Tag: Media

Iran’s Elnaz Rekabi, who competed without hijab, in Tehran

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranian competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi received a hero’s welcome on her return to Tehran early Wednesday, after competing in South Korea without wearing a mandatory headscarf required of female athletes from the Islamic Republic.

Rekabi’s decision not to wear the hijab while competing Sunday came as protests sparked by the Sept. 16 death in custody of a 22-year-old woman have entered a fifth week. Mahsa Amini was detained by the country’s morality police over her clothing — and her death has seen women removing their mandatory hijabs in public.

The demonstrations, drawing school-age children, oil workers and others to the street in over 100 cities, represent the most-serious challenge to Iran’s theocracy since the mass protests surrounding its disputed 2009 presidential election.

Supporters and Farsi-language media outside of Iran have worried about Rekabi’s safety after she choose to compete without the hijab.

Rekabi on Wednesday repeated an explanation posted earlier to an Instagram account in her name that described her not wearing a hijab as “unintentional.” The Iranian government routinely pressures activists at home and abroad, often airing what rights group describe as coerced confessions on state television — the same cameras she addressed on her arrival back home.

Video shared online showed large crowds gathered early Wednesday at Imam Khomeini International Airport outside of Tehran, the sanctioned nation’s main gateway out of the country. The videos, corresponding to known features of the airport, showed crowds chanting the 33-year-old Rekabi’s name and calling her a hero.

She walked into one of the airport’s terminals, filmed by state media and wearing a black baseball cap and a black hoodie covering her hair. She received flowers from an onlooker, and then repeated what had been posted on Instagram that not wearing the hijab was “unintentional” and her travel had been as previously planned.

Rekabi described being in a women’s only waiting area prior to her climb.

“Because I was busy putting on my shoes and my gear, it caused me to forget to put on my hijab and then I went to compete,” she said.

She added: “I came back to Iran with peace of mind although I had a lot of tension and stress. But so far, thank God, nothing has happened.”

Outside, she apparently entered a van and slowly was driven through the gathered crowd, who cheered her. It wasn’t clear where she went after that.

Rekabi left Seoul on a Tuesday morning flight. The BBC’s Persian service, which has extensive contacts within Iran despite being banned from operating there, quoted an unnamed “informed source” who described Iranian officials as seizing both Rekabi’s mobile phone and passport.

BBC Persian also said she initially had been scheduled to return on Wednesday, but her flight apparently had been moved up unexpectedly.

IranWire, another website focusing on the country founded by Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who once was detained by Iran, alleged that Rekabi would be immediately transferred to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison after arriving in the country. Evin Prison was the site of a massive fire this past weekend that killed at least eight prisoners.

In a tweet, the Iranian Embassy in Seoul denied “all the fake, false news and disinformation” regarding Rekabi’s departure. But instead of posting a photo of her from the Seoul competition, it posted an image of her wearing a headscarf at a previous competition in Moscow, where she took a bronze medal.

Rekabi didn’t put on a hijab during Sunday’s final at the International Federation of Sport Climbing’s Asia Championship.

Rekabi wore a hijab during her initial appearances at the one-week climbing event. She wore just a black headband when competing Sunday, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail; she had a white jersey with Iran’s flag as a logo on it.

Footage of the competition showed Rekabi relaxed as she approached the climbing and after she competed.

Iranian women competing abroad under the Iranian flag always wear the hijab.

“Our understanding is that she is returning to Iran, and we will continue to monitor the situation as it develops on her arrival,” the International Federation of Sport Climbing, which oversaw the event, said in a statement. “It is important to stress that athletes’ safety is paramount for us and we support any efforts to keep a valued member of our community safe in this situation.”

The federation said it had been in touch with both Rekabi and Iranian officials, but declined to elaborate on the substance of those calls when reached by The Associated Press. The federation also declined to discuss the Instagram post attributed to Rekabi and the claims in it.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged the departures of the Iranian athlete and her team from the country without elaborating. On Wednesday, a small group of protesters demonstrated in front of Iran’s Embassy in Seoul, with some women cutting off locks of their hair like others have in demonstrations worldwide since Amini’s death.

So far, human rights groups estimate that over 200 people have been killed in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed. Iran has not offered a death toll in weeks. Demonstrations have been seen in over 100 cities, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. Thousands are believed to have been arrested.

Gathering information about the demonstrations remains difficult, however. Internet access has been disrupted for weeks by the Iranian government. Meanwhile, authorities have detained at least 40 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have repeatedly alleged the country’s foreign enemies are behind the ongoing demonstrations, rather than Iranians angered by Amini’s death and the country’s other woes.

Iranians have seen their life savings evaporate; the country’s currency, the rial, plummeted and Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers has been reduced to tatters.

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Associated Press writer Ahn Young-joon in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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October 19, 2022
Lawyer: Cardi B ‘humiliated’ man with racy image on mixtape

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SANTA ANA, Calif. — A self-described family man with a distinctive back tattoo felt humiliated after Cardi B allegedly misused his likeness for her sexually suggestive mixtape cover art, his lawyer said during opening arguments Tuesday.

Kevin Michael Brophy is suing the Grammy-winning musician in a $5 million copyright-infringement lawsuit in federal court in Southern California. His attorneys say Brophy’s life was disrupted and he suffered distress because of the 2016 artwork.

Brophy’s lawyer A. Barry Cappello said photo-editing software was use to put the back tattoo, which has appeared in tattoo magazines, onto the male model used in the mixtape cover. The image shows a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs. The man’s face cannot be seen.

Cardi B, who is expected to testify during the trial, is fighting the allegations and said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art – created by Timm Gooden — was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.

“Their life has been disrupted,” Cappello told the jury as Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, watched from the defense table. He said the image disturbed Brophy along with his wife, Lindsay Michelle Brophy, who he says initially questioned her husband if it was him in the cover art. The couple has two young children.

Brody has said he once considered his back tattoo featuring a tiger battling a serpent to be a “Michelangelo piece” that has since become “raunchy and disgusting.”

Defense filings have pointed out that the model who posed for the photos was Black, while Brophy is white.

Cardi B’s lawyer Peter Anderson said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated. He said the model did not have tattoos on his neck, which Brophy does.

“Brophy’s face wasn’t on the mixtape,” Anderson said during his opening statement. “She was already popular. It has nothing to do with Brophy.”

But Brophy contested in court that everyone who knows him believed he was on the mixtape cover. He said the offensive image was something he would never approve.

