda said. “It’s a great experience. I’m glad they reached out and let us know about this opportunity.”

    That includes collecting photos with an eye toward versatility. With Favre, for example, some included him holding his empty hand palm up — ready for an item to be added later via photo editing software to accommodate a specific branding deal.

    “That’s great, you can put so many different things there,” Jaynes said, swiping through the shots on an iPad.

    Rennie, sidelined this year with a knee injury, has been happy to see teammates get deals. Like Suarez, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed at being unable to do the same. Still, she didn’t commit to Influxer’s shoot until having enough conversations to feel it was OK.

    “We do Tennessee photo shoots all the time,” Rennie said, “but it was nice to do something that was more about me and who I am and it’s going to be for my benefit, if that makes sense.”

    Influxer returned three days later before the men’s Atlantis tournament, with Southern California’s Australian big man, Harrison Hornery, visiting as the day’s final appointment.

    “It’s been frustrating at USC and being such a high-profile school, and all those NIL opportunities that everyone is getting,” Hornery said. “We have people come to practice and pitch us stuff all the time, and I’m just like, ‘Man, I can’t do it.’”

    “I’m not saying I need X amount of dollars to make me happy,” he added. “Just being here and getting the opportunity to do a cool shoot and then do a podcast with those guys over there — and whatever happens, happens.”

    Influxer ultimately worked with roughly 35 international athletes through the Thanksgiving holiday week, the final session coming in a Nassau studio.

    Ask Jaynes about what’s next for Influxer, and he mentions events beyond basketball such as college golf tournaments in Mexico and elsewhere in the Bahamas. Director of business development Steve McLean even imagines a large-scale media day for international athletes, complete with corporate sponsorship.

    “There’s going to be a lot of trial and error,” McLean said of future events, “and we’re open to all of it.”

    ___

    Follow Aaron Beard on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aaronbeardap

    ___

    This story has been corrected to show that there are roughly 14,000 international athletes in Division I, not more than 100,000.

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  • The mass unbanning of suspended Twitter users is underway | CNN Business

    The mass unbanning of suspended Twitter users is underway | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Thousands of previously banned Twitter users, including members of the far-right and users sharing blatant misinformation, have begun to have their accounts restored to the platform, according to an independent analysis.

    The mass restoration of accounts comes after new owner Elon Musk said late last month that he would offer “general amnesty” to many who had been removed from the platform. In following through on that commitment, however, Musk risks further alienating other users and advertisers, and exacerbating concerns among watchdog groups about the rise of hate speech on the platform under his ownership (a fact Musk has attempted to refute).

    Among those recently unbanned are a range of large and small accounts, including users promoting NFTs and cryptocurrencies, users tweeting about sports, many users tweeting in languages other than English, as well as both users that appear to be left-leaning and pro-Trump, according to observations by CNN.

    But the restored accounts also include far-right figures such as Andrew Anglin, a self-professed white supremacist who founded the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, and Patrick Casey, who is associated with the far-right group “America First” and was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee for his involvement in the Capitol riot.

    A number of accounts restored in recent days, including many with thousands of followers, used their first tweets in years to thank Musk for allowing them back on the platform, according to a review of their posts by CNN. Some also quickly began sharing conspiracy theories about issues such as Covid-19 and the 2020 US Presidential election.

    A data set of many of the unbanned accounts compiled by researcher and software developer Travis Brown, who worked for Twitter for a year in 2014 and last year began a project tracking hate speech on the platform, shows dozens of users who have had their bans reversed are using QAnon-related phrases or hashtags in their account bios. The dataset was built using Twitter’s API and a tool Brown had originally built to observe and track high-profile Twitter suspensions.

    The accounts that have been restored includes “a really strange mix of accounts” that includes apparent far-right extremists and QAnon adherents, but also, for example, a Miley Cyrus fan account that has been repeatedly suspended and appears aimed mostly at growing a large following, Brown said.

    But Brown added that other accounts he has observed as part of his hate speech tracking project have yet to be reinstated, raising questions about the criteria Twitter is using to restore previously banned accounts, although it’s possible Musk’s reinstatement process will take time. Many users on Twitter have also raised questions about Musk’s move last week to again suspend Kanye West, who has made numerous antisemitic comments, while restoring the accounts of other white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. In another instance, Musk tweeted that he would not restore Alex Jones’s account because of a personal preference.

    “I’ve found it really hard … to generalize about how and why certain accounts are allowed back,” Brown said.

    Twitter, which has made substantial cuts to its public relations team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment and questions on the number of previously banned accounts restored or its process for doing so.

    Musk said last month that he would begin restoring most previously banned accounts to the platform, after having polled his Twitter followers about whether to offer “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The poll, which garnered more than three million votes, finished with more than 72% voting in favor of the proposition. It is not clear how Musk and Twitter’s remaining staff are sorting out which accounts were banned for spam or illegal activity.

    The new Twitter owner had already begun to restore the accounts of some prominent, controversial users that had previously been banned or suspended from the platform, most notably former President Donald Trump, as well as conservative Canadian podcaster and all-beef diet promoter Jordan Peterson and the right-leaning satire website Babylon Bee.

    Some of the accounts restored in the latest wave have already raised concerns from civil rights groups. The Anti-Defamation League on Monday described as “deeply disturbing” Twitter’s decision to allow Anglin back on the platform.

    “The return of extremists to the platform has the potential to supercharge the spread of extremist content and disinformation, and this in turn could lead to the increased harassment of users,” Yael Eisenstat, vice president of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society said in a statement to CNN. “Musk’s actions to date show that he is not committed to a transparent process that incorporates the best practices we have learned from civil society groups.”

    Before taking over Twitter, Musk said he disagreed with the platform’s policy of permanent bans, which were typically doled out only after a user had received a number of “strikes” for repeatedly violating Twitter’s policies, including those against Covid-19 or civic integrity misinformation.

    Shortly after acquiring the company, Musk said he would create a “content moderation council” prior to making major changes, but there is no evidence such a group was ever formed or involved in the decisions to bring back violative accounts. Instead, Musk has appeared to make the decisions himself.

    Musk and Twitter have repeatedly stressed that the platform’s rules have not changed, despite restoring accounts that had repeatedly violated its rules and ceasing enforcement of the company’s policy prohibiting Covid-19 misinformation. In a blog post last month, Twitter said that its trust and safety team “remains strong and well-resourced, and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse.” Content that violates Twitter’s rules, it added, will be demoted on the platform.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety who left the company following Musk’s takeover, criticized the billionaire Twitter owner’s top-down approach to content decisions in an interview with journalist Kara Swisher last month, suggesting that the platform had started to be run by “dictatorial edict rather than by a policy.” He also raised concerns about layoffs that hit Twitter’s safety teams.

    Restoring additional, previously banned accounts could exacerbate several big issues Twitter is currently facing. It could further alienate Twitter’s advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform in the wake of the chaos since Musk took over and out of fear that their ads could end up running alongside objectionable content. Musk has said the departure of key Twitter advertisers in recent weeks has led to a “massive drop in revenue” for the company.

    Ads for major brands, including Kia, Amazon, Snap and Uber, have already begun to appear alongside tweets from reinstated accounts such as Anglin’s, according to reporting from the Washington Post and observations by CNN. (Kia told CNN it “continues to monitor the evolving Twitter environment and work closely with their teams on advertisement placement and usage.” The other brands did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.)

    It could also draw more attention from Apple, which Musk previously tweeted had threatened to remove Twitter from its app store. Musk later said that the concern had been resolved following a meeting with Tim Cook, but Apple has previously shown a willingness to remove social media platforms from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate hate speech and other potentially harmful content. Getting booted from Apple’s app store would be detrimental to Twitter’s business by making it harder for the iPhone maker’s more than one billion global customers to access the app, and difficult if not impossible for iPhone users to receive app updates.

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  • Meta avoids showdown over news content in US after journalism bargaining bill shelved | CNN Business

    Meta avoids showdown over news content in US after journalism bargaining bill shelved | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    A threat by Facebook owner Meta to remove news content from its platforms appears to have been averted — for now — after US lawmakers omitted an antitrust bill it opposed from the text of an annual defense spending bill released late Tuesday evening.

    Meta had warned on Monday that if Congress passed the competition bill as part of the larger legislation — temporarily allowing digital news publishers to negotiate collectively against tech platforms for a larger share of ad revenues — then the social media giant “will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether.”

    The warning had come amid 11th-hour reports that lawmakers were considering including the measure as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. Meta declined to comment on Wednesday morning.

    Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a key architect of the news media bill, has argued that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is necessary to help small, local journalism outlets survive in the face of Google and Facebook’s advertising dominance. It is one of several tech-focused antitrust bills pending in Congress.

    In a statement, Klobuchar said: “Continually allowing the big tech companies to dominate policy decisions in Washington is no longer a viable option when it comes to news compensation, consumer and privacy rights, or the online marketplace. We must get this done.”

    Danielle Coffey, executive vice president of the News Media Alliance, a supporter of the JCPA, said the bill was removed from the NDAA due to the ordinary give-and-take of high-stakes legislation. Congressional Republicans were strongly opposed to including non-defense legislation in the defense bill, resulting in many “ornaments” being rejected, not just the JCPA, said Coffey.

    “At the end of the day, that determines our fate, even though there’s bipartisan support for this legislation,” Coffey said. “I don’t think anyone disagrees with the overall intention, which is to help newsrooms around the country.”

    Coffey vowed to keep pushing for the JCPA’s passage, adding that it would be “devastating” if the United States fails to pass the JCPA while other countries including Canada and New Zealand consider similar measures.

    Fight for the Future, a digital rights group opposed to the JCPA, applauded the bill’s omission from the NDAA on Wednesday and called on congressional leaders to advance the remaining tech antitrust legislation, which would erect new barriers between tech giants’ various lines of business and force Apple to allow iOS users to download apps from any source.

    “There are precious few days left,” said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future. “It would be an embarrassment, and a travesty, if the Biden administration and Democratic leadership can’t deliver on their promise to rein in the abuses of Big Tech giants.”

    The prospect of the JCPA’s imminent passage this week prompted swift pushback from the bill’s opponents, including some that at times have heavily criticized Big Tech.

    In a letter Monday to congressional leaders, more than two dozen groups said the JCPA could make mis- and disinformation worse by allowing news websites to sue tech platforms for reducing a story’s reach and intimidating them into not moderating offensive or misleading content.

    The letter also said the JCPA could end up disproportionately favoring large media companies over the small, local and independent outlets that have been hit the hardest by falling digital ad revenues.

    Among those that signed the letter were the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Wikimedia Foundation and Public Knowledge.

    The tech industry launched its own offensive to keep the JCPA out of the defense bill, with groups including NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association announcing ad campaigns targeting the measure.

    Meta, meanwhile, turned to a familiar playbook in threatening to remove from the platform. When similar legislation was on the verge of passing in Australia last year, the company briefly suspended users’ ability to share and view links to news stories on its platforms. (It later changed course and the legislation passed later that year.)

