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Tag: Media

  • Philippine prisons chief charged in journalist’s killing

    Philippine prisons chief charged in journalist’s killing

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    MANILA, Philippines — Philippine authorities filed murder complaints on Monday against the top prisons official and an aide, accusing them of masterminding the killing of a radio commentator in an elaborate crime they said showed that the country’s prisons system had been turned into a “criminal organization.”

    The complaints were filed against Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, who has been suspended from his post, prisons security official Ricardo Zulueta and other key suspects in the Oct. 3 fatal shooting of Percival Mabasa. The journalist had fiercely criticized Bantag and other officials for alleged corruption and other anomalies.

    Mabasa, who used the broadcast name Percy Lapid, is among the latest media workers killed in a Southeast Asian country regarded as among the most dangerous for journalists in the world.

    A joint statement read at a news conference by top justice, interior and police officials said three gang leaders locked up in the country’s largest prison under Bantag’s control were tapped to look for a gunman to kill Mabasa for a 550,000-peso ($9,300) contract.

    After the killing, however, the gunman, who was identified by police as Joel Escorial, surrendered in fear after government officials raised a reward for his capture. He then publicly identified an inmate, Jun Villamor, who he said was assigned by detained gang leaders to call him and arrange Mabasa’s killing. The gang leaders later killed Villamor inside the prison by suffocating him with a plastic bag allegedly on orders of Bantag and Zulueta, officials said.

    “Bantag had a clear motive to effect the murders,” officials said in the statement.

    Mabasa was shot to death for his critical exposes against the prisons chief, and Villamor was killed by gang leaders as a cover-up after he was publicly identified by the gunman as the inmate who arranged the killing behind bars, they said.

    Bantag has denied any involvement in the killings. He and Zulueta have also been charged for the killing of Villamor. No warrants have been issued yet for their arrests, officials said.

    The investigation of the killings bared “the unfortunate transformation of a pillar of justice – the correction pillar – into a deep, large-scale and systematic criminal organization,” officials said in their statement.

    “This will be the cause of many reforms in government and the strengthening of current mechanisms to ensure that nothing of this nature will happen again,” they said.

    As suspicions grew over Bantag’s involvement in the two killings, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered him suspended indefinitely and replaced with a former military chief of staff, Gregorio Catapang Jr.

    A recent search of the maximum-security prison complex under Bantag’s control yielded more than 7,000 cans of extra-strong beer, bladed weapons, cellphones, laptop computers and suspected drugs in a discovery that deepened long-held suspicions of prison anomalies involving officials and guards, Catapang said.

    “There are many crimes that we have to look into,” Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla told a news conference. He cited the beer, drugs and other contrabands smuggled into prison and the deaths of 18 detained drug lords supposedly of coronavirus infection followed by their cremation in a span of 75 days.

    Aside from Bantag, Mabasa had also strongly criticized former President Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw a deadly crackdown on illegal drugs. Duterte ended his turbulent six-year term in June.

    Duterte appointed Bantag as Bureau of Corrections chief in 2019 despite pending criminal complaints. Bantag had faced charges for a 2016 clash that killed 10 inmates when he was the warden in another detention center. A court later cleared him.

    Media watchdogs have condemned Mabasa’s killing, saying the attack underscores how deadly the Philippines remains for journalists.

    Nearly 200 journalists have been killed in the country since 1986, when dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown, according to the journalists’ union. The group led a protest Tuesday night and called on the government to do more to stop the killings.

    In 2009, members of a powerful political clan and their associates killed 58 people, including 32 media workers, in an execution-style attack in southern Maguindanao province that horrified the world.

    The mass killing, linked to a political rivalry, demonstrated the dangers journalists face in the Philippines, which has many unlicensed guns, private armies controlled by powerful clans and weak law enforcement, especially in rural regions.

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  • Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

    Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

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    BOSTON — Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another.

    The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month as he simultaneously laid off a big chunk of the workforce.

    “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,” Musk wrote. While Twitter previously issued warnings before suspensions, now that it is rolling out “widespread verification, there will be no warning.”

    In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world’s richest man said.

    Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.

    “I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? Lol,” Griffin joked afterward on Mastodon, an alternative social media platform where she set up an account last week.

    Actor Valerie Bertinelli had similarly appropriated Musk’s screen name — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had fun and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

    Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.

    “That no longer applies. Good luck out there!” she added.

    The $8 verified accounts are Musk’s way of democratizing the service, he claims. On Saturday, a Twitter update for iOS devices listed on Apple’s app store said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can get the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would roll go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”

    Twitter did not respond on Sunday to an email seeking comment on the verified accounts issue and Griffin’s suspension.

    Musk later tweeted, “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.”

    If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.

    Like Griffin, some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — Counter Social is another popular alternative — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.