Brophy said he sent a cease-and-desist letter to Cardi B’s representatives to remove the tattoo, but he never received a response.

“For me, it was something I took a lot of pride in,” Brophy said about his tattoo. “Now, that image feels devalued. I feel robbed. I feel completely disregarded. There’s a lot of things I would like to be spending time on. But the only way to get this removed was to come here to this courtroom.”

Cappello said Gooden was paid $50 to create a design but was then told to find another tattoo after he turned in an initial draft. He said Gooden googled “back tattoos” before he found an image and pasted it on the cover.

Last month, Cardi B pleaded guilty to a criminal case stemming from a pair of brawls at New York City strip clubs that required her to perform 15 days of community service. Earlier this year, the rapper was awarded $1.25 million in a defamation lawsuit against a celebrity news blogger who posted videos falsely stating she used cocaine, had contracted herpes and engaged in prostitution.

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October 18, 2022
Netflix Adds a Better-Than-Expected 2.4 Million Subscribers

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Netflix

shares were trading sharply higher after the streaming giant posted better-than-expected subscriber growth for the third quarter.

The company added 2.41 million net new subscribers in the quarter, beating its own forecast of 1 million additions. Netflix (ticker: NFLX) said it expects to add another 4.5 million subscribers in the December quarter.

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October 18, 2022
Netflix’s message to shareholders: Focus on revenue and profit, not subscriber adds

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Netflix logo

Mario Tama | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Netflix has a message for investors: start focusing on revenue and profit, and stop obsessing about subscriber growth.

Netflix made its argument with several pointed comments in its quarterly shareholder letter. The world’s largest streamer said it will stop forecasting paid subscriber adds. The company’s rationale behind the change is to get investors focused on revenue instead of customer growth.

“We are increasingly focused on revenue as our primary top line metric,” Netflix wrote as it reported third quarter earnings Tuesday. “This will become particularly important heading into 2023 as we develop new revenue streams like advertising and paid sharing, where membership is just one component of our revenue growth.”

Netflix will continue to provide guidance for revenue, operating income, operating margin and net income — traditional metrics of profitability — and it will still report subscriber adds each quarter. It just won’t forecast what’s to come.

Part of the change is motivated by the increasingly wide array of revenue per user. A given subscriber could be paying $6.99 per month for Netflix’s new advertising tier, which debuts in the U.S. on November 3, or $19.99 per month for Netflix’s premium, no-ad service.

“Focusing on subscribers in our early days was helpful, but now that we have such a wide range of price points and different partnerships all over the world, the economic impact of any given subscriber can be quite different,” Spencer Wang, Netflix’s vice president of finance, said during the company’s earnings call Tuesday. “That’s particularly true if you’re trying to compare our business with our streaming services.”

Theoretically, Netflix’s advertising tier and coming crackdown on password sharing should reinvigorate subscriber growth. But Netflix, which gained 2.4 million subscribers in the third quarter on an “especially strong” content slate, led by “Stranger Things 4,” may see quarters with 10 million or more subscriber adds as a relic of the past.

Focusing on Netflix’s strengths

Instead of operating in a world filled with comparisons to a pandemic era fueled by surging growth, Netflix is attempting to steer investor focus to the fact that its streaming service actually makes money. Netflix directly addressed this point in the “Competition” section of its shareholder letter.

“It’s hard to build a large and profitable streaming business – our best estimate is that all of these competitors are losing money on streaming, with aggregate annual direct operating losses this year alone that could be well in excess of $10 billion, compared with our +$5-$6 billion of annual operating profit,” Netflix wrote.

In other words: Netflix is saying it has built a great streaming business, while Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast‘s NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, and others want to build a great streaming business. Netflix acknowledged some of their competitors may get there, through consolidation and price hikes.

This is a clear competitive advantage for Netflix, unlike subscriber adds, where Disney — earlier in its growth cycle, having launched Disney+ in 2019 — has the upper hand. Disney added 14.4 million Disney+ customers last quarter while Netflix lost 970,000.

Netflix shares surged after hours, rising 14%. The company is once again adding subscribers after losing customers in the first and second quarters. Next quarter, Netflix said it will add 4.5 million more customers.

But Netflix says we’re not supposed to be focused on that anymore. The question is whether investors will listen.

Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

WATCH: Pleasant surprises in this market are most welcome, says Netflix investor

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October 18, 2022
Take note: Utah Jazz may have lost their hashtag to Apple

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SALT LAKE CITY — Take note: The Utah Jazz evidently need a new hashtag.

The team’s long-used hashtag — #TakeNote — was used by Apple CEO Tim Cook in a tweet on Tuesday, accompanied by an Apple logo emoji. It raises questions about how the phrase will be used in the team’s marketing plans going forward.

“That was weird. I saw that when you all did,” Jazz owner Ryan Smith said Tuesday at a Salt Lake City news conference unrelated to hashtag matters. “Got to look into it.”

Cook and Smith are friends; Cook has even sat courtside with Smith for at least one Jazz game.

Apple Inc. unveiled the latest innovations with its iPad and Apple TV products on Tuesday, and Cook’s early morning tweet with the hashtag and a short video that also made use of the “Take Note” phrase was basically the kickoff to his company’s announcements.

The Jazz have “#TakeNote” on multiple displays in their arena, plus they have used it on merchandise. The team started using the hashtag in 2016, got away from it briefly and began using it again in 2019.

And just last week, the Jazz announced a partnership with Utah-based company Chatbooks — including a promotion where Chatbooks would “display a collage of fans’ social media photos” on the video boards hanging over center court.

The plan was to tell fans to post photos on social media with the #TakeNote hashtag to have them considered for those collages.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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October 18, 2022
Netflix snaps streak of subscriber declines and beats on earnings, stock jumps 15%

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Netflix Inc. added more than 2 million subscribers in the third quarter after stumbling into 2022 with two consecutive quarterly declines, a rebound that sent shares more than 15% higher in after-hours trading Tuesday.

Netflix
NFLX,
-1.73%
reported a net gain of 2.41 million subscribers in the third quarter, while analysts on average were forecasting 1.1 million net additions, according to FactSet. That follows a decline of roughly 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and nearly a million in the second quarter, which has led the company to plan massive changes, including a cheaper, ad-supported streaming tier set to arrive in the fourth quarter.