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  • Elon Musk claims Apple has ‘threatened to withhold’ Twitter from its app store | CNN Business

    Elon Musk claims Apple has ‘threatened to withhold’ Twitter from its app store | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Elon Musk on Monday claimed that Apple has “threatened” to pull Twitter from its iOS app store, a move that could be devastating to the company Musk just acquired for $44 billion.

    “Apple

    (AAPL)     has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk said in one of several tweets Monday taking aim at Apple

    (AAPL)     and its CEO for alleged moves that could undermine Twitter’s business.

    In another tweet, Musk claimed that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. “Do they hate free speech in America,” he said, in an apparent reference to his oft-stated desire to bolster his idea of free speech on the platform. “What’s going on here [Apple CEO Tim Cook]?” Musk added in a follow-up tweet. He also criticized Apple’s size, claimed it engages in “censorship,” and called out the 30% transaction fee Apple charges large app developers to be listed in its app store.

    The tweetstorm highlights the tenuous relationship between Musk and Apple, which along with Google serves as the major gatekeepers for mobile applications. Long before taking over Twitter, the Tesla CEO said that when the car company was struggling, he considered selling the company to Apple, but that Cook refused to take a meeting with him.

    Removal from Apple’s app store, or that of Google, would be detrimental to Twitter’s business, which is already struggling with a loss of advertisers following Musk’s takeover and a rocky initial attempt at expanding its subscription business.

    Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk’s tweets. The company has previously shown it’s willing to remove apps from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate harmful content or if they attempt to circumvent the cut Apple takes from in-app purchases and subscriptions.

    In January 2021, Apple removed Parler, an app popular with conservatives, including some members of the far right, from its app store following the US Capitol attack over concerns about the platform’s ability to detect and moderate hate speech and incitement. Parler was returned to Apple’s app store three months later after updating its content moderation practices.

    In its official app store review guidelines, Apple lists various safety parameters that apps must adhere to in order to be included in the store, including an ability to prevent “content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy” such as hate speech, pornography and terrorism. “If you’re looking to shock and offend people, the App Store isn’t the right place for your app,” the guidelines state.

    Various civil society groups, researchers and other industry watchers have raised concerns about Twitter’s ability to effectively moderate harmful content and maintain the platform’s safety following widespread layoffs and mass employee exits at the company. Musk has also claimed he wants to amplify “free speech” on the platform and has begun to restore some accounts that were previously banned or suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s rules. Musk himself has shared a conspiracy theory and several other controversial tweets since taking over as Twitter’s owner.

    Musk, long a prolific and antagonistic tweeter, has not let up at all since taking over the company. And what it may have lost in revenue, he has claimed it has made up for in engagement. Part of the strategy appears to be relentlessly taking aim at enemies, either of him personally or of “free speech.”

    In an interview with CBS earlier this month, Cook was asked whether there are any ways in which Twitter could change that would cause Apple to remove it from the app store. “They say that they’re going to continue to moderate and so … I count on them to do that,” Cook responded. “Because I don’t think that anybody really wants hate speech on their platform. So I’m counting on them to continue to do that.”

    In an op-ed published in the New York Times last week, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who left the company earlier this month, suggested that Twitter had already begun to receive calls from app store operators following Musk’s takeover. Roth said the company’s failure to adhere to Google and Apple’s app store rules could be “catastrophic.”

    And last weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.

    While the state of Apple and Twitter’s relationship is unclear, the iPhone maker was running Black Friday ads on the platform as recently as last Thursday, according to posts viewed by CNN.

    Many companies have pulled back on digital ad spending in recent months as the economy declined, and Twitter has likely always only been a small portion of Apple’s ad budget. Apple’s impact on Twitter, however, could be much more significant, including if Musk succeeds in shifting its core business to being more reliant on subscription revenue, and potentially has to pay a 30% cut to Apple.

    In one tweet Monday, Musk asked his nearly 120 million followers if they know “Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?” In another tweet, he posted a picture of a highway exit: one lane headed toward “pay 30%,” the other pointed toward “go to war.” An old car labeled “Elon” skidded toward the latter.

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  • Elon Musk has upended Twitter’s business. Here’s how he could fix it | CNN Business

    Elon Musk has upended Twitter’s business. Here’s how he could fix it | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Much of Twitter’s ad sales team has been fired or pushed out. Large companies from General Mills to Macy’s have paused advertising on the platform, with more potentially following suit after new owner Elon Musk’s decision to restore the account of former President Donald Trump and other controversial figures. And any cursory scroll of the platform will likely show you fewer big brand ads.

    That would all seem like horrible news for a business that generates the lion’s share of its revenue from advertising. But Musk may not care.

    The Tesla CEO has previously said he “hates advertising” and, as Twitter’s owner, professed a desire to make the company more reliant on subscription revenue than advertising dollars. Twitter has always struggled to turn its outsized influence in media, politics, and culture into a highly successful advertising business. And without needing to please advertisers, the billionaire would be freer to implement his “free speech” vision for Twitter.

    “I’ve always thought that a move to a subscription business would make sense for Twitter … it’s never been a great advertising platform,” said Larry Vincent, associate professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Twitter’s advertising business has long been smaller than that of rivals like Facebook, in part because it didn’t offer the same level of user targeting.

    To successfully overhaul Twitter into a thriving subscription business would be to buck the trend of many other media properties that have struggled with the model. And Musk’s attempts right out of the gate have faltered. An updated, $8-per-month version of the Twitter Blue subscription service that allowed users to buy a verification checkmark had to be halted after just two days when it was abused to impersonate prominent people (notably Musk himself), businesses, and government agencies. Musk initially said he would relaunch the service on November 29, but on Monday suggested he might further delay it “until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation.”

    Some industry watchers have also questioned whether, given Twitter’s somewhat niche status as a relatively small platform used largely by members of the media, politicians and academics, such a subscription service could be widely adopted. Even if all 217 million daily users Twitter reported having at the end of 2021 signed up for Musk’s $8 per month subscription, the annual revenue would still be less than a quarter of the size of rival Meta’s.

    Still, some industry insiders have reason to think he can pull it off. “Twitter over the last month has been far more entertaining than Netflix and easily worth $8,” Roy Price, the founder of Amazon Studios, said in a tweet Saturday. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a tweet, “don’t underestimate” Musk. And Twitch co-founder Justin Kan tweeted that he thinks Twitter is “likely to survive just fine (and potentially thrive!)” in part because, unlike some high-profile users who have announced their departure from the platform, most regular users likely don’t care about who’s leading the platform and how.

    Indeed, Musk’s shift away from advertising and toward a subscription model could work if Twitter can survive having its entire revenue decimated beforehand, keep its systems up and running, avoid violating laws around copyright infringement and hate speech, and also remain in good standing with Apple and Google, which control the app stores on which Twitter depends.

    The stakes to pull it off are significant for Musk. After borrowing billions of dollars to finance the Twitter takeover, Musk is up against the clock to turn what was already a struggling business into a company that can generate enough cash flow to pay back his debt. He may also risk his reputation as “a gifted and audacious entrepreneur who made Tesla work against widespread doubts and naysaying,” said Robert Bruner, professor of business administration at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

    Whether he likes advertising or not, the business made up 90% of Twitter’s revenue prior to Musk’s takeover and replacing it won’t be an immediate shift.

    In the wake of the chaos at Twitter in recent weeks, there has been talk of brands quitting the platform out of concern that their ads could end up next to objectionable content. But that may not be the only or even primary reason advertisers have walked away — or why attracting new ones could be tricky. Advertisers are also likely on edge about Twitter’s stability, as users and former employees raise concerns that the mass exodus of staff could leave the platform vulnerable to glitches and outages.

    Brands may also be miffed that many of Twitter’s ad sales employees who managed their campaigns have been fired or pushed out, including after another round of layoffs and exits Monday.

    Large digital platforms “have experienced professionals out there who develop relationships with these advertisers,” Vincent said. “When you let go of a staff that was as veteran as Twitter’s and there’s no one there to respond to those [brands], you basically reduce the value of the ad platform.”

    By bringing Trump and other controversial figures back to the platform, Twitter may have greater appeal to the right-leaning advertisers that do business on alternative platforms like Trump’s Truth Social. While there is a market to advertise to “people buying gold, people buying survivalist home kits, guns and weapons,” Twitter has long been known as a more politically neutral, if not somewhat left-leaning, platform and may struggle to attract such companies, said Michael Serazio, a communications professor at Boston College.

    Musk is also going to have to contend with potential pressure from regulators, as well as the app store operators at Apple and Google, if he wants to succeed in turning Twitter’s business around. A group of US senators has already called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Musk’s Twitter over potential violations of the company’s 2011 consent decree. And Europe’s Digital Services Act may impose limits on just how free Musk’s “free speech” Twitter can be.

    In an op-ed published in the New York Times last week, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who left the company earlier this month, said the company’s failure to adhere to Google and Apple’s app store rules could be “catastrophic.” The app stores have previously removed social media apps for failing to protect their users from harmful content, and Roth suggested that Twitter had already begun to receive calls from app store operators following Musk’s takeover. Over the weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.

    Most importantly, Twitter will have to keep users invested in the platform if Musk’s subscription strategy is going to work. And it’s not just existing users — Musk will also need to attract new people to the platform, which has long struggled to break out of its niche status and grow its user base, by ensuring it’s filled with must-read content.

    In the weeks since Musk took over Twitter — which was immediately followed by an uptick in hateful content — there has been much hand-waving from users about moving to other platforms, and several high-profile accounts have announced their exits, including director Shonda Rimes and model Gigi Hadid. But it’s not clear that there has been a broad drop-off in the user base; instead, Musk has claimed in tweets that platform usage is at an all-time high.

    So long as Musk can keep Twitter functioning properly despite having fewer employees, many users will likely stick around, perhaps even more so following the return of controversial accounts that tend to make news with incendiary comments on the platform. Musk himself has pointed out that even as people fret about the demise of Twitter, they’re doing it on the platform itself. And the billionaire has proposed making it easier for creators to earn money on the platform, which could also drive usage.

    Even still, there is no guarantee that continuing to capture the online world’s attention will translate into subscription payments or other revenue growth.

    “Even as both Musk and Trump are driven by the gravity of the attention economy, it doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to cash in on it,” Serazio said. He said Musk likely made the decision to restore Trump’s account because “it was going to cause headlines, it was going to cause attention,” adding that “the attention won’t save Twitter … but I don’t know that [Musk] has any other strategy other than the attention economy, even if he doesn’t know how to profit from it.”

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  • Twitter was already in disarray. Trump’s return will only make it more chaotic | CNN Business

    Twitter was already in disarray. Trump’s return will only make it more chaotic | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    With his decision on Saturday to restore the personal Twitter account of former President Donald Trump nearly two years after it was permanently banned, Elon Musk could plunge Twitter deeper into chaos — and that may be the point.

    In the weeks since Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the influential social network has shed so much staff that users and employees have raised concerns about its ability to continue operating. It has also suffered a “massive drop in revenue,” according to Musk, as a growing number of brands pause advertising amid uncertainty about the direction and stability of the platform.

    Trump’s return won’t help either issue.