    Many companies have paused advertising on the platform out of concern it could become more unruly under Musk.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

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  • Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

    Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

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    BOSTON — Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another.

    The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month as he simultaneously laid off a big chunk of the workforce.

    “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,” Musk wrote. While Twitter previously issued warnings before suspensions, now that it is rolling out “widespread verification, there will be no warning.”

    In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world’s richest man said.

    Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.

    “I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? Lol,” Griffin joked afterward on Mastodon, an alternative social media platform where she set up an account last week.

    Actor Valerie Bertinelli had similarly appropriated Musk’s screen name — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had fun and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

    Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.

    “That no longer applies. Good luck out there!” she added.

    The $8 verified accounts are Musk’s way of democratizing the service, he claims. On Saturday, a Twitter update for iOS devices listed on Apple’s app store said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can get the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would roll go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”

    Twitter did not respond on Sunday to an email seeking comment on the verified accounts issue and Griffin’s suspension.

    Musk later tweeted, “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.”

    If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.

    Like Griffin, some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — Counter Social is another popular alternative — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.

    Many companies have paused advertising on the platform out of concern it could become more unruly under Musk.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

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  • ‘Free-speech absolutist’ Elon Musk cracks down on parody accounts targeting him

    ‘Free-speech absolutist’ Elon Musk cracks down on parody accounts targeting him

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    Self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” Elon Musk announced a crackdown Sunday on parody Twitter accounts impersonating him, or anyone else.

    “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk tweeted Sunday evening.

    “Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” he continued in a thread. Furthermore, “Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark.”

    That came after a number of prominent verified Twitter users — including comedians Kathy Griffin and Sarah Silverman and actress Valerie Bertinelli — switched their account names to read “Elon Musk” to prove that Musk’s new plan to give blue verification checkmarks to anyone who’ll pay $8 a month is flawed, allowing anyone with $8 to impersonate anyone else and potentially spread disinformation. As of Sunday night, Griffin’s account was suspended, while Silverman and Bertinelli had gone back to their real names.

    See: What does Twitter verification really mean? And what may happen to it?

    However, this tweet — clearly marked parody — from podcasters Griffin Newman and David Sims was still up:

    Also: Twitter reportedly delays blue-checkmark changes until after midterm elections

    Musk has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” and that content on Twitter should not be censored much past the the law. Last week, after completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk tweeted: “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”

    In April, Musk said: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”

    But perhaps more telling, in a 2019 interview in The Atlantic, Musk said “Accurate and entertaining satire is vital to a functioning democracy,” then quipped: “Unless it’s about me.”

    A number of Twitter users called out Musk for Sunday’s changes:

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  • Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

    Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

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    BOSTON — Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another.

    The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month.

    “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,” Musk wrote. While Twitter previously issued warnings before suspensions, now that it is rolling out “widespread verification, there will be no warning.”

    In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world’s richest man said.

    Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday for switching her screen name to Musk.

    Actress Valerie Bertinelli had done the same — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had fun and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

    Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.

    “That no longer applies. Good luck out there!” she added.

    The $8 verified accounts are Musk’s way of democratizing the service, he claims. On Saturday, a Twitter update for iOS devices listed on Apple’s app store said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can get the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would roll go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”

    Twitter did not respond on Sunday to an email seeking comment.

    If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.

    Some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — to alternatives such as Mastodon and Counter Social — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.

    Many companies have paused advertising on the platform out of concern it could become more unruly under Musk.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

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  • Haiti gang leader to lift fuel blockade amid shortages

    Haiti gang leader to lift fuel blockade amid shortages

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    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A powerful gang leader announced Sunday that he was lifting a blockade at a key fuel terminal that has strangled Haiti’s capital for nearly two months.

    The announcement by Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer nicknamed “Barbecue,” followed government claims of at least some success in efforts to reclaim the terminal, as well as a United Nations resolution targeting Cherizier with sanctions. But it remained unclear who actually controls the terminal and the surrounding area, and there had been no evidence that any fuel had been able to leave.

    In a speech posted on social media, Cherizier called on truck drivers to come and fill their tanks.

    “Drivers can come to the terminal without any fear,” he said.

    If fuel can leave, that would ease a crisis that began when Cherizier’s G9 gang federation seized control of the area surrounding a fuel depot in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 12 to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

    The gang’s blockade cut off access to about 10 millions gallons of diesel and gasoline and more than 800,000 gallons of kerosene, forcing gas stations to close, hospitals to cut back on critical services and banks and grocery stores to operate on a limited schedule.

    It also hindered efforts to cope with a cholera outbreak that has killed dozens and sickened thousands. Clinics have warned they were running out of fuel and had difficulty accessing potable water.

    Gunfire echoed from the area around the terminal on Thursday as Haiti’s National Police fought to reassert control. Police Chief Frantz Elbé said in a voicemail shared with The Associated Press on Friday: “We won a fight, but it is not over.”