In a letter to shareholders, Netflix executives said they expect 4.5 million new subscribers to join in the fourth quarter, with revenue forecast to grow to $7.78 billion from $7.71 billion a year ago. Analysts on average were estimating revenue of $7.97 billion and a net subscriber gain of 4 million for the fourth quarter, according to FactSet.

“After a challenging first half, we believe we’re on a path to reaccelerate growth,” executives wrote in the letter.

The news sent Netflix shares up about 15% in after-hours trading following the release of the results, after closing with a 1.7% drop at $240.86. The stretch of subscriber declines has filleted Netflix shares, which have swooned 60% so far this year while the broader S&P 500 index
SPX,
+1.14%
has declined 22.8%.

The streaming-video giant’s downturn after a pandemic-boosted surge has only intensified pressure from rival streaming services at Walt Disney Co.
DIS,
+1.18%,
Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+0.94%,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
+2.26%,
Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.
WBD,
+4.55%,
Comcast Corp.
CMCSA,
-0.23%
and Paramount Global
PARA,
+1.56%.

That didn’t stop Netflix executives from taking a pot shot at streaming rivals over profitability. “Our competitors are investing heavily to drive subscribers and engagement, but building a large, successful streaming business is hard — we estimate they are all losing money, with combined 2022 operating losses well over $10 billion, vs. Netflix’s $5 to $6 billion annual operating profit,” Netflix executives said in the shareholder letter.

A dramatic shift in the video-streaming climate, one in which Disney surpassed Netflix as market leader in July, has prompted a radical makeover at Netflix. Last week, the company announced its long-awaited advertising-supported tier, which debuts Nov. 3 in the U.S. for $6.99 a month. Another 11 countries, including Canada and Mexico, will get the service by Nov. 10. The company has also vowed a crackdown on shared accounts, and is pushing forward on gaming.

The advertising-supported tier directly acknowledges competition and the necessity of Netflix “adapting to the streaming landscape’s new normal,” Insider Intelligence analyst Ross Benes said in a note late Tuesday.

For more: Netflix lost its streaming crown to Disney. Here’s how execs expect to win it back.

Netflix announced third-quarter earnings of $1.4 billion, or $3.10 a share, down from $3.16 a share a year ago. Netflix revenue improved to $7.93 billion in the quarter from $7.48 billion in the same period a year ago, but missed diminished expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of $2.14 a share on sales of $7.84 billion, estimates that had dipped in recent days.

Tuesday’s results follow some serious self-reflection among Netflix executives on how to stanch a decline in visits among subscribers that has led to cancellations. Co-CEO Reed Hastings has consulted with staff to find ways to make subscribers visit the platform more frequently, according to reports by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

One such strategy is cracking down on multiple users sharing the same account. In the shareholder letter, Netflix said it has “landed on a thoughtful approach to monetize account sharing and we’ll begin rolling this out more broadly starting in early 2023.”

“After listening to consumer feedback, we are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create sub-accounts (‘extra member’), if they want to pay for family or friends,” the letter said. “In countries with our lower-priced ad-supported plan, we expect the profile transfer option for borrowers to be especially popular.”

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October 18, 2022
Family: Saudis sentence US citizen to 16 years over tweets

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An American citizen has been arrested in Saudi Arabia, tortured and sentenced to 16 years in prison over tweets he sent while in the United States, his son said Tuesday.

Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 72-year-old retired project manager living in Florida, was arrested last November while visiting family in the kingdom and was sentenced earlier this month, his son Ibrahim told The Associated Press, confirming details that were first reported by the Washington Post. Almadi is a citizen of both Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel, speaking to reporters in Washington, confirmed Almadi’s detention Tuesday.

“We have consistently and intensively raised our concerns regarding the case at senior levels of the Saudi government, both through channels in Riyadh and Washington DC as well and we will continue to do so,” he said. “We have raised this with members of the Saudi government as recently as yesterday.”

It appeared to be the latest in a series of recent cases in which Saudis received long jail sentences for social media posts critical of the government.

Saudi authorities have tightened their crackdown on dissent following the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is seeking to open up and transform the ultraconservative kingdom but has adopted a hard line toward any criticism.

A Saudi court recently sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison for allegedly damaging the country through her social media activity. A Saudi doctoral student at Leeds University in England was sentenced to 34 years for spreading “rumors” and retweeting dissidents, a case that drew international outrage.

Ibrahim says his father was detained over 14 “mild tweets” sent over the past seven years, mostly criticizing government policies and alleged corruption. He says his father was not an activist but a private citizen expressing his opinion while in the U.S., where freedom of speech is a constitutional right.

President Joe Biden traveled to the oil-rich kingdom in July for a meeting with Prince Mohammed, in which he said he confronted him about human rights. Their meeting — and a widely criticized fist-bump — marked a sharp turnaround from Biden’s earlier vow to make the kingdom a “pariah” over the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Ibrahim said his father was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Oct. 3 on charges of supporting terrorism. The father was also charged with failing to report terrorism, over tweets that Ibrahim had posted.

His father was also slapped with a 16-year travel ban. If the sentence is carried out, the 72-year-old would be 87 upon his release and barred from returning home to the U.S. unless he reaches the age of 104.

Ibrahim said Saudi authorities warned his family to stay quiet about the case and to not involve the U.S. government. He said his father was tortured after the family contacted the State Department in March.

Ibrahim also accused the State Department of neglecting his father’s case by not declaring him a “wrongfully detained” American, which would elevate his file.

“They manipulated me. They told me to stay quiet so they can get him out,” Ibrahim said, explaining his decision to go public this week. “I am not willing to take a gamble on the Department of State anymore.”

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October 18, 2022
Semafor news site makes debut, intent on reinventing news

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NEW YORK — The media organization Semafor launched on Tuesday with no less an ambition than reinventing the news story.

Semafor is the brainchild of Ben Smith — former media reporter for The New York Times and, before that, former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed — and Justin Smith, ex-CEO of Bloomberg Media. Since both men — who are not related — quit their previous jobs in January, Semafor has raised $25 million and hired more than 50 staff members.

Semafor’s website, with a distinctive yellow-tinged backdrop that looks like a newspaper left out in the sun, went live shortly after 6 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, with eight newsletters in place as well as an events business.

“We see, and are very excited about, a big opportunity to create a new and high-quality, independent global news brand that is obsessed with solving a number of big consumer frustrations that we see in the news business, primarily polarization,” said Justin Smith, the new company’s CEO.

