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Tag: Meta Platforms Inc

  • The inventor of the web thinks everyone will have their own personal A.I. assistants like ChatGPT

    The inventor of the web thinks everyone will have their own personal A.I. assistants like ChatGPT

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    More control over your data. No blockchain. And your own personal artificial intelligence assistant, like ChatGPT.

    These are all part of the vision of the future of the web, according to internet inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and CEO of Inrupt John Bruce, who spoke on CNBC’s Beyond The Valley podcast published Friday.

    Inrupt is a company they co-founded which aims to deliver the web inventors’ original vision of the way the internet should work.

    Berners-Lee said that when he invented the web in 1989, “if you were sufficiently switched on geeky, you could get yourself a computer. And you could put a web server on it, you could plug it into the internet. And you could have a website.”

    “The spirit of the web was incredibly empowering to individuals,” he said.

    But in his view, something has gone wrong since, with the concentration of power now in the hands of large internet companies.

    Through their company Inrupt, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and John Bruce, are trying to change the future of the internet. Their vision is a future where users have more control over their data.

    Sam Barnes | Sportsfile | Getty Images

    “Well, everybody’s on Facebook, so they don’t have the website. They all use Mark Zuckerberg’s website,” Berners-Lee said.

    “When people look you up on Facebook, you don’t control actually what they see … Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms control what news gets fed to them as they’re looking at your stuff,” he told CNBC.

    “That’s very disempowering. It is very useful to Facebook. They have a lot of data about people that they they use for targeting them with advertisements … but what we’ve lost is the ability for individuals to have power.”

    In control of data

    His solution? A product that allows users to control their data and how it’s used. Currently, internet companies collect data on users by default, as a way of using their services.

    But Berners-Lee and Bruce’s start-up Inrupt is working on a different way forward. The aim is for users to have a single sign-on across different products and services on the internet.

    Data will be stored in so-called “pods,” which are basically a person’s personal data online storage container. Individuals can grant a website or service access to their pod, or silo of data, rather than websites taking data by default.

    The system is built on an open protocol on the internet called Solid.

    “And that’s the ‘yin’ and the ‘yang’ of Inrupt, which is the personal empowerment. And the opportunity for individuals to take more command over their role on the web,” Bruce told CNBC’s Beyond The Valley.

    China's tech giants announce their plans for ChatGPT rivals

    Such an idea would require buy-in from large internet players. But Bruce said there is an “endless trudge” from companies to get more data on users, so they can target them with products and services. But the endeavour is showing diminishing returns for companies, he said.

    “The other way of doing it is instead of, you know, figuring out blindly ‘Are you the likely candidate for my product or service?’ How about I just ask you in a legitimate way? And you tell me,” Bruce said, referencing the idea that users would be able to share the data that they want with companies from their pod.

    Users will also need to change their behavior, and there needs to be a desire to control their data in this way. Berners-Lee admitted this change wouldn’t come overnight but instead “bit by bit.”

    Your own personal A.I. assistant

    In the wide-ranging Beyond The Valley episode, Bruce and Berners-Lee also addressed new artificial intelligence product ChatGPT which was developed by OpenAI.

    Backed by Microsoft, ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot, that responds to questions from users.

    Berners-Lee said that users can run their own AI, much like their own personal version of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, when they have their own data pods.

    That’s because in the future that Berners-Lee sees, users will have all sorts of data stored in their pods — from fitness information to online shopping habits. The AI could use all that data to learn and be able to assist a user.

    “Sometimes you have the whole data spectrum — all of the data to do with your collaborations and your coffees and your projects and your dreams. And the books you’re reading and … all of your life, then that is in your pod. You run AI on that. That could be sweet,” Berners-Lee said.

    Web3 or Web 3.0?

    What Berners-Lee and Bruce are working on at Inrupt is all part of the future of the internet.

    Some have termed it Web3, which proponents say will be a decentralized version of the internet — one that is not dominated by a handful of powerful players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

    Many Web3 advocates suggest it will be built on some sort of blockchain technology. Blockchain is the technology that first came to light with bitcoin but has since evolved.

    But Berners-Lee is keen to call the next generation of the internet Web 3.0, emphasizing the dot.

    “It’s not blockchain,” he said.

    What is Web3? We ask the man who invented the word

    Web3 proponents suggest blockchain could be used to underpin the future of the internet. But Berners-Lee said the technology is not fast enough nor does it afford enough privacy.

    He also said cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are “only speculative.”

    Gavin Wood, founder of blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, coined the term “Web 3.0.”

    Wood spoke to CNBC last year about his vision for the future of the web in a previous episode of Beyond the Valley. He advocated blockchain technology as part of the future web make-up.

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  • Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision takeover in doubt as UK regulator raises competition concerns

    Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision takeover in doubt as UK regulator raises competition concerns

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    An Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare video game is inserted into the Microsoft’s Xbox One video game console arranged in Denver, Colorado, on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022.

    Michael Ciaglo | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    The British competition regulator says that Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard could harm competition in the U.K. gaming market, and that it could move to block the deal.

    The Competition and Markets Authority published a provisional decision on the deal on Wednesday, stating that the takeover raises competition concerns and may result in higher prices, fewer choices and less innovation.

    In a notice of possible remedies sent to both parties, the CMA said it may require Microsoft to:

    • sell the business associated with its popular Call of Duty franchise
    • divest the Activision segment of Activision Blizzard
    • divest both Activision and Blizzard
    • terminate the deal

    Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have until Feb. 22 to respond. The CMA is set to issue a final decision on April 26. The regulator opened an in-depth probe into the deal on Sept. 1.

    The CMA is concerned that the Activision deal could strengthen Microsoft’s position in the cloud gaming market, adding Call of Duty and other lucrative titles to its cloud-based Xbox Game Pass platform.

    Cloud gaming, which allows gamers to play games over the internet on devices other than a console, is still in its infancy and not yet a mass-market technology.

    The deal would also boost Microsoft’s console business, the CMA said, adding that Microsoft would find it “commercially beneficial” to make Activision games exclusive to its Xbox hardware or available on PlayStation “under materially worse conditions.”

    This “could substantially reduce the competition between Xbox and PlayStation in the UK, in turn harming UK gamers,” the watchdog noted.

    Activision Blizzard shares were down 2% on Wednesday following the CMA announcement. Microsoft shares, meanwhile, were trading 2% higher on the back of an announcement about the tech giant’s artificial intelligence advancements.

    “We are committed to offering effective and easily enforceable solutions that address the CMA’s concerns,” said Rima Alaily, Microsoft corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, in an emailed statement to CNBC.

    Microsoft has made commitments to Sony and Nintendo to continue releasing its new Call of Duty games on their respective PlayStation and Switch gaming platforms for 10 years.

    An Activision Blizzard spokesperson said the company hopes to “help the CMA better understand our industry to ensure they can achieve their stated mandate to promote an environment where people can be confident they are getting great choices and fair deals.”

    Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick also sent an internal memo to employees Wednesday, saying that the company was “confident that the law – and the facts – are on our side.”

    “In this case, our combined companies will bring more competition to an already crowded field of world-class gaming competitors, including Sony, Tencent, NetEase, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook,” Kotick added. “We believe this merger gives us additional resources to compete with such giants.”

    The Microsoft-Activision deal also faces scrutiny in the U.S. and European Union.

    Stateside, the Federal Trade Commission is seeking to block the purchase on competition grounds, while the European Commission also has a competition investigation into the transaction. The commission, which is the executive arm of the EU, recently filed a charge sheet known as a statement of objections setting forth its concerns about the deal, according to Reuters.

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  • US senators seek answers from Meta on whether user data was accessed by China, Russia and others | CNN Business

    US senators seek answers from Meta on whether user data was accessed by China, Russia and others | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Top US lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee want answers from Meta on a newly disclosed internal investigation it conducted in 2018 that found tens of thousands of software developers in China, Russia and other “high-risk” countries may have had access to detailed Facebook user data before the company clamped down on that access beginning in 2014.

    In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, Sens. Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the chair and vice-chair of the Senate committee, cited a document unsealed last week in an ongoing privacy lawsuit involving the company.

    That document, an internal slide presentation from 2018, suggested that nearly 87,000 developers in China, 42,000 in Russia and a handful based in Cuba, Iran and North Korea had access to Facebook user information through an earlier version of the company’s programming interfaces. The presentation provides an interim update on the probe, which found, among other things, that Iran was home to a “significant number of seemingly Russian developers” of Facebook apps.

    The document does not explicitly outline what types of information the developers could have accessed, but it focuses on a period prior to 2014, before Facebook had restricted third-party access to data such as political views, relationship statuses and education history, among other things.

    The congressional letter seeks more information about the outcome of the investigation, with a particular focus on whether Facebook users’ data could have ended up in the hands of Chinese or Russian intelligence agencies.