    Official police social media accounts posted a video on Sunday with no sound stating officers were still “busy” at the terminal and saying “an important provision is taken to secure the perimeters.”

    Cherizier stressed that neither the gang nor anyone working on its behalf has negotiated anything with the prime minister, despite claims by some politicians to have done so.

    “This is a fight for a better life,” he said of the gang’s actions. “The situation has worsened. … We are not responsible for what happened to the country.”

    Cherizier then asked whether Haitians are happy with their living conditions, whether they feel safe, whether their children can go to school without being kidnapped and whether they have food and medical care.

    Many in the country of more than 11 million people are living in even deeper poverty at a time of double-digit inflation. Meanwhile, kidnappings and gang violence has increased following the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

    Spokespeople for Haiti’s National Police and the office of the prime minister could not be immediately reached for comment following Cherizier’s announcement.

    But some people on social media celebrated Cherizier’s announcement, referring to him as “Father” or “Mr. President.”

    In early September, Henry announced his administration could no longer afford to subsidize petroleum, leading to sharp increases in prices that unleashed large protests.

    On Oct. 7, almost a month after the blockade began, Henry requested the immediate deployment of foreign troops. The U.N. Security Council has yet to vote on the request, though it voted to impose sanctions on the gang leader himself.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this report.

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  • Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

    Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

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    The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball.

    In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform — and Twitter the company — since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn’t changing anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — if it gets better at all.

    Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird’s nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company’s sole director (for now) and declared himself “Chief Twit,” then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” on his bio.

    On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

    All the while, he’s continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

    “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow” as well as some premium features — not yet available — like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO also has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation. He received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top associate, and tweeted — then deleted — a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was attacked in his home.

    More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation.

    “Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree,” the letter said.

    One of Musk’s first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” that some fear it might.

    On Friday, he tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk’s changes might increase objectionable material on the platform.

    Musk also met with some civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1.

    But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

    The mercurial billionaire has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts — such as that of former President Donald Trump — before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include “the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.” But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

    “Truly I can’t imagine how it would differ,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.”

    Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter.

    “I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. “It’s one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there’s a new level of responsibility.”

    For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform’s most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move.

    “You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor” with Musk, Perez said.

    “There’s just no world in which all of that is normal,” he added. “That should absolutely concern us.”

    Twitter didn’t start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter’s rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond.

    “The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language — to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

    Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter’s most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms themselves became central figures in the political debate.

    “Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?” Rainie said. “The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that’s the environment that Elon Musk is entering now.”

    And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk’s own description of his new job — “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

    ———

    AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this story.

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  • Macron welcomes French questions on climate ahead of COP27

    Macron welcomes French questions on climate ahead of COP27

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    PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron released a selfie video on social media platforms Saturday asking the public to send him questions about what France should do about climate change and biodiversity.

    Thousands of responses quickly poured in. Several were hostile or questioned his sincerity, but they also included rigorous questions about fossil fuel subsidies, sea pollution and nuclear energy.

    Macron, who will take part in the U.N. climate talks opening in Egypt on Sunday, promised to respond to the questions starting next week.

    In the video, he read from a letter from the public asking why he doesn’t declare an “environmental state of emergency.” He said the letter “prompted me to ask questions about what we are doing about this ecological challenge, the challenge of our generation.”

    Early in his presidency, Macron pledged to make tackling climate change issues a top priority, but he has come under widespread criticism for not instituting enough tangible change.

    At the COP27 talks in Egypt on Monday, Macron is expected to discuss climate-related financing, protecting forests, Africa’s Great Green Wall, and other climate adaptation measures, according to his office.

    He’s also expected to raise the importance — and challenge — of sticking to climate commitments as Europe faces an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Those are all key issues at the climate talks at the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which are expected to include more than 120 world leaders and run from Nov. 6-18.

    Laurent Fabius, the French diplomat who presided over the U.N. talks in 2015 that produced the Paris climate agreement, made a plea Saturday to those gathering in Egypt: “Keep in mind that the most beautiful announcements mean nothing if they’re not backed up by precise and rapid policies and actions.”

    ___

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

    Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

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    Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

    The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed alleging Twitter violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at the company and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.

    No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

    Roth said the company’s front-line moderation staff was the group the least impacted by the job cuts.

    He added that Twitter’s “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Musk, meanwhile, tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”

    But a Twitter employee who spoke with The Associated Press Friday said it will be a lot harder to get that work done starting next week after losing so many colleagues.

    “This will impact our ability to provide support for elections, definitely,” said the employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security.

    The employee said there’s no “concrete sense of direction” except for what Musk says publicly on Twitter.

    “I follow his tweets and they affect how we prioritize our work,” said the employee. “It’s a very healthy indicator of what to prioritize.”

