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Tag: Media

  • Court rules family’s appeal can advance in ‘Serial’ case

    Court rules family’s appeal can advance in ‘Serial’ case

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    ANNAPOLIS, Md. — An appeal of the court proceedings that freed Adnan Syed from prison filed by the family of the murder victim in the case chronicled in the true-crime podcast “Serial” can move forward, Maryland’s intermediate appellate court ruled Friday.

    The family of Hae Min Lee has contended their rights were violated, because they did not receive enough notice about a September court hearing that resulted in Syed’s murder conviction being overturned. Lee’s family has said it is not seeking to impact Syed’s release from prison in its appeal.

    The Maryland Court of Special Appeals on Friday ordered that the appeal from the family will be considered in February.

    “Hae Min Lee’s family is thrilled with today’s ruling,” said Steve Kelly, an attorney representing the family. “All they are seeking is what the law requires — a full evidentiary hearing in which they can meaningfully participate and one that makes public the relevant evidence.”

    At the September hearing, a Baltimore judge ordered Syed’s release after overturning his conviction for the 1999 murder of Lee, who was Syed’s ex-girlfriend and 18 years old at the time.

    Prosecutors had moved to vacate Syed’s conviction on Sept. 14. That followed a yearlong investigation and was two days after they notified the Lee family.

    Last month, Baltimore prosecutors dropped charges against Syed.

    Syed has always maintained his innocence. His case captured the attention of millions in 2014 when the debut season of “Serial” focused on Lee’s killing and raised doubts about some of the evidence prosecutors had used, inspiring heated debates across dinner tables and water coolers about Syed’s innocence or guilt.

    Prosecutors said a reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence regarding the possible involvement of two other possible suspects. The two suspects may be involved individually or may be involved together, the state’s attorney’s office said.

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  • Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover

    Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover

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    NEW YORK — Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the 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 Thursday in San Francisco alleging Twitter has violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

    The company had told workers by email that they would find out Friday if they had been laid off. It did not say how many of the roughly 7,500 employees would lose their jobs.

    Musk didn’t confirm or correct investor Ron Baron at a Friday conference in New York when he asked the billionaire Tesla CEO how much money he would save after he “fired half of Twitter.”

    Musk responded by talking about Twitter’s cost and revenue challenges and blamed activists who urged big companies to halt advertising on the platform. Musk hasn’t commented on the layoffs themselves.

    “The activist groups have been successful in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue, and we’ve done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is working,” he said.

    Some employees of the San Francisco-based company got clues about their pending dismissal when they lost access to their work accounts hours earlier. They and others tweeted messages of support using the hashtag #OneTeam. The email to staff said job reductions were “necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

    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.

    Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter also 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.

    Perez, a board member at the nonpartisan election integrity nonprofit OSET Institute, said the post-election period is particularly perilous because “some candidates may not concede and some may allege election irregularities and that is likely to generate a new cycle of falsehoods.”

    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.

    The sweeping layoffs will jeopardize content moderation standards, according to a coalition of civil rights groups, that 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.

    Leaders with the organizations Free Press and Color of Change said they spoke with Musk on Tuesday, and he promised to retain and enforce election integrity measures already in place. But the mass layoffs suggest otherwise, according to Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press.

    González pushed back on Musk’s assertion that content moderation rules — an operation she said was already “dangerously under-resourced” — had not changed since his takeover.

    “When you lay off reportedly 50% of your staff — including teams who are in charge of actually tracking, monitoring and enforcing content moderation and rules — that necessarily means that content moderation has changed,” González said.

    As of Friday, Musk and Twitter had given no public notice of the coming layoffs, according to a spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department. That’s even though 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.

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

    In the case of mass firings, failure to notify the government could “have criminal penalties associated with it,’’ Bartlett said, adding that whether criminal sanctions are ever applied is another question.

    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.

    Employment lawyer Peter Rahbar said most employers “take great care in doing layoffs of this magnitude” to make they are justified and don’t unfairly discriminate or bring unwanted attention to the company.

    “For some reason, he seemingly wants to lay off half the company without doing any due diligence on what these people do or who they are and without any regards to the law,” Rahbar said.

    The layoffs come at a tough time for social media companies, as advertisers are scaling back and newcomers — mainly TikTok — are threatening older platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

    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. He did not say how much revenue had dropped.

    Big companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi have all paused ads on Twitter due to questions about how it will operate under Musk. Volkswagen Group said it is recommending its brands, which include Audi, Lamborghini and Porsche, pause paid activities until Twitter issues revised brand safety guidelines.

    Musk last week sought to convince advertisers that Twitter wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape” but many remain concerned about whether content moderation will remain as stringent and whether staying on Twitter might tarnish their brands.

    In his tweet, Musk said “nothing has changed with content moderation.”

    But Twitter advertisers have steadily declined since Musk agreed to buy Twitter in April, according to MediaRadar, which tracks ad buys. Between January and April, the average number of advertisers on Twitter was 3,350. From May through September, the number dropped to 3,100. Prior to July, more than 1,000 new advertisers were spending on Twitter every month. In July and August, that number dropped to roughly 200.

    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.”

    ———

    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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  • BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

    BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

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    NEW YORK — Larry, a 71-year-old retired insurance broker and Donald Trump fan from Alabama, wouldn’t be likely to run into the liberal Emma, a 25-year-old graphic designer from New York City, on social media — even if they were both real.

    Each is a figment of BBC reporter Marianna Spring’s imagination. She created five fake Americans and opened social media accounts for them, part of an attempt to illustrate how disinformation spreads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok despite efforts to stop it, and how that impacts American politics.

    That’s also left Spring and the BBC vulnerable to charges that the project is ethically suspect in using false information to uncover false information.

    “We’re doing it with very good intentions because it’s important to understand what is going on,” Spring said. In the world of disinformation, “the U.S. is the key battleground,” she said.

    Spring’s reporting has appeared on BBC’s newscasts and website, as well as the weekly podcast “Americast,” the British view of news from the United States. She began the project in August with the midterm election campaign in mind but hopes to keep it going through 2024.

    Spring worked with the Pew Research Center in the U.S. to set up five archetypes, although the center was not involved in how to use them. Besides the very conservative Larry and very liberal Emma, there’s Britney, a more populist conservative from Texas; Gabriela, a largely apolitical independent from Miami; and Michael, a Black teacher from Milwaukee who’s a moderate Democrat.

    With computer-generated photos, she set up accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. The accounts are passive, meaning her “people” don’t have friends or make public comments.

    Spring, who uses five different phones labeled with each name, tends to the accounts to fill out their “personalities.” For instance, Emma is a lesbian who follows LGBTQ groups, is an atheist, takes an active interest in women’s issues and abortion rights, supports the legalization of marijuana and follows The New York Times and NPR.

    These “traits” are the bait, essentially, to see how the social media companies’ algorithms kick in and what material is sent their way.

    Through what she followed and liked, Britney was revealed as anti-vax and critical of big business, so she has been sent into several rabbit holes, Spring said. The account has received material, some with violent rhetoric, from groups falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election. She’s also been invited to join in with people who claim the Mar-a-Lago raid was “proof” Trump won and the state was out to get him, and groups that support conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

    Despite efforts by social media companies to combat disinformation, Spring said there’s still a considerable amount getting through, mostly from a far-right perspective.

    Gabriela, the non-aligned Latina mom who’s mostly expressed interest in music, fashion and how to save money while shopping, doesn’t follow political groups. But it’s far more likely that Republican-aligned material will show up in her feed.

    “The best thing you can do is understand how this works,” Spring said. “It makes us more aware of how we’re being targeted.”

    Most major social media companies prohibit impersonator accounts. Violators can be kicked off for creating them, although many evade the rules.

    Journalists have used several approaches to probe how the tech giants operate. For a story last year, the Wall Street Journal created more than 100 automated accounts to see how TikTok steered users in different directions. The nonprofit newsroom the Markup set up a panel of 1,200 people who agreed to have their web browsers studied for details on how Facebook and YouTube operated.