    “We have grave concerns about the extent to which this access could have enabled foreign intelligence service activity, ranging from foreign malign influence to targeting and counter-intelligence activity,” the lawmakers wrote.

    The findings are “especially remarkable given that Facebook has never been permitted to operate in [China],” they added.

    Meta’s investigation, launched after the company’s Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, had focused on third-party app developers with access to “large amounts of information” and whose software had exhibited “suspicious activity.”

    On Tuesday, Meta told CNN in a statement that the document cited in the letter references data practices that are no longer in effect at the company.

    “These documents are an artifact from a different product at a different time,” said Meta spokesman Andy Stone. “Many years ago, we made substantive changes to our platform, shutting down developers’ access to key types of data on Facebook while reviewing and approving all apps that request access to sensitive information.”

    Meta declined to answer whether the app developer investigation is still ongoing or how many apps have been reviewed since the 2018 slide presentation, which was unsealed in court last week. The document had projected the probe would continue at least through 2020.

    In recent years, policymakers have increasingly sounded the alarm about data leakages to foreign adversaries. Hostile governments could seek to use Americans’ personal information to spread disinformation or identify intelligence targets, US officials have said.

    Those fears have culminated most visibly in tensions with the short-form video app TikTok, whose links to China through its parent company have prompted the US government and numerous states to ban the app from official devices. US officials have also sought to block Chinese telecom firms from the US market over similar concerns.

    But the lawmakers’ letter highlights how worries about data access by foreign adversaries extends beyond TikTok and encompasses some of the largest social media platforms.

    Although Meta has moved on with different, more restrictive policies for developers, Warner and Rubio called for the company to explain what information may have been transferred to China, Russia and other nations in the past, and for any evidence the company may have that the data has been abused to target Americans or engage in propaganda campaigns.

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  • Facebook co-founder Moskovitz funds research into cooling the Earth with sunlight reflection

    Facebook co-founder Moskovitz funds research into cooling the Earth with sunlight reflection

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    This photograph taken on May 11, 2022 shows Shivaram, a villager walking through the cracked bottom of a dried-out pond on a hot summer day at Bandai village in Pali district. – Every day dozens of villagers, mostly women and children, wait with blue plastic jerry cans and metal pots for a special train bringing precious water to people suffering a heatwave in India’s desert state of Rajasthan.

    Prakash Singh | Afp | Getty Images

    Scientists from Africa, Asia and South America are getting a new infusion of $900,000 to study the effects of reflecting sunlight to cool the Earth and mitigate the impacts of global warming. The money comes from Open Philanthropy, a venture funded primarily by billionaire Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook and Asana, and his wife, Cari Tuna.

    Sunlight reflection involves releasing aerosols like sulfur dioxide high in the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays back into space, temporarily mitigating global warming. (It’s sometimes called solar radiation modification or solar geoengineering.)

    The idea has been around for decades, but it is being taken more seriously as the effects of climate change become more apparent. While volcanic eruptions have proven that the technique can work, there are significant risks as well, including damage to the ozone layer, acid rain and increased respiratory illness.

    On Tuesday, nonprofit research organization The Degrees Initiative and the United Nation’s World Academy of Sciences announced they are distributing more than $900,000 to scientists across Africa, Asia and South America to study solar radiation modification in a program called “The Degrees Modelling Fund.” The Degrees Initiative has been funded by various donors over the years, but the biggest has been Open Philanthropy and all of the $900,000 disbursement announced Tuesday came from that group, Degrees Initiative co-founder and CEO Andy Parker told CNBC.

    The money will go to 81 scientists in Benin, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand and Uganda working on 15 solar geoengineering modeling projects.

    The lesser of two bad choices, akin to chemotherapy

    Sunlight reflection is getting more attention as scientists have started suggesting that its negative effects may not be as bad as the harm from climate change will be in the future. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is coordinating a five-year research plan into solar geoengineering and in January, the quadrennial U.N.-backed Montreal Protocol assessment report included an entire chapter addressing stratospheric aerosol injection for the first time ever.

    “Like anyone else sensible, when I first heard about the idea of blocking out the sun, I thought it was a terrible idea. As time goes by, the view didn’t really change it. It’s a horrible idea,” Parker told CNBC. “But it may prove to be less horrible than not using it and allowing temperatures to keep rising if we don’t cut our emissions far enough.”

    I liken the decision to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy to treat cancer is also a horrible idea. It’s very dangerous. It’s unpleasant. It’s risky. And no one would ever consider doing it unless they feared the alternative. might be worse. And so it goes for solar geoengineering.

    Andy Parker

    CEO of The Degrees Initiative

    Sunlight reflection is not a solution to climate change or global warming. It is a relatively fast and inexpensive way to temporarily cool the Earth. We know it works: In the 15 months following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the average global temperature was about 1 degree Fahrenheit lower, according to NASA. Releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere from retrofitted planes would essentially mimic the way a volcano releases large quantities of aerosols into the atmosphere.

    “It’s not a pleasant idea. It’s not a fun thing to work on. But it’s potentially important, it could be very, very helpful, it could be disastrous,” Parker told CNBC.

    “I liken the decision to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy to treat cancer is also a horrible idea. It’s very dangerous. It’s unpleasant. It’s risky. And no one would ever consider doing it unless they feared the alternative might be worse. And so it goes for solar geoengineering,” he said.

    Before launching The Degrees Initiative, Parker led the production of a 98-page report on geoengineering for The Royal Society, an independent science academy in the United Kingdom, and has done research at Harvard and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany.

    A giant volcanic mushroom cloud explodes some 20 kilometers high from Mount Pinatubo above almost deserted US Clark Air Base, on June 12, 1991 followed by another more powerful explosion. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 was the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century.

    Arlan Naeg | Afp | Getty Images

    Ensuring the most at-risk countries have a say

    One of Parker’s goals with the Degrees Initiative is to ensure that scientists from developing countries in the global south will be part of international conversations about sunlight reflection, he told CNBC.

    “If it can work well to reduce the impacts of climate change, then they’ve got the most to gain because they’re on the frontlines of global warming,” he said. “If, on the other hand, it all goes wrong and there are nasty side effects, or perhaps if it’s rejected prematurely, when it could have helped, then developing countries have got the most to lose.”

    But without philanthropic donations, research and decisions about solar geoengineering would be primarily relegated to the parts of the world that can afford it, like North America, the European Union and Japan, Parker said.

    The $900,000 announced Tuesday is the second round of funding of this kind. In 2018, The Degrees Modelling Fund distributed $900,000 to 11 projects in Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Indonesia, Iran, the Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Philippines and South Africa.

    The money goes out in grants of up to $75,000, of which $60,000 is for salary and $15,000 is for the tools that a local research team would need, Parker told CNBC. Each scientific team should suggest its own proposal in the application for the grant money, he said. But broadly, the task for each team is to use computer models to predict the weather and their regional impacts — both with and without sunlight reflection.

    “By comparing the two, they can start to generate evidence on what the impact of solar radiation modification might be on things that matter locally,” Parker said.

    Scientists who have had their work funded by The Degrees Modelling Fund at a recent research-planning workshop for old and new teams in Istanbul.

    Photo courtesy The Degrees Initiative

    Researching the water cycles in La Plata Basin

    Ines Camilloni, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, has received two Degrees Initiative grants and is also getting funded by the government of Argentina. With the funding, Camilloni is researching how solar radiation modification would affect the hydroclimate of La Plata Basin, the fifth largest water basin in the world, covering parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, she told CNBC.

    “A large fraction of the economic activities within the basin relies on water availability, including agriculture, river navigability and hydroelectric production, and therefore any variations in the water cycle of the basin could have significant impacts on the economy of each country,” Camilloni told CNBC.

    Prof. Inés Camilloni speaking at the 2022 Paris Peace Forum.

    Photo courtesy The Degrees Initiative

    Camilloni says her research has so far showed that sunlight reflection could be helpful to some parts of the La Plata Basin region, but particularly harmful to others. Large rivers that power hydroelectric dams could see higher flows and increased energy production, balanced by a risk of more flooding.

    In Buenos Aires, awareness of sunlight reflection has grown in the oast couple years, and it spurs strong emotions.

    “The range of feelings that solar radiation modification generates goes from disbelief to fear. Everyone perceives it to be controversial,” Camilloni told CNBC.

    Clear communication is critical, though, because even research proponents do not see it as a climate change silver bullet.

    “This is no one’s Plan A for how you deal with climate risk, and whatever happens, we have to cut our emissions,” Parker told CNBC. “But people are finally starting to seriously address the question: What do we do if we don’t do enough with emissions cuts, if they prove insufficient to avoid very dangerous climate change? What are our options? And that leaves people regretfully, but necessarily, to think about things like solar radiation modification.”

    Correction: Andy Parker is the co-founder and CEO of The Degrees Initiative. An earlier version didn’t attribute some quotes to him.