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another checking Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

    Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

    “I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

    President Joe Biden, at a campaign event in Illinois Friday night, said: “Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk, who goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world. … How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

    Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

    As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

    A Twitter manager said many employees found out they had been laid off when they could no longer log into the company’s systems. The manager said the way the layoffs were conducted showed a “lack of care and thoughtfulness.” The manager, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security, said managers were not given any notice about who would be getting laid off.

    “For me as a manager, it’s been excruciating because I had to find out about what my team was going to look like through tweets and through texting and calling people,” the employee said. “That’s a really hard way to care for your people. And managers at Twitter care a lot about their people.”

    A coalition of civil rights groups escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week.

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said there is “little Musk can say to appease advertisers when he’s keeping the company in a constant state of uncertainty and turmoil, and appears indifferent to Twitter employees and the law.”

    “Musk needs advertisers more than they need him,” she said. “Pulling ads from Twitter is a quick and painless decision for most brands.”

    A lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges Twitter violated the law by not providing the required notice.

    The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held, as Twitter is now.

    Twitter filed notifications late Friday in California for its offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose. The layoffs affected 983 employees in the state, according to the filings. Twitter said it will continue to pay wages and benefits to the workers through Jan. 4 and employees were notified on Friday.

    The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, it would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

    The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

    ___

    AP Business Writers Mae Anderson, Alexandra Olson and Ken Sweet in New York, James Pollard in Columbia, S.C., Frank Bajak in Boston and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.

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  • Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

    Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

    In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

    It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live. Crawford told The Associated Press in a Twitter message that it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

    Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

    “So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.

    But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.

    The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

    Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.

    “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”

    The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.

    Musk, who had earlier said he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating they are posting from an official government account.

    President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

    Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, who has 7.8 million Twitter followers, told the AP, “I could actually just delete my Twitter account, I never use it. I find it really healthy to delete social media from my phone for periods of time.”

    “But it’s also a really powerful tool to connect with people, so I appreciate that and I try to use it as that and not as something that’s veering me off course of the journey that I’m on in life,” he said.

    The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how the platform will operate under its new owner.

    About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

    He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.

    “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

    He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.

    United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

    But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.

    U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”

    “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”

    Meanwhile, Twitter cannot simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.

    “Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”

    He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.

    “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”

    ___

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York and Associated Press Writer Jenna Fryer in Charlotte, N.C., contributed to this story.

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  • Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

    Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

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    The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball.

    In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform — and Twitter the company — since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn’t changing anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — if it gets better at all.

    Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird’s nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company’s sole director (for now) and declared himself “Chief Twit,” then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” on his bio.

    On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

    All the while, he’s continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

    “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow” as well as some premium features — not yet available — like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO also has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation, received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top associate and tweeted — then deleted — a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was attacked in his home.

    More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation.

    “Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree,” the letter said.

    One of Musk’s first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” that some fear it might.

    On Friday, he tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk’s changes might increase objectionable material on the platform.

    Musk also met with some civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1.

    But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

    The mercurial billionaire has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts — such as that of former President Donald Trump — before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include “the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.” But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

    “Truly I can’t imagine how it would differ,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.”

    Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter.

    “I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. “It’s one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there’s a new level of responsibility.”

    For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform’s most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move.

    “You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor” with Musk, Perez said.

    “There’s just no world in which all of that is normal,” he added. “That should absolutely concern us.”

    Twitter didn’t start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter’s rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond.

    “The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language — to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

    Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter’s most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms found themselves became central figures in the political debate.

    “Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?” Rainie said. “The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that’s the environment that Elon Musk is entering now.”

    And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk’s own description of his new job — “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

    ———

    AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this story.

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  • Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

    Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

    [ad_1]

    The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball.

    In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform — and Twitter the company — since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn’t changing anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — if it gets better at all.

    Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird’s nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company’s sole director (for now) and declared himself “Chief Twit,” then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” on his bio.

    On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

    All the while, he’s continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

    “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow” as well as some premium features — not yet available — like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO also has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation, received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top associate and tweeted — then deleted — a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was attacked in his home.

    More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation.

    “Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree,” the letter said.

    One of Musk’s first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” that some fear it might.

    On Friday, he tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk’s changes might increase objectionable material on the platform.

    Musk also met with some civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1.

    But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

    The mercurial billionaire has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts — such as that of former President Donald Trump — before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include “the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.” But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

    “Truly I can’t imagine how it would differ,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.”

    Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter.

    “I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. “It’s one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there’s a new level of responsibility.”

    For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform’s most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move.

    “You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor” with Musk, Perez said.

    “There’s just no world in which all of that is normal,” he added. “That should absolutely concern us.”

    Twitter didn’t start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter’s rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond.