    “My job is to investigate misinformation and I’m setting up fake accounts,” Spring said. “The irony is not lost on me.”

    She’s obviously creative, said Aly Colon, a journalism ethics professor at Washington & Lee University. But what Spring called ironic disturbs him and other experts who believe there are above-board ways to report on this issue.

    “By creating these false identities, she violates what I believe is a fairly clear ethical standard in journalism,” said Bob Steele, retired ethics expert for the Poynter Institute. “We should not pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, with very few exceptions.”

    Spring said she believes the level of public interest in how these social media companies operate outweighs the deception involved.

    The BBC said the investigation was created in accordance with its strict editorial guidelines.

    “We take ethics extremely seriously and numerous processes are in place to ensure that our activity does not affect anyone else,” the network said. “Our coverage is transparent and clearly states that the investigation does not offer exhaustive insight into what every U.S. voter could be seeing on social media, but instead provides a snapshot of the important issues associated with the spread of online disinformation.”

    The BBC experiment can be valuable, but only shows part of how algorithms work, a mystery that largely evades people outside of the tech companies, said Samuel Woolley, director of the propaganda research lab in the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas.

    Algorithms also take cues from comments that people make on social media or in their interactions with friends — both things that BBC’s fake Americans don’t do, he said.

    “It’s like a journalist’s version of a field experiment,” Woolley said. “It’s running an experiment on a system but it’s pretty limited in its rigor.”

    From Spring’s perspective, if you want to see how an influence operation works, “you need to be on the front lines.”

    Since launching the five accounts, Spring said she logs on every few days to update each of them and see what they’re being fed.

    “I try to make it as realistic as possible,” she said. “I have these five personalities that I have to inhabit at any given time.”

    ———

    This story was first published on Nov. 1, 2022, and updated on Nov. 4, 2022, to add that the Pew Research Center was not involved in how five archetypes of fake Americans were used.

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  • Hungarians demand end to pro-government bias in public media

    Hungarians demand end to pro-government bias in public media

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    Around 1,000 demonstrators gathered at the headquarters of Hungary’s public media company have protested what they say is biased news coverage and state-sponsored propaganda that favors the country’s populist government

    BUDAPEST, Hungary — Around 1,000 demonstrators gathered at the headquarters of Hungary’s public media company Friday to protest what they say is biased news coverage and state-sponsored propaganda that favors the country’s populist government.

    Demonstrators called for the replacement of the director of public media corporation MTVA and for due coverage of a recent wave of major protests and strikes by Hungarian teachers and students. The actions demanding better pay and working conditions for educators are largely ignored by the public media despite some protests drawing tens of thousands of people.

    The protest Friday, dubbed a “blockade of the factory of lies,” was called by independent opposition lawmaker Akos Hadhazy, a former member of the ruling Fidesz party who is known as an anti-corruption crusader.

    In a Facebook event for the demonstration, Hadhazy described the event as “the first real, decisive step to take back the party-state media for the public good, to sack the news-fabricating director of MTVA and to ban paid propaganda by law.”

    Hungary’s government, under the leadership of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban since 2010, has frequently been accused of eroding press freedom and rolling back democratic checks and balances in the country.

    International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders added Orban to its list of “press freedom predators” last year. He has pointed to the existence of several online news outlets and commercial television stations that are critical of his government as proof that the media in Hungary are “freer and more diverse” than in Western Europe.

    In September, the European Union’s legislature declared that Hungary had become “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” under Orban’s leadership, and that its undermining of the bloc’s democratic values had taken Hungary out of the community of democracies.

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  • Alex Jones trial moves to punitive damages phase

    Alex Jones trial moves to punitive damages phase

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    HARTFORD, Conn. — Infowars host Alex Jones is facing the possibility of having more penalties heaped onto the amount he already owes for spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, as the punitive damages phase of his Connecticut trial is set to begin Friday in a lawsuit filed by the victims’ families.

    A jury last month ordered Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, to pay nearly $1 billion in compensation to the Sandy Hook families for the harm they suffered when he persuaded his audience that the 2012 shooting that killed 26 people was a hoax perpetrated by “crisis actors.”

    The jury also said punitive damages should be awarded. That amount will be determined by Judge Barbara Bellis following evidentiary hearings set for Friday and Monday.

    The plaintiffs’ lawyers, in court filings, suggested punitive damages could total $2.75 trillion based on one hypothetical calculation, but have not asked for a specific amount.

    “Justice requires that the Court’s punitive damages award, punish and deter this evil conduct,” attorneys Alinor Sterling, Christopher Mattei and Joshua Koskoff wrote in a motion. “Only a punitive damages assessment of historic size will serve those purposes.”

    Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, is arguing that any punitive damages should be minimal, in part because the $1 billion compensatory damages award is the functional equivalent of punitive damages due to its extremely large amount.

    “Few defendants alive could pay damages of this sum,” Pattis wrote. “Indeed, most defendants would be driven into bankruptcy, their livelihood destroyed, and their future transformed into the bleak prospect of a judgment debtor saddled for decades with a debt that cannot be satisfied. To regard this as anything other than punishment would be unjust.”

    Pattis did not return a message seeking comment. Mattei declined to comment.

    All the plaintiffs, including relatives of eight of the shooting victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school, gave emotional testimony during the trial, describing how they have been threatened and harassed for years by people who believe the shooting didn’t happen.

    Strangers showed up at some of their homes and confronted some of them in public. People hurled abusive comments at them on social media and in emails. And some said they received death and rape threats.

    Jones was found liable last year for damages to the families for defamation, infliction of emotional distress and violating Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act. Although punitive damages are generally limited to attorneys’ fees for defamation and infliction of emotional distress, there are no such limits for punitive damages under the Unfair Trade Practices Act.

    In a calculation in a plaintiffs’ court filing, they said Jones’ comments about Sandy Hook were viewed an estimated 550 million times on his and Infowars’ social media accounts from 2012 to 2018. They said that translated into 550 million violations of the Unfair Trade Practices Act.

    “If each of the 550 million violations were assessed at the $5,000 statutory maximum, the total civil penalty would be $2,750,000,000,000 ($2.75 trillion),” their attorneys wrote.

    They also said punitive damages for violations of the unfair trade practices law typically are multiple times more than compensatory damages.

    As for legal fees, the plaintiffs and their lawyers have a retainer agreement stipulating the law firm, Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, will get one-third of any compensatory damages recovered from Jones and Free Speech Systems. The firm says its legal costs in the case have been nearly $1.7 million so far.

    Jones has said on his Infowars show that it doesn’t matter how large the damages awards are, because he doesn’t have $2 million to his name and he wouldn’t be able to pay the full amounts.

    That contradicted testimony at a similar trial in Texas in August, when a jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million to the parents of one of the children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting due to his lies about the massacre.

    A forensic economist testified that Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, have a combined net worth as high as $270 million, which Jones disputes. Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy protection in the middle of the trial in Texas, while a third trial over the hoax conspiracy is planned around the end of the year.

    Jones hawks nutritional supplements, survival gear and other products on his show. Evidence at the Connecticut trial showed his sales spiked around the time he talked about the Sandy Hook shooting — leading the plaintiffs’ lawyers to say he was profiting off the tragedy.

    In documents recently filed in Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy case, a budget for the company for Oct. 29 to Nov. 25 estimated product sales would total $2.5 million, while operating expenses would be about $740,000. Jones’ salary was listed at $20,000 every two weeks.

    Jones has vowed to appeal all the verdicts against him related to Sandy Hook.

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  • General Mills, Audi pause Twitter ads, will evaluate site

    General Mills, Audi pause Twitter ads, will evaluate site

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    NEW YORK — General Mills and Audi are the latest big advertisers to pause ads on Twitter as questions swirl about how the social media platform will operate under new owner Elon Musk.

    Spokesperson Kelsey Roemhildt on Thursday confirmed the move by the Minneapolis-based maker of food brands such as Cheerios and Annie’s macaroni and cheese.

    “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.

    Audi spokesperson Whaewon Choi-Wiles said the German automaker is pausing ads and “will continue to evaluate the situation.”

