Tag: Meta Platforms Inc

Elon Musk rebrands Twitter as X | CNN Business

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In a radical rebranding, Twitter owner Elon Musk has replaced Twitter’s iconic bird logo with X.

Musk made the shock announcement of his plans early Sunday. By Monday morning US time, he tweeted that X.com now points to Twitter.com.

“Interim X logo goes live later today,” he wrote, shortly before sharing a photo of Twitter’s headquarters lit up by a giant new X.

The Twitter website now features the same logo, while the familiar blue bird is gone.

Previously, Musk said he was bidding “adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”

Twitter

(TWTR), founded in 2006, has used its vivid, globally recognized blue bird emblem for more than a decade.

The renaming could be seen as something of a brand overhaul “Hail Mary” for the company: Musk in recent months has repeatedly warned that Twitter, facing steep losses in ad revenue, was on the edge of bankruptcy.

Increasing the pressure, earlier this month rival social media platform Threads launched from Facebook

(FB) parent Meta. It surpassed 100 million user sign-ups in its first week.

Twitter had 238 million active users prior to being taken private by Musk in October 2022.

One of the world’s richest men, Musk was once best known for his innovative efforts through companies SpaceX and Tesla

(TSLA) to launch rockets and build electric cars.

Now, many of the headlines he makes are for his eccentric remarks on his personal Twitter account – often sharing conspiracy theories and getting into public spats on the social media platform.

Musk overhauled the site after acquiring it for $44 billion in late October, then followed with mass layoffs, disputes over millions of dollars allegedly owed in severance and Musk’s note to employees that remaining at the company would mean “working long hours at high intensity.” He wrote: “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

The upheaval prompted organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, Free Press and GLAAD, to pressure brands to rethink advertising on Twitter.

The groups pointed to the mass layoffs as a key factor in their thinking, citing fears that Musk’s cuts would make Twitter’s election-integrity policies effectively unenforceable, even if they technically remain active.

Musk also began overseeing controversial policy changes which led to frequent service disruptions at Twitter and upended his own reputation in the process.

In June, Musk named Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal marketing executive, CEO of the company.

She commented on the name change on Twitter Sunday afternoon: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”

As the new venture begins, it faces challenges. Musk recently disclosed that the platform still has a negative cash flow due to a 50% drop in advertising revenue and heavy debt loads.

Criticizing the exit, or pause, of such Twitter advertisers as General Mills

(GIS), Macy’s

(M) and some car companies that compete with Tesla, Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist” and said he wanted to buy Twitter to bolster users’ ability to speak freely on the platform.

Musk explained his approach to free speech by saying: “Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”

He added that Twitter would “be very reluctant to delete things” and that the platform would aim to allow all legal speech. Many users have worried that could mean a rise in hate speech.

Meanwhile, the initial frenzy around rival Threads appears to have come back to earth, especially as it has been plagued with spam and lacks several user-friendly features Twitter, or, now X, offers.

Adam Mosseri, who is overseeing the Threads launch for Meta, has hinted at plans to add features such as a desktop version of the app, a feed of only accounts a user follows and an edit button.

Its ability to draw advertising support is, as yet, unproven.

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April 12, 2021
Meta’s latest round of layoffs is underway | CNN Business

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Facebook parent Meta on Wednesday began its latest round of layoffs focusing on technical workers, who are often thought of as more immune to job cuts in Silicon Valley.

Meta spokesperson Nkechi Nneji confirmed to CNN that some previously announced layoffs were taking place Wednesday, and pointed to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s March announcement that the company would cut another 10,000 employees in the coming months.

Zuckerberg’s notice said that restructurings and layoffs in Meta’s tech groups would take place in April. Among those affected by Wednesday’s layoffs were members of the company’s sustainability, well-being, user experience, news feed and messaging teams, according to public LinkedIn posts.

Meta reportedly told North American employees to work from home on Wednesday in anticipation of the layoffs. (CNN has not independently confirmed that.)

Members of Meta’s recruiting team were notified of additional layoffs last month, and cuts to the company’s business groups are expected to take place in late May.

The 10,000 job reductions mark the second recent round of significant job cuts at Meta. The company said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in its history.