    “The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language — to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

    Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter’s most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms found themselves became central figures in the political debate.

    “Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?” Rainie said. “The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that’s the environment that Elon Musk is entering now.”

    And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk’s own description of his new job — “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

    ———

    AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this story.

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  • Populists vs. the planet: How climate became the new culture war front line

    Populists vs. the planet: How climate became the new culture war front line

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    Press play to listen to this article

    Delegates landing in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for U.N. climate talks this week are a global elite bent on tearing down national borders, stripping away individual freedoms and condemning working people to a life of poverty. 

    That dark view is held by a range of far-right or populist parties — among them Donald Trump’s Republicans, who are seeking to retake control in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections. Some of these radicals are rampaging through elections in Europe while others, such as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro last week, have been defeated only narrowly.

    Republican and Trump acolyte Lauren Boebert derides the environmentalist agenda as “America last;” Britain’s Brexit-backing Home Secretary Suella Braverman says the country is in thrall to a “tofu-eating wokerati;” and in Spain, senior figures in the far-right Vox party dismiss the U.N.’s climate agenda as “cultural Marxism.”

    Right-wingers of various strains around the world have co-opted climate change into their culture war. The fact this is happening in countries that produce a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions has alarmed some green advocates. 

    “Reactionary populism is now the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change,” wrote three climate leaders, including Brazil’s former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, in a recent commentary.

    In the U.S., Republicans are eyeing a return to power in one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Many at the COP27 talks will be reliving the first week of the U.N. climate conference in Morocco six years ago when Trump’s election struck the climate movement like a hurricane.

    A Republican surge would gnaw at the fragile confidence that has built around global climate efforts since President Joe Biden’s election, raising the specter of a second Trump term and perhaps the withdrawal — again — of the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal.

    “I don’t want to think about that,” said Teixeira’s co-author Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who led the design of the Paris Agreement and who now leads the European Climate Foundation.

    Some on the American right are pushing a more conciliatory message than others. “Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy to our allies across the globe,” said Utah Congressman John Curtis, who will lead a delegation from his party to COP27.

    Tubiana and others in the environmental movement are trying to put on a brave face. They argue Republicans won’t want to tamper too much with Biden’s behemoth Inflation Reduction Act, which contains measures to promote clean energy.

    “You might see railing against it, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of political talk and rhetoric, but I don’t expect that would be a focus for the Republicans,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a green NGO based in Arlington, Virginia. Nevertheless, if Republicans take both houses, “we certainly won’t make any progress,” Keohane said.

    Trump’s first term and the presidency of Brazil’s Bolsonaro — which ended in a narrow defeat in last month’s election — now look like the opening skirmishes in a struggle in which the planet’s stability is at stake.

    In parts of Europe, the right present their policies as sympathetic to the risks of climate change while dismissing internationally sanctioned action as sinister elitism that threatens their voters’ prosperity.

    “The Sweden Democrats are not climate deniers, whatever that means,” Swedish far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson told a crowd days before a September election that saw his party win big. But Sweden’s current climate plans, Åkesson said, were “100 percent symbolic” rather than meaningful. “All that leads to is that we get poorer, that our lives get worse.”

    This is the gibbet on which the far right are hanging environmentalism: depicting them as the witting or unwitting cavalry of global elites. 

    “We consider it to be a globalist movement that intends to end all borders, intends to end our freedom, intends to end our freedom for our identities,” Javier Cortés, president of the Seville chapter of Spain’s far-right Vox party, said in an interview with POLITICO. “We are not in favor of CO2 emissions. On the contrary, we want to respect the environment. All we are saying is that the European Union has to clarify that it wants to sell us a climate religion in which we cannot emit CO2, while we make our industries disappear from Europe and we need to buy from China.”

    To describe this as climate denial — a common but often inaccurate charge — would be to miss the point that this is now just another front in the culture wars.

    Online disinformation about the last U.N. climate talks was largely focused on the hypocrisy and elitism of those attending, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The main spreaders weren’t websites and figures traditionally associated with climate denial, but culture war celebrities such as psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant and Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.

    Populist attacks on globalism “rely on a well-funded transnational network,” said Tubiana. “It warrants serious scrutiny.”

    But while economic interests may be powering parts of the movement, there is also a sense of political opportunism at work. Huge changes to the economy will be needed to lower emissions at the speed dictated by U.N.-brokered global climate goals. There will be winners and losers — and the losers may gravitate toward populists pledging to take up their cause.

    “Far-right organizations are recognizing this as a potentially lucrative topic that they can win votes or support on,” said Balsa Lubarda, head of the ideology research unit at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.

    Loving the losers

    The far right’s focus on the losers has been “turbo charged” by the energy crisis, said Jennie King, head of civic action and education at ISD, which populists have wrongly argued is the fault of green policy. The European Parliament’s coalition of far-right parties has grown and capitalized on the energy crisis by joining with center-right parties to vote down environmental legislation.

    Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — newly elected with Åkesson’s support — aims to dilute the country’s ambitions for cutting some greenhouse gas emissions, a move center-right Liberal Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari justified in familiar terms: “That is a reaction to the reality people are facing.” And in Britain, Brexit leader Nigel Farage retooled his campaign to become an anti-net zero mouthpiece.

    Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right | Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images

    Strains of right-wing ecology may also mean that not all groups are actively hostile to the climate agenda, said Lubarda. Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a huge fan of the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, which center on the Shire, an idealized bucolic homeland. Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right, but the protection of national economic interests still comes first. 

    “There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside,” she said in her inaugural speech to parliament last month. 

    While Meloni has announced that she will attend COP27, she has also renamed the Ministry for the Ecological Transition the Ministry for Environment and Energy Security. The governing program of her Brothers of Italy party includes a section on climate change, but it strongly emphasizes the need to protect industry. 

    It’s this broad sense of demotion and delay that alarms those who are watching these ideas grow in stature among populists on the right. They say that while it may not sound like climate denial, the result is effectively the same.

    “You can say that you are climate friends,” said Belgian Socialist MEP Marie Arena. “But in the act, you are not at all. You are business friends first.”

    Jacopo Barragazzi, Charlie Duxbury and Zack Colman contributed to this report.

    This article is part of POLITICO Pro

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  • Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

    Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

    In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

    It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live. Crawford told The Associated Press in a Twitter message that it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

    Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

    “So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.

    But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.

    The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

    Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.

    “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”

    The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.

    Musk, who had earlier said he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating they are posting from an official government account.

    President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

    Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, who has 7.8 million Twitter followers, told the AP, “I could actually just delete my Twitter account, I never use it. I find it really healthy to delete social media from my phone for periods of time.”

    “But it’s also a really powerful tool to connect with people, so I appreciate that and I try to use it as that and not as something that’s veering me off course of the journey that I’m on in life,” he said.

    The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how the platform will operate under its new owner.

    About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

    He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.

    “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

    He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.

    United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

    But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.

    U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”

    “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”

    Meanwhile, Twitter cannot simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.

    “Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”

    He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.

    “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”

    ———

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York and Associated Press Writer Jenna Fryer in Charlotte, N.C., contributed to this story.

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  • Musk’s past tweets reveal clues about Twitter’s new owner

    Musk’s past tweets reveal clues about Twitter’s new owner

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    He may be good with rockets and electric cars, but don’t turn to Elon Musk for public health predictions.

    “Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April,” the world’s richest man tweeted about COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic was ramping up.

    It’s one of many tweets that offer a glimpse into the mind of Twitter’s new owner and moderator in chief. Playful, aggressive and sometimes reckless, Musk’s past tweets show how he has used social media to tout his businesses, punch back at critics and burnish his brand as a brash billionaire who is unafraid to speak his mind.

    Musk joined Twitter in 2009 and now has more than 112 million followers — the third most of any account after former president Barack Obama and Canadian singer Justin Bieber. He had long mused about purchasing the platform before the $ 44 billion deal was finalized last week.

    Musk hasn’t detailed the changes he intends to make at Twitter, though he wasted no time in making widespread layoffs. But he has said he wants to make Twitter a haven for free speech. He’s said he disagrees with the platform’s decision to ban ex-President Donald Trump for inciting violence ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk tweeted earlier this year when he announced his intention to buy the platform.

    As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk uses his Twitter account to make business announcements and promote his enterprises. He muses about technology and trade, but has also posted jokes about women’s breasts and once compared Canada’s prime minister to Hitler. He regularly weighs in on global events, as he did in March 2020 when he tweeted that “The coronavirus pandemic is dumb.”

    That same month, he tweeted that children were largely immune from the virus and predicted that cases would soon disappear.

    Musk has also used his Twitter account to weigh in other big news events — with mixed results.

    This fall, Musk infuriated leaders in Ukraine when he went on Twitter to float a potential peace deal. Under Musk’s plan, Russia would get to keep Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine would have to drop its plans to join NATO.

    Musk also suggested that people living in other areas illegally annexed by Russia should vote on whether Russia or Ukraine should get control over the territories — a move that Ukraine supporters said would reward Russia for its illegal aggression.

    “The danger here is that in the name of ‘free speech,’ Musk will turn back the clock and make Twitter into a more potent engine of hatred, divisiveness, and misinformation,” said Paul Barrett, a disinformation researcher and the deputy director of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

    Stern singled out Musk’s comments about Ukraine as particularly concerning. “This is not going to be pretty,” he said.