    The company’s servers are “being put through quite the stress test by @elonmusk right now,” tweeted Sriram Krishnan, a general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and former Twitter employee who is working with Musk to manage the company. (He also noted Trump’s return comes a day before the World Cup is set to kick off, a high-traffic event for the platform.)

    Also on Saturday, NAACP president Derrick Johnson sent an urgent warning to companies still doing business with Twitter: “Any advertiser still funding Twitter should immediately pause all advertising.”

    Some advertisers had previously indicated they could halt spending on the platform if Trump were to be reinstated, potentially dealing a further blow to a company that generates nearly all of its revenue from advertising.

    Before buying Twitter, Musk had repeatedly said he would reinstate Trump’s account and rethink the platform’s approach to permanent bans as part of his maximalist vision for “free speech.” But Musk also sought to reassure brands and users that he would establish a “content moderation council” to determine whether Trump and other banned account holders would be brought back on the platform.

    There is no indication that group was even established, let alone involved in the decision to restore Trump. Instead, Musk tweeted a poll Friday, asking followers to vote whether or not to restore Trump’s account. “Yes” won, and Musk tweeted Saturday: “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”

    If Musk has any strategy behind the decision and its timing, it appears to be betting that chaos makes for a good show.

    Through all the mass layoffs and staff departures, the controversial paid verification option introduced and withdrawn, the prominent brands and celebrities pulling back from the platform, and the widespread criticism of his incendiary remarks, Musk has repeatedly stressed that Twitter is hitting all-time highs in user numbers.

    Now, add Trump to the mix.

    Throughout his time as president, Trump was the most high-profile and often the most controversial user on the platform, forcing Twitter to think about how it should handle a sitting world leader taunting North Korea with threats of nuclear destruction (allowed) and encouraging a violent pro-Trump mob to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 (which got him banned).

    But Trump also made Twitter into the center of the known media and political universe. His tweets made headlines, moved markets and shaped the agenda in Washington. Celebrities, world leaders, and a long list of critics and supporters often engaged with Trump directly on Twitter. The world could not look away.

    It remains unclear whether Trump will tweet as often, or at all, now that he has his own social network, Truth Social. And if he does, his tweets may not get quite as much attention as when he was the sitting president. But Musk’s decision to bring Trump back also comes days after Trump announced he would run for president again, raising the likelihood that Trump’s remarks and his tweets, if he posts them, won’t be ignored.

    Musk is clearly still in the early days of setting up his so-called Twitter 2.0. Apart from reorganizing staff and racing to bolster Twitter’s bottom line through subscription products, he also has yet to formalize his policies around bans and suspensions.

    But one answer seems clear: Musk appears to be betting that if users can’t turn away from the platform, neither can advertisers. And with enough eyeballs on the site, he may just be able to find new ways to make money from them.

    All he has to do is find a way to keep the lights on.

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  • George Lois, icon of ads and magazine covers, dead at 91

    George Lois, icon of ads and magazine covers, dead at 91

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    NEW YORK — George Lois, the hard-selling, charismatic advertising man and designer who fashioned some of the most daring magazine images of the 1960s and popularized such catchphrases and brand names as “I Want My MTV” and “Lean Cuisine,” has died. He was 91.

    Lois’ son, the photographer Luke Lois, said he died “peacefully” Friday at his home in Manhattan.

    Nicknamed the “Golden Greek” and later (to his displeasure) an “Original Mad Man,” George Lois was among a wave of advertisers who launched the “Creative Revolution” that jolted Madison Avenue and the world beyond in the late 1950s and ’60s. He was boastful and provocative, willing and able to offend, and was a master of finding just the right image or words to capture a moment or create a demand.

    His Esquire magazine covers, from Muhammad Ali posing as the martyr Saint Sebastian to Andy Warhol sinking in a sea of Campbell’s tomato soup, defined the hyper spirit of the ’60s as much as Norman Rockwell’s idealized drawings for the Saturday Evening Post summoned an earlier era. As an ad man, he devised breakthrough strategies for Xerox and Stouffer’s and helped an emerging music video channel in the 1980s by suggesting ads featuring Mick Jagger and other rock stars demanding, with mock-petulance, “I Want My MTV!”

    Lois boiled it down to what he called the “Big Idea,” crystallizing “the unique virtues of a product and searing it into people’s minds.” He was inducted into numerous advertising and visual arts halls of fame, and in 2008 his Esquire work was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Martin Scorsese, Tina Brown and Graydon Carter were among his admirers.

    His legacy was vast, although the actual dimensions are disputed. His claims to developing the 1960s “I Want My Maypo” breakfast ads and to inspiring the creation of New York magazine have been widely contradicted. Some former Esquire colleagues would allege that he exaggerated his role at the expense of other contributors, such as Carl Fischer, who photographed many of the magazine’s famous covers. But his overpowering energy and confidence were well recorded.

    In her memoir “Basic Black,” former USA Today publisher Cathie Black recalled bringing in Lois in the early 1980s to propose a new advertising approach for a publication that struggled at first over how to identify itself. Lois’ idea was to champion USA Today’s dual appeal as a newspaper and magazine, proposing the slogan, “A lot of people are saying USA Today is neither fish nor fowl. They’re right!” Before a gathering of the publication’s, including founder Al Neuharth, Lois gave an Oscar-worthy performance, Black wrote, “bounding in like a 6-foot-3 teenager hopped up on Red Bull.”

    “He flung his jacket to the floor, tore off his tie, then flashed one prototype ad after another, prancing around the room and keeping up a running monologue sprinkled with jokes and profanity. It was epic, almost scary. I was thrilled. When he was finished, the room sat absolutely silent.” All eyes turned to Neuharth, who sat “absolutely still, his expression hidden behind his dark aviator glasses.” Neuharth paused, removed his glasses and smiled. “We’ve got it,” he said.

    Lois’ longtime wife, Rosemary Lewandowski Lois, died in September. A son, Harry Joseph Lois, died in 1978.

    Lois, the son of Greek immigrants, was born in New York City in 1931 and would cite the racism of his Irish neighborhood for his drive “to awaken, to disturb, to protest.” He liked to say that a successful advertiser absorbed as many influences as possible, and he prided himself on his knowledge of everything from sports to ballet. He was a compulsive drawer and for much of his life made weekly visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    He enrolled in Pratt Institute, soon met his future wife and eloped with her before either had graduated. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he joined the advertising and promotion department of CBS and in 1960 helped found the advertising agency Papert Koenig Lois. Two years later he was recruited by Esquire editor Harold Hayes and remained until 1972, the same year Hayes left.

    Esquire was a prime venue for the so-called New Journalism of the 1960s, nonfiction stories with a literary approach, and the magazine would publish such celebrated pieces as Gay Talese’s portrait of Frank Sinatra and Tom Wolfe’s “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!” But to read the words, you had to buy the magazine, and Lois’ covers launched countless conversations.

    For a cover story on “The New American Woman,” he featured a naked model folded into a garbage can. A notorious 1970 cover showed a grinning Lt. William Calley, the serviceman later found guilty of murdering unarmed civilians in the My Lai Massacre, with his arms around a pair of Vietnamese children, two other kids behind him.

    In the mid-1970s, Lois was among the public figures who led efforts to free the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter from prison. Carter’s conviction for murder was later overturned, and he was released in 1985. Lois also wrote several books and was featured in the 2014 documentary about Esquire, “Smiling Through the Apocalypse.”

    Interest in Lois was renewed through the popularity of the AMC series “Mad Men,” but he was not flattered, writing in his book “Damn Good Advice” that the show was “nothing more than a soap opera set in a glamorous office where stylish fools hump their appreciative, coiffured secretaries, suck up martinis, and smoke themselves to death as they produce dumb, lifeless advertising.”

    “Besides,” he added, “when I was in my 30s I was better looking than Don Draper.”

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  • Elon Musk’s SpaceX is buying an ad package on Elon Musk’s Twitter | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX is buying an ad package on Elon Musk’s Twitter | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    While a number of major brands have announced advertising pauses on Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition, the platform has scored a new ad buy from one notable billion-dollar business: Musk’s SpaceX.

    Musk confirmed on Twitter Monday that his aerospace company, SpaceX, bought a package to advertise its Starlink internet service on Twitter, though he downplayed the size of the ad buy.

    The ad buy would be the first for any of Musk’s companies, including Tesla, which does not engage in traditional advertising.

    “SpaceX Starlink bought a tiny – not large – ad package to test effectiveness of Twitter advertising in Australia & Spain,” Musk wrote in a reply to one Twitter user, adding that he did the same on competitors such as Facebook, Instagram and Google.

    His remarks came after CNBC reported Sunday that Musk had ordered “one of the larger advertising packages available from Twitter” for SpaceX, citing unnamed sources who had viewed internal documents related to the matter. SpaceX did not respond to CNN Business request for comment.

    In the weeks since Musk completed the Twitter takeover, some civil rights groups have called for an advertiser boycott of the platform, citing concerns about the direction under its new owner and reports that incidents of hate speech have ticked up on the platform.

    A number of major brands including General Mills, the North Face and several car companies (which compete with Musk’s Tesla) have announced they are pausing ads on the social network. Earlier this month, Musk said the growing pullback in advertiser spending has led to a “massive drop in revenue.” He blasted the situation as “extremely messed up!”

    Musk has spent his first weeks running Twitter pleading with advertisers to remain on the platform and also working make the platform less reliant on ad dollars by adding more subscription options, including a controversial option to pay for verification. The latter feature led to a wave of accounts impersonating prominent brands on the platform.

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  • A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink | CNN Business

    A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    Two weeks after Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter, the future of the company has never looked less certain.

    In the past week alone, one of the world’s most influential social networks has laid off half its workforce; alienated powerful advertisers; blown up key aspects of its product, then repeatedly launched and un-launched other features aimed at compensating for it; and witnessed an exodus of senior executives.

    The wild swings at Twitter only seemed to accelerate on Thursday with more executive departures, growing chaos over fake, verified accounts and an unusual public rebuke from the US government. Twitter now appears to be on the brink, a point Musk himself seemed to concede on Thursday by reportedly telling employees that bankruptcy could be on the horizon (though it’s far from the first time he’s warned about bankruptcy at one of his companies).

    “Quite the day!” Musk tweeted.

    It’s a stunning reversal of fortunes not just for Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion, but also for a platform used by some of the most powerful people on the planet, including world leaders, CEOs, and the Pope.

    An end to the disruption seemed nowhere in sight on Friday. In its latest reversal on the matter, Twitter said it would re-introduce a gray “Official” badge for select accounts to help confirm their identities. The decision came after Twitter was forced to fend off a wave of verified-account impostors this week, including some posing as former President Donald Trump, Nintendo, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, among others. These accounts were the result of Musk’s decision to rush ahead with offering a blue check mark to any account holder willing to pay $8 a month, no questions asked, as he races to find new ways to make money from the platform.

    That paid subscription service, too, was also suspended on Friday with little warning, just two days after its official launch, with the menu option to sign up for Twitter Blue suddenly disappearing from Twitter’s iOS app — the only place the add-on had been offered. It was not immediately clear when the company might restore the offering.