In September, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per a securities filing. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced last month, Meta’s headcount will fall to around 66,000 — a total reduction of about 25%.

Meta has said the layoffs are part of its “year of efficiency,” as the company attempts to engineer a turnaround following repeated revenue declines, heightened competition, concerns about user growth and big losses in its Reality Labs division amid its pivot to building the so-called metaverse. Zuckerberg has also taken responsibility for over-hiring earlier in the pandemic, when there was strong demand for the company’s products and online advertising, which dropped off somewhat once the world reopened.

Zuckerberg said last month that, in some cases, it may take through the end of this year to complete its staff restructuring processes.

“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision,” Zuckerberg said in his March statement.

Meta is set to report earnings for the first three months of 2023 next week, during which Wall Street analysts expect it to post its fourth straight quarterly decline in revenue and a more than 30% decline in profits. Still, Meta’s shareholders appear to have been reassured by Zuckerberg’s plans for efficiency — the company’s shares were up more than 70% year-to-date as of midday Wednesday.

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April 12, 2021
How Meta got caught in tensions between the US and EU | CNN Business

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Facebook-parent Meta has perhaps become the most high-profile casualty of a long-running privacy dispute between Europe and the United States — but it may not be the last.

Meta has been fined a record-breaking €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) by European Union regulators for violating EU privacy laws by transferring the personal data of Facebook users to servers in the United States. Meta said Monday it would appeal the ruling, including the fine.

The historic fine against Meta — and a potentially game-changing legal order that could force Meta to stop transferring EU users’ data to the United States — isn’t just a one-off decision limited to this one company or its individual business practices. It reflects bigger, unresolved tensions between Europe and the United States over data privacy, government surveillance and regulation of internet platforms.

Those underlying and fundamental disagreements, which have simmered for years, have now come to a head, casting a significant shadow over thousands of businesses that depend on processing EU data in the United States.

Beyond its huge economic implications, however, the fine has once again highlighted Europe’s deep mistrust of US surveillance powers — right as the US government is trying to build its own case against foreign-linked apps such as TikTok over similar surveillance concerns.

The origins of Meta’s fine this week trace back to a 2020 ruling by Europe’s top court.

In that decision, the European Court of Justice struck down a complex transatlantic framework Meta and many other companies had been relying on until then to legally move EU user data to US servers in the ordinary course of running their businesses.

That framework, known as Privacy Shield, was itself the outgrowth of European complaints that US authorities didn’t do enough to protect the privacy of EU citizens. At the time Privacy Shield was created, the world was still reeling from disclosures made by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. His disclosures highlighted the vast reach of US surveillance programs such as PRISM, which allowed the NSA to snoop on the electronic communications of foreign nationals as they used tech tools built by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others.

PRISM relied on a basic fact of internet architecture: Much of the world’s online communications take place on US-based platforms that route their data through US servers, with few legal protections or recourse for either foreigners or Americans swept up in the tracking.

A 2013 European Parliament report on the PRISM program captured the EU’s sense of alarm, noting the “very strong implications” for EU citizens.

“PRISM seems to have allowed an unprecedented scale and depth in intelligence gathering,” the report said, “which goes beyond counter-terrorism and beyond espionage activities carried out by liberal regimes in the past. This may lead towards an illegal form of Total Information Awareness where data of millions of people are subject to collection and manipulation by the NSA.”

Privacy Shield was a 2016 US-EU agreement designed to address those concerns by making US companies certifiably accountable for their handling of EU user data. For a time, it seemed as if Privacy Shield could be a lasting solution facilitating the growth of the internet and a globally connected society, one in which the free flow of data would not be impeded.

But when the European Court of Justice invalidated that framework in 2020, it reiterated longstanding surveillance concerns and insisted that Privacy Shield still didn’t provide EU citizens’ personal information the same level of protection in the US that it enjoys in EU countries, a standard required under GDPR, the EU’s signature privacy law.

The loss of Privacy Shield created enormous uncertainty for the more than 5,300 businesses that rely on the smooth transfer of data across borders. The US government has said transatlantic data flows support the more than $7 trillion dollars of economic activity that occurs every year between the United States and the European Union. And the US Chamber of Commerce has estimated that transatlantic data transfers account for about half of all data transfers in both the US and the EU.