The founders also believe people suffer from information overload. While another media organization may seem an odd way to deal with that issue, they envision Semafor helping consumers make sense of all that’s out there.

Stories contain separate sections that present the news, the author’s analysis, a counter to that viewpoint, perspective on how the issue is seen elsewhere in the world and a distillation of other stories on the topic.

“Really good reporters do analysis all the time,” said Gina Chua, executive editor, a post she formerly held at Reuters. “That’s great in a story but oftentimes readers don’t know where the facts stop and the analysis begins. What we’re doing is very clearly separating them out.”

It’s probably the highest-risk move Semafor is making, said Ben Smith, the organization’s editor-in-chief.

Among the stories Semafor offered at launch: a previously unreported accident at SpaceX that injured a rocket technician, by Reed Albergotti, formerly of the Washington Post; and an investor group’s campaign to force Coca-Cola into the garbage business, by Liz Hoffmann, formerly of the Wall Street Journal.

Ex-Washington Post writer David Weigel interviewed Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman and Ben Smith looked at his old shop, with a story about an identity crisis at The New York Times.

Ben Smith’s story was Semafor’s centerpiece on Tuesday morning, next to a welcome to readers that he also penned. A series of clocks on top of the site showed the time in various cities, including Washington, Dubai and Beijing. A map of the world sat in the upper right corner.

A breaking news column ran down the left side of the site and, on the right, readers were encouraged to sign up for various newsletters.

Ben Smith will author a newsletter on the media, and others will center on business, technology and climate. Semafor Flagship, the day’s main newsletter, will be written from London, while Semafor Principals will look at Washington’s power players.

The latter is currently considered the turf of Politico — another of Ben Smith’s former homes — and Axios, two of the century’s most successful media startups.

Events will also be a big part of Semafor’s business, and 11 have already been held. They include a series on trust in news, sponsored by the Knight Foundation, that featured Ben Smith’s interview with Tucker Carlson.

“It’s an extension of our journalism, it’s very very popular with clients and an important way to monetize news,” Justin Smith said.

Another event is planned for December, when many African leaders will be in Washington. Semafor is anticipating worldwide expansion, making Africa the first area overseas where it is investing in reporting.

At its start, the company is looking to make money through advertising and brand partnerships, said Rachel Oppenheim, chief revenue officer.

The news site, www.semafor.com, will be available for free initially. After a year, the company will look for ways to charge for its service, Justin Smith said.

“Ultimately, we believe we will have subscriptions over time,” he said.

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October 18, 2022
Microsoft Lays Off Employees After Slowdown in Earnings Growth
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Tech

The software giant said earlier this year that it planned to reduce staff by less than 1%
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October 17, 2022
Report: Taliban killed captives in restive Afghan province

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Taliban captured, bound and shot to death 27 men in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley last month during an offensive against resistance fighters in the area, according to a report published Tuesday, refuting the group’s earlier claims that the men were killed in battle.

One video of the killings verified by the report shows five men, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. Then, Taliban fighters spray them with gunfire for 20 seconds and cry out in celebration.

The investigation by Afghan Witness, an open-source project run by the U.K.-based non-profit Center for Information Resilience, is a rare verification of allegations that the Taliban have used brutal methods against opposition forces and their supporters, its researchers said. Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed a tighter and harsher rule, even as they press for international recognition of their government.

David Osborn, the team leader of Afghan Witness, said the report gives the ”most clear-cut example” of the Taliban carrying out an “orchestrated purge” of resistance fighters.

Afghan Witness said it analyzed dozens of visual sources from social media — mostly videos and photographs — to conclusively link one group of Taliban fighters to the killings of 10 men in the Dara District of Panjshir, including the five seen being mowed down in the video.

It said it also confirmed 17 other extrajudicial killings from further images on social media, all showing dead men with their hands tied behind their backs. Videos and photos of Taliban fighters with the bodies aided geolocation and chrono-location, also providing close-ups of the fighters at the scene. These were cross-referenced with other videos suspected to feature the group.

“Using open-source techniques we have established the facts around the summary and systematic execution of a group of men in the Panjshir Valley in mid-September,” Osborn said. “At the time of their execution, the detained were bound, posing no threat to their Taliban captors.”

Enayatullah Khawarazmi, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the defense minister, said a delegation is investigating the videos released on social media. He said he was unable to give further details as the investigation is ongoing.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Taliban-run government, was not immediately available for comment.

Last month, Mujahid was reported as saying the Taliban had killed 40 resistance fighters and captured more than 100 in Panjshir. He gave no details on how the 40 men died.

The force fighting in the mountainous Panjshir Valley north of Kabul — a remote region that has defied conquerors before — rose out of the last remnants of Afghanistan’s shattered security forces. It has vowed to resist the Taliban after they overran the country and seized power in August 2021.

Ali Maisam Nazary, head of foreign relations at the National Resistance Front for Afghanistan, said: “The Taliban committed war crimes by killing POWs that surrendered to them point blank and the videos are evidence of this.”

Afghan Witness said it has credible evidence of a further 30 deaths due to last month’s Taliban offensive against alleged resistance fighters in Panjshir.

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October 17, 2022
Kanye West to buy conservative social media platform Parler

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The rapper formerly known as Kanye West is offering to buy right-wing friendly social network Parler shortly after being booted off Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic posts.

Parlement Technologies, which owns the platform, and West, legally known as Ye, said the acquisition should be completed in the fourth quarter, but details like price were not revealed. Parlement Technologies said the agreement includes the use of private cloud services via Parlement’s private cloud and data center infrastructure.

Ye, was locked out of Twitter and Instagram a week ago over antisemitic posts that the social networks said violated their policies. In one post on Twitter, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records, making an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

Ye is no stranger to controversy, once suggesting slavery was a choice and calling the COVID-19 vaccine “the mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, he was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

The potential purchase of Parler would give Ye control of a social media platform and a new outlet for his opinions with no gatekeeper.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said in a prepared statement.

The acquisition could also breathe new life into Parler, which has struggled amid competition from other conservative-friendly platforms like Truth Social. Parler, which launched in August 2018, didn’t start picking up steam until 2020. But it was kicked offline following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A month after the attack, Parler announced a relaunch. It returned to Google Play last month.

“This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said in a prepared statement.

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October 17, 2022
Russia strikes central Kyiv with ‘kamikaze drones’

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Several explosions were reported around Kyiv on Monday morning, a week after Russia last attacked the Ukrainian capital.

Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said on Telegram that the city was attacked by kamikaze drones. Multiple people in Kyiv said on social media that they heard noises that are characteristic of the unmanned devices before the explosions.

In a Telegram post, Zelenskyy said: “The enemy can attack our cities, but it won’t be able to break us. The occupiers will get only fair punishment and condemnation of future generations. And we will get victory.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said buildings in the central Shevchenkivskyi district had been set alight by the explosions. He posted a picture on Telegram of what he said was the wreckage of a drone, which looks like one of the Iranian-made Shaheds reportedly acquired by Russia. EU foreign ministers are on Monday set to discuss potential sanctions against Iran over the transfer of drones to Russia.

Russia also appears to have targeted “critical infrastructure facilities” in Romny, near the northeastern city of Sumy, according to Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the regional governor. “There are victims,” he said on Telegram.

Russia previously hit Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities last week with strikes, in what were seen as revenge attacks after Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive and a fiery blast on the Kerch Bridge linking Russian-occupied Crimea with mainland Russia.

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Jules Darmanin

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October 16, 2022
Ukraine: Explosions rock Kyiv a week after Russian strikes

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KYIV, Ukraine — Several loud explosions rocked the center of the Ukrainian capital Monday, a week after Russia orchestrated a massive, coordinated air strike across the country.

Kyiv city mayor Vitaliy Klichko said the central Shevchenko district of the capital had been hit, and urged residents to take shelter. No further details were immediately known.

The explosions came from the same central Kyiv district where a week ago a missile struck a children’s playground and intersection near the Kyiv National University’s main buildings.

Social media posts showed a fire in the area of the apparently strike, with black smoke rising into the early morning light.

Russian forces struck Kyiv with Iranian Shahed drones, wrote Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, in a post on the Telegram social media site. Russia has repeatedly been using the so-called suicide drones in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power stations.

The strike on Kyiv comes as fighting has intensified in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in recent days, as well as the continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last night in his evening address that there was heavy fighting around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the bulk of the industrial east known as the Donbas, and were two of four regions annexed by Russia in September in defiance of international law.

On Sunday, the Russian-backed regime in the Donetsk region said Ukraine had shelled its central administrative building in a direct hit. No casualties were reported.

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October 16, 2022
Malta marks 5 years since journalist killed, seeks justice

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VALLETTA, Malta — Malta on Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of the car bomb slaying of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, with calls for justice and praise for the courage of a woman whose death shocked Europe and exposed a culture of impunity on the Mediterranean island nation.

Over 1,000 Maltese residents joined Caruana Galizia’s relatives, activists and the Maltese president of the European Parliament in a nighttime march and vigil at a makeshift memorial opposite Valletta’s law courts. Also on hand was the sister of Italy’s crusading anti-Mafia investigator, Giovanni Falcone, who was himself assassinated by the mob in a highway bombing in Sicily in 1992.

The anniversary came just two days after two key suspects reversed course on the first day of their trial and pleaded guilty to carrying out the murder. But other cases are still pending in Maltese courts and both the government and opposition leaders have called for justice to be delivered.

Caruana Galizia had written extensively about suspected corruption in political and business circles in the EU nation, and was killed Oct. 16, 2017, when a bomb placed under her car detonated as she was driving near her home. The murder shocked Europe and triggered angry protests in Malta.

A 2021 public inquiry report found that the Maltese state “has to bear responsibility” for the murder because of the culture of impunity that emanated from the highest levels of government. But as recently as last month, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights had decried the “lack of effective results in establishing accountability.”

During the nighttime vigil, one of Caruana Galizia’s nieces, Megan Mallia, read out a message on behalf of her family that said the assassination of an anti-corruption investigative journalist such as her aunt “robs people of their right to understand the reality in which they live.”

The men who ended Daphne’s life knew this, she said. “They feared neither the country’s authorities, nor their own conscience. They feared the thousands of people who chose to light a candle to drive away the darkness.”

Caruana Galizia, 53, was a top Maltese investigative journalist who had targeted people in then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s inner circle whom she accused of having offshore companies in tax havens disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. She also targeted the opposition. When she was killed, she was facing more than 40 libel suits.

“Throughout her life, Daphne Caruana Galizia always followed one principle in her investigative stories: She always did what she was duty bound to do. Not what benefitted her. Not what was convenient. Not what was popular. But what was right,” the president of the EU Parliament, Roberta Metsola, told those at the vigil.

The anniversary came two days after the trial opened for brothers George Degiorgio, 59, and Alfred Degiorgio, 57, the alleged hitmen who were accused of carrying out the bombing. After several hours of the hearing, they reversed their pleas and pled guilty and were sentenced to 40 years in prison apiece. The sentencing brought to three the number of people serving time, after Vincent Muscat pleaded guilty last year for his part in the murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Yorgen Fenech, a top businessman with ties to the former government, is awaiting trial following his 2021 indictment for alleged complicity in the slaying and for conspiracy to commit murder. His arrest in 2019 sparked a series of mass protests in the country that culminated with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s resignation.

Fenech had entered not-guilty pleas to all charges in the pre-trial compilation of evidence. Two other men have been accused of supplying the bomb and are currently undergoing a pre-trial compilation of evidence. They have pleaded not guilty.

A self-confessed middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony.

Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna opened Sunday’s anniversary commemoration by celebrating a Mass at Bidjna church near where Caruana Galizia lived, saying killing can never be “business as usual” and stressing the need for justice, even when it makes the powerful uncomfortable.

Afterward, activists, family members and Metula presided over a silent gathering at the site of the bombing. They planted a banner reading “Justice” in the ground alongside a big poster of the journalist’s face and lay flowers in the shape of the number five. They were joined by Maria Falcone, whose brother Giovanni and his wife, as well as three bodyguards were killed by a bomb planted on a Sicilian highway on May 23, 1992.

Falcone later thanked the crowd at the vigil for coming out in such big numbers, saying their presence showed that Caruana Galizia’s murder would not be in vain.

She urged Maltese to keep it up, saying Italy had paid the price in dead because of its dreadful history of organized crime. “I want you to take our society as an example to understand what a tremendous evil the Mafia is, and the even bigger evil that is the relationship and the agreement between the Mafia and politics,” she said.

“As Giovanni used to say: ‘Do your job at any cost,’” his sister said. “Giovanni and Daphne did this, but now our job is to remember them day after day.”