    The gray “Official” badge has become an illustration of the whiplash users, employees, and advertisers have experienced in recent days.

    Hours after the gray badges launched on Wednesday as a way to help users differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly tweeted that he had “killed” the feature, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.

    “We’re not currently putting an ‘Official’ label on accounts but we are aggressively going after impersonation and deception,” Twitter’s verified support account tweeted on Wednesday evening.

    The account’s very next tweet, a day and nine hours later, said exactly the opposite: “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts.”

    Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the changes to the rollout of Twitter Blue or “Official” badges.

    The paid verification feature’s rocky rollout attracted widespread criticism from misinformation experts who had warned it would make identifying trustworthy information much more difficult, particularly in the critical period following the US midterm elections. Even some of Musk’s fellow high-powered users of the platform had tough feedback.

    “@elonmusk, from one entrepreneur to another, for when you have your customer service hat on. I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again,” tweeted billionaire Mark Cuban.

    “Bottom line is that you have a decision to make,” Cuban added. “Stick with the new Twitter that democratizes every tweet by paid accounts and puts the onus on all users to curate for themselves. Or bring back Twitter curation. One makes Twitter time and information efficient. The other is awful.”

    In a Twitter Spaces event held for advertisers this week, Musk pleaded with brands to keep using the platform, after a growing number of companies paused ads, causing what Musk previously described as a “massive drop in revenue.” In the event, Musk sought to appear magnanimous in accepting responsibility for the company’s performance.

    “If things go wrong, it’s my fault, because the buck stops with me,” he told an audience of over 100,000 listeners.

    But privately, Musk’s critics have described the billionaire as dismissive of accountability, even in the face of scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission, which publicly warned on Thursday, in a rare forward-looking statement, that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

    According to an internal Slack message posted by a Twitter employee and viewed by CNN, Musk has shown little fear of the FTC regulators overseeing the company’s multiple, legally binding consent agreements committing it to maintaining a robust cybersecurity program and producing written privacy impact reports before launching any new products or services, a requirement that could cover Twitter Blue.

    The company is already facing billions in potential fines from the FTC over alleged privacy missteps dating to before Musk’s ownership. But, the Twitter employee warned colleagues, Twitter could find itself even more legally exposed after the sudden resignation of multiple top Twitter executives charged with fulfilling the company’s FTC obligations, including its chief information security officer and chief privacy officer.

    Forced to address the looming risk of FTC oversight, Musk reportedly struck a conciliatory tone.

    “Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree,” Musk reportedly wrote in an email to employees Thursday evening.

    The one thing Musk claims is going in his favor at Twitter is user growth, as more people tune in to watch him fumble his way through owning the company.

    “Twitter usage is at an all-time high,” Musk tweeted earlier this week, before adding in a follow-up tweet: “I just hope the servers don’t melt!”

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  • Elon Musk pleads with advertisers to stay on Twitter | CNN Business

    Elon Musk pleads with advertisers to stay on Twitter | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Twitter owner Elon Musk pleaded with advertisers to keep using his platform on Wednesday as he sketched out his plans for user verification, content moderation and even his intention to add banking features to Twitter in front of a live audience of over 100,000 users.

    During an hour-long Twitter Spaces session attended by representatives from Adidas, Chevron, Kate Spade, Nissan and Walgreens, Musk said he wanted Twitter to “be a force that moves civilization in a positive direction.”

    An indicator of success, he said, would be whether his decisions lead to growth in users and advertising, while failure would mean the opposite.

    The collection of major advertisers and brands listening to Musk’s remarks underscored the intense interest — and perceptions of risk — generated by Musk’s erratic management of the company over the past week, from launching (and then un-launching) product changes to his sweeping layoffs that hit half the company.

    To his critics, and to companies that have paused advertising on Twitter, Musk asked to be given a chance.

    “I understand if people want to give it a minute and see how things are evolving,” he said. “But really, the best way to see how things are evolving is just use Twitter. And see how your experience has changed. Is it better? Is it worse?”

    Musk repeatedly urged skeptics to use the platform while addressing questions about his proposal to offer blue check marks to users who agree to pay $8 a month — a plan whose rollout has been marred by uncertainty and abrupt changes.

    Users who pay for Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service, will not be required to provide identifying information other than a credit card and a phone number, Musk confirmed. Twitter will eventually default to displaying tweets from Twitter Blue subscribers, while tweets from users who do not pay for a blue check mark, he said, would be relegated to a separate page on the site and effectively buried unless viewers sought out that material.

    Brands will be expected to foot the bill for their own verification on Twitter Blue, Musk said. He did not go into specifics about a separate, gray verification badge Twitter is developing for major brands, government accounts and media outlets — a feature the company has said will not be available for purchase but rather bestowed on high-profile accounts to distinguish them from those who paid for blue check marks. On Wednesday Twitter briefly appeared to have rolled out the grey check mark feature for some users, though Musk soon after tweeted that he had “killed it.” A Twitter product manager working on the feature left the door open for its eventual release.

    Musk also argued, contrary to some of his critics, that well-resourced purveyors of mis- and disinformation would not be able to game the system because they would quickly run out of phone numbers and credit cards, or eventually tire of the effort.

    Musk sought to distill many of the challenges of running a social media platform into a binary.

    “Thinking of it as an information problem, truth is signal and falsehood is noise,” he said. “And we want to improve the signal-to-noise ratio as much as possible.”

    Musk’s expansive plans for Twitter include adding financial products to the mix. It could begin, he said, with Twitter allowing users to pay each other through the platform, with the company setting up each user with an initial gift of $10 to test it out. Over time, Musk added, Twitter will offer the ability for users to transfer money out of its system to third-party banks — and then to market its own banking services.

    “The next step would be a money market account so you can get an extremely high yield on your balance,” Musk said, adding that debit cards and checks could also be a part of the plan.

    Last week, Twitter submitted registration paperwork to the US government that indicated its intent to join the payments industry, and to comply with certain banking regulations. A copy of the paperwork viewed by CNN showed that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network received the registration filing by “Twitter Payments LLC” on Nov. 4. A FinCEN spokesperson declined to comment on Twitter’s filing, which had been first reported by the New York Times on Wednesday.

    Musk acknowledged brands’ concerns about the presence of hate speech and other offensive content on the platform.

    “I don’t think having hate speech next to an ad is great, obviously,” he said with a chuckle.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of integrity and safety, said Twitter is increasing its investment in ideas to battle hateful content.

    “We think there’s a lot of other stuff we can do, from warning messages to interstitials, to reducing the reach of that content, that we haven’t fully explored in the past,” Roth said, vowing to implement those ideas quickly. Twitter has implemented many of these steps in the past, particularly in response to election and Covid-19 misinformation.

    Musk said he and his teams are at work changing much of Twitter’s existing codebase, partly to support new features such as longform video. That feature, he said, will initially allow paid users to download 10 minutes of high-definition video before gradually lengthening that time limit to 40 minutes and then several hours.

    And he emphasized the importance of Community Notes, formerly known as Birdwatch, a crowdsourced fact-checking feature that Twitter has been testing with some of its users.

    Community Notes, he said, “will obviate the need for a lot of the content stuff that’s currently in place, I think.”

    The sprawling question-and-answer session occasionally delved into the metaphorical and philosophical.

    At one point, Musk appeared to acknowledge that his commitment to “free speech” was not absolute.

    “There’s a giant difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach,” he said.

    Musk also described Twitter’s existing verification system as a “lords and peasants situation” and compared it to the American Revolutionary War.

    “In the United States, we fought a war to get rid of that stuff,” he said. “Maybe this is a dumb decision, but we’ll see.”

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  • The sudden decline of one of the largest crypto exchanges could rattle the sports industry | CNN Business

    The sudden decline of one of the largest crypto exchanges could rattle the sports industry | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    The near collapse this week of FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has sent shockwaves throughout the crypto startup and investment community. But the fallout could also spread to the sports industry.

    Like other crypto companies, FTX has invested heavily in sports sponsorships, including partnerships and naming rights in professional basketball, baseball and Formula One racing. Now, the company is in turmoil. On Tuesday, it said it would be acquired by rival Binance after experiencing a sudden liquidity crisis, but the deal was called off Wednesday by Binance after the firm conducted a financial review of FTX.

    The uncertainty around the future of FTX raises new questions over what happens to its many sports deals.

    In 2021, FTX inked a reported $135 million, 19-year deal with the NBA’s Miami Heat to rename the American Airlines Arena as FTX Arena. Major League Baseball struck a five-year deal in 2021 to name FTX as its official cryptocurrency exchange, a partnership that includes putting FTX patches on umpires’ uniforms. FTX is also the official cryptocurrency exchange partner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.

    “It is far too premature for us to comment,” the FTX Arena and Miami Heat said in a joint statement provided to CNN Business when asked how the acquisition could impact their deal.

    Even college sports has ties to FTX, with the University of California, Berkeley, signing a $17.5 million, 10-year naming rights partnership in 2021 for the school’s football stadium. “We believe we have found a great partner in FTX,” Cal Director of Athletics Jim Knowlton said at the time. “We are looking forward to building our relationship now and in the years ahead.” Cal Athletics did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    FTX also works directly with some of the biggest athletes across sports. Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani became the exchange’s global ambassador in return for a stake in the company; NBA star Steph Curry and his foundation, Eat.Learn.Play., signed a partnership with FTX in 2021; and football legend Tom Brady has an equity stake and has served as an ambassador for FTX.

    Sports partnership experts say the stadium naming rights are the biggest headache. “There’s not a huge level of permanence to a lot of the things that have been done, except for the two buildings,” Peter Laatz, global managing director at sports partnerships consultancy IEG, told CNN Business.

    “It happened during the dot-com era where a bunch of buildings, baseball stadiums mostly, were getting named after all these wonky dot-com companies, and they all went completely belly up,” said Laatz. “Naming rights deals are just so hard to get up and running, to get in the minds of consumers that Staples and American Airlines Arenas are now called something different and to pull the roots up on something like that is just more difficult. It makes the property’s job harder. It’s more expensive.”

    FTX and Binance did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    FTX is not the only crypto company involved in the sports world. Cryptocurrency brands spent more than $130 million on NBA sponsorships alone last season, up from less than $2 million the season before. Just five crypto companies, including Crypto.com, Coinbase and FTX, were responsible for 92% of the sector spending, according to IEG.

    In 2021, trading platform Coinbase inked a multiyear agreement with the NBA to serve as the league’s exclusive cryptocurrency partner, reportedly worth $192 million over four years. Crypto.com, another cryptocurrency exchange, purchased the naming rights for the Los Angeles Lakers’ stadium in November 2021, a deal reportedly worth $700 million. It also entered a multiyear deal to become the Philadelphia 76ers’ official jersey patch partner.

    Then the market shifted. Coinbase, Crypto.com and other services announced layoffs as rising inflation, fears of a looming recession and broader market turbulence led to a sharp decline in the value of cryptocurrencies.

    “We’ve always said that this was an arms race for brand awareness and users, and there were 40 crypto exchanges spending money in sponsorship a year ago — and now there’s like none. There’s maybe three or four,” said Laatz.