    Advertisers are concerned about whether content moderation will remain as stringent under Musk — a self-described “free speech absolutist” — as it has been, and whether staying on Twitter might tarnish their brands.

    Shortly before taking over the San Francisco company last week, Musk issued a vow to advertisers that he would not allow Twitter to become a “free-for-all hellscape,” an indication there would still be consequences for violators of its rules against harassment, violence, or election and COVID-related misinformation.

    But since then some users have posted racial slurs and recirculated long-debunked conspiracy theories in an apparent attempt to see if the site’s policies were still being enforced. The NAACP said this week it has expressed to Musk its concerns about “the dangerous, life-threatening hate and conspiracies that have proliferated on Twitter” under his watch.

    Last week, General Motors announced that it had temporarily paused its Twitter advertising while it works to “understand the direction of the platform.” GM described the pause as a normal step it takes when a media platform undergoes significant change.

    IPG Mediabrands sent a recommendation to clients on Monday that they pause advertising on Twitter for a week until more clarity emerges about brand safety on the site, according a person who had seen the recommendation.

    Other big Twitter advertisers like Warner Discovery, Coca-Cola and Nestle did not respond to requests for comment about their advertising plans.

    Some could evaluate their plans after Twitter’s new “content moderation council” meets. Musk has said he will not reinstate any accounts or make major content decisions before it is convened. No date has been announced for that meeting.

    About 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertisers but it’s far from the biggest platform that advertisers turn to for digital marketing. Google, Amazon and Meta account for about 75% of digital ads, with all other platforms combined making up the other 25%.

    Twitter will account for 0.9% of worldwide digital ad spending in 2022, according to projections by Insider Intelligence. Meta will account for 21.4% in 2022.

    Twitter has lost most of its top executives in the past week, including the one in charge of advertising sales.

    Sarah Personette, the site’s chief customer officer, tweeted earlier this week that she resigned on Friday from Twitter and her work access was officially cut off Monday night. Days earlier, she said she had a “great discussion” with Musk and expressed optimism about the company’s future. In announcing her resignation Tuesday, she said she still believes Twitter’s new administration understands the importance of upholding the “brand safety” standards she sought to champion.

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  • Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Argentina announce they are married

    Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Argentina announce they are married

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    HAVANA — Two former beauty queens, Fabiola Valentín of Puerto Rico and Mariana Valera of Argentina, announced this week that they had secretly married.

    The joint Instagram post spurred celebration in LGBTQ communities across Latin America, a region that has historically lagged on gay rights but has made small steps in recent years.

    “After deciding to keep our relationship private, we’re opening the doors on this special day, 28/10/22,” Valentín and Valera said in their announcement posted Sunday.

    The post includes a video montage of their relationship, including the two on vacations, at bars and on the beach at sunset. There is a view of gold and silver balloons reading “Marry me?” and the two together after the proposal.

    The video ends with Valentín and Valera dressed in white kissing outside the courthouse in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

    Once barred in the U.S. territory, same-sex marriage became legal in Puerto Rico in 2015 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such bans unconstitutional. In 2020, new codes came into place on the island adding additional LGBTQ protections.

    The two women met at the Miss Grand International competition in Thailand in 2020, where they represented their countries. They continued to post on social media together since.

    The marriage announcement was met with a swell of celebration on social media, which the couple responded to with enthusiam.

    “Thank you for all the love! We’re very happy and joyful,” wrote Valera. “I am sending you all back the love you are giving us.”

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  • Prince William’s Earthshot Prize ceremony to air on PBS, BBC

    Prince William’s Earthshot Prize ceremony to air on PBS, BBC

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    LOS ANGELES — The Earthshot Prize, founded by Britain’s Prince William to honor groundbreaking solutions to environmental issues, will broadcast its second ceremony on PBS and the BBC.

    William, who launched the global prize with The Royal Foundation, will join the event to be filmed Dec. 2 in Boston and air Dec. 4 on Britain’s BBC. On Dec. 5, it will stream on PBS.org, the PBS app and PBS YouTube channel and on The Earthshot Prize YouTube channel. PBS stations will air the ceremony on Dec. 14.

    In a statement Thursday, BBC executive Jack Bootle said last year’s inaugural ceremony included “big-name stars and brilliant musical acts. This year’s will be every bit as spectacular.” Participants besides the prince have yet to be announced.

    The prize, inspired by and with a name echoing President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to America to land a man on the moon by that decade’s end, aims to “discover and scale the best solutions to help repair our planet within the next decade,” according to a release.

    Each of this year’s five winners will receive $1 million to accelerate their projects aimed at the prize’s 2030 goals: protecting and restoring nature; cleaning the air; reviving the oceans; building a waste-free world, and fixing the climate.

    “We support the mission of The Earthshot Prize and are looking forward to creating year-round content that showcases the work of the individuals and teams who are working to protect the planet with breakthrough innovations,” Paula Kerger, PBS president and CEO, said in a statement.

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  • TV audience for World Series Game 3 on Fox down 2.7%

    TV audience for World Series Game 3 on Fox down 2.7%

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    Philadelphia’s 7-0 win over Houston in Game 3 of the World Series was seen by 11,162,000 viewers on Fox, down 2.7% from last year’s third game

    PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Phillies’ 7-0 win over Houston in Game 3 of the World Series was seen by 11,162,000 viewers on Fox, down 2.7% from last year’s third game.

    Atlanta’s 2-0 victory over the Astros last season was seen by 11,469,000. That game was on a Friday night, while this year’s Game 3 was on a Tuesday.

    This year’s audience was up 34% from the 8,339,000 for the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 6-2 win over Tampa Bay in 2020, the lowest-rated World Series.

    Including Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms, this year’s Game 3 was viewed by 11,373,000. The game, which began at 8:05 p.m. EDT and ended at 11:13 p.m., drew a 29.1 rating and 56 share in Philadelphia and a 21.9/47 in Houston.

    Game 3 was postponed by rain on Monday night.

    The first three games this year averaged 11,179,000 viewers on Fox, up 2% from the three-game average of 10,964,000 last year and an increase of 25% from the three-game average of 8,977,000 in 2020.

    The rating is the percentage of television households tuned in to a broadcast. The share is the percentage viewing a telecast among those households with TVs on at the time.

    ———

    AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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  • Roku stock plunges as downbeat earnings forecast assumes ad budgets could ‘degrade’

    Roku stock plunges as downbeat earnings forecast assumes ad budgets could ‘degrade’

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    Roku Inc. shares plummeted 19% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the streaming company topped expectations with its latest results but gave a weaker-than-anticipated outlook for the holiday quarter as economic conditions could further “degrade advertising budgets.”

    For the fourth quarter, Roku executives anticipate $800 million in revenue and a loss of $135 million on the basis of adjusted Ebitda. The FactSet consensus called for $899 million in revenue as well as a $48 million adjusted Ebitda loss.

    “As we enter the holiday season, we expect the macro environment to further pressure consumer discretionary spend and degrade advertising budgets, especially in the TV scatter market,” the company said in its shareholder letter. “We expect these conditions to be temporary, but it is difficult to predict when they will stabilize or rebound.”

    Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden shared on a call with reporters following the release that the company’s forecast “reflects the fact that we see a lot of challenges in the macro environment.”

    He explained that Roku tends to be more exposed to the scatter ad market — which represents ads bought during the quarter — than the typical TV network. Scatter spending is easy for marketers to turn on, but also easier for them to turn off, he noted.

    The forecast overshadowed the results from Roku’s third quarter, which were broadly better than expected.

    The company posted a net loss of $122.2 million, or 88 cents a share, whereas it logged net income of $68.9 million, or 48 a share, in the year-earlier period. Analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting a $1.29 loss on a per-share basis.

    Roku also reported a loss of $34 million on the basis of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The company had posted positive adjusted Ebitda of $130 million in the year-before quarter. The FactSet consensus was for a $74 million loss on the non-GAAP metric.

    Revenue rose to $761 million from $680 million, while analysts were anticipating $696 million.