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  • Meta to buy VR startup Within after favorable court ruling

    Meta to buy VR startup Within after favorable court ruling

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    A federal judge has sided with Facebook parent Meta and cleared the way for the company to buy virtual reality startup Within Unlimited, the maker of the popular fitness app Supernatural.

    Federal antitrust regulators had sought to block the acquisition on the grounds that it would hurt competition in the emerging virtual reality market.

    But U.S. District Judge Edward Davila denied the Federal Trade Commission’s request for a preliminary injunction against the deal. The judge’s ruling said the agency did not provide sufficient evidence to prove its case.

    Meta said it will now proceed with its acquisition of Within Unlimited.

    The FTC had argued that Meta’s acquisition of the small company — reminiscent of Facebook’s early purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp — would hurt competition in the emerging virtual reality market.

    Allowing the tech giant to buy Los Angeles-based Within Unlimited, the FTC had argued, would violate antitrust laws and dampen innovation, hurting consumers who may face higher prices and fewer options outside of Meta-controlled platforms.

    Meta Platforms Inc. said in a statement late Friday after the ruling was unsealed that it is “pleased” with the decision.

    “This deal will bring pro-competitive benefits to the ecosystem and spur innovation that will benefit people, developers, and the VR space more broadly,” the company based in Menlo Park, California, said. “We look forward to closing the transaction soon.”

    The FTC had argued that Meta scrapped its own plans to enter the nascent VR fitness market in the summer of 2021 when it decided to buy Within Unlimited. Without the competitive threat of the tech giant’s entry into the market on its own, the agency asserts, innovation stalls, hurting end users.

    “The threat is what keeps firms going,” testified economist Hal Singer, a witness for the FTC. “If I know there is a chance that someone could come in and steal my lunch,” he said, companies will innovate and constrain pricing.

    But Meta executives — including CEO Mark Zuckerberg — sought to play down the notion that the company was anywhere close to creating its own VR fitness app. The Meta CEO testified that even though his company was “looking at” developing its own VR fitness app before deciding to acquire Within Unlimited in 2021, the business environment has changed and “there is almost no chance” it would start such a project today.

    Under Zuckerberg’s, Meta moved aggressively into virtual reality in 2014 with its acquisition of headset maker Oculus VR. Since then, Meta’s VR headsets have become the cornerstone of its growth in the virtual reality space, the FTC noted in its suit. Fueled by the popularity of its top-selling Quest headsets, Meta’s Quest Store has become a leading U.S. app platform with more than 500 apps available to download, according to the agency.

    Meta bought seven of the most successful virtual-reality development studios, and now has one of the largest virtual-reality content catalogs in the world, the FTC noted.

    Davila’s ruling, however, says the FTC needed to provide “at least circumstantial evidence” that Meta’s entry into the VR fitness market by itself, not via the acquisition, would have directly and favorably affected consumers by encouraging robust competition.

    “Under this standard, the FTC’s evidence on this element is insufficient,” Davila wrote.

    Representatives for the FTC did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Monday.

    Davila also oversaw the trial of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Both were sentenced to over a decade in prison for their roles in the company’s blood-testing hoax.

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  • Market veteran is still bullish on tech despite earnings upset, and reveals his other top picks

    Market veteran is still bullish on tech despite earnings upset, and reveals his other top picks

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  • Judge reportedly allows Meta to move forward with VR startup acquisition, in blow to FTC | CNN Business

    Judge reportedly allows Meta to move forward with VR startup acquisition, in blow to FTC | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge will not block Meta from buying a virtual reality tech startup, according to multiple reports, in a setback for the US government, which had alleged the deal would threaten competition in a nascent market.

    Tuesday’s decision, issued by the US District Court for the Northern District of California, is sealed. But according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the contents of the decision dealt Meta a victory by denying the US government’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the acquisition from closing. The New York Times cited two people with knowledge of the matter and the Wall Street Journal cited one person familiar with the ruling.

    CNN has not independently confirmed the contents of the court’s decision. The Federal Trade Commission, which had sued to block the deal last summer, declined to comment. Meta declined to comment, and several outside attorneys for the company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The closely watched case involves Meta’s purchase of Within Unlimited, a virtual reality company and maker of a VR fitness app called “Supernatural.” The FTC’s suit had been seen as a major test for Chair Lina Khan, a critic of large tech platforms, as well as of the FTC’s unusual legal theory alleging that Meta’s deal would harm future competition in a rapidly evolving industry.

    According to the reports, the judge in the case also issued a separate order that delays Meta’s ability to close its deal for another week to allow the FTC to decide whether to appeal the ruling.

    A separate challenge to Meta’s deal is ongoing before an in-house administrative law judge at the FTC. That proceeding could continue despite Tuesday’s ruling, but whether agency officials intend to press ahead is unclear.

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  • Big Tech just added to a shrinking forecast, but maybe Bob Iger can brighten the mood

    Big Tech just added to a shrinking forecast, but maybe Bob Iger can brighten the mood

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    Wall Street’s expectations for 2023 have been diving as forecasts for the new year come in light, and the news could get worse once they factor in disappointing results from Big Tech. But at least Bob Iger is coming back for a sequel.

    Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple all disappointed with holiday earnings this week. Their forecasts ranged from nonexistent to piecemeal to meh, and the fallout will only add to the biggest dive in Wall Street’s expectations through the beginning of a year since 2016.

    Analysts’ average forecast for 2023 earnings from the S&P 500 index
    SPX,
    -1.04%
    dropped by 2.5% in January, according to FactSet Senior Earnings Analyst John Butters, the worst in seven years. Those projections began heading lower last year, and the decline is only steepening — analysts are now projecting 3% earnings growth in 2023, and that is contingent on a big holiday rebound from the results being released this quarter.


    Uncredited

    The news was even worse for the first quarter, for which projections declined 3.3% in January as companies whiffed on their forecasts at a rapid pace: 86% of the 43 companies that have guided for first-quarter earnings have missed projections, Butters reported. Earnings are now expected to decline 4.2%, which would be the first year-over-year earnings decline since the third quarter of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic write-offs started to come in.

    Big Tech only added to the downward trajectory in recent days. Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    -8.43%
    missed on its holiday earnings as well as its forecast for the first quarter, and that company could determine if S&P 500 profits rise in 2023 all on its own. Amazon’s worst holiday earnings since 2014 could also contribute to the consumer discretionary sector’s first earnings decline since the beginning of the pandemic, with holiday sector earnings now expected to drop more than 5%.

    Google parent Alphabet Inc.
    GOOGL,
    -2.75%
    GOOG,
    -3.29%
    and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    -1.19%
    also missed their respective earnings targets amid problems with the digital-advertising industry, leading to the communications-services sector having the worst earnings season in the S&P 500. Profit has declined 25.2% in that sector so far, the worst among the 11 S&P 500 sectors, but would be down just 6.5% without the effects of Meta and Alphabet, Butters reported.

    Apple Inc.
    AAPL,
    +2.44%
    also didn’t do projections any favors, reporting its biggest sales decrease since 2016 and an earnings miss Thursday afternoon. In a piecemeal forecast, executives projected a similar sales decline in the calendar first quarter, though unofficially.

    This week in earnings

    After the busiest week in earnings season wrapped up, don’t expect much of a breather — 95 S&P 500 companies are expected to report in the week ahead, the third consecutive week with at least 90 companies reporting. There will be plenty of intrigue among companies not in the S&P 500 too, including Robinhood Markets Inc.
    HOOD,
    -3.59%
    and Affirm Holdings Inc.
    AFRM,
    -14.14%
    reporting together on Wednesday afternoon.

    Only one Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA,
    -0.38%
    stock will report, but that is the Wednesday call you will want to tune in for: Bob Iger’s return to the Walt Disney Co.
    DIS,
    -2.21%
    earnings show.

    The calls to put on your calendar
    The numbers to watch

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  • I’m a parent with an active social media brand: Here’s what you need to check on your child’s social media right now | CNN

    I’m a parent with an active social media brand: Here’s what you need to check on your child’s social media right now | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Stress, But Less newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide will inform and inspire you to reduce stress while learning how to harness it.



    CNN
     — 

    If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll know I wear a lot of hats: romance author, parent of funny tweenagers, part-time teacher, amateur homesteader, grumbling celiac and the wife of a seriously outdoorsy guy.

    Because I’m an author with a major publisher in today’s competitive market, I’ve been tasked with stepping up my social media brand: participation, creation and all. The more transparent and likable I am online, the better my books sell. Therefore, to social media I go.

    It’s rare to find someone with no social media presence these days, but there’s a marked difference between posting a few pictures for family and friends and actively creating social media content as part of your daily life.

    With a whopping 95% of teens polled having access to smartphones (and 98% of teens over 15), according to an August Pew Research Center survey on teens, social media and technology, it doesn’t look like social media platforms are going away anytime soon.