    Binance, notably, sat out the sports sponsorship frenzy. In a hiring announcement earlier this year, Binance CEO Zhao “CZ” Changpeng said: “It was not easy saying no to Super Bowl ads, stadium naming rights, large sponsor deals a few months ago, but we did.”

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  • Opinion: A really bad night for some high-profile Trump-backed candidates | CNN

    Opinion: A really bad night for some high-profile Trump-backed candidates | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    CNN Opinion contributors share their thoughts on the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a clear message to every Republican voter Tuesday night: My way is the path to a national majority, and former President Donald Trump’s way is the path to future disappointments and continued suffering.

    Four years ago, DeSantis won his first gubernatorial race by less than a percentage point. His nearly 20-point win against Democratic candidate Charlie Crist on Tuesday sent the message that DeSantis, not Trump, can win over the independent voters who decide elections.

    DeSantis’ decisive victory offers a future where the Republican Party might actually win the popular vote in a presidential contest – something that hasn’t been done since George W. Bush in 2004.

    Meanwhile, many of the candidates Trump endorsed in 2022 struggled, and it was clear from CNN exit polls that the former President – with his 37% favorability rating – would be a serious underdog in the 2024 general election should he win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time.

    My friend Patrick Ruffini of Echelon Insights tweeted a key observation: DeSantis commanded huge support among Latinos in 2022 compared to Trump in 2020.

    In 2020, Biden won the heavily Latino Miami-Dade County by seven points. DeSantis flipped the county on Tuesday and ran away with an 11-point win.

    In 2020, Biden won Osceola County by nearly 14 points. This time, DeSantis secured the county by nearly seven points, marking a whopping 21-point swing.

    DeSantis combined his strength among Latinos with his support among working class Whites, suburban white-collar voters and rural Floridians. That’s a coalition that could win nationally, unlike Trump’s limited appeal among several traditional Republican voting segments.

    Last year, it was Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin of Virginia who scored an earthquake in a Biden state by keeping Trump at arm’s length and focusing on the issues. Tonight, it was DeSantis who ran as his own man (Trump rallied for Marco Rubio but not DeSantis at the end of the campaign) and showed what you can do when you combine the political instincts required to be a successful Republican these days with actual governing competence.

    DeSantis made a convincing case that he, rather than Trump, gives Republicans the best chance to defeat Biden (or some other Democrat) in 2024. With Trump plotting a reelection campaign announcement soon, DeSantis has a lot to think about and a solid springboard from which to launch a challenge to the former President.

    Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor and Republican campaign adviser, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY.

    Roxanne Jones

    Let it go. If election night confirmed anything for me it is this: We can all – voters, doomscrollers, pundits and election deniers included – stop believing every election revolves around former President Donald Trump. Instead, when asked in exit polls across the country, younger people, women and other voters in key demographics said their top concerns were inflation, abortion rights, crime and other quality of life issues.

    What a relief. It finally feels like a majority of voters want to re-center American politics away from the toxic, conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric we’ve experienced over the past several years.

    Yes, Republicans are still projected to take control of the House of Representatives, with a narrow (and narrowing) majority – but will that make much difference? Despite the advantage Democrats had in the chamber the past two years, President Joe Biden has still had to battle and compromise to get parts of his agenda passed. How the balance of power will settle in the Senate is unclear, with a few races in key states still undecided as of this afternoon. It will likely hinge, again, on Georgia, and a forthcoming runoff election between the incumbent, Democrat Raphael Warnock, and his GOP challenger, former football star Herschel Walker.

    No matter what party you claim, there were positive signs coming out of the midterms. My hometown, Philadelphia, and its surrounding suburbs, came up big in another election – rejecting the Trump-backed New Jersey transplant, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and helping to send Democratic candidate John Fetterman to the US Senate. Pennsylvania voters also rejected an election denier, Doug Mastriano, in the race for state governor, and made history by electing Democrat Summer Lee as the state’s first Black woman to serve in Congress.

    Maryland voters, meanwhile, elected Democrat Wes Moore as their state’s first Black governor. And in New England, Maura Healey became Massachusetts’ first female governor. She’s also the first out lesbian to win a state governorship anywhere in the US.

    Democracy, freedom and equality also won out on ballot issues.

    In unfinished business, voters tackled slavery, permanently abolishing “involuntary servitude” in four states – Vermont, Oregon, Alabama and Tennessee. (Louisiana held on to the slavery clause under its constitution, however.)

    Despite efforts to limit voting rights across the nation, voters in Alabama approved a measure requiring that any change to state election law goes into effect at least six months before a general election. And, in Kentucky, voters narrowly beat back an amendment that would have removed constitutional protections for abortion rights – one of several instances in which voters refused to accept restrictive reproductive rights measures.

    Still, the highlight of my midterms night was watching 25-year-old Maxwell Frost win a US congressional race in Florida – holding a Democratic seat in a state whose 2022 results skewed red, no less. More and more, we are seeing young people energized, voting and stepping up with fresh ideas to lead this democracy. I’m here for it.

    Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN The Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has been a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of “Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete.” She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia’s 900AM WURD.

    Michael D'Antonio

    Voters made Tuesday a bad night for former President Donald Trump. Despite his efforts, many of his favorites not only lost but denied the GOP the usual out-party wave of wins that come in midterm elections. This leaves a diminished Trump with the challenge of deciding what to do next.

    In the short term, the man who so often returns to his well-worn playbook resumed his years-long effort to ruin Americans’ confidence in any election his team loses. “Protest, protest, protest,” he told his followers, even before all the polls closed. In a sign of his declining power, no mass protests ensued.

    Nevertheless, false claims of election fraud will likely be a major theme if he follows through on his loudly voiced hints that he plans to run for the White House again in 2024.

    To run or not to run is now the main question. It’s not an easy choice. Trump could end up like other one-term presidents he has mocked, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, who retreated from politics and devoted themselves to new interests. However, he has other options. He could revive his television career – Fox News? – or return to his businesses. Or, he could develop a new role as leader of an organization that can exploit his prodigious fundraising ability, and give him a platform for grabbing attention, while leaving him plenty of time for golf.

    Running could forestall the various legal problems he faces, but he has lawyers who might accomplish the same goal. Fox News is unlikely to pay enough, and his businesses are now being watched by a court-appointed overseer. This leaves him with a combination of easy work – fundraising and pontificating – combined with his favorite pastimes: fame, money and fun. What’s not to like?

    Michael D’Antonio is the author of the book “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success” and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book “High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump.”

    Jill Filipovic

    Democrat Kathy Hochul won the New York State gubernatorial race, and thank goodness. Her opponent, Lee Zeldin, is not your typical moderate Republican who usually stands a chance in a blue state. Instead, he’s an abortion opponent who wanted voters to simply trust he wouldn’t mess with New York’s abortion laws.

    Zeldin was endorsed by the National Rifle Association when he was in Congress. He is a Trump acolyte who voted against certifying the 2020 election in Congress, after texting with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and reportedly planning to contest the outcome of the 2020 election before the results were even in.

    New Yorkers sent a definitive message: Our values matter, even in moments of profound uncertainty.

    Plus, Hochul made history as the first woman elected to the governor’s office in New York.

    This race was, in its final days, predicted to be closer than it actually was. Part of that was simply the usual electoral math: The minority party typically has an advantage in the midterms, and Republicans are a minority in Washington, DC, with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in Congress. And polling in New York state didn’t look as good for Hochul as it should have in a solidly blue state: Voters who talked to pollsters emphasized crime fears and the economy; abortion rights were galvanizing, but didn’t seem as definitive in an election for a governor vastly unlikely to have an abortion criminalization bill delivered to her desk.

    The polls were imperfect. It turns out that New Yorkers are, in fact, New Yorkers: Not cowed by overblown claims of crime (while I think crime is indeed a problem Democrats should address, New York City remains one of the safest places in the country); determined to defend the racial, ethnic and sexual diversity that makes our state great; and committed to standing up against the tyranny of an anti-democratic party that would force women into pregnancy and childbirth.

    However, Democrats shouldn’t take this win for granted. The issues voters raised – inflation, crime – are real concerns. And the reasons many voters turned out – abortion rights, democratic norms – remain under threat.

    Hochul’s job now is to address voter concerns, while standing up for New York values: Openness, decency, freedom for all. Because that’s what New Yorkers did today: The majority of us didn’t cast our ballots from a place of fear and reaction, but from the last dregs of hope and optimism. We voted for what we want. And we now want our governor to deliver.

    Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on Twitter.

    Douglas Heye

    North Carolina’s Senate race received less attention than contests in some other states – possibly a result of the campaign having lesser-known candidates than states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

    In the waning weeks of the race, multiple polls had the candidates – Democratic former state Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley and Republican US House Rep. Ted Budd – separated by a percentage point or less.

    Perhaps more than in any other Senate campaign, the issue of crime loomed large in North Carolina, with Budd claiming in his speeches that it had become much more dangerous to walk the streets in the state. That talking point, along with his focus on inflation, appeared to help propel him to victory in Tuesday’s vote.

    Beasley, by contrast, focused much of her attention on abortion, making it a central plank of her campaign that she would stand up not just for women’s reproductive rights, but workplace protections and equal pay.

    The two candidates were vying for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Despite being seen as a red state – albeit that is less solidly Republican than neighboring southern states – North Carolina has elected Democrats as five of the last six governors and two of the last six senators.

    Former President Barack Obama won the state in 2008 but lost it in 2012 by one of the closest margins in the nation. And while Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020, he never received 50% of the vote.

    Douglas Heye is the ex-deputy chief of staff to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a GOP strategist and a CNN political commentator. Follow him on Twitter @dougheye.

    Sophia A. Nelson

    Many of us suspected that Democratic Florida Congresswoman and former House impeachment manager Val Demings would have an uphill battle unseating incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio, and weren’t entirely surprised when she lost the race. With 98% of the vote counted, Rubio won easily, garnering 57.8% of the vote to Demings’ 41.1%.

    As it turns out, Tuesday was a tough night all around for Black women running statewide. Beyond Demings’ loss, Judge Cheri Beasley narrowly lost her Senate bid in North Carolina.

    And in the big heartbreak of the night, Stacey Abrams lost the Georgia governor’s race to Gov. Brian Kemp – a repeat of her defeat to him four years ago, when the two tangled for what at the time was an open seat.

    Abrams shook up the 2018 race by expanding the electoral map, enlisting more women and people of color who turned out in record numbers – but she fell short of punching her ticket to Georgia’s governor’s mansion. And on Tuesday she lost to Kemp by a much wider margin than in 2018.

    Had Abrams succeeded, she would have been the first Black woman to become the governor of a US state. After her second straight electoral loss, America is still waiting for that breakthrough.

    Meanwhile, an ever bigger winner of the night was Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, who handily defeated Democrat Charlie Crist.

    DeSantis’ big night solidifies what some feel is a compelling claim to front-runner status for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, on what turned out to be a strong election night for Republicans in the state.

    It’s hard for a Democrat to win statewide in the deep South. And as Demings, Beasley and Abrams have shown, it’s particularly tough for a Black woman to win statewide in the region: In fact, it’s never been done.