    The company generated $670 million in platform revenue and $91 million in player revenue. Analysts were expecting platform revenue of $613 million and player revenue of $87 million.

    Roku had 65.4 million active accounts in the latest quarter, up from 63.1 million in the second quarter. Average revenue per user was $44.25 on a trailing-12-month basis, compared with $44.10 in the second quarter and $40.10 in the prior year’s third quarter.

    Analysts were anticipating 64 million active accounts and $43.40 in average revenue per user.

    Louden noted on the media call that the account numbers “outperformed expectations.” The company has seen “strong sales of smart TVs both in the U.S. and internationally,” with Louden adding that “it’s hard to tell how much is driven by a shift back to home or back to streaming, which is a very good value proposition if money is tight.”

    Viewers spent 21.9 billion hours streaming content through Roku’s platform in the period. The FactSet consensus was for 20.9 billion hours streamed.

    As companies like Netflix Inc.
    NFLX,
    -4.80%
    and Walt Disney Co.
    DIS,
    -3.94%
    explore ad-supported streaming more deeply, Louden sees opportunity for Roku to be of further value.

    “That changes their focus a bit from only thinking about subscribers to thinking about engagement” and he sees Roku’s team members as “experts in understanding how consumers look at that.”

    The company also noted in its shareholder letter that CFO Louden intends to leave Roku at some point in 2023 after helping to recruit and train his successor.

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

    ___

    Graphic misrepresents House GOP agenda

    CLAIM: An image shows the House Republicans’ “Commitment to America” plan, including raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 75 and making retirees with pensions, 401(k)s or disabled veterans’ benefits ineligible for Social Security payments.

    THE FACTS: The image shows policies that don’t match the language in House Republicans’ actual plan. Ahead of the midterm elections, social media users are sharing the misleading graphic that claims to outline House Republicans’ policy plan. The image shows a logo reading “Commitment to America” that matches branding on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s website for the House GOP’s 2022 agenda. “Entitlements are bankrupting our country and the future of our children,” reads the image. “Republicans are the only Party with a plan to address our fiscal crisis and commit to the following if you give us the majority in November.” The image goes on to list several policies: making retirees “who have pension, IRAs, 401Ks, disabled veteran benefits” ineligible for Social Security; raising the age of Medicare eligibility to 75; and taxing “disabled veterans benefits” and employer-sponsored health care plans. One tweet sharing the image gained more than 3,000 likes. But the graphic’s contents do not match the policies and goals outlined in the Commitment to America agenda. Mark Bednar, McCarthy’s director of strategic communications, told the AP that the graphic is “fabricated” and contains “false information.” A summary of the plan contains only one mention of Social Security or Medicare, saying it would “save and strengthen” the programs. A document outlining the plan’s fiscal proposals says “Congress must be prepared to make reforms to extend the solvency of the entitlement programs,” but does not contain explicit references to cutting particular programs. Neither the summary nor individual policy documents on McCarthy’s website explicitly recommend taxing veterans’ disability benefits or employer-sponsored health care plans. Congressional Republicans have previously proposed raising the Medicare eligibility age. A fiscal 2023 budget proposal from the Republican Study Committee suggests adjusting the Medicare eligibility age to reflect increased average life expectancy, though it does not offer a specific age. That committee’s prior proposal, for fiscal 2022, suggested gradually increasing the eligibility age to 70. Buckley Carlson, a spokesperson for the Republican Study Committee, confirmed the statements in the graphic are inaccurate. Republican Rep. Jim Banks, who chairs the committee, also tweeted about the image, calling it a “fake graphic.”

    — Associated Press writers Karena Phan in Los Angeles and Graph Massara in San Francisco contributed this report.

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    USPS won’t reject mail-in ballots for too few stamps

    CLAIM: Absentee ballots will not be accepted unless voters mail them with up to two stamps.

    THE FACTS: Some states and counties do require voters to pay for their own postage on mail-in ballots, however, the United States Postal Service says its policy is to deliver all ballots, even those with insufficient postage. As the midterm election approaches, some social media users have warned that those planning to vote by mail need a specific amount of postage to send their ballots or they won’t be counted. “OHIO USE 2 STAMPS ON YOUR BALLOT OR THEY WONT COUNT THEY WILL BE RETURNED FOR UNPAID POSTAGE,” read one tweet posted Wednesday. Another tweet with a similar warning was shared more than 2,000 times. While some states provide pre-paid ballot envelopes, many states do require voters to provide their own postage for returning mail-in ballots. However, USPS doesn’t reject or delay delivery of ballots if the postage is insufficient or unpaid, USPS spokesperson Martha Johnson confirmed. For mail-in ballots that need postage, USPS requires election officials to inform voters of the amount. “We are proactively working with state and local election officials on mailing requirements, including postage payment,” Johnson wrote in an email to the AP. In cases where a post office receives a ballot with insufficient postage, USPS will still deliver it and attempt to collect postage from the appropriate local election officials, Johnson added. The USPS also released an election mail guide in January 2022 that confirms that policy. “Postage is collected from the election office upon delivery or at a later date,” the policy says, referring to unpaid ballots or those with insufficient postage. The amount of postage can vary by jurisdiction. In Ohio, for example, if a person returns an absentee ballot by mail it must be postmarked no later than the day before Election Day, and it is the voter’s responsibility the ballot has enough postage, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website. The Lucas County, Ohio, Board of Elections said in a statement posted to Twitter that not every ballot in Ohio needs more than one stamp, and requirements vary depending on how many pages each ballot is. “In addition the post office will deliver it to the board of elections regardless of postage,” the tweet added. The elections administration office in Harris County, Texas — which similarly requires two stamps per ballot — has also been posting reminders about postage. “Our mail ballot office worked with USPS to weigh and determine the amount of postage for this ballot, as it is four sheets of paper long,” Nadia Hakim, a spokesperson for the Harris County elections administration office, told the AP. “USPS determined that the amount of postage needed is $1.08, so we have been telling voters two forever stamps are needed to send their ballot back.” Hakim also confirmed the USPS policy on ballot delivery and postage.

    — Karena Phan

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    Colorado’s universal mail-in ballot system is legal, secure

    CLAIM: Colorado’s practice of sending mail-in ballots to every registered voter is unconstitutional and voters should only vote in person on Election Day.

    THE FACTS: Colorado state law explicitly protects mail-in voting and the U.S. Constitution gives states broad authority to run their elections, according to legal experts. With the midterm elections just weeks away, some social media users are sharing misleading information about Colorado’s mail-in voting system. One Instagram user posted a picture of a ballot that features the label of the Douglas County clerk and recorder and wrote, “So when you get this…mailed unconstitutionally to every Colorado voter whether they requested one or not, ignore the instructions to vote early. Vote in person, on Election Day.” But there’s nothing unconstitutional about the process. In 2013, Colorado adopted legislation requiring that mail-in ballots be sent to all eligible voters. And the Constitution gives state legislatures control over election administration, though Congress can amend regulations for federal elections, experts say. “There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that speaks to mail-in balloting. And therefore there’s nothing that prohibits the practice,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Doug Spencer, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder, agreed that Colorado’s mail-in voting system is “not actually unconstitutional” under the law. Annie Orloff, a spokesperson for the Colorado secretary of state, wrote in an email to the AP that there has “never been a legitimate or successful lawsuit challenging the constitutionality” of the state’s mail-in voting law. Local and national experts and election judges agree that Colorado’s mail-in voting system is safe, the AP has reported. Bipartisan teams transport, verify, open, sort, count and store Colorado’s ballots in secure rooms with windows through which anyone can watch. Election judges and computers check each vote and signature against state registries before the ballots are tabulated and stashed by the hundreds in cardboard boxes, numbered and dated.

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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    Officials: No fentanyl found in California cereal boxes

    CLAIM: A photo shows cereal boxes filled with fentanyl that were recently seized by law enforcement officials in San Bernardino County, California.