    Not only are they key social tools, but they also allow teens to feel more a part of things in their communities. Many teens like being online, according to a November Pew Research Center survey on teen life on social media. Eighty percent of the teens surveyed felt more connected to what is happening in their friends’ lives, while 71% felt social media allows them to showcase their creativity.

    So, while posting online is work for me, it’s a way of life for the tweens and teens I see creating and publishing content online. As a parent of two middle schoolers, I know how important social media is to them, and I also know what’s out there. I see the good, the bad and the viral, and I’ve have put together some guidelines, based on what I’ve seen, for my fellow parents to watch for.

    Here are eight questions to ask yourself as you check out your children’s social media accounts.

    If you don’t, it’s time to start. It’s like when I had to look up the term “situationship,” I saw that ignorance is not bliss in this case. Or really any case when it comes to your children. Both of my children have smartphones, but even if your children don’t have smartphones, if they have any sort of device — phone, tablet, school laptop — it’s likely they have some sort of social media account out there. Every app our children wish to add to their smart devices comes through my husband’s and my phone notifications for approval. Before I approve any apps, I’ll read the reviews, run an internet search and text my mom friends for their experience.

    Most tweens and teens use social media for socializing with local friends.

    If I’m still uncertain about an app, I’ll hold off on approving it until I can sit down with my children and ask them why they want it. Sometimes just waiting and forcing a short discussion is enough to convince them they no longer want it. In our household, I avoid any apps that run social surveys, allow anonymous feedback or require the individual to use location services.

    If you don’t have your family phone plan all hooked together with parental controls, I’d advise setting that up ASAP. Because different devices and apps have different ways to monitor and set up parental controls, it’s impossible to link all the options here. However, a quick search will give you exactly the coverage you are comfortable with, including apps that track your child’s text messages and changing the settings on your child’s phone to lock down at a certain time every night.

    The top social media platforms teens use today are YouTube (95% of teens polled), TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%), according to the Pew Research Center survey on teens and social media tech. Other social media platforms teens use less frequently are Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp and Facebook. Most notably, Facebook is seeing a significant downturn in teen users. This list isn’t exhaustive, however. I would check out your children’s devices for group chat apps (such as Slack or Discord) and also scroll through their sport or activity apps where group chat capabilities exist.

    I’ve seen preteens and teens using their real names, birthdate, home address, pets’ names, locker numbers or their school baseball team. Any of that information could be used to identify your child and location in real life or using a quick Google search. All of that is an absolute “no” in our house.

    I also tell my kids not to answer the fun surveys and quizzes that invite children to share their unique information and repost it for others to see. These can be useful tools for predators and people trying to steal your children’s identity.

    What I do: I made the choice a long ago to withhold the names of my children and partner. It’s not an exact science, and I know some clever digging could find them. For my husband, it’s for the sake of his privacy and also the protection of his professionalism. Just because he’s married to a romance author doesn’t mean he should have to answer for my online antics, whatever they may be. For my children, I want to avoid anything embarrassing that could be traced back to them during their college application season.

    Even if your children keep their social media profiles private (more on that later), their biographical information, screen name and avatar or profile picture are public information.

    Do an internet search of your child’s name to see what’s out there and scroll through images to make sure there isn’t anything you wouldn’t want to be made public. In our household, I’ve asked my children to use generic items or illustrated avatars in their social media bios.

    What I do: Parents who do have active social media accounts may want to do a search of their own names. When my first book was published in 2019, I did a search of my name and images and found many photos of my children that came directly from my social media pages. I hadn’t posted pictures of them, but I did use a family photo as my profile photo and those are public record. Once I deleted them, the photos disappeared.

    Another “no” in our household is posting videos or photos of our home or bedrooms. Something that feels innocent and innocuous to your middle schooler may not feel that way to an adult seeking out inappropriate content.

    I learned this from one of my children’s Pinterest accounts. My kid loves to create themed videos using her own photos and stock pictures, and she’s gained over 500 followers in a short period of time. She has completely followed our rules and I know, because I check and follow her myself — but it hasn’t stopped the influx of adult men following her content.

    What we do: Over the holidays, I sat with her and went through each follower one by one and blocked anyone we decided was there for the wrong reasons. In the end, we blocked close to 30 adult men on her account. (I also know that some predators cleverly disguise themselves as children or teens, and we may not catch them all, but this is still a worthy exercise.)

    We also talk to our children about how to protect themselves. They wouldn’t want those strangers standing in their bedroom; therefore, they don’t want to post videos of their bedroom or bathroom or classroom for strangers to view.

    This is a tricky one for lots of reasons. For content creators to build their following, they need to remain public on social media. If your child is an entrepreneur or artist hoping to grab attention, locking down their account will prevent that from happening.

    That said, a way around this is to have two accounts. First, a private one, locked down and only used for family and close friends, and second, a public one that lacks identifiers but showcases whatever branding the child is hoping to grow. I’ve come across some well-managed public accounts for children who have giant followings and noticed they are usually run by parents, who state that right in the profile. I like this. If your children want public profiles because they are hoping to catch the attention of a talent scout, having the accounts monitored by a responsible adult who has their best interest in mind is a healthy compromise.

    This is the exception, however. Most tweens and teens today use their social media for socializing with local friends. The benefit of keeping their account as private (or as private as can be) is threefold. It allows them to screen who follows their content, thus preventing our Pinterest fiasco. It prevents strangers from accessing their content and making it viral without their permission. And it protects them from unsolicited contact with strangers.

    Not all social media platforms have the option to make your account “private.” For example, YouTube has parental controls that can be adjusted at any time. TikTok and Instagram can be made private (which means users must approve followers) by making the change in the account settings. Once the account is private, a little padlock will show next to the username.

    Snapchat allows users to approve followers on a case-by-case basis as well as turn off features that disclose a user’s location. Notably, Snapchat also informs users when another user takes a screenshot of their story, which is a feature other social media platforms don’t have yet.

    Most group chat apps don’t have the ability to go private so much as they ask users to approve of follower requests. Take time to discuss with your children who they allow to follow them and what personal information they allow those followers to know. It’s also a great time to teach them the art of “blocking” those individuals who are unsafe or unkind.

    My suggestion is to log in, scroll around and even ask your children to teach you about the platforms they use. Then, when they roll their eyes at you, go ahead and tell them about your first Hotmail email address and the way you picked the perfect emo playlist on your Myspace page … and when they’re bent over laughing, sneak a peek at their follower list. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.

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  • Tech stocks just finished a five-week rally — the longest stretch since market peak in November 2021

    Tech stocks just finished a five-week rally — the longest stretch since market peak in November 2021

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    Tech stocks on display at the Nasdaq.

    Peter Kramer | CNBC

    The Nasdaq just wrapped up its fifth straight week of gains, jumping 3.3% over the last five days. It’s the longest weekly winning streak for the tech-laden index since a stretch that ended in November 2021. Coming off its worst year since 2008, the Nasdaq is up 15% to start 2023.

    The last time tech stocks enjoyed a rally this long, investors were gearing up for electric carmaker Rivian’s blockbuster IPO, the U.S. economy was closing out its strongest year for growth since 1984, and the Nasdaq was trading at a record.

    This time around, there’s far less champagne popping. Cost cuts have replaced growth on Wall Street’s checklist, and tech executives are being celebrated for efficiency over innovation. The IPO market is dead. Layoffs are abundant.

    Earnings reports were the story of the week, with results landing from many of the world’s most valuable tech companies. But the numbers, for the most part, weren’t good.

    Apple missed estimates for the first time since 2016, Facebook parent Meta recorded a third straight quarter of declining revenue, Google‘s core advertising business shrank, and Amazon closed out its weakest year for growth in its 25-year history as a public company.

    While investors had mixed reactions to the individual reports, all four stocks closed the week with solid gains, as did Microsoft, which reported earnings the prior week and issued lackluster guidance in projecting revenue growth this quarter of only about 3%.

    Cost control is king

    Meta was the top performer among the group this week, with the stock soaring 23%, its third-best week ever. In its earnings report Wednesday, revenue came in slightly above estimates, even with sales down year over year, and the first-quarter forecast was roughly in line with expectations.

    The key to the rally was CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pronouncement in the earnings statement that 2023 would be the “Year of Efficiency” and his promise that “we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization.”

    “That was really the game-changer,” Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist at Hightower Advisors, said in an interview Friday with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

    “The quarter itself was OK, but it was the cost-cutting that they finally got religion on, and that’s why I think Meta really took off,” she said.

    Zuckerberg acknowledged that the times are changing. From the year of its IPO in 2012 through 2021, the company grew between 22% and 58% a year. But in 2022 revenue fell 1%, and analysts expect growth of only 5% in 2023, according to Refinitiv.