    All three women were well-qualified and well-funded stars in their party. But, when we look at the final vote tallies, it tells a familiar story. Take Demings, for example, a former law enforcement officer – she was Orlando’s police chief – and yet, she did not get the big law enforcement endorsements. Rubio did, although he never wore the blue.

    That was a big red flag for me, and it showed how much gender and race still play in the minds of male voters and power brokers of my generation and older. For Black women, a double burden of both race and gender at play. It is the nagging story of our lives.

    As for Abrams, I think Kemp was helped by backing away from Trump and modulating his campaign message to appeal to suburban women and independents.

    Abrams, meanwhile, just didn’t have the same support and enthusiasm this time around for her candidacy. And that is unfortunate, but for her to lose by such a big margin says much more.

    At the end of the day however, these three women have nothing to regret. They ran great campaigns, and they created great future platforms for themselves. And they each put one more crack in the glass ceiling facing candidates for the US Senate and governors’ mansions.

    Sophia A. Nelson is a journalist and author of the new book “Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.”

    David Thornburgh

    Reflections on the morning after Election Day can be a little fuzzy: Chalk it up to a late night, incomplete data and a still-forming narrative. Still, as a longtime Pennsylvania election-watcher, I see three clear takeaways:

    1) Pennsylvanians don’t take to extreme anti-establishment candidates. The GOP candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, broke the mold of just about any statewide candidate in the last few decades.

    The state that delivered wins to center-right and center-left candidates like my father Gov, Dick Thornburgh, Sen. Bob Casey and Gov, Tom Ridge gave establishment Democrat Josh Shapiro a wipeout double-digit victory.

    2) “You’re not from here and I am” and “Stick it to the man” proved to be sufficiently powerful messages for alt-Democrat John Fetterman to win his Senate race, albeit by a much smaller margin.

    Amplified by more than $300 million in campaign spending (making PA’s the most expensive Senate race in the country), those two simple themes spoke to the quirky, stubborn authenticity that is a longstanding strand of Pennsylvania’s political DNA.

    3) In the home of Independence Hall, independent voters made a significant difference. Pretty much every poll since the beginning of both marquee races showed the two party candidates with locked in lopsided mirror-image margins among members of their own party.

    Over 90% of Democrats said they’d vote for Shapiro or Fetterman and close to 90% of Republicans said the same of Mastriano or Oz. The 20 to 30% of PA voters who consider themselves independent voters may have been more decisive than most tea-leaves readers gave them credit for.

    Most polls showed Shapiro and Fetterman with whopping leads among independent voters. They may not have been the same independent voters: Shapiro’s indy supporters could be former GOP voters disaffected by Trump, and Fetterman’s indy squad could be young voters mobilized by the abortion rights issue (about half of young voters are independents nationally).

    The growing significance of this independent vote in close elections may increase pressure on both parties to repeal closed primaries so that indy voters can vote in those elections. Both parties will want to have more time and opportunity to court them in the future.

    With Florida ripening to a deeper and deeper Red, Pennsylvania may loom larger and larger as the most contested, consequential swing state in the country: well-worth watching as we move inexorably to 2024.

    David Thornburgh is a longtime Pennsylvania civic leader. The former CEO of the Committee of Seventy, he now chairs the group’s Ballot PA initiative to repeal closed primaries. He is the second son of former GOP Governor and US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.

    Isabelle Schindler

    The line of students registering to vote on Election Day stretched across the University of Michigan campus, with students waiting for over four hours. There was a palpable sense of excitement and urgency around the election on campus. For many young people, especially young women, there was one motivating issue that drove their participation: abortion rights.

    One of the most important and contentious issues on the ballot in Michigan was Proposal 3 (commonly known as Prop 3), which codifies the right to abortion and other reproductive freedoms, such as birth control, into the Michigan state constitution. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many Michiganders have feared the return of a 1931 law that bans abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and contains felony criminal penalties for abortion providers.

    Though the courts have prevented that old law from taking effect, voters were eager to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, and overwhelmingly voted in favor of Prop 3 with over 55% of voters approving the proposal. This is a major feat given the coordinated campaign against the proposal. Both pro-life groups and the Catholic Church strongly opposed it, and many ads claimed it was “too confusing and too extreme.”

    The issue of abortion was a major focal point of the gubernatorial campaign between Gov, Gretchen Whitmer and her Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon. Pro-Whitmer groups consistently highlighted Dixon’s support of a near-total abortion ban and her past comments that having a rapist’s baby could help a victim heal. Whitmer’s resounding win in the purple state of Michigan is certainly due, in part, to backlash against Dixon’s extreme positions on the issue.

    After the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, so many young voters felt helpless and despondent about the future of abortion rights. However, instead of throwing in the towel, Michigan voters showed up and displayed their support for Whitmer and Prop 3, showing that Michiganders support bodily autonomy and the right to choose.

    Isabelle Schindler is a senior at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She is a field director for College Democrats on her campus and has worked as a UMICH Votes Fellow to promote voting.

    Paul Sracic

    From the beginning, the US Senate race in Ohio wasn’t expected to be close. In the end, it wasn’t – with author and political newcomer J.D. Vance defeating Rep. Tim Ryan by over six percentage points.

    Republicans also swept every statewide office in Ohio, including the elections for justices on the Ohio Supreme Court who, for the first time, had their political party listed next to their names on the ballot. This will give the Republicans a dependable majority on state’s highest court, which is significant since there is an ongoing unresolved legal battle over the drawing of state and federal legislative districts.

    It is now safe to say that Ohio, for so long the quintessential swing state, is a Republican state. What happened is simple to explain: White, working-class voters have become a solid part of the Republican coalition in the Buckeye State. In 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump convinced these voters that the Democratic Party had abandoned them to progressive and internationalist interests with values they did not share. This shift was symbolized by the movement of voters in the former manufacturing hub of Northeast Ohio, once the most Democratic part of the state, to the GOP.

    The question going into 2022 was whether the Republicans could keep these voters if Trump was not on the ballot. The Democrats recruited Rep. Tim Ryan to run for the Senate because he was from Northeast Ohio, having grown up just north of Youngstown. They hoped that he could win those working-class voters back, and Ryan designed his campaign around working-class economic interests, distancing himself from Washington, DC, Democrats and even opposing President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Once the votes were counted, however, Ryan performed only slightly better than Biden had in Northeast Ohio. In fact, he even lost Trumbull County, the place where he grew up and whose voters he represented in Washington for two decades.

    Ohio Democrats will face another test in two years, when the Democratic Senate seat held by Sherrod Brown will be on the ballot. Brown won in 2018, but given last night’s result, the Republicans will have no problem recruiting a quality candidate to run for a seat that, right now, at least leans Republican.

    Paul Sracic is a professor of politics and international relations at Youngstown State University and the coauthor of “Ohio Politics and Government” (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2015). Follow him on Twitter at @pasracic.

    Joyce M. Davis

    Pennsylvanians clearly rejected the worst of right-wing extremism on Nov. 8, sending a strong message to former President Donald Trump that his endorsement doesn’t guarantee victory in the Keystone State.

    Trump proved to be a two-time loser in the commonwealth this election cycle, despite stirring up his base with screaming rallies for Republican candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz, Doug Mastriano and Rep. Scott Perry.

    And a lot of people are breathing a long, hard sign of relief.

    Mastriano, who CNN projects will lose the race for the state’s governor to Democrat Josh Shapiro, scared many Pennsylvanians with his brash, take-no-prisoners Trump swagger. He inflamed racial tensions, embraced Christian nationalism, and once said women who violated his proposed abortion ban should be charged with murder. On top of all that, he’s an unapologetic election denier.

    Dr. Oz, meanwhile, couldn’t shake his carpetbagger baggage, and Oprah’s rejection – on November 4, she endorsed his rival and now-victorious candidate in the Senate race, John Fetterman – seems to have carried more weight than Trump’s rallies, at least in the feedback I’ve received from readers and community members.

    All of this should compel some serious soul-searching among Republican leadership in Pennsylvania. What could have they been thinking to place all their marbles on someone so outside of the mainstream as Mastriano? Did they think Pennsylvanians wouldn’t check Oz’s address? Will they rethink their hardline stance on abortion?

    In a widely-watched House race, Harrisburg City Councilwoman Shamaine Daniels made a valiant Democratic effort to unseat GOP Rep. Scott Perry, after the party’s preferred candidate pulled out of the race. But her lack of name recognition and inexperience on the state or national stage impacted her ability to establish a base of her own. So the five-term incumbent, who played a role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, will return to Washington – though perhaps with a clipped wing.

    Many Pennsylvanians may be staunch conservatives, but we proved we’re not extremists – and we won’t embrace Trump or his candidates if they threaten the very foundations of democracy.

    Joyce M. Davis is outreach and opinion editor for PennLive and The Patriot-News. She is a veteran journalist and author who has lived and worked around the globe, including for National Public Radio, Knight Ridder Newspapers in Washington, DC, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.

    Edward Lindsey

    In the last two years, President Joe Biden, Sen. Jon Ossoff and Sen. Raphael Warnock, all Democrats, won in the Peach State. There has been a raging debate in Georgia political circles since then as to whether these races signal a long-term left turn toward the Democratic Party, caused by shifting demographics, or whether they were merely a negative reaction to former President Donald Trump. Tuesday’s results point strongly to the latter.

    Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who had rebuffed Trump’s demand to overturn the 2020 presidential result, cruised to a convincing reelection on Tuesday with a pro-growth message by defeating the Democrats’ rising star Stacey Abrams by some 300,000 votes. His coattails also propelled other Republican state candidates to victory – including the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who had also defied the former President – and helped to keep the Georgia General Assembly firmly in GOP hands.

    However, before sliding Georgia from a purple political state back into the solid red state column, we still have one more contest to look forward to: a runoff for the US Senate, echoing what happened in Georgia’s last set of Senate races.

    Georgia requires candidates to win over 50% of the vote and the presence of a Libertarian on the ticket has thrown the heated race between Warnock, the incumbent senator and senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and Georgia football great Herschel Walker into an overtime runoff campaign to be decided on December 6.

    Both Walker and Warnock survived November 8 to fight another day despite different strong headwinds facing each of them. For Warnock, it has been Biden’s low favorability rating – hovering around 40% nationwide, and only 38% in Georgia, according to Marist. For Walker, it has been the steady drumbeat of personal allegations rolled out over the past few months, some admitted to and others staunchly denied.

    Warnock has faced his challenge by emphasizing his willingness to work across the aisle on some issues and occasionally disagreeing with the President on others. Walker, who is backed by Trump, has pulled from the deep well of admiration many Georgians feel for the former college football star.

    Both of these strategies were strong enough to get them into a runoff, but which strategy will work in that arena? The answer could be crucial to determining which party controls the US Senate, depending on the result of other races that have yet to be called. Stay tuned while Georgians enjoy having the two candidates for Thanksgiving dinner and into the holiday season.

    Edward Lindsey is a former Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives and its majority whip. He is a lawyer in Atlanta focusing on public policy and political law.