    THE FACTS: The county sheriff’s department said the photo, from a drug bust earlier this year, shows pills suspected of being MDMA, not fentanyl. With Halloween around the corner, social media users have been sharing warnings about the possibility of potentially deadly drugs showing up in otherwise innocuous children’s treats. The latest warning includes a photo of two cereal boxes — one Lucky Charms, the other Trix — and their contents. The widely-circulating image purportedly shows pink-colored pills mixed in with the colorful cereal pieces. “This was seized in San Bernardino County today. It’s Fentanyl mixed with cereal,” wrote one Instagram user in a post that was shared more than 25,000 times before being taken down. “PLEASE SHARE AS HALLOWEEN GETS CLOSER SAVE A LIFE!!!!,” wrote another Instagram user. However, the photograph doesn’t show fentanyl in the cereal, but likely another less lethal recreational drug: MDMA, often referred to as ecstasy or Molly, according to Mara Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. She added that lab tests have not yet been completed on the substance. The photo comes from a joint investigation this summer by the sheriff’s office and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that involved drugs being distributed through the mail, Rodriguez said. The agency stressed the incident doesn’t raise broader concerns about illegal drugs infiltrating the nation’s food supply. “This is an isolated incident with individual packages, not a mass-produced or commercial/retail distribution system,” the sheriff’s department said in an emailed statement. The use of cereal to conceal the drugs is most likely a smuggling technique, “not a sinister attempt” to market illegal drugs to a younger demographic, says Ryan Marino, an addiction medicine specialist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio. “The drug trade is a business and nobody is giving away expensive products for free,” he said. “It wouldn’t make any logical sense.” The claims come shortly after California authorities seized 12,000 suspected fentanyl pills hidden in candy boxes at Los Angeles International Airport last week. The county sheriff’s department said the suspected trafficker tried to go through security screening with packages of Sweet Tarts, Skittles and Whoppers filled with the drug. The DEA also warned the public in an Aug. 30 news release about the increased presence of candy-colored “rainbow fentanyl,” which it billed as a tactic by drug cartels to sell the highly addictive and potentially deadly opioids to younger users. Still, as trick-or-treat season approaches, the DEA says its so far found “no indication there is a connection” between fentanyl and Halloween, said Nicole Nishida, a DEA spokesperson in the Los Angeles field office. “Traditionally, drug traffickers use different concealment methods to try and evade law enforcement detection,” she wrote in an email. “We have seen fentanyl pills and other drugs hidden in fire extinguishers, fish tanks, candy boxes, everyday household items, pallets, and even concrete blocks.”

    — Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

    ___

    Death of red panda cub in Toronto not linked to COVID vaccine

    CLAIM: The recent death of a red panda cub at Canada’s Toronto Zoo was related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

    THE FACTS: The cub that died was not vaccinated against COVID-19. The Toronto zoo on Monday announced the death of the 3-month-old red panda cub, referred to as “Baby Spice” but recently dubbed Dash following a naming contest. Soon after, erroneous suggestions emerged on social media linking the death to the COVID-19 vaccine. “They killed the red panda,” reads a tweet that received more than 5,000 likes. The tweet included screenshots of two headlines: On the left, a headline from April reported that the zoo had received COVID-19 vaccines for its animals. On the right was a headline about the panda cub’s death. But there is no connection between the two, a spokesperson for the zoo told the AP. “Dash did not receive the Covid vaccine,” Amy Naylor said in an email. “A post-mortem was conducted to collect samples for additional testing which will be required to better understand the possible cause of the rapid decline of this animal. Until the results are available to us, we are unable to definitively state the cause of death.” The zoo also posted a statement responding to the false claim on Twitter. Dash showed no signs of illness on Oct. 22 but by the morning of Oct. 23 was lying on his side and weak, the zoo said. Attempts to treat him were unsuccessful. Red pandas are difficult to breed, the zoo added. Many pregnancies are lost and the zoo estimated that approximately 40% of cubs die within one year.

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    ___

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  • The murder of Somalia’s brave journalists must stop

    The murder of Somalia’s brave journalists must stop

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    Somalia can lay claim – through no choice of its own people – to being the most dangerous country for journalists in Africa. Data collected by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the testimonies of local journalists demonstrate that media rights are flagrantly violated on a daily basis. Threats and violent actions intended to terrorise media practitioners are routine. The idea is simple: to silence them.

    On November 2, the world celebrates the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, a United Nations-recognised event. There are few other countries where this issue has the same chilling significance as it does in Somalia.

    According to data collated by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), 54 journalists have been murdered over the past decade. The most recent victim, TV journalist Mohamed Isse Hassan was killed on October 29 in a car bombing while he and others were covering another explosion in the capital Mogadishu. The twin bombings killed more than 100 people in total.

    Yet, barring one conviction earlier this year, those responsible for these killings have never been brought to justice. Nor have those who ordered the assassinations. An end to this campaign of terror is still nowhere in sight.

    Some Somali journalists have died in a hail of bullets, others have lost their lives in suicide bomb attacks, and some others have been killed in the line of duty – as happened on October 29. Some were sent death threats and lived in fear until their killers finally tracked them down. Others were attacked without warning.

    In addition to the appalling death toll, 50 journalists have been seriously injured since 2012. That includes two journalists who were wounded on October 29.

    Many others – both men and women – have faced arrests, threats and harassment. There is no expectation that, once arrested, a journalist will receive a fair trial. In most cases, the notorious words “convicted as charged” are pronounced.

    Amid the conflict between different armed groups and the government that continues to rage in the country, there is a lack of political will from any major actor to end this deadly violence against journalists. Each political side wants to control and manipulate news and information, and independent and critical journalism draws retaliation. There is an unstated compact between political forces that there need be no fear of any accountability for such crimes.

    Despite these risks, journalists – who are mostly young adults – are joining both government-controlled and private media. News organisations are mushrooming and there is a growing independent media landscape. They represent hope for a better future and their optimism must not be extinguished.

    Female reporters in particular additionally face the threat of gender-based violence and harassment. On social media, female journalists routinely receive messages warning them that they will be killed or raped if they pursue a particular line of reporting.

    The psychological wellbeing of journalists is another critical safety issue. In addition to covering stories in high-risk, hostile environments, many Somali journalists are traumatised by constant threats and harassment. The fear that they may be deliberately targeted at any time adds to their sense of unease.

    The widespread acceptance of impunity for those who attack journalists in Somalia is a major cause for concern. Meanwhile, the government uses obsolete, oppressive laws – like the country’s archaic 1964 penal code that UN experts have also criticised (PDF) – to legally prosecute journalists rather than those who hound them.

    This, in turn, encourages individuals within the judicial system – including in the provinces away from Mogadishu – and non-state actors to believe that they can harass and attack journalists without any adverse consequences.

    Without firm political will, it is unlikely that this violence will abate.

    In September, Somali journalists adopted a National Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists, backed by the African Union, UNESCO, the International Labour Organization and NUSOJ. The plan – a Somali-led, Somali-owned, journalist-centred blueprint – addresses pressing occupational safety and security issues. It encompasses everything from safety skills for journalists and partnerships for the legal and physical defence of media professionals, to strategies to take on gender-based violence against women journalists and the broader culture of impunity within which attacks continue.

    What is now required is the vigorous implementation of that plan by all sectors of society, not just journalists. The federal government, state governments and judiciary too must embrace the plan. The time for grief and condolences alone is over. It’s time to act.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • Musk emerging as Twitter’s chief moderator ahead of midterms

    Musk emerging as Twitter’s chief moderator ahead of midterms

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    AP Business Writers — Days after taking over Twitter and a week before the U.S. midterm elections, billionaire Elon Musk has positioned himself as moderator-in-chief of one of the most important social media platforms in American politics.

    Musk has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. But his own behavior as a prolific tweeter has signaled otherwise.

    He’s engaged directly with figures on the political right who are appealing for looser restrictions, including a Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state who credits Musk with enabling him to begin tweeting again after his account was briefly suspended Monday.

    Musk even changed his profile to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — with a photo of himself when he was a toddler holding a telephone. But it is almost impossible for those outside of Twitter to know what strings he is pulling or whose accounts have been suspended: The company has stopped responding to media questions, except for the few that Musk answers by tweet.