    Just days after purchasing Twitter Musk waded into yet another firestorm when he posted a link to an article advancing a bizarre conspiracy theory about the attack on the husband of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The article suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, even though authorities said the suspect confessed to targeting the speaker and did not know her husband.

    Musk later deleted the tweet without explanation.

    Musk has long used the megaphone of his Twitter account to punch back at critics or people he opposes, such as when he attacked a diver working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand by calling him a “pedo,” short for pedophile. The diver had previously mocked Musk’s proposal to use a sub to rescue the boys. Musk, who won a defamation suit filed by the diver, later said he never intended “pedo” to be interpreted as “pedophile.”

    Three days before Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, the world’s richest man tweeted a photo of Bill Gates and used a crude sexual term while making a joke about his belly.

    Earlier this year he criticized the Twitter executive in charge of the platform’s legal, policy and trust divisions. In response to his tweets about the executive, many of Musk’s followers piled on with misogynistic and racist attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her when his purchase of Twitter was approved.

    Musk fired the executive on day one.

    Musk’s use of Twitter has at times led to problems for his own companies. In one August 2018 tweet, for instance, Musk asserted that he had the funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share, although a court has ruled that it wasn’t true. That led to an SEC investigation that Musk is still fighting.

    Last year another federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, ordered Musk to delete a tweet that officials said illegally threatened to cut stock options for Tesla employees who joined the United Auto Workers union.

    Those tweets helped cement Musk’s reputation as a brash outsider. But that doesn’t mean he is equipped to run a social media platform with more than 200 million users, said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media. Grygiel has assigned Musk’s tweets as reading material for students.

    “Look at the feed: It’s all over the place. It’s erratic. At times it’s pretty extreme,” Grygiel said. “It paints him as some sort of rebel leader who will take control of the public square to save it. That is a myth he has constructed.”

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of Elon Musk at https://apnews.com/hub/elon-musk and follow its coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

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  • Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

    Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

    In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

    It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live, and Crawford did not immediately respond to a message to clarify the timing. Twitter also did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

    Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

    “So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.

    But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.

    The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

    Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.

    “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University and an expert on social media. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”

    The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.

    Musk, who had earlier said that he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating that they are posting from an official government account.

    President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

    The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how it will operate under its new owner.

    About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

    He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.

    “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

    He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.

    United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

    But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.

    U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”

    “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”

    Meanwhile, Twitter can not simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.

    “Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”

    He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.

    “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”

    ———

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed from New York.

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  • Twitter launches subscription service for $8 a month that includes blue checkmark now given to verified accounts

    Twitter launches subscription service for $8 a month that includes blue checkmark now given to verified accounts

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    Twitter launches subscription service for $8 a month that includes blue checkmark now given to verified accounts

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  • Fox loses legal battle to buy a stake in FanDuel from parent company Flutter at a lower valuation

    Fox loses legal battle to buy a stake in FanDuel from parent company Flutter at a lower valuation

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    The FanDuel Inc. app.

    Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Fox lost a legal battle to buy an 18.6% stake in sports betting company FanDuel Group from its parent company Flutter at a reduced valuation, according to a ruling Friday from a New York arbitrator.

    Should Fox exercise its option to take the stake, it would be at a price of at least $3.72 billion.

    The decision ends the more-than-yearlong lawsuit between the two companies over the valuation of FanDuel, which has emerged as one of the leading U.S. sports betting platforms alongside services from DraftKings, Caesars and MGM.

    The price that Fox would have to pay is based on a FanDuel valuation of $20 billion, according to the ruling. Flutter, which owns nearly 95% of FanDuel, acquired a 37.2% stake in the company in December 2021 at an implied valuation of $11.2 billion. Fox had argued the price should be based on that threshold.

    Still, Fox could have been ordered to pay much more, as Flutter had been arguing for Fox to pay “fair market value” to exercise the option, which could have valued the stake at upward of $6 billion based on a March 2021 estimated value, a Fox spokesperson told CNBC.

    Fox has a 10-year option to acquire the stake, which runs through December 2030. The arbitrator ruled that there would be a 5% annual escalator on its purchase price, meaning the current price of a deal would be $4.1 billion.

    “Today’s ruling vindicates the confidence we had in our position on this matter and provides certainty on what it would cost Fox to buy into this business, should they wish to do so,” said Flutter CEO Peter Jackson in a statement.

    As part of the arbitration ruling, Flutter cannot pursue an IPO for FanDuel without Fox’s consent or approval from the arbitrator. Flutter had previously considered taking FanDuel public, taking advantage of the booming sports betting market.

    “Fox is pleased with the fair and favorable outcome of the Flutter arbitration,” the company said in a statement following the ruling. “Fox has no obligation to commit capital towards this opportunity unless and until it exercises the option. This optionality over a meaningful equity stake in the market leading U.S. online sports betting operation confirms the tremendous value Fox has created as a first mover media partner in the U.S. sports betting landscape.”