    Brianna N. Mack

    In his bid to win a seat in the US Senate, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan tried to appeal to working class voters who felt abandoned by establishment Democrats. Those blue collar voters – many of them formerly members of his party – overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016 and again in 2020.

    Unfortunately for Ryan, his strategy failed. He lost to J.D. Vance by a decisive margin, according to election projections.

    It was, perhaps, a predictable ending for a candidate who threw away the traditional approach of rallying your base and instead courted the almost non-existent, moderate Trump voter. And it’s a shame. Had Ryan won, Ohio would have had two Democratic senators. The last time that happened was almost 30 years ago, when Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn represented our state.

    But in wooing Republicans and right-leaning moderates, Ryan abandoned many of Ohio’s left-leaning Democrats who brought him to the dance.

    That approach was perhaps most evident in his ads. In a campaign spot in which he is shown tossing a football at various computer screens showing messages he disapproves of, he hurls the ball at one emblazoned with the words “Defund the Police” and dismisses what he disdainfully calls “the culture wars.”

    Another ad showed Ryan, gun in hand, hitting his mark at target practice, as the words “Not too bad for a Democrat” appear on the screen. To imply you’re pro-gun rights when majority of Americans support gun control legislation – and when your party explicitly embraces a pro-gun control stance is bewildering. Ryan’s ads on the economy began to parrot the anti-China rhetoric taken up by Republicans. And when President Joe Biden announced his student debt plan in an effort to invigorate the Democratic bringing economic relief to millions of millennial voters, Ryan opposed the move.

    As a Black woman living in a metropolitan area, I would have liked to see him reach out to communities of color, perhaps by making an appearance with African American members of Ohio’s congressional delegation Rep. Joyce Beatty or Rep. Shontel Brown. But I would have settled for one ad addressing the economic or social concerns of people who don’t live in the Rust Belt.

    Ryan might have won if he’d gotten the kind of robust backing from his own party that Vance got from his – and if he’d courted his Democratic base.

    Brianna N. Mack is an assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University whose coursework is centered on American political behavior. Her research interests are the political behavior of racial and ethnic minorities. She tweets at @Mack_Musings.

    James Wigderson

    Wisconsin remains as split as ever with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers surviving a challenge from businessman Tim Michels and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson barely holding off a challenge from Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

    In late February, Johnson, who Democrats hoped might be a beatable incumbent, was viewed favorably by only 33% of Wisconsin’s voters, according to the Marquette University Law School poll. He was viewed unfavorably by 45% of the electorate with 21% saying they didn’t know what to think of him or hadn’t heard enough about him. He finished the election cycle still seen unfavorably by 46% with 43% of the voters holding a favorable view of him.

    However, Democrats decided to run possibly the worst candidate if they wanted to win against Johnson. At one point in August, the relatively unknown Barnes actually led Johnson by 7%. But familiarity with Barnes didn’t help him. Crime was the third most concerning issue for Wisconsin voters this election cycle, according to the Marquette University Law School poll, and Johnson’s campaign successfully attacked Barnes for statements in support of decreasing or redirecting police funding and for reducing the prison population. In the end, Johnson came out victorious.

    So, with Republicans winning in the Senate, what saved Evers in the gubernatorial race? Perhaps it was women voters.

    The overturning of Roe v. Wade meant Wisconsin’s abortion ban from 1849 went back into effect. Michels supported the no-exceptions law but then flip-flopped and said he could support exceptions for rape and incest. Johnson, for his part, successfully deflected the issue by saying he wanted Wisconsin’s abortion law to go to referendum.

    Another issue that may have soured women voters on Michels was the allegation of a culture of sexual harassment within his company. Evers’ campaign unsurprisingly jumped at the opportunity to argue that “the culture comes from the top.” (In response to the allegations against his company, Michel said: “These unproven allegations do not reflect the training and culture at Michels Corporation. Harassment in the workplace should not be condoned, nor tolerated, nor was it under Michels Corporation leadership.”) Michels’ divisive primary fight against former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch also didn’t help his appeal to women voters, especially in Kleefisch’s home county of Waukesha, formerly a key to a Republican victory in Wisconsin.

    If Republicans are going to win in 2024, they need to figure out how to attract the support of suburban women.

    James Wigderson is the former editor of RightWisconsin.com, a conservative-leaning news website, and the author of a twice-weekly newsletter, “Life, Under Construction.”

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  • Elon Musk said Twitter has seen a ‘massive drop in revenue’ as more brands pause ads | CNN Business

    Elon Musk said Twitter has seen a ‘massive drop in revenue’ as more brands pause ads | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk said Friday that Twitter has seen a “massive drop in revenue,” as a growing number of advertisers pause spending on the platform in the wake of his $44 billion acquisition.

    “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” he said in a tweet. “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

    The remarks came after General Mills and the Volkswagen Group confirmed that they are pausing advertising on Twitter in the wake of Musk’s acquisition of the social media company, in the clearest sign yet of growing advertiser uncertainty about the future of the platform under new ownership.

    “We have paused advertising on Twitter,” Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokesperson for General Mills, told CNN in a statement, making it the first company that doesn’t compete with Musk’s Tesla to confirm such a move. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” the spokesperson said.

    In a separate statement, Volkswagen Group, which owns Audi, Porsche and Bentley, confirmed it had recommended its brands “pause their paid activities on the platform until further notice.”

    The Wall Street Journal, which was first to report the moves, also said Pfizer and Mondalez are pausing ads on Twitter. The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The companies join General Motors, which had previously said it would pause paying for advertising on Twitter while it evaluates the platform’s “new direction.” Toyota, another Tesla competitor, previously told CNN that it is “in discussions with key stakeholders and monitoring the situation” on Twitter.

    Ad buying giant Interpublic Group, which works with consumer brands such as Unilever and Coca Cola, earlier this week also recommended its clients pause advertising on the platform.

    The impact is apparently already being felt at Twitter, as Musk tweeted that “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers” Thursday after many of the advertising announcements were made.

    After months of uncertainty about Musk’s pending acquisition, advertisers are now confronting questions around how Musk will change the platform, which is already an also-ran in the digital ad space despite its outsized political influence. Musk, known as both an innovative entrepreneur and an erratic figure, has promised to rethink Twitter’s content moderation policies and undo permanent bans of controversial figures, including former President Donald Trump.

    That creates a challenge for brands, which are sensitive to the types of content their ads run against, an issue made more complicated by social media. Most marketers bristle at the thought of having their ads run alongside toxic content such as hate speech, pornography or misinformation.

    The pauses also come days ahead of the US midterm elections, as many civil society leaders worry that misinformation and other harmful content could spread on the platform and create disruption.

    Musk has said he’s not a fan of advertising and is currently working to boost Twitter’s subscription revenue to boost its bottom line and be less dependent on ad sales, which account for 90% of Twitter’s overall revenue. But this shift won’t happen overnight, if it happens at all. Musk said he plans to launch an $8 per month subscription plan that will provide users with a verification mark, as well as several other perks, but the plans has faced sharp backlash.

    In the meantime, Musk is working to stave off a possible advertiser exodus. Musk’s team spent Monday “meeting with the marketing and advertising community” in New York, according to Jason Calacanis, a member of Musk’s inner circle.

    Musk also met earlier this week with a group of leaders of civil society organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, Free Press and the NAACP, to address concerns about a rise in hate on the platform. Representatives who attended the meeting told CNN they were encouraged by Musk’s willingness to talk and his initial commitments not to change the company’s content policies ahead of the midterms, but called on him to take further steps to protect the platform.

    Shortly before news broke last week that his $44 billion Twitter acquisition was completed, Musk wrote an open letter attempting to reassure advertisers that he does not want the social network to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

    “Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise,” he wrote. “Let us build something extraordinary together.”

    – CNN’s Jon Passantino and Peter Valdes-Dapena contributed to this report.

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  • After Elon Musk’s antics on Twitter, advertisers may think twice for now | CNN Business

    After Elon Musk’s antics on Twitter, advertisers may think twice for now | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Hours before news broke on Thursday that he had completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk wrote an open letter to advertisers stressing that he doesn’t want the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

    But that attempt at reassuring the advertising industry, which makes up the vast majority of Twitter’s business, was quickly overshadowed by Musk’s first days as the new owner of the platform. Some industry experts are now predicting an advertiser exodus could be coming sooner than expected.

    Within the first 24 hours of his ownership, there were several reports that racist comments, hate speech and other objectionable content had increased significantly on Twitter as users tested Musk’s promise that he would allow “free speech” on the platform. Then over the weekend, Musk was widely criticized for tweeting (then deleting without providing a reason) a link to a fringe conspiracy theory about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    “I think advertisers are bracing to leave,” said Claire Atkin, co-founder of the adtech watchdog Check My Ads. “It’s very possibly a seismic shift for marketers and advertisers.”

    After months of uncertainty about Musk’s pending acquisition, advertisers must now confront questions around how Musk will change the platform, which is already an also-ran in the digital ad space despite its outsized political influence. Musk, known as both an innovative entrepreneur and an erratic figure, has promised to rethink Twitter’s content moderation policies and undo permanent bans of controversial figures, including former President Donald Trump.

    Brands have long been sensitive to the types of content their ads run against, an issue made more complicated by social media. Most marketers bristle at the thought of having their ads run alongside toxic content such as hate speech, pornography or misinformation. And if Twitter continues to struggle with an uptick in such content — or if Musk updates Twitter’s policies to explicitly allow some of it — companies may cease advertising there for fear of risks to their brands, or because they’re reaching a smaller audience if regular users also depart.

    “If you think about the money, investment and care, real care and attention that goes into connecting with consumers, and then to have your ad be published next to lies … it goes against everything a brand wants to do,” Atkin said.

    Musk, who has previously tweeted “I hate advertising” and indicated he wants to make the platform less reliant on it, is also confronting the reality that about 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising. In addition to the open letter to advertisers, Musk’s team spent Monday “meeting with the marketing and advertising community” in New York, according to Jason Calacanis, a member of Musk’s inner circle.

    In public and private conversations with advertisers, Twitter has also stressed that its content policies have not changed following the acquisition, and Musk has said they won’t change until a new content moderation council is appointed (apparently to replace the company’s existing Trust and Safety council).

    But Musk may face an uphill battle. Twitter’s digital advertising business is much smaller than those of Meta, Google and Amazon, and doesn’t have growth and user demographics of TikTok. And many brands have already reduced digital ad spending in recent months amid the economic downturn. It may not take much for brands to cut back more.

    General Motors

    (GM)    , which competes with Musk’s Tesla

    (TSLA)    , said on Friday it would pause paying for advertising on Twitter while it evaluates “Twitter’s new direction.” CNN on Monday reached out to more than a dozen other brands that advertise on Twitter, most of which did not respond. Toyota

    (TM)    , another Tesla

    (TSLA)     competitor, told CNN that it is “in discussions with key stakeholders and monitoring the situation” on Twitter. Ben & Jerry’s said that “at this point we have not considered taking any action.”