    On the earnings call, Zuckerberg said he doesn’t expect declines to continue, “but I also don’t think it’s going to go back to the way it was before.” Meta announced in November the elimination of 11,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce.

    Link said the reason Meta’s stock got such a big bounce after earnings was because “expectations were so low and the valuation was so compelling.” The stock lost almost two-thirds of its value last year, far more than its mega-cap peers.

    Navigating ‘a very difficult environment’

    Apple, which slid 27% last year, gained 6.2% this week despite reporting its steepest drop in revenue in seven years. CEO Tim Cook said results were hurt by a strong dollar, production issues in China affecting the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, and the overall macroeconomic environment. 

    “Apple is navigating what is, of course, a very difficult environment quite well overall,” Dan Flax, an analyst at Neuberger Berman, told “Squawk Box” on Friday. “As we move through the coming months and quarters, we’ll see a return to growth and the market will begin to discount that. We continue to like the name even in the face of these macro challenges.”

    Watch CNBC's full interview with Neuberger Berman's Dan Flax

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded Jeff Bezos in mid-2021, took the unusual step of joining the earnings call with analysts Thursday after his company issued a weaker-than-expected forecast for the first quarter. In January, Amazon began layoffs, which are expected to result in the loss of more than 18,000 jobs.

    “Given this last quarter was the end of my first full year in this role and given some of the unusual parts in the economy and our business, I thought this might be a good one to join,” Jassy said on the call.

    Managing expenses has become a big theme for Amazon, which expanded rapidly during the pandemic and subsequently admitted that it hired too many people during that period.

    “We’re working really hard to streamline our costs,” Jassy said.

    Alphabet is also in downsizing mode. The company announced last month that it’s slashing 12,000 jobs. Its revenue miss for the fourth quarter included disappointing sales at YouTube from a pullback in ad spending and weakness in the cloud division as businesses tighten their belts.

    Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s finance chief, told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa that the company is meaningfully slowing the pace of hiring in an effort to deliver long-term profitable growth.

    Alphabet shares ended the week up 5.4% even after giving up some of their gains during Friday’s sell-off. The stock is now up 19% for the year.

    Ruth Porat, Alphabet CFO, at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland on May 23rd, 2022. 

    Adam Galica | CNBC

    Should the Nasdaq continue its upward trend and notch a sixth week of gains, it would match the longest rally since a stretch that ended in January 2020, just before the Covid pandemic hit the U.S.

    Investors will now turn to earnings reports from smaller companies. Some of the names they’ll hear from next week include Pinterest, Robinhood, Affirm and Cloudflare.

    Another area in tech that flourished this week was the semiconductor space. Similar to the consumer tech companies, there wasn’t much by way of growth to excite Wall Street.

    AMD on Tuesday beat on sales and profit but guided analysts to a 10% year-over-year decline in revenue for the current quarter. Intel, AMD’s primary competitor, reported a disastrous quarter last week and projected a 40% decline in sales in the March quarter.

    Still, AMD jumped 14% for the week and Intel rose almost 8%. Texas Instruments and Nvidia also notched nice gains.

    The semiconductor industry is dealing with a glut of extra parts at PC and server makers and falling prices for components such as memory and central processors. But after a miserable year in 2022, the stocks are rebounding on signs that an easing of Federal Reserve rate increases and lightening inflation numbers will give the companies a boost later this year.

    WATCH: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Truist’s Youssef Squali

    Watch CNBC's full interview with Truist Securities' Youssef Squali

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  • Meta posts lower Q4 profit, announces huge stock buyback

    Meta posts lower Q4 profit, announces huge stock buyback

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook parent company Meta posted lower fourth-quarter profit and revenue on Wednesday, hurt by a downturn in the online advertising market and competition from rivals such as TikTok.

    But the company’s stock soared in extended trading, as its revenue beat Wall Street’s muted expectations and the Menlo Park, California-based company announced a $40 billion stock buyback.

    This is the third consecutive quarter of revenue decline for the tech giant, which laid off 11,000 workers, or about 13% of its workforce, in November. CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed the layoffs on aggressive hiring during the pandemic, when Meta’s business boomed because people were stuck at home, scrolling on their phones and computers, glued to social media. But as the lockdowns ended and people started going outside again, revenue growth began to falter.

    ″(Our) management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization,” Zuckerberg said in a statement Wednesday.

    Meta’s mega stock buyback appeared to ease investors’ concerns over the company’s spending on the “metaverse” — an immersive digital universe, viewed through a headset, that Zuckerberg predicts will eventually replace smartphones as the primary way people use technology.

    Meta Platforms Inc. said it earned $4.65 billion, or $1.76 per share, in the final three months of 2022. That’s down 55% from $10.29 billion, or $3.67 per share, a year earlier.

    Analysts were expecting earnings of $2.26 per share, according to a poll by FactSet.

    Revenue fell 4% to $32.17 billion from $33.67 billion. Analysts were expecting $31.55 billion.

    Meta ended 2022 with a 1% revenue decline from 2021 — its first year-over-year drop.

    “The downturn was slightly less than we thought it would be, but that’s not necessarily a good sign,” said said Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson. She said that Meta’s 2022 results were “a stark difference” from 2021, when the company’s worldwide revenue grew 37%.

    “Now the challenge is to return to positive territory. Meta needs to stay focused on stabilizing its core platforms, Facebook and Instagram,” she added. “And with losses at its VR division mounting, Mark Zuckerberg is going to have to accept an unfortunate reality: Virtual worlds are simply not what businesses or consumers want right now.”

    Meta’s Reality Labs segment, which includes its virtual and augmented-reality hardware such as its headsets, as well as software and related content, posted a fourth-quarter operating loss of $4.28 billion, compared with a loss of $3.3 billion a year earlier.

    Though revenue declined, Meta continued to add users on its social media apps. Facebook’s daily active users hit 2 billion for the first time — up 4% from a year earlier. Facebook had 2.96 billion monthly active users at the end of the year. Meta’s monthly active users on what it calls its “family” of apps — Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger — were 3.74 billion as of Dec. 31.

    “The growth in monthly users is … a good sign that there is still a small pool of new social network users (or perhaps lapsed users) who are willing to give Facebook a try,” Williamson said.

    For the current quarter, Meta is forecasting revenue between $26 billion and $28.5 billion. Analysts are expecting $27.18 billion. The company also lowered its outlook for 2023 expenses to the range of $89 billion to $95 billion from its earlier guidance of $94 billion to $100 billion.

    Meta’s shares jumped almost 19% in after-hours trading. The stock had closed the regular trading session at $153.12, down 52% in the last year.

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  • Meta shares surge nearly 20% as Zuckerberg pledges to make 2023 a ‘year of efficiency’ | CNN Business

    Meta shares surge nearly 20% as Zuckerberg pledges to make 2023 a ‘year of efficiency’ | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    For years, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg invested heavily in growth, including in areas like virtual reality with unproven potential. But after a brutal year in which the company lost more than $600 billion in market value, Zuckerberg has started speaking Wall Street’s language — and they are rewarding him for it.

    Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday posted its third straight quarterly decline in revenue and a sharp drop in profit for the final three months of 2022, as it confronted broader economic uncertainty, heightened competition in the social media market and incurred significant charges from a recent round of layoffs.

    But the company nonetheless outperformed Wall Street analysts’ expectations for sales. Moreover, it pledged to focus on “efficiency,” lowered its forecast for capital expenditures in the year ahead and announced plans to boost its share repurchase plan by $40 billion. All of that helped send shares of Meta up nearly 20% in after hours trading Wednesday.

    “Our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization,” Zuckerberg said in a statement with the earnings results.

    Meta reported nearly $32.2 billion in revenue for the quarter, down 4% from the year prior but ahead of the $31.5 billion analysts had projected. The social media giant’s quarterly net income was just shy of $4.7 billion, down 55% from the same period in the prior year and below analysts’ expectations.

    Meta announced plans to lay off around 11,000 employees in November. The company also currently has a broad hiring freeze in place and plans to limit hiring throughout the year, Meta CFO Susan Li said on a call with analysts Wednesday.

    In its earnings report, Meta said it has cut its guidance for capital expenditures for 2023 down slightly to between $30 billion and $33 billion, citing plans for lower data center construction spending. It also added that “substantially all of our capital expenditures continue to support the Family of Apps,” a term that refers to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, perhaps in an effort to reassure investors skeptical of its plan to center its business model around the future version of the internet it calls the metaverse.

    For the first quarter of 2023, Meta expects revenue between $26 and $28.5 billion, the upper end of which would represent an increase from the year-ago quarter and would break Meta’s streak of consecutive quarterly revenue declines. The guidance is somewhat better than Snapchat-parent Snap’s from earlier in the week, which said it expects first quarter revenue to fall between 2% and 10% compared to the previous year.