    Musk’s promised interventions started last week on his first full day as Twitter’s owner. A conservative political podcaster shared examples of the platform allegedly favoring liberals and secretively downgrading conservative voices — a common criticism that Twitter’s previous leaders dismissed as inaccurate. “I will be digging in more today,” Musk responded.

    It continued when the daughter of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, whose provocative critiques of “politically correct” culture and feminism are popular with some right-wing activists, appealed for Musk to restore her father’s account after a tweet about transgender actor Elliot Page that apparently ran afoul of Twitter’s rules on hateful conduct.

    “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail,” Musk pledged. He had months earlier said in reference to Peterson that Twitter was “going way too far in squashing dissenting opinions.”

    One of Musk’s first big moves was an open letter to advertisers — Twitter’s chief revenue source — promising that he would not let Twitter descend into a “free-for-all hellscape” as he follows through with his plans to promote free speech on the platform. And he’s suggesting asking users to pay $8 for a coveted verified blue check mark as a way to diversify revenue.

    The check mark has been criticized as a symbol of elitism on the platform. But its primary purpose has been to verify that accounts in the public eye — such as politicians, brands and journalists — are who they say they are. It’s been a tool to prevent impersonation and help stem the flow of misinformation.

    But some still have their worries about Musk opening the platform to a flood of online toxicity that’s bad for their brands. General Motors has said it will suspend advertising on Twitter as it monitors the platform under Musk, and others are facing pressure to review their own plans. On Tuesday, more than three dozen advocacy organizations sent 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.

    Over the weekend, the billionaire posted — then deleted — an article that contained baseless rumors about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. And much of his commentary in recent days has been a response to appeals from conservative voices.

    In a text exchange with The Associated Press, Mark Finchem, the Republican running to become Arizona’s secretary of state, said his access to the platform was restored quickly after reaching out to Musk via his personal Twitter handle. Asked why his account was suspended, Finchem said: “Perhaps you should reach out to Elon Musk. We were banned for an unknown reason, we reached out to him and 45 minutes later we were reinstated.”

    Finchem, who questions the results of the 2020 presidential election and was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has drawn national attention for his statements about election security and his ability to change election rules if he wins the state’s top election post next week.

    Musk tweeted Monday evening that he was “Looking into it” in response to a complaint about Finchem’s apparent suspension. The complaint came from attorney Jenna Ellis, who was a legal adviser to former President Donald Trump’s campaign. About 40 minutes later, Finchem posted a “test” tweet on his account, which was followed by a lengthier post thanking Musk for restoring his ability to use the site.

    “Thank you @elonmusk for stopping the commie who suspended me from Twitter a week before the election,” Finchem wrote in the Tweet. “Twitter is much better with you at the helm.”

    Jared Holt, a senior research manager at The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said big social media companies have typically operated on the whims of their owners. But “that problem is especially glaring when somebody like Elon Musk takes the reins and kind of establishes himself as king of the platform, rather than an owner trying to run a coherent business,” Holt said.

    At the same time, Musk has sent mixed signals about his intentions. Despite overt examples of appealing to conservative calls and complaints about Twitter’s policies, there’s also plenty of evidence that the platform’s policies on combating misinformation are still in effect. Separately, Musk has defended Twitter’s ongoing head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, after some conservative users called for his firing over past comments expressing liberal views.

    Roth remained on the job this week after other top executives were fired or resigned. And apart from Musk, he appeared to be the chief public voice of Twitter’s content moderation, explaining that the company spent the weekend working to remove a “surge in hateful conduct” following Musk’s takeover.

    “We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel,” Musk tweeted in response to a complaint from another conservative commentator. “My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”

    Some longtime Twitter observers have expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of Musk’s planned content moderation council. In part, that’s because 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 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.”

    Citron said she’s still waiting to hear if the council will be having its next meeting, scheduled for the day after the midterms.

    ——-

    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.. AP Writer Bob Christie in Phoenix contributed to this report.

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  • ‘Blockbuster’ is a workplace comedy about people connecting

    ‘Blockbuster’ is a workplace comedy about people connecting

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    Actors are accustomed to change, always beginning and ending new projects in various locations with new people. But for Melissa Fumero, who starred in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” for eight seasons, taking on a new role in the Netflix series “ Blockbuster ” was anxiety-inducing.

    “I told myself ‘Look, that kind of magic doesn’t happen again. You had your one unicorn in your career. It’s probably never going to be that good again,” Fumero said in a recent interview. Those jitters went away when co-star Randall Park and the rest of the cast assembled to film the 10-episode show about the employees of the sole surviving Blockbuster video store.

    “I met this cast and met Randall, and we started all working together, and it was literally the same magic unicorn again. I can’t believe it.”

    Park — best known for the ABC comedy “Fresh off The Boat” which aired for six seasons — plays Timmy, the proud manager of a Blockbuster store in a small town in Michigan. Quickly into the first episode he gets word that all remaining Blockbusters will be shut down effective immediately, corporate’s office is being turned into a WeWork, but Timmy’s Blockbuster can remain open because it still generates a small amount of business. He becomes the de facto owner of the last Blockbuster in the world. (The actual last remaining Blockbuster is in Bend, Ore.)

    Timmy loves his job, his coworkers, and connecting with the people who come to his store. In the pilot episode, as Timmy chats with a customer who hasn’t rented a movie in a while, he says, “What’s it been? Three years this March?” The customer breaks it to him that he’s been using Netflix, but ends up renting “Under the Tuscan Sun” on Timmy’s recommendation to help get through a breakup.

    Timmy’s genuine belief is that the in-person exchange of renting a movie, or just leaving the house to visit any brick-and-mortar store, is valuable because human beings need socialization. His employees (played by actors including Madeleine Arthur, Olga Merediz and Tyler Alvarez) don’t exactly match his conviction, but they’ll go along with his lofty ideas to bring attention to the store — and to keep working.

    “Timmy is the same kind of boss I would be, I think. Which is not necessarily a good thing,” said Park. “The problem with Timmy and the problem with me, is this deep desire to be liked. … He puts out a lot of positivity and a lot of love. That’s what really speaks to me about the character. But his need to be liked gets him in trouble often.”

    Vanessa Ramos, “Blockbuster” creator and showrunner, says when she was coming up with its characters Park is who she had in mind all along for Timmy.

    “In my original pitch, Timmy was described as ‘a Randall Park- type,’ and that was because they’re like, ‘there’s no way we can get Randall Park.’” Enter Netflix, which suggested sending it to Park and seeing what happened.

    “He read it and was in. In my brain I was like, ‘OK, this is as good as it going to get. Like, I’ve really lucked out here,’” said Ramos.

    That good fortune continued when her pal and former colleague Fumero, whom she wrote for on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” became available. Fumero plays Eliza, a down on her luck Blockbuster employee who previously worked with Timmy at the store when they were in high school and he’s had a secret crush on her ever since. Eliza went to Harvard — for a semester — but dropped out because she got pregnant. She married, had a baby and is now separated from her husband whom she caught on a date with another woman in the Costco cafe.

    “The thing about Eliza that I was really drawn to was this woman who things didn’t go exactly the way she thought they would,” said Fumero. “We’re catching her at this moment in her life where she’s figuring out what’s next and who she is after she’s already raised a kid.”

    Timmy and Eliza have a classic will they/won’t they running storyline which the actors say they enjoy.

    “Everyone loves a romance,” said Park. “The fact that these two characters also had a history before, makes it so special and different and complicated and all those things. I’m very invested.”

    Fumero says “Blockbuster,” like “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” is a workplace comedy where employees become family and in some ways know each other better than family.

    “No matter what industry you work in are these little dysfunctional families that exist everywhere and these people that you spend all these hours with every day and it’s a part of everyone’s life.”

    ——

    Follow Alicia Rancilio at http://www.twitter.com/aliciar

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  • Stocks end lower as hot jobs data signals aggressive Fed

    Stocks end lower as hot jobs data signals aggressive Fed

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    NEW YORK — Stocks gave up early gains and ended lower on Wall Street after an unexpectedly strong report on the job market raised concerns that the Federal Reserve will need to keep the pressure on inflation with aggressive interest rate increases. Those high rates are intended to slow the economy, and the fear is the Fed may go too far and cause a recession. Several companies rose after reporting solid earnings or outlooks, including Pfizer and Uber. The S&P 500 fell 0.4% Tuesday. Long-term Treasury yields reversed course from an early slide and rose back near multiyear highs.

    THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

    Stocks on Wall Street gave up early gains and turned lower in afternoon trading Tuesday after an unexpectedly strong report on the job market raised concerns that the Federal Reserve will need to keep the pressure on inflation with aggressive interest rate increases.

    The S&P 500 fell 0.4% as of 3:31 p.m. Eastern. It had been up as much as 1% shortly after trading opened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 72 points, or 0.2%, to 32,660 and the Nasdaq fell 0.8%.

    Big technology stocks were the biggest weights on the market. The companies, with their big valuations, have more heft in pushing the broader market up or down. Also, rising interest rates tend to make the sector look less attractive because of its those high valuations. Apple fell 1.6%.

    Small company stocks held up better than the rest of the market. The Russell 2000 rose 0.4%.

    The Labor Department reported that U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in September, suggesting that the labor market is not cooling as fast as the Fed hoped for as it tries to slow economic growth.

    The latest jobs data, which comes ahead of a broader employment report on Friday, is disappointing for investors who are looking for signs that inflation is easing and that the Fed might consider tempering its interest rate increases.

    “That really fuels the expectation that the Fed has to do more hiking,” said Jason Draho, head of asset allocation for the Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management. “The labor market is still too tight for the Fed.”

    Wall Street is concerned that the central bank is being too aggressive in slowing the economy, running the risk that it could bring on a recession.

    Long-term Treasury yields turned higher after the report in job openings came out and rose back near multiyear highs. Those high rates have helped push mortgage rates above 7% this year.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.06% from 3.93% earlier in the morning.

    The yield on the two-year Treasury, which tends to reflect market expectations of future moves by the Federal Reserve, rose to 4.53% from 4.40%.

    “The issue for investors is figuring out how long the hiking cycle will last,” Draho said. “(Fed Chair Jerome) Powell will want to leave all options on the table.”

    Stocks are coming off a strong rally in October that resulted in big monthly gains for some of the major indexes. Even so, they remain in the red for the year, including the S&P 500, which is down 19%.

    Several big companies made solid gains following encouraging earnings reports and forecasts.

    Pfizer rose 3.3% after reporting strong results and raising its profit forecast for the year. Uber surged 12.4% after giving investors a strong forecast for future bookings. Rival Lyft rose 4.5%.

    Earnings remain a big focus for investors this week. CVS reports its results on Wednesday and Starbucks reports earnings on Thursday.

    Outside of earnings, Abiomed surged 50.1% after health care giant Johnson & Johnson said it will pay $16.6 billion for the heart pump maker. Johnson & Johnson fell 0.1%.

    The Fed is beginning a two-day policy meeting that’s expected to result in its sixth interest rate increase of the year as the central bank fights the worst inflation in four decades. The widespread expectation is for the Fed to push through another increase that’s triple the usual size, or three-quarters of a percentage point.

    For its final policy meeting of the year, in December, opinions are currently split among investors as to whether the Fed will make another three-quarters point move or dial back to a half-point increase.

    “The big focus is not so much on what the rate hike is going to be, but really what the comments are coming out of this week’s meeting in terms of any indications of whether there’ll be a little bit of softening as we move into early next year,” said Greg Bassuk, CEO at AXS Investments.

    ———

    AP Business writers Joe McDonald, Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

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  • BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

    BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

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    NEW YORK — Larry, a 71-year-old retired insurance broker and Donald Trump fan from Alabama, wouldn’t be likely to run into the liberal Emma, a 25-year-old graphic designer from New York City, on social media — even if they were both real.

    Each is a figment of BBC reporter Marianna Spring’s imagination. She created five fake Americans and opened social media accounts for them, part of an attempt to illustrate how disinformation spreads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok despite efforts to stop it, and how that impacts American politics.

    That’s also left Spring and the BBC vulnerable to charges that the project is ethically suspect in using false information to uncover false information.

    “We’re doing it with very good intentions because it’s important to understand what is going on,” Spring said. In the world of disinformation, “the U.S. is the key battleground,” she said.

    Spring’s reporting has appeared on BBC’s newscasts and website, as well as the weekly podcast “Americast,” the British view of news from the United States. She began the project in August with the midterm election campaign in mind but hopes to keep it going through 2024.

    Spring worked with the Pew Research Center in the U.S. to set up five archetypes. Besides the very conservative Larry and very liberal Emma, there’s Britney, a more populist conservative from Texas; Gabriela, a largely apolitical independent from Miami; and Michael, a Black teacher from Milwaukee who’s a moderate Democrat.

    With computer-generated photos, she set up accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. The accounts are passive, meaning her “people” don’t have friends or make public comments.

    Spring, who uses five different phones labeled with each name, tends to the accounts to fill out their “personalities.” For instance, Emma is a lesbian who follows LGBTQ groups, is an atheist, takes an active interest in women’s issues and abortion rights, supports the legalization of marijuana and follows The New York Times and NPR.

    These “traits” are the bait, essentially, to see how the social media companies’ algorithms kick in and what material is sent their way.

    Through what she followed and liked, Britney was revealed as anti-vax and critical of big business, so she has been sent into several rabbit holes, Spring said. The account has received material, some with violent rhetoric, from groups falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election. She’s also been invited to join in with people who claim the Mar-a-Lago raid was “proof” Trump won and the state was out to get him, and groups that support conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

    Despite efforts by social media companies to combat disinformation, Spring said there’s still a considerable amount getting through, mostly from a far-right perspective.

    Gabriela, the non-aligned Latina mom who’s mostly expressed interest in music, fashion and how to save money while shopping, doesn’t follow political groups. But it’s far more likely that Republican-aligned material will show up in her feed.

    “The best thing you can do is understand how this works,” Spring said. “It makes us more aware of how we’re being targeted.”

    Most major social media companies prohibit impersonator accounts. Violators can be kicked off for creating them, although many evade the rules.

    Journalists have used several approaches to probe how the tech giants operate. For a story last year, the Wall Street Journal created more than 100 automated accounts to see how TikTok steered users in different directions. The nonprofit newsroom the Markup set up a panel of 1,200 people who agreed to have their web browsers studied for details on how Facebook and YouTube operated.

    “My job is to investigate misinformation and I’m setting up fake accounts,” Spring said. “The irony is not lost on me.”

    She’s obviously creative, said Aly Colon, a journalism ethics professor at Washington & Lee University. But what Spring called ironic disturbs him and other experts who believe there are above-board ways to report on this issue.

    “By creating these false identities, she violates what I believe is a fairly clear ethical standard in journalism,” said Bob Steele, retired ethics expert for the Poynter Institute. “We should not pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, with very few exceptions.”

    Spring said she believes the level of public interest in how these social media companies operate outweighs the deception involved.

    The BBC experiment can be valuable, but only shows part of how algorithms work, a mystery that largely evades people outside of the tech companies, said Samuel Woolley, director of the propaganda research lab in the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas.

    Algorithms also take cues from comments that people make on social media or in their interactions with friends — both things that BBC’s fake Americans don’t do, he said.

    “It’s like a journalist’s version of a field experiment,” Woolley said. “It’s running an experiment on a system but it’s pretty limited in its rigor.”

    From Spring’s perspective, if you want to see how an influence operation works, “you need to be on the front lines.”

    Since launching the five accounts, Spring said she logs on every few days to update each of them and see what they’re being fed.

    “I try to make it as realistic as possible,” she said. “I have these five personalities that I have to inhabit at any given time.”

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  • Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

    Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

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    Billionaire Elon Musk is already floating major changes for Twitter — and faces major hurdles as he begins his first week as owner of the social-media platform.

    Twitter’s new owner fired the company’s board of directors and made himself the board’s sole member, according to a company filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    He’s also testing the waters on asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has historically used to verify higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s really them.