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October 16, 2022
Turkey calls Greek claims on migrant mistreatment fake news

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ISTANBUL — Turkish officials on Sunday shot back at Greek allegations that Turkey forced 92 naked migrants into Greece, calling it “fake news” and accusing Greece of the mistreatment.

Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi was “sharing false information” after the official tweeted a photo of the naked migrants on Saturday and blamed Turkey, said Fahrettin Altun, the communications director of Turkey’s president.

Altun tweeted in Turkish, Greek and English that this was to “cast suspicion on our country,” while calling on Athens to abandon its “harsh treatment of refugees.”

“Greece has shown once again to the entire world that it does not respect the dignity of refugees by posting these oppressed people’s pictures it has deported after extorting their personal possessions,” he said.

Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Catakli tweeted that the photo showed Greece’s cruelty. “Spend your time to obey human rights, not for manipulations & dishonesty!”

Greek police said Saturday that police officers found the migrants stark naked on Friday, “some with bodily injuries” who had entered the country using plastic boats to cross the Evros River, which forms a border between the two countries.

Relations between the two neighboring countries have been tense over a variety of issues, including migration.

Turkey regularly accuses Greece of violently pushing back migrants entering the country by land and sea. Turkey’s coast guard frequently shares videos of such pushbacks.

Greece accuses Turkey, which hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, of “pushing forward” migrants to put pressure on the EU.

The U.N. refugee agency said it was “deeply distressed by the shocking reports,” condemning the “degrading treatment” and calling for an investigation.

———

Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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October 16, 2022
Musk has a ‘super app’ plan for Twitter. It’s super vague

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Elon Musk has a penchant for the letter “X.” He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.” He named the company he created to buy Twitter “X Holdings.” His rocket company is, naturally, SpaceX.

Now he also apparently intends to morph Twitter into an “everything app” he calls X.

For months, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has expressed interest in creating his own version of China’s WeChat — a “super app” that does video chats, messaging, streaming and payments — for the rest of the world. At least, that is, once he’s done buying Twitter after months of legal infighting over the $44 billion purchase agreement he signed in April.

There are just a few obstacles. First is that a Musk-owned Twitter wouldn’t be the only global company in pursuit of this goal, and in fact would probably be playing catch-up with its rivals. Next is the question of whether anyone really wants a Twitter-based everything app— or any other super app — to begin with.

Start with the competition and consumer demand. Facebook parent Meta has spent years trying to make its flagship platform a destination for everything online, adding payments, games, shopping and even dating features to its social network. So far, it’s had little success; nearly all of its revenue still comes from advertising.

Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber and others have also tried to jump on the super app bandwagon, expanding their offerings in an effort to become indispensable to people as they go about their day. None have set the world on fire so far, not least because people already have a number of apps at their disposal to handle shopping, communicating and payments.

“Old habits are hard to break, and people in the U.S. are used to using different apps for different activities,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. Enberg also notes that super apps would likely suck up more personal data at a time when trust in social platforms has deteriorated significantly.

Musk kicked off the latest round of speculation on Oct. 4, the day he reversed his attempts to get out of the deal and announced that he wanted to acquire Twitter after all. “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he tweeted without further explanation.

But he’s provided at least a little more detail in the past. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk told the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he thinks he’s “got a good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to make it radically better.”

And he’s dropped some strong hints that handling payments for goods and services would be a key part of the app. Musk said he has a “grander vision” for what X.com, an online bank he started early in his career that eventually became part of PayPal, could have been.

“Obviously that could be started from scratch, but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years,” Musk said in August. “So it’s kind of something that I thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do.”

But it’s not clear that WeChat’s success in China means the same idea would translate for a U.S. or global audience. WeChat usage is almost universal in China, where most people never had a computer at home and skipped straight to going online by mobile phone.

Operated by tech giant Tencent Holding Ltd., the platform has made itself a one-stop shop for payments and other services and is starting to compete in entertainment. It is also a platform for health code apps the public is required to use prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

China has 1 billion internet users, and nearly all of them go online by mobile phone, according to the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center. Only 33% use desktop computers at all — and mostly in addition to mobile phones. Tencent says WeChat had 1.3 billion users worldwide as of the end of June.

Tencent and its main Chinese competitor, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aim to make apps that offer so many services that users can’t easily switch to another app. They’re not the only ones.

WeChat has added video calls and other message features as well as shopping, entertainment and other features. Government agencies use it to send out health, traffic and other announcements. WeChat’s payment function, meanwhile, is so widely used that coffee shops, museums and some other businesses refuse cash and will take payment only through WeChat or the rival Ant app.

There is no comparable app in the U.S., despite tech companies’ efforts.

It’s worth remembering that Musk’s grand visions don’t always work out the way he appears to expect. Humans are nowhere near colonizing Mars and his promised fleet of robotaxis remains about as far from reality as the metaverse.

Twitter’s user base is also tiny relative to those at its social-platform competitors. While Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all passed the 1 billion mark long ago, Twitter has about 240 million daily users.

“Musk would not only have to overcome the hurdle of convincing consumers to change how they behave online, but also that Twitter is the place to do it,” Enberg said.

——

Associated Press Writer Joe McDonald contributed to this story.

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October 16, 2022
Musk has a ‘super app’ plan for Twitter. It’s super vague

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Elon Musk has a penchant for the letter “X.” He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.” He named the company he created to buy Twitter “X Holdings.” His rocket company is, naturally, SpaceX.

Now he also apparently intends to morph Twitter into an “everything app” he calls X.

For months, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has expressed interest in creating his own version of China’s WeChat — a “super app” that does video chats, messaging, streaming and payments — for the rest of the world. At least, that is, once he’s done buying Twitter after months of legal infighting over the $44 billion purchase agreement he signed in April.

There are just a few obstacles. First is that a Musk-owned Twitter wouldn’t be the only global company in pursuit of this goal, and in fact would probably be playing catch-up with its rivals. Next is the question of whether anyone really wants a Twitter-based everything app— or any other super app — to begin with.

Start with the competition and consumer demand. Facebook parent Meta has spent years trying to make its flagship platform a destination for everything online, adding payments, games, shopping and even dating features to its social network. So far, it’s had little success; nearly all of its revenue still comes from advertising.

Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber and others have also tried to jump on the super app bandwagon, expanding their offerings in an effort to become indispensable to people as they go about their day. None have set the world on fire so far, not least because people already have a number of apps at their disposal to handle shopping, communicating and payments.