    On Monday, advertising giant Interpublic Group advised clients to pause advertising on Twitter for the next week as it awaits more clarity on the platform’s plans for trust and safety and its capacity to carry out those plans under new owner Elon Musk, a person familiar with the situation told CNN. The guidance was sent via an internal memo to IPG employees who work with clients in its Mediabrands ad-buying arm, which include major consumer brands including Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Spotify, Unilever and more.

    Also on Monday, the Global Alliance of Responsible Media, a leading consortium of advertisers and platforms, including Twitter, published an open letter to Musk, encouraging him to ensure Twitter continues to align with the group’s standards, which designate hate speech, violence, harassment and insensitive treatment of debated social issues as “not appropriate for any advertising support.” In response to the letter, Musk said in a tweet, “Twitter’s commitment to brand safety is unchanged,” and Twitter Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette added that the company takes seriously brand safety and its partnership with the organization. (Personette tweeted on Tuesday that she resigned from the company last week.)

    Also on Monday, Angelo Carusone, CEO of media watchdog Media Matters for America, tweeted calling on major Twitter advertisers “to be putting pressure on Twitter right now” to better address the increase in hate and other toxic content. On Tuesday, a group of more than 40 civil society organizations, including Media Matters, the NAACP, GLAAD and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, sent an open letter to Twitter’s top advertisers calling on them to halt advertising on the platform if Musk cuts back on content moderation.

    “Advertisers are very sensitive to the changing landscape of social media,” said Atkin, adding that the question for Twitter is now “whether Elon Musk can continue to broker trust with advertisers or if he’s going to continue to sow uncertainty and fear.”

    In response to a request for comment on this story, a Twitter representative pointed CNN to the earlier tweets by Musk and Personette and Musk’s letter to advertisers, as well as a tweet by Twitter Head of Safety and Integrity Yoel Roth noting that the platform’s policies hadn’t changed, although it was facing an uptick in hate content from mostly non-human accounts.

    In a separate tweet thread Monday, Roth said that the company had since Saturday “been focused on addressing the surge in hateful conduct on Twitter.” He added: “We’ve made measurable progress, removing more than 1500 accounts and reducing impressions on this content to nearly zero.”

    One advertising executive told CNN on Monday that dozens of their clients had reached out in recent days for guidance on the situation.

    “It seems like a reasonable time for advertisers to rethink things,” said David Karpf, associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. “I think advertisers are going to look at this and say, is the weak Twitter advertising product becoming a better or worse investment? And it’s going to be the same or a little worse … advertisers certainly aren’t going to start spending more on Twitter anytime soon.”

    There is precedent for advertisers stepping away from platforms because of hateful content. In 2020, dozens of brands publicly signed on to the #StopHateForProfit advertiser boycott of Facebook, which called out the platform for its “repeated failure to meaningfully address the vast proliferation of hate on its platforms.”

    But when it comes to Twitter, brands may have to tread carefully to avoid backlash. After GM announced its Twitter advertising pause, some users on the platform, including some right-leaning political figures, have called for a boycott of the automaker.

    Because Musk has positioned himself as a “free speech” maximalist, and one with strong support among many conservative politicians, brands risk being framed as anti-free speech if they exit the platform. But brands also risk appearing to implicitly endorse hate speech and other harmful content if they stay, meaning that many may decide to quietly pause their advertising on the site without a formal announcement.

    “Advertisers are finding it hard to weigh in publicly on what is kind of an unwinnable position to take,” the advertising executive told CNN.

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  • Facebook became Meta one year ago. Its metaverse dream feels as far away as ever | CNN Business

    Facebook became Meta one year ago. Its metaverse dream feels as far away as ever | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Even by Facebook’s standards, 2021 was a rough year.

    A series of damning reports based on leaks from a whistleblower raised uncomfortable questions about Facebook’s impact on society; the company continued reeling from concerns about the use of its platform to organize the January 6 Capitol riot; and privacy changes from Apple threatened its core advertising business. Meanwhile, young users were flocking to TikTok.

    At a virtual reality event on October 28, 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to turn the page. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would change its name to Meta and go all in on building a future version of the internet called the “metaverse,” proving to all in the process that the company he launched in 2004 was more than just a social media business.

    One year and billions of dollars later, the so-called metaverse still feels years away, if it ever manifests at all. And the company formerly known as Facebook remains very much a social media business — one that is facing more financial pressure than when it announced the change.

    Meta’s Quest 2 consumer virtual-reality headset, released two years ago, is popular in its category but remains a niche product overall. Its newest headset, the much pricier $1,500 Quest Pro, is intended for enterprise customers and likely won’t move the needle with everyday consumers. And Meta’s flagship social VR app Horizon Worlds can feel like a ghost town (albeit a ghost town with laser tag).

    While some brands have since made measured bets on the metaverse, including by hiring “chief metaverse officers,” it’s not clear whether consumers actually want to work or play in it, or even know what the hard-to-define term means. The metaverse refers, generally, to a sort of virtual world that people can walk around in, as well as the idea of making the internet more ubiquitous and interconnected.

    Meanwhile, Meta’s core business is contracting as it confronts growing competition from TikTok and an advertising industry in retreat amid looming recession fears. The company this week reported its second-ever quarterly drop in revenue and saw profit cut in half from the prior year. It’s selling more ads but making less money on them, and user growth on its social media platforms is slowing. After hitting a $1 trillion market cap for the first time last summer, it’s now worth about a quarter of that, or less than Home Depot.

    “The business is not growing in 2022,” said Gil Luria, technology strategist at D.A. Davidson. “There is expectation that it will grow going forward, but that expectation may prove to be optimistic.”

    A bet that looked bold a year ago now looks borderline unhinged. Meta lost $9.4 billion in the first nine months of 2022 on its metaverse efforts and expects losses from the unit to “grow significantly year-over-year” in 2023. This has prompted even some of Meta’s supporters to urge it to rethink its strategy shift, and possibly slow it down. (It also prompted a tearful Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money,” to apologize to viewers for trusting Meta’s management team and recommending that investors buy the stock.)

    “People are confused by what the metaverse even means. If the company were investing $1-2B per year into this project, then that confusion might not even be a problem. You would simply do R&D quietly and investors would focus on the core business,” Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, a shareholder in Meta, wrote in an open letter to Zuckerberg this week. He urged Meta to “cap its metaverse investments to no more than $5B per year with more discrete targets and measures of success.”

    The current pace of spending, he added, “is super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

    Meta did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

    Though the name change was just announced a year ago, the shift from Facebook to Meta has been years in the making. Zuckerberg has said in the past that it’s a long-term bet for the company — not an overnight transformation. It began with Facebook’s 2014 purchase of Oculus VR, and in the years since, the company has rolled out a series of headsets that are increasingly capable, affordable and portable.

    Meta’s latest headset, the Quest Pro, is its first effort at combining the immersiveness of VR with the real world. It can display text and fine details in VR, track your eyes and facial features to give you a sense of connection with other people in virtual spaces, and show you a view of the world around you in color while letting you interact with digital objects — all nods toward Meta’s goal of attracting more business users.

    It’s a far cry from the Oculus Rift headset available in 2016: That cost $599, but users also had to connect it to a powerful PC and use it with a sensor camera on a stand that tracked the headset. At first, that headset didn’t even come with tracked hand controllers; it initially shipped to customers with an Xbox controller and a small handheld remote.

    Although the headsets have improved dramatically, VR and AR are still nascent technologies searching for purpose and popularity. The VR headset market is still tiny compared to, say, an established gadget market like console video games. ABI Research expects 11.1 million VR headsets will ship out this year, about 70% of which it predicts will be Quest 2 headsets. That’s a drop from its estimate of 14.5 million headsets in 2021, of which Quest 2 headsets made up 85% of the total.

    There’s potential for these products, some technology experts say, including in the workplace, but in the near term its adoption by everyday users remains uncertain at best.

    “I’m not sure this is going to translate to end-user consumers any time soon,” said David Lindlbauer, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who leads the school’s Augmented Perception Lab. (Meta is sponsoring Lindlbauer’s research into developing advanced user interfaces for AR and VR.)

    For Zuckerberg, and Meta, that creates a unique challenge.

    Zuckerberg successfully pivoted Facebook’s operations once before from desktop to mobile devices shortly after taking the company public, a move that helped supercharge its advertising business and ensure its dominance for much of the next decade. But smartphones were already ubiquitous at that time; if anything Facebook was a bit late.

    Now, the company is trying to spearhead a new technology and hoping consumers will follow its lead.

    Meta has positioned the shift as a sort of existential imperative for the company. After Apple’s app tracking changes hurt Meta’s ability to target ads to its users, the company doesn’t want to rely on any outside hardware or app store in the future.

    A visitor to the 2022 Tokyo Game Show tests the Meta Quest 2 VR headset.

    But there’s a big difference between looking at a computer or smartphone display and wearing a headset. While Lindlbauer can imagine using a headset for perhaps an hour a day, alternating between immersive views in VR and digital imagery that mixes with the physical world, “I think we haven’t hit the sweet spot yet of something I want to wear all day,” he said.

    Meta is also facing an enormous challenge when it comes to showing off VR content that users like the looks of and want to use repeatedly. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, internal documents show Horizon Worlds has fewer than 200,000 active monthly users, a rounding error for a company with 3.7 billion monthly active users across its various services. (A Meta spokesperson told the Journal that it’s “easy to be a cynic about the metaverse” but Meta thinks it is “the future of computing.”)

    “They’re starting with this idea that they want to build one big space like Horizon Worlds in which everybody’s just going to show up and start building stuff,” said Avi Bar-Zeev, founder of AR and VR consultancy RealityPrime and a former employee at Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, where he worked on the HoloLens VR headset. “There’s no virtual world that was ever successful building a canvas that people would just come and start painting.”

    Zuckerberg has personally received intense criticism for the way Meta envisions work and play interactions in virtual spaces after posting on Facebook an image of his blocky, cartoon-like avatar in Horizon Worlds — an image he later admitted was “pretty basic.”

    “As far as the quick-twitch, give-me-more public is concerned, the progress seen so far is a letdown,” said Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. “Meta is suffering tremendous ridicule in social media and in the overall public zeitgeist.”

    The Quest Pro’s face-tracking capabilities can help make avatars’ facial expressions look more realistic: Initially, users can access this tracking in Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms, Meta said, as well as in several developers’ apps such as Painting VR and DJ app Tribe XR.

    But even with facial tracking, what users see when they pop in to Horizon Worlds — blocky, human-like avatars that exist only from the torso up, floating around a virtual plaza — will for now continue to contrast sharply with the image Zuckerberg portrayed during Meta’s Connect event on October 11 of his own full-body avatar.

    In the meantime, investors appear to be getting fed up with the investments in the metaverse at a time when the future of its core business is also deeply uncertain.

    “I think kind of summing up how investors are feeling right now is that there are just too many experimental bets versus proven bets on the core,” Jeffries analyst Brent Thill said on Meta’s earnings call this week.

    Zuckerberg, for his part, is defending the strategy shift. “I’d say that there’s a difference between something being experimental and not knowing how good it’s going to end up being,” he responded. Separately, he added: “I think people are going to look back decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here.”

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