    Zuckerberg explained the focus on efficiency during the analyst call by acknowledging that for the first 18 years of the company’s history, its revenue grew sharply each year. “And then obviously that changed very dramatically in 2022, where our revenue was negative growth for the first time in the company’s history … and we don’t anticipate that’s going to continue but I don’t necessarily think it’s going to go back to the way it was before.”

    He added: “So I think this is a pretty rapid phase change there that I think just forced us to basically take a step back and say, okay, we can’t just treat everything like it’s hyper-growth,” although Zuckerberg said he thinks the shift in mindset “actually makes us better.”

    Meta’s user numbers also marked a bright spot from Wednesday’s report. Facebook now has 2 billion daily active users, and Meta’s family of apps grew its daily active people by 5% year-over-year to 2.96 billion, a welcome sign for the company following concerns about stagnant user growth last year.

    The company’s core advertising business fell just over 4% to nearly $31.3 billion, a “better-than-expected” result that “should refute concerns over the state of the digital advertising industry,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com. Li said that ad revenue growth from its top advertising verticals, online commerce and consumer packaged goods, remained negative during the December quarter but fell at a slower rate than in the previous quarter.

    Still, Meta’s average price per ad fell 22% year-over-year during the December quarter, and 16% overall in 2022, as the company grapples with Apple’s app tracking changes and increased competition from the likes of TikTok.

    The company also lost a total of more than $13.7 billion in its “Reality Labs” unit which houses its metaverse efforts. Fourth quarter Reality Labs revenue fell 17% to $727 million, due to lower sales of its Quest 2 headset, the company said.

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  • Meta stock spikes nearly 20% as cost cuts and $40 billion for investors overshadow earnings miss

    Meta stock spikes nearly 20% as cost cuts and $40 billion for investors overshadow earnings miss

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    Meta Platforms Inc. shares soared in after-hours trading Wednesday despite an earnings miss, as the Facebook parent company guided for potentially more revenue than Wall Street expected in the new year and promised more share repurchases amid cost cuts.

    Meta
    META,
    +2.79%
    said it hauled in $32.17 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, down from $33.67 billion a year ago but stronger than expectations. Earnings were $4.65 billion, or $1.76 a share, compared with $10.3 billion, or $3.67 a share, last year.

    Analysts polled by FactSet expected Meta to post fourth-quarter revenue of $31.55 billion on earnings of $2.26 a share, and the beat on sales coincided with a revenue forecast that also met or exceeded expectations. Facebook Chief Financial Officer Susan Li projected first-quarter sales of $26 billion to $28.5 billion, while analysts on average were projecting first-quarter sales of $27.2 billion.

    Shares jumped more than 19% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, after closing with a 2.8% gain at $153.12.

    Alphabet Inc.’s
    GOOGL,
    +1.61%

    GOOG,
    +1.56%
    Google and Pinterest Inc.
    PINS,
    +1.56%
    benefited from Meta’s results, with shares for each company rising more than 4% in extended trading Wednesday.

    “Our community continues to grow and I’m pleased with the strong engagement across our apps. Facebook just reached the milestone of 2 billion daily actives,” Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement announcing the results. “The progress we’re making on our AI discovery engine and Reels are major drivers of this. Beyond this, our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization.”

    Read more: Snap suffers worst sales growth yet in holiday quarter, stock plunges after earnings miss

    Facebook’s 2 billion-user milestone was slightly better than analysts expected for user growth on Meta’s core social network. Daily active users across all of Facebook’s apps neared, but did not crest, another round number, reaching 2.96 billion, up 5% from a year ago.

    Meta has been navigating choppy ad waters as it copes with increasing competition from TikTok and fallout from changes in Apple Inc.’s
    AAPL,
    +0.79%
    ad-tracking system in 2021 that punitively harmed Meta, costing it potentially billions of dollars in advertising sales. Meta has invested heavily in artificial-intelligence tools to rev up its ad-targeting systems and making better recommendations for users of its short-video product Reels, but it laid off thousands of workers after profit and revenue shrunk in recent quarters.

    The cost cuts seemed to pay off Wednesday. While Facebook missed on its earnings, it noted that the costs of its layoffs and other restructuring totaled $4.2 billion and reduced the number by roughly $1.24 a share.

    Meta executives said they now expect operating expenses to be $89 billion to $95 billion this year based on slower salary growth, cost of revenue, and $1 billion in savings from facilities consolidation — down from previous guidance for $94 billion to $100 billion. Capital expenditures are expected to be $30 billion to $33 billion, down from previous guidance of $34 billion to $37 billion, as Meta cancels multiple data-center projects.

    In a conference call with analysts late Wednesday, Zuckerberg called 2023 the “year of efficiency” after 18 years of unbridled growth. He recommitted to Meta’s emphasis on AI and the metaverse, a platform for “better social experiences” than the phone, he said.

    “The reduced outlook reflects our updated plans for lower data-center construction spend in 2023 as we shift to a new data-center architecture that is more cost efficient and can support both AI and non-AI workloads,” Li said in her outlook commentary included in the release.

    Meta expects to increase its spending on its own stock. The company’s board approved a $40 billion increase in its share-repurchase authorization; Meta spent nearly $28 billion on its own shares in 2022, and still had nearly $11 billion available for buybacks before that increase.

    “Investors are cheering Meta’s plans to return more capital to shareholders despite worries over rising costs related to its metaverse spending,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com.

    “At first glance…Meta getting its mojo back,” Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note late Wednesday. “Results and guidance look particularly solid after Snap’s dismal report; however, further cuts to operating and capital expenditures announced this afternoon were perhaps the biggest surprise.”

    UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley said he anticipates double-digit revenue growth exiting 2023 and strong growth in earnings and free cash flow.

    The results came a day after Snap Inc.
    SNAP,
    -10.29%
    posted fourth-quarter revenue of $1.3 billion, flat from a year ago and the worst year-over-year sales growth Snap has ever reported. But they also arrived on the same day Facebook scored a major win in a California court. The company successfully fended off the Federal Trade Commission bid to win a preliminary injunction to block Meta’s planned acquisition of VR startup Within Unlimited.

    Read more: Meta wins bid to buy VR startup Within Unlimited, beating U.S. FTC in court: report

    Meta shares have plunged 53% over the past 12 months, while the broader S&P 500 index 
    SPX,
    +1.05%
    has tumbled 10% the past year.

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  • Nasdaq logs best January since 2001 as stocks climb to cap off stellar month

    Nasdaq logs best January since 2001 as stocks climb to cap off stellar month

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    U.S. stocks finished in the green on Tuesday as the Nasdaq cemented its best January performance since 2001 amid a broad-based rally in equities that saw some of 2022’s worst performers take the lead. The S&P 500 SPX gained 58.83 points, or about 1.5%, to finish January at 4,076.60, a gain of 6.2% for the month, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That’s the large-cap index’s best monthly gain since October, and its best January since 2019, something that is also true for the Dow. The Nasdaq Composite COMP rose by 190.74 points, or 1.7%, to 11,584.55 on Tuesday, bringing its gain for January to 10.7%. January was also…

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  • Europe’s crackdown on Big Tech omitted TikTok — but now that’s set to change

    Europe’s crackdown on Big Tech omitted TikTok — but now that’s set to change

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    TikTok holds its End Of Year Event 2022 in Milan, Italy, on Dec. 13.

    Claudio Lavenia | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

    TikTok is beginning to feel the sting of political and regulatory pressure in Europe, where the Chinese-owned app has largely evaded the scrutiny it’s faced in the U.S.

    EU Commissioner of the Internal Market Thierry Breton warned TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in a meeting this month the bloc could ban the app if it didn’t comply with new rules on digital content well ahead of a Sep. 1 deadline.

    That’s a marked shift from the EU’s near silence on TikTok, while U.S. lawmakers have been aggressive — banning the app from federal devices in December over national security concerns. A proposed bipartisan bill also seeks to block the app from operating in the U.S.

    It’s not that the EU is soft on tech. Europe has fined U.S. tech giants for violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

    The difference with TikTok is that the app has kept out of the crosshairs of commercial interests in Europe.

    Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

    “There is no political demand for investigation into Chinese entities,” Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, the director of think tank the European Centre for International Political Economy, said in an interview in December.

    “The user base of TikTok is a lot bigger than a lot of people in Europe think,” he said. But, he added, “you’re not going to look very closely if they don’t steal too much from your ad revenue.”

    TikTok had about 275 million monthly active users in Europe as of December, according to Sensor Tower’s Abe Yousef, noting that’s more than one third of Europe’s population of about 750 million.

    The data dragon TikTok must be placed under the surveillance of the European authorities. Europe must finally wake up.

    Moritz Korner

    MEP, European Parliament

    TikTok was the most-downloaded social media app last year in Italy and Spain, according to data.ai, formerly called App Annie. The app held second place in France and Germany, the data showed.

    WhatsApp, owned by Facebook parent Meta, ranked first among social media app downloads in France and Germany, and third in Italy and Spain, according to data.ai.