“Old habits are hard to break, and people in the U.S. are used to using different apps for different activities,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. Enberg also notes that super apps would likely suck up more personal data at a time when trust in social platforms has deteriorated significantly.

Musk kicked off the latest round of speculation on Oct. 4, the day he reversed his attempts to get out of the deal and announced that he wanted to acquire Twitter after all. “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he tweeted without further explanation.

But he’s provided at least a little more detail in the past. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk told the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he thinks he’s “got a good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to make it radically better.”

And he’s dropped some strong hints that handling payments for goods and services would be a key part of the app. Musk said he has a “grander vision” for what X.com, an online bank he started early in his career that eventually became part of PayPal, could have been.

“Obviously that could be started from scratch, but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years,” Musk said in August. “So it’s kind of something that I thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do.”

But it’s not clear that WeChat’s success in China means the same idea would translate for a U.S. or global audience. WeChat usage is almost universal in China, where most people never had a computer at home and skipped straight to going online by mobile phone.

Operated by tech giant Tencent Holding Ltd., the platform has made itself a one-stop shop for payments and other services and is starting to compete in entertainment. It is also a platform for health code apps the public is required to use prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

China has 1 billion internet users, and nearly all of them go online by mobile phone, according to the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center. Only 33% use desktop computers at all — and mostly in addition to mobile phones. Tencent says WeChat had 1.3 billion users worldwide as of the end of June.

Tencent and its main Chinese competitor, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aim to make apps that offer so many services that users can’t easily switch to another app. They’re not the only ones.

WeChat has added video calls and other message features as well as shopping, entertainment and other features. Government agencies use it to send out health, traffic and other announcements. WeChat’s payment function, meanwhile, is so widely used that coffee shops, museums and some other businesses refuse cash and will take payment only through WeChat or the rival Ant app.

There is no comparable app in the U.S., despite tech companies’ efforts.

It’s worth remembering that Musk’s grand visions don’t always work out the way he appears to expect. Humans are nowhere near colonizing Mars and his promised fleet of robotaxis remains about as far from reality as the metaverse.

Twitter’s user base is also tiny relative to those at its social-platform competitors. While Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all passed the 1 billion mark long ago, Twitter has about 240 million daily users.

“Musk would not only have to overcome the hurdle of convincing consumers to change how they behave online, but also that Twitter is the place to do it,” Enberg said.

——

Associated Press Writer Joe McDonald contributed to this story.

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October 16, 2022
Iran’s celebrities face reprisals for supporting protests

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BAGHDAD — Singers, actors, sports stars — the list goes on. Iranian celebrities have been startlingly public in their support for the massive anti-government protests shaking their country. And the ruling establishment is lashing back.

Celebrities have found themselves targeted for arrest, have had passports confiscated and faced other harassment.

Among the most notable cases is that of singer Shervin Hajipour, whose song “For …” has become an anthem for the protest movement, which erupted Sept. 17 over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for not abiding by the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.

The song begins with a soft melody, then Hajipour’s resonant voice starts, “For dancing in the streets,” “for the fear we feel when we kiss …” — listing reasons young Iranians have posted on Twitter for why they are taking to the streets against the ruling theocracy.

It ends with the widely chanted slogan that has become synonymous with the protests: “For women, life, freedom.”

Released on his Instagram page, the song quickly went viral. Hajipour paid the price: The 25-year-old was arrested and held for several days before being released on bail on Oct. 4.

Since the protests took off — and expanded from anger at Amini’s death to a complete challenge to the 43-year-old rule by conservative Islamic clerics — a string of celebrities have faced reprisals, from singers and soccer players to news anchors.

At least seven public figures have been detained inside the country, most of whom were released on bail and could face charges, according to Iranian news outlets. Others were questioned and released.

But their popularity has also made it difficult to crack down too hard on them — in contrast to protest activists whom security forces have arrested in large numbers. Iran has a vibrant scene of singers and actors, as well as sports stars, who are closely followed by the public.

Holly Dagres, an Iranian-American non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the attempts to intimidate public figures were no surprise.

“Celebrities — be it athletes, actors, singers or artists — have a large following inside Iran, particularly on social media, and their support gives life to these protests,” she said.

Their support has helped invigorate protesters struggling with widespread internet outages that limit their ability to have their voices heard and facing a brutal government crackdown. There have been widespread arrests, dozens have died and many more wounded. Still, protests have spread to dozens of cities, drawing broad segments of Iranian society, from schoolgirls to oil workers.

One of Iran’s most beloved singers of classical Persian music, Homayoun Shajarian, projected a large photo of Amini behind him on stage as he sang a traditional song, “Dawn Bird,” during a tour in Australia in September.

The audience joined him in singing one of the song’s most iconic lines: “The tyrant’s oppression like a hunter has blown away my nest. God, Sky, Nature, bring dawn to our dark night.”

When Shajarian returned to Iran, his passport and that of actress Sahar Dolatshahi, who was traveling with him, were seized at the airport. He later said on his Instagram account that they had been barred from travel.

Similarly, a soccer legend in Iran, Ali Daei, had his passport confiscated at the airport when he returned from abroad. He had urged the government on social media to “solve the problems of the Iranian people rather than using repression, violence and arrests.”

A few days later, the passport was returned to him, he told the press.

Two well known former soccer players, Hossein Mahini and Hamidreza Aliasgari, were arrested and released on bail. Mona Borzoui, a female songwriter and Mahmoud Shahriari, a former state TV showman, have also been arrested and face charges.

Iranian leaders blame foreign governments for fanning the protests. Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi said celebrities in particular have had a “steering role” in the unrest.

Mirahmadi said celebrities who have backed the protests will be allowed to atone for their “mistaken actions.”

He denied any athletes had been arrested but said some had received “guidance.” He said Mahini, for example, had been released and given “the chance to make good on his mistakes,” according to the Mehr News Agency.

Public figures have not been deterred.

Amirhossein Esfandiar, a national volleyball player, reposted a video of violent confrontations between security forces and protesters, writing, “You have no sense of humanity, why do you beat and kill innocent people?”

Qasim Haddadifar, a veteran sportsman and former soccer captain, published photos of girls protesting and wrote he was proud of them in an Instagram story.

Some players on the soccer team Persepolis F.C. reportedly wore black armbands during a Wednesday match in solidarity with the protest movement and were later summoned by security, reported British-based Iran International.