    Musk, whose account is verified, replied, “Interesting.”

    Critics have derided the mark, often granted to celebrities, politicians, business leaders and journalists, as an elite status symbol.

    But Twitter also uses the blue check mark to verify activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people.

    “The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified.

    On Friday, meanwhile, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he and his Kingdom Holding Company rolled over a combined $1.89 billion in existing Twitter shares, making them the company’s largest shareholder after Musk. The news raised concerns among some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.

    Murphy tweeted that he is requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment — which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign buyers — to investigate the national security implications of the kingdom’s investment in Twitter

    “We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting U.S. politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy tweeted. “There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review.”

    Having taken ownership of the social media service, Musk has invited a group of tech-world friends and investors to help guide the San Francisco-based company’s transformation, which is likely to include a shakeup of its staff. Musk last week fired CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives. There’s been uncertainty about if and when he could begin larger-scale layoffs.

    Those who have revealed they are helping Musk include Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which pledged back in the spring to chip in to Musk’s plan to buy the company and take it private.

    Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter product executive, said in a tweet that it is “a hugely important company and can have great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen.”

    Jason Calacanis, the venture capitalist who tweeted the poll about whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend he is “hanging out at Twitter a bit and simply trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition.”

    Calacanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number of (and visibility of) bots, spammers, & bad actors on the platform.” And in the Twitter poll, he asked if users would pay between $5 and $15 monthly to “be verified & get a blue check mark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users because it depends on advertising for its revenue.

    Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April but it wasn’t until Thursday evening that he finally closed the deal, after his attempts to back out of it led to a protracted legal fight with the company. Musk’s lawyers are now asking the Delaware Chancery Court to throw out the case, according to a court filing made public Monday. The two sides were supposed to go to trial in November if they didn’t close the deal by the end of last week.

    Musk has made a number of pronouncements since early this year about how to fix Twitter, and it remains unclear which proposals he will prioritize.

    He has promised to cut back some of Twitter’s content restrictions to promote free speech, but said Friday that no major decisions on content or reinstating of banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints is put in place. He later qualified that remark, tweeting “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.”

    The head of a cryptocurrency exchange that invested $500 million in Musk’s Twitter takeover said he had a number of reasons for supporting the deal, including the possibility Musk would transition Twitter into a company supporting cryptocurrency and the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency enthusiasts envision as the next generation of the internet.

    “We want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday. “And there are more tactical things, like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready.”

    He said cryptocurrency could be useful for solving some of Musk’s immediate challenges, such as the plan to charge a premium membership fee for more users.

    “That can be done very easily, globally, by using cryptocurrency as a means of payment,” he said.

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  • Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

    Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

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    Billionaire Elon Musk is already floating major changes for Twitter — and faces major hurdles as he begins his first week as owner of the social-media platform.

    Twitter’s new owner fired the company’s board of directors and made himself the board’s sole member, according to a company filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    He’s also testing the waters on asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has historically used to verify higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s really them.

    Musk, whose account is verified, replied, “Interesting.”

    Critics have derided the mark, often granted to celebrities, politicians, business leaders and journalists, as an elite status symbol.

    But Twitter also uses the blue check mark to verify activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people.

    “The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified.

    On Friday, meanwhile, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he and his Kingdom Holding Company rolled over a combined $1.89 billion in existing Twitter shares, making them the company’s largest shareholder after Musk. The news raised concerns among some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.

    Murphy tweeted that he is requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment — which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign buyers — to investigate the national security implications of the kingdom’s investment in Twitter

    “We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting U.S. politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy tweeted. “There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review.”

    Having taken ownership of the social media service, Musk has invited a group of tech-world friends and investors to help guide the San Francisco-based company’s transformation, which is likely to include a shakeup of its staff. Musk last week fired CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives. There’s been uncertainty about if and when he could begin larger-scale layoffs.

    Those who have revealed they are helping Musk include Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which pledged back in the spring to chip in to Musk’s plan to buy the company and take it private.

    Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter product executive, said in a tweet that it is “a hugely important company and can have great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen.”

    Jason Calacanis, the venture capitalist who tweeted the poll about whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend he is “hanging out at Twitter a bit and simply trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition.”

    Calacanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number of (and visibility of) bots, spammers, & bad actors on the platform.” And in the Twitter poll, he asked if users would pay between $5 and $15 monthly to “be verified & get a blue check mark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users because it depends on advertising for its revenue.

    Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April but it wasn’t until Thursday evening that he finally closed the deal, after his attempts to back out of it led to a protracted legal fight with the company. Musk’s lawyers are now asking the Delaware Chancery Court to throw out the case, according to a court filing made public Monday. The two sides were supposed to go to trial in November if they didn’t close the deal by the end of last week.

    Musk has made a number of pronouncements since early this year about how to fix Twitter, and it remains unclear which proposals he will prioritize.

    He has promised to cut back some of Twitter’s content restrictions to promote free speech, but said Friday that no major decisions on content or reinstating of banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints is put in place. He later qualified that remark, tweeting “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.”

    The head of a cryptocurrency exchange that invested $500 million in Musk’s Twitter takeover said he had a number of reasons for supporting the deal, including the possibility Musk would transition Twitter into a company supporting cryptocurrency and the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency enthusiasts envision as the next generation of the internet.

    “We want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday. “And there are more tactical things, like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready.”

    He said cryptocurrency could be useful for solving some of Musk’s immediate challenges, such as the plan to charge a premium membership fee for more users.

    “That can be done very easily, globally, by using cryptocurrency as a means of payment,” he said.

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  • Instagram trying to reconnect users locked out of accounts

    Instagram trying to reconnect users locked out of accounts

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    NEW YORK — Instagram said it was working on an issue that left a seemingly large number of users locked out of their accounts Monday morning.

    Some users reported seeing a message that they were locked out but were still able to scroll through their feeds. Others posting on Twitter said they were completely shut out. Some reported that their number of followers dropped, presumably because those accounts were locked.

    The number of people complaining of being locked out of their accounts began to spike around 8:30 a.m. Eastern.

    It was unclear whether the problem was an internal issue or whether the social media site had been hacked.

    “We are aware that some Instagram users in different parts of the world are having issues accessing their Instagram accounts,” said a spokesperson for Meta. “We’re working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize for the inconvenience.”

    Users flooded social media platforms about the issue and Instagram acknowledged the problem on Twitter at 10:14 a.m. Eastern. In a couple of hours, the tweet had received more than 14,000 comments and was retweeted more than 40,000 times.

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  • Review: ‘It’s Not TV’ account of HBO’s rise and challenges

    Review: ‘It’s Not TV’ account of HBO’s rise and challenges

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    “It’s Not TV: The Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO” by Felix Gillette and John Koblin (Viking)

    Streaming and on-demand services are so commonplace nowadays, one can take for granted how revolutionary HBO was when it was first launched.

    In “It’s Not TV,” business reporters Felix Gillette and John Koblin paint a revealing picture of a cultural and business institution from its beginnings to the challenges it now faces.

    The book serves two purposes, and does both quite well. The first is as a cultural history of some of the most iconic shows and programs that HBO has developed over the years.

    In their telling, HBO is a cultural empire that’s been built on some of the most memorable antiheroes and flawed characters ever created. From Tony Soprano to Selina Meyer, HBO had a knack for investing in shows with characters that for many years broadcast television wouldn’t touch.

    But the book’s other purpose as a fascinating account of HBO’s business practices show how the cable network and eventual streaming service struggled to keep up with the world it helped create.

    Gillette and Koblin offer plenty of behind-the-scenes tales that whet the appetites of TV and business news junkies alike. They include some of the missteps along the way, such as HBO’s miscalculation on how to respond to and compete with Netflix and other services.

    It also recounts many of the issues HBO struggled with, including its depiction of women and especially violence against them.

    Gillette and Koblin’s deep reporting and sourcing are what make “It’s Not TV” come together so well. The result is a read so riveting, it’s not hard to imagine watching it unfold on Sunday nights.

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