    Sports betting has continued to grow in the U.S. as more states bring legal sports betting online — as of Nov. 1, 33 states allow some form of sports betting, with California having two measures on its ballot to legalize it.

    That has pushed up revenues as well. Commercial sports betting revenue nationally through August was $3.97 billion, up nearly 70% year over year, according to data from the American Gaming Association.

    But that continued growth hasn’t benefitted all public sports betting companies. DraftKings stock posted its worst-ever decline on Friday after the company reported monthly customer growth that fell short of estimates even as it revised its revenue forecast upwards. DraftKings, which is down more than 59% year-to-date, is now valued at just over $5 billion.

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  • Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

    Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

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    Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

    The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed alleging Twitter violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at the company and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.

    No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

    Roth said the company’s front-line moderation staff was the group the least impacted by the job cuts.

    He added that Twitter’s “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Musk, meanwhile, tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”

    But a Twitter employee who spoke with The Associated Press Friday said it will be a lot harder to get that work done starting next week after losing so many colleagues.

    “This will impact our ability to provide support for elections, definitely,” said the employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security.

    The employee said there’s no “concrete sense of direction” except for what Musk says publicly on Twitter.

    “I follow his tweets and they affect how we prioritize our work,” said the employee. “It’s a very healthy indicator of what to prioritize.”

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another checking Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

    Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

    “I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

    President Joe Biden, at a campaign event in Illinois Friday night, said: “Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk, who goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world. … How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

    Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

    As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

    A Twitter manager said many employees found out they had been laid off when they could no longer log into the company’s systems. The manager said the way the layoffs were conducted showed a “lack of care and thoughtfulness.” The manager, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for job security, said managers were not given any notice about who would be getting laid off.

    “For me as a manager, it’s been excruciating because I had to find out about what my team was going to look like through tweets and through texting and calling people,” the employee said. “That’s a really hard way to care for your people. And managers at Twitter care a lot about their people.”

    A coalition of civil rights groups escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week.

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said there is “little Musk can say to appease advertisers when he’s keeping the company in a constant state of uncertainty and turmoil, and appears indifferent to Twitter employees and the law.”

    “Musk needs advertisers more than they need him,” she said. “Pulling ads from Twitter is a quick and painless decision for most brands.”

    A lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges Twitter violated the law by not providing the required notice.

    The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held, as Twitter is now.

    The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, it would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

    The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

    ———

    AP Business Writers Mae Anderson, Alexandra Olson and Ken Sweet in New York, James Pollard in Columbia, S.C., Frank Bajak in Boston and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.

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  • Settlement reached in suits over FBI posing as AP reporter

    Settlement reached in suits over FBI posing as AP reporter

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    WASHINGTON — The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will get a $145,000 settlement following a pair of lawsuits filed after an FBI agent posed as a reporter for The Associated Press and created a fake story.

    The long-running Freedom of Information Act cases led to appeals court decisions that will help bolster access to public records, said Adam Marshall, an attorney for the group. The cases also shed light on FBI agents posing as members of the media, a tactic that free press advocates say undermines media credibility and blurs lines between law enforcement and the press.

    The agency failed to follow its own rules over such undercover operations when an agent posed as an AP reporter and sent a link to a fake story in an investigation in Washington state in 2007, according to documents uncovered in the lawsuit filed along with The Associated Press.

    Then-FBI Director James Comey called the technique “proper and appropriate” under FBI guidelines at the time, though he said it would require higher-level approvals when the incident came to light seven years later, in 2014. No actual story was published and it led to an arrest, he maintained.

    The agent posing as an AP reporter sent a link to the fake article to a 15-year-old suspected of making bomb threats at a high school. When the teen clicked the link, a tracking tool revealed his computer’s location and helped agents confirm his identity.

    The FBI declined to comment Friday.

    Kathleen Carroll, then executive editor of the AP, said in 2014 that the FBI’s “unacceptable tactics undermine AP and the vital distinction between the government and the press.” A letter signed by two dozen news organizations called the revelations “inexcusable” and the Reporter’s Committee specifically called out the use of the AP’s name as “cover for delivery of electronic surveillance software.”

    Lauren Easton, an Associated Press spokeswoman, declined additional comment Friday.

    The lawsuits were filed as part of an effort to get records about FBI news-media impersonations, and eventually resulted in important court decisions about how far agencies must go in searching for requested documents and the standards they must meet in order to withhold documents, Marshall said. The settlement will cover attorney’s fees and costs.

    “This has shown that there are significant, concerning and ongoing issues with respect to federal law enforcement impersonation of the press in the United States,” Marshall said. The cases have also “shown that the Reporters Committee and The Associated Press were committed to finding out as much as we could about what happened here for the public to know.”

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