Actress Hediye Tehrani said Iranian security had warned her about her posts to her nearly 1 million Instagram followers. Still, she continues to share images in support of the protests. “Millions of girls are now Mahsa Amini,” she wrote in a recent post.

Celebrities outside of Iran have also raised their voices, from Dua Lipa and Shakira to the fashion house Balenciaga. On Instagram, Angelina Jolie posted a photo of a protester holding up an image of Amini and wrote, “To the women of Iran, we see you.”

The ruling establishment clearly sees danger in celebrities’ wide reach. Ali Saaedi Shahroudi, a former representative of the Supreme Leader of Revolutionary Guards, called for an organization to oversee the behavior of musicians, actors and sports stars, similar to institutions regulating professional groups.

But the damage may have already been done.

Although Hajipour was forced to remove his song from Instagram, it continues to reverberate, sung by everyone from Iranian school girls to protesters in European capitals.

A campaign is under way to nominate the song for a Grammy, in the best song for social change category.

“While using #MahsaAmini might seem like keyboard activism, Iranians see the world’s attention is on them and they appreciate it,” said Dagres. “The solidarity invigorates protesters to keep braving batons and bullets to make a change in their country. It gives them hope.”

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October 15, 2022
Meta documents show main metaverse is losing users and falling short of goals, report says

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Horizon Worlds, Meta‘s flagship metaverse for consumers, is failing to meet internal performance expectations, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed internal company documents.

Meta initially aimed to reach 500,000 monthly active users in Horizon Worlds by the end of the year, but the current figure is less than 200,000, according to the report. Additionally, the documents showed that most users didn’t return to Horizon after the first month on the platform, and the number of users has steadily declined since spring, the Journal said.

Only 9% of worlds are visited by at least 50 people, and most are never visited at all, according to the report.

The report comes as the company’s stock falls, user numbers decline and advertisers cut spending. Meta shares are down 62% so far this year.

Meta rebranded from Facebook last year in order to reflect the company’s ambitions beyond social media. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has specifically been interested in building out the metaverse, which is a virtual world that allows users to work and play together.

As a result, Meta created Horizon Worlds, which is a network of virtual spaces where users can engage with one another as avatars. Individuals can access Horizon through Meta’s Quest virtual-reality headsets.

In an effort to drum up some excitement around the metaverse, Zuckerberg unveiled his company’s newest virtual reality headset, dubbed the Meta Quest Pro, at Meta’s Connect conference Tuesday. The device costs $1,500 and contains new technologies, such as an advanced mobile Snapdragon computer chip.

A Meta spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the company continues to make improvements to the metaverse, which was always meant to be a multiyear project. Representatives for Meta didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Meta has said it will release a web version of Horizon for mobile devices and computers this year, but the spokesman didn’t have any launch dates to disclose.

Read the full Journal report here.

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October 15, 2022
Musk has a ‘super app’ plan for Twitter. It’s super vague

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Elon Musk has a penchant for the letter “X.” He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.” He named the company he created to buy Twitter “X Holdings.” His rocket company is, naturally, SpaceX.

Now he also apparently intends to morph Twitter into an “everything app” he calls X.

For months, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has expressed interest in creating his own version of China’s WeChat — a “super app” that does video chats, messaging, streaming and payments — for the rest of the world.. At least, that is, once he’s done buying Twitter after months of legal infighting over the $44 billion purchase agreement he signed in April.

There are just a few obstacles. First is that a Musk-owned Twitter wouldn’t be the only global company in pursuit of this goal, and in fact would probably be playing catch-up with its rivals. Next is the question of whether anyone really wants a Twitter-based everything app— or any other super app — to begin with.

Start with the competition and consumer demand. Facebook parent Meta has spent years trying to make its flagship platform a destination for everything online, adding payments, games, shopping and even dating features to its social network. So far, it’s had little success; nearly all of its revenue still comes from advertising.

Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber and others have also tried to jump on the super app bandwagon, expanding their offerings in an effort to become indispensable to people as they go about their day. None have set the world on fire so far, not least because people already have a number of apps at their disposal to handle shopping, communicating and payments.

“Old habits are hard to break, and people in the U.S. are used to using different apps for different activities,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. Enberg also notes that super apps would likely suck up more personal data at a time when trust in social platforms has deteriorated significantly.

Musk kicked off the latest round of speculation on Oct. 4, the day he reversed his attempts to get out of the deal and announced that he wanted to acquire Twitter after all. “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he tweeted without further explanation.

But he’s provided at least a little more detail in the past. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk told the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he thinks he’s “got a good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to make it radically better.”

And he’s dropped some strong hints that handling payments for goods and services would be a key part of the app. Musk said he has a “grander vision” for what X.com, an online bank he started early in his career that eventually became part of PayPal, could have been.

“Obviously that could be started from scratch, but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years,” Musk said in August. “So it’s kind of something that I thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do.”

But it’s not clear that WeChat’s success in China means the same idea would translate for a U.S. or global audience. WeChat usage in almost universal in China, where most people never had a computer at home and skipped straight to going online by mobile phone.

Operated by tech giant Tencent Holding Ltd., the platform has made itself a one-stop shop for payments and other services and is starting to compete in entertainment. It is also a platform for health code apps the public is required to use prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

China has 1 billion internet users, and nearly all of them go online by mobile phone, according to the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center. Only 33% use desktop computers at all — and mostly in addition to mobile phones. Tencent says WeChat had 1.3 billion users worldwide as of the end of June.

Tencent and its main Chinese competitor, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aim to make apps that offer so many services that users can’t easily switch to another app. They’re not the only ones.

WeChat has added video calls and other message features as well as shopping, entertainment and other features. Government agencies use it to send out health, traffic and other announcements. WeChat’s payment function, meanwhile, is so widely used that coffee shops, museums and some other businesses refuse cash and will take payment only through WeChat or the rival Ant app.

There is no comparable app in the U.S., despite tech companies’ efforts.

It’s worth remembering that Musk’s grand visions don’t always work out the way he appears to expect. Humans are nowhere near colonizing Mars and his promised fleet of robotaxis remains about as far from reality as the metaverse.

Twitter’s user base is also tiny relative to those at its social-platform competitors. While Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all passed the 1 billion mark long ago, Twitter has about 240 million daily users.

“Musk would not only have to overcome the hurdle of convincing consumers to change how they behave online, but also that Twitter is the place to do it,” Enberg said.

——

Associated Press Writer Joe McDonald contributed to this story.

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October 15, 2022