    Meta reported $29.06 billion in European revenue in 2021, a region the company defined as including Russia and Turkey. In contrast, TikTok recorded turnover of just $531 million in the European Union in 2021, according to the latest available filing in the U.K. But that was well over four times what was disclosed for 2020.

    “It takes a little bit of time for the European Commission to get its act together on these issues,” said Dexter Thillien, lead tech and telecoms analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit.

    “It’s not because of a lack of willingness from the European Commission to do something,” Thillien told CNBC in a phone interview. “They’ve got their hands full with bigger companies.”

    TikTok isn’t yet a behemoth at the scale of companies like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon when it comes to social media, advertising and e-commerce. But TikTok has become so popular that its app has inspired copycat products, such as Meta’s Reels short video feature.

    More than half of people aged 16 to 24 in France and Germany use TikTok, according to data.ai.

    Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has amassed a worldwide monthly user base of more than 1 billion, and cemented the careers of well-known media personalities, from the D’Amelio sisters to Addison Rae.

    That gives it an attractive pool of data to train its algorithms to target users aggressively with content most aligned with their interests. TikTok’s parent, Beijing-based ByteDance, has found similar success in China with a local version of the app, called Douyin.

    A big fear among U.S. intelligence officials — and increasingly lawmakers in Europe, as well — is that Beijing could influence how TikTok targets its users to engage in propaganda or censorship.

    Read more about China from CNBC Pro

    “TikTok’s success is the result of a European policy failure,” Moritz Korner, a member of the European Parliament for Germany’s Free Democratic Party, told CNBC via email.

    “From a geopolitical perspective, the EU’s inactivity towards TikTok has been naive.”

    Korner has been calling on the European Commission to pressure data protection authorities into taking action against TikTok since 2019. He is worried the platform poses “several unacceptable risks for European users,” including “data access by Chinese authorities, censorship, [and] tracking of journalists.”

    “The data dragon TikTok must be placed under the surveillance of the European authorities,” said Korner. “Europe must finally wake up.”

    Why Europe’s tone is changing

    Last month, ByteDance admitted to using two journalists’ TikTok data to locate their physical movements, according to an internal memo. TikTok distanced itself from the activity, and said the employees involved were no longer employed at ByteDance.

    Surveillance concerns, in addition to the EU’s tough Digital Services Act, were a big topic of conversation in Chew’s meetings with EU officials earlier this month.

    The DSA, which was approved last year, is yet to be applied in Europe. EU officials are pressuring tech giants of all stripes to get their houses in order before a Sep. 1 deadline, including TikTok.

    “The EU takes privacy and data protection issues very seriously. And it is building one of the most rigorous regulatory architectures for digital platforms, including TikTok, in the world,” Manuel Muniz, provost at IE University, told CNBC.

    Under Chinese counter-espionage and national security rules, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and other Chinese tech firms would be forced to share user data with Beijing if asked to by the government, experts previously told CNBC.

    This was a concern back when the U.S. was pressuring allies to ban Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, in 2019.

    China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to CNBC that the Chinese government has never and will not require companies or individuals to collect or share data located in foreign countries in violation of local laws.

    The ministry said relevant parties should respect the principles of market economy and fair competition, stop abusing the concept of national security and provide Chinese companies with a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment.

    TikTok has admitted that data on its European users can be accessed by employees based in China, but denies it would ever share such information with the Chinese government. A company spokesperson told CNBC the firm has “always been bound by and strived to comply with EU regulations that apply to us.”

    “We’re continuing to foster a strong culture of compliance by investing heavily in evolving our platform and business to align with the changing regulatory framework,” the spokesperson said.

    The firm nonetheless says it is committed to creating a robust system for processing the data of Europeans within Europe. This will include establishing a new data center in Ireland to house European users’ data locally.

    That reflects a major difference: European regulators have focused on data processing, while U.S. regulators look for national security threats.

    Meanwhile, investigations into TikTok’s accessing of users’ data in China are “starting to bear fruit,” according to Thillien.

    Investigations take time. The Irish Data Protection Commission took nearly five years to end its probe into Meta’s targeted advertising practices, which resulted in a fine of more than $400 million.

    The commission is examining whether the transfer of user data from TikTok to China and processing of data on minors is in breach of the bloc’s strict GDPR privacy rules. An outcome in the Irish privacy probe isn’t expected until late this year or 2024.

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  • Could Big Tech layoffs keep growing? Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google may give hints in biggest week of earnings.

    Could Big Tech layoffs keep growing? Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google may give hints in biggest week of earnings.

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    In the biggest week of the holiday-earnings season, Big Tech results will receive the spotlight amid thousands of layoffs that could only be the beginning.

    After tech stocks were decimated in 2022, investors will be looking for signs of a turnaround in holiday reports and potential forecasts for the year ahead from three of 2022’s top five market-value losers: Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    -0.66%    ,
    Apple Inc.
    AAPL,
    -0.63%
    and Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    -0.60%    .
    The other two stocks on that list — Microsoft Corp.
    MSFT,
    -1.38%
    and Tesla Inc.
    TSLA,
    -0.15%
    — reported last week, and Microsoft’s results in the wake of a mass-layoffs announcement did not bode well for its Big Tech brethren.

    See also: Microsoft could be the cloud sector’s ‘canary in the coal mine’

    Those companies — along with Google parent Alphabet Inc.
    GOOGL,
    -1.32%
    GOOG,
    -1.49%
    — will deliver results after finding themselves in unfamiliar territory: A backdrop of layoffs amid slowing demand for core products like digital ads, electronics and e-commerce, after a two-year pandemic surge and a two-decade-plus honeymoon with investors. Some analysts say the bottom hasn’t arrived, for either their finances or their workforces.

    The one Big Tech company that hasn’t taken a sword to its payroll is Apple, which also increased its staff the least among the group during the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple shed $846 billion from its market cap last year, and now reports after its core product was part of the smartphone industry’s worst year since 2013 and worst holiday-season decline on record. The iPhone maker could also face questions from Wall Street about changing up its product sourcing, which has relied heavily on China, a nation whose COVID-19 restrictions have constrained production of some phones.

    While the tech-industry layoffs have yet to hit Apple, some analysts say the company is unlikely to be spared, despite Chief Executive Tim Cook requesting and receiving a healthy cut to his compensation.

    “Similar to other big technology companies, we expect Apple to adjust its head count to reflect an increasingly challenging global macroeconomic environment,” D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte said in a research note Tuesday.

    Rivals that have already cut could face more if profit continues to fall along with revenue growth. Alphabet, for instance, is cutting 12,000 employees, but an activist investor has already said that is not enough considering how much the company grew during the pandemic, and the difficulties it now faces in the online-ad sector.

    Opinion: Microsoft’s big move in AI does not mean it will challenge Google in search

    Analysts have said Meta’s “darkest days” are still ahead, as it navigates a round of more than 11,000 layoffs, competition from TikTok and its early stumbles in the metaverse. While cutting, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has promised to keep spending on metaverse development, even as the efforts slash the Facebook parent company’s previously healthy bottom line.

    “In 2023, we expect Meta to remain engulfed in arduous battles inside the Octagon,” Monness Crespi Hardt analyst Brian White said in a research note on Thursday. “In the long run, we believe Meta will benefit from the secular digital ad trend and innovate in the metaverse; however, regulatory scrutiny persists, internal headwinds remain, and we believe the darkest days of this downturn are ahead of us.”

    Full Facebook earnings preview: Meta’s ‘darkest days’ are ahead, but some analysts say ad sales are still on track

    Online retailer Amazon
    AMZN,
    -0.66%
    was the first Big Tech company to publicly declare cost-cutting was in order a year ago, and still coughed up $834 billion in market value in 2022. It kicked off 2023 with plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers as struggles continued throughout last year, when inflation siphoned away more consumer dollars toward essentials.

    Amazon’s own AWS cloud-infrastructure unit has helped to drive sales in years past, as businesses built out their tech infrastructures. But remarks and the outlook from Microsoft executives — the third-biggest market-cap loser of 2022, and a big barometer for tech spending overall — weren’t exactly encouraging for cloud growth: Executives there last week warned of “moderating consumption growth” for its own cloud business.

    For more: One company could determine whether U.S. corporate profits rise to a record in 2023

    “Sentiment was already bearish on AWS, with investors looking for slowing revenue over the next three quarters, largely confirmed after Microsoft earnings and conversations with industry checks,” Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein said in a note on Wednesday. “Positively, we believe e-commerce revenue has stabilized, and margins should improve from organic scale and announced head-count reductions.”

    Layoffs are also starting to spread beyond Big Tech companies that grew fast during the pandemic in response to massive demand spikes. International Business Machines Corp.
    IBM,
    +0.76%
    confirmed plans for 3,900 layoffs as it reported earnings, despite already reducing its workforce by at least 20% during the pandemic.

    One sector to watch is semiconductors, where a chip shortage has turned into a glut: Chip-equipment maker Lam Research Corp.
    LRCX,
    +0.04%
    announced layoffs in the past week as Silicon Valley semiconductor giant Intel Corp.
    INTC,
    +0.27%
    displayed “astonishingly bad” results while laying off workers. When Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    -1.64%
    reports this week, it could determine whether there is any silver lining in the semiconductor storm.

    Earnings preview: AMD faces even more scrutiny after ‘astonishingly bad’ Intel outlook

    Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said in a Sunday note that a common theme of this week’s Big Tech earnings will be that “tech layoffs will accelerate with more pain ahead to curb expenses,” though he added that “Apple will likely cut some costs around the edges, but we do not expect mass layoffs from Cupertino this week.”

    Big Tech earnings were a salve to other problems in the market for the past decade-plus, but with layoffs already under way and doubts about the path forward, don’t expect salvation from their results this week.

    This week in earnings

    For the week ahead, 107 S&P 500
    SPX,
    -0.19%
    companies, including six members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA,
    +0.18%    ,
    will report results, according to FactSet. While more Dow components reported last week, this will be the busiest week for S&P 500 holiday earnings of the season, FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters confirmed to MarketWatch.

    Appliance-maker Whirlpool Corp.
    WHR,
    +1.18%
    reports on Monday, after it forecast fourth-quarter sales that were below expectations, following what it called a “one-off supply-chain disruption” and the pandemic home-renovation boom.

    On Tuesday, package-deliverer United Parcel Service Inc.
    UPS,
    -0.26%
    reports, amid questions about holiday-season demand. So does streaming service Spotify Technology,
    SPOT,
    -0.02%
    following its own layoffs and suggestions of possible price hikes, as well as McDonald’s Corp.
    MCD,
    -0.30%    ,
    amid concerns that rising prices are keeping people from dining out. Exxon Mobil Corp.
    XOM,
    -0.99%    ,
    Caterpillar Inc.
    CAT,
    -0.12%    ,
    Snap Inc.
    SNAP,
    +0.64%
    and Pfizer Inc.
    PFE,
    +0.72%
    also report Tuesday.

    Earnings outlook: McDonald’s earnings haven’t been hit by higher prices

    On Wednesday, T-Mobile US Inc.
    TMUS,
    +0.23%
    reports, in the wake of a data breach and wobbling cellphone demand. Coffee chain Starbucks Corp.
    SBUX,
    -0.58%
    reports on Thursday, with analysts likely to be zeroed in on U.S. demand and China’s reopening, after executives said they were confident that higher prices, along with enthusiasm from younger customers and for customizable drinks, could help them navigate any potholes in the economy.

    For the Big Tech companies, Thursday is also the big day: Apple, Amazon and Alphabet will report that afternoon, after Meta reports the prior day.

    The calls to put on your calendar

    WWE upheaval: World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.
    WWE,
    +0.91%
    reports earnings on Thursday, as Vince McMahon — who returned to the professional-wrestling organization this month following allegations of sexual misconduct — seeks a buyer or some other so-called “strategic alternative” for the company.

    Analysts have speculated how the company’s wrestling events and backlog of media content might be repurposed, with some entertaining the possibility of interest from Amazon or Netflix Inc.
    NFLX,
    -0.39%    .
    But WWE has struggled to develop story lines that stick with viewers, and has thinned its ranks of wrestlers.

    The Wall Street Journal this month reported that McMahon would pay a multimillion-dollar settlement to a former referee who accused him of raping her. Among the changes since McMahon returned was the departure of his daughter, who had been promoted to co-CEO after he stepped down from the role last year.

    There isn’t much clarity on whether Vince McMahon will be on Thursday’s earnings call, which was moved from the morning to the afternoon due to a scheduling conflict. But it should offer drama no matter who attends.

    The numbers to watch

    GM and Ford auto sales: Auto makers General Motors Co.
    GM,
    -2.00%
    and Ford Motor Co.
    F,
    -0.94%
    will issue results on Tuesday and Thursday respectively, amid signs of waning demand and rising interest rates that have made car loans more expensive. Despite falling new-vehicle sales in the third quarter, GM managed to keep its own sales higher, the AP noted.

    Mary Barry, GM’s chief executive, called out the popularity of vehicles like the Escalade, the Chevrolet Bolt EV and some pickups and SUVs during the auto maker’s third-quarter earnings call in October. During that quarter, GM said it completed and shipped nearly 75% of the unfinished vehicles held in its inventory in June. She said supply-chains were opening up again, but added that “short-term disruptions will continue to happen.”

    The auto makers report as they try to put a chip shortage and other production constraints behind them. But some forecasts call for 2022 auto sales, or sales volumes, to be the weakest in roughly a decade. Electric vehicle maker Tesla’s recent price cuts could also cut into GM’s and Ford’s own EV sales.

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  • I see this year’s budding stock rally signaling a different kind of bull market, one that’s not so reliant on just a few stocks

    I see this year’s budding stock rally signaling a different kind of bull market, one that’s not so reliant on just a few stocks

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    Jim Cramer at NYSE with bull. June 30, 2022.

    Virginia Sherwood | CNBC

    This nascent bull market started with the peak in interest rates and the dollar back in the fall and then broadened to include bank and semiconductor stocks in 2023. Is it fragile? Is it alchemy? Is it real? We’ll know after we see the quarterly earnings this week from the likes of Club holdings Apple (AAPL), Meta Platforms (META) Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN), as well as what the Federal Reserve decides at its two-day meeting ending Wednesday and what the monthly nonfarm payroll numbers show Friday.

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

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

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Cramer’s week ahead: Fed decision on Wednesday could let the bulls ‘party on’

    Cramer’s week ahead: Fed decision on Wednesday could let the bulls ‘party on’

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    CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday said that Wall Street’s recent gains could continue next week depending on the Federal Reserve’s actions.

    “A decision not to raise rates at all might show too much weakness. A quarter-point with a statement that they’ll remain vigilant will allow the bulls to party on,” he said.

    The central bank is set to conclude its first meeting of the year on Wednesday, which Wall Street largely expected to beget a quarter-percentage point interest rate hike. 

    Cramer said he’ll also have his eye on the January nonfarm payrolls report set to be released Friday. “If wage inflation’s very strong, the quarter-point move will be criticized. If it’s weaker, we’ll be hearing all about that hard landing,” he said.

    All estimates for earnings, revenue and economic data are courtesy of FactSet.

    Monday: Whirlpool

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call on Tuesday at 8 a.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $3.23
    • Projected revenue: $5.08 billion

    He predicted that the company will report abating supply chain headwinds and a more frugal consumer on its conference call.

    Tuesday: Caterpillar, Pfizer, Advanced Micro Devices

    Caterpillar

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 6:30 a.m. ET; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $4.02
    • Projected revenue; $15.82 billion

    He said the company will likely report a solid quarter.

    Pfizer

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 6:45 a.m. ET; conference call at 10 a.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $1.05
    • Projected revenue: $24.44 billion

    There’s more to the company than unsustainable earnings from its Covid vaccine, despite what Wall Street believes, Cramer said.

    Advanced Micro Devices

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:15 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: 67 cents
    • Projected revenue: $5.51 billion

    “AMD’s got a great portfolio now, and they keep taking market share,” he said.

    Wednesday: Meta Platforms

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $2.26
    • Projected revenue: $31.54 billion

    “All I know is the stock’s had a real run, and while we own it for the Charitable Trust, we’re not pounding the table on this one. Not here,” Cramer said.

    Thursday: Ford Motor, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet

    Ford

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: 62 cents
    • Projected revenue: $41.39 billion

    He said he isn’t worried that price cuts from Tesla will affect demand for Ford’s electric vehicles.

    Apple

    • Q1 21023 earnings release at 4:30 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $1.94
    • Projected revenue: $121.81 billion

    Investors should hold onto their shares of the iPhone maker, according to Cramer.

    Amazon

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:01 p.m. ET; conference call at 5:30 p.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: 17 cents
    • Projected revenue: $145.64 billion

    Amazon stock will soar if the company lays off 100,000 employees, he predicted.

    Alphabet

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 4 p.m. ET; conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $1.18
    • Projected revenue: $76.17 billion

    Cramer said that Alphabet also needs to downsize its workforce.

    Friday: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

    • Q4 2022 earnings release at 6:30 a.m. ET; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET
    • Projected EPS: $10.1
    • Projected revenue: $3.14 billion

    He said he likes the stock.

    Disclaimer; Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Apple, Amazon, Advanced Micro Devices, Caterpillar, Ford and Meta.

    Cramer's game plan for the trading week of Jan. 30

    Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing

    Click here to download Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing at no cost to help you build long-term wealth and invest smarter.

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

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

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

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

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