The Biden administration has moved to implement a successor to Privacy Shield that contains some changes to US surveillance practices, and if it is fully implemented in time, it could prevent Meta and other companies from having to suspend transatlantic data transfers or some of their European operations.

But it’s unclear whether those changes will be enough to be accepted by the EU, or whether the new data privacy framework could avoid its own court challenge.

The possibility that US-EU data transfers may be seriously disrupted is refocusing scrutiny on US surveillance law just as the US government has been sounding its own alarms about Chinese government surveillance.

US officials have warned that China could seek to use data collected from TikTok or other foreign-linked companies to benefit the country’s intelligence or propaganda campaigns, using the personal information to identify spying targets or to manipulate public opinion through targeted disinformation.

But US moral authority on the issue risks being eroded by the EU criticism, a problem for the US government that may only be compounded by its own missteps.

Just last week, a federal court described how the FBI improperly accessed a vast intelligence database meant for surveilling foreign nationals in a bid to gather information on US Capitol rioters and those who protested the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

The improper access, which was not “reasonably likely” to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime, according to a Justice Department assessment described in the court’s opinion, has only inflamed domestic critics of US surveillance law, and could give ammunition to EU critics.

The intelligence database at issue was authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the same law used to justify the NSA’s PRISM program and which the EU has repeatedly cited as a danger to its citizens and a reason to suspect transatlantic data sharing.

While the US distinguishes itself from China based on commitments to open and democratic governance, the EU’s concerns about the US are not much different in kind: They come from a place of deep mistrust of broad surveillance authority and suspicions about the potential misuse of user data.

For years, civil liberties advocates have alleged that Section 702 enables warrantless spying on Americans on an enormous scale. Now, the FBI incident may only further validate EU fears; add to the existing concerns that led to Meta’s fine; contribute to the potential unraveling of the US-EU data relationship; and damage US credibility in its push to warn about the hypothetical risks of letting TikTok data flow to China.

If a new transatlantic data agreement is delayed or falls apart, Meta won’t be the only company stuck with the bill. Thousands of other companies may get caught in the middle, and the United States will have to hope nobody looks too closely at why while still trying to make a case against TikTok.

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April 12, 2021
Opinion: Utah’s startling new rules for kids and social media | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Kara Alaimo, an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. Her book, “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Reclaim It,” will be published by Alcove Press in 2024. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, recently signed two bills into law that sharply restrict children’s use of social media platforms. Under the legislation, which takes effect next year, social media companies have to verify the ages of all users in the state, and children under age 18 have to get permission from their parents to have accounts.

Parents will also be able to access their kids’ accounts, apps won’t be allowed to show children ads, and accounts for kids won’t be able to be used between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. without parental permission.

It’s about time. Social networks in the United States have become potentially incredibly dangerous for children, and parents can no longer protect our kids without the tools and safeguards this law provides. While Cox is correct that these measures won’t be “foolproof,” and what implementing them actually looks like remains an open question, one thing is clear: Congress should follow Utah’s lead and enact a similar law to protect every child in this country.

One of the most important parts of Utah’s law is the requirement for social networks to verify the ages of users. Right now, most apps ask users their ages without requiring proof. Children can lie and say they’re older to avoid some of the features social media companies have created to protect kids — like TikTok’s new setting that asks 13- to 17-year-olds to enter their passwords after they’ve been online for an hour, as a prompt for them to consider whether they want to spend so much time on the app.

While critics argue that age verification allows tech companies to collect even more data about users, let’s be real: These companies already have a terrifying amount of intimate information about us. To solve this problem, we need a separate (and comprehensive) data privacy law. But until that happens, this concern shouldn’t stop us from protecting kids.

One of the key components of this legislation is allowing parents access to their kids’ accounts. By doing this, the law begins to help address one of the biggest dangers kids face online: toxic content. I’m talking about things like the 2,100 pieces of content about suicide, self-harm and depression that 14-year-old Molly Russell in the UK saved, shared or liked in the six months before she killed herself last year.

I’m also talking about things like the blackout challenge — also called the pass-out or choking challenge — that has gone around social networks. In 2021, four children 12 or younger in four different states all died after trying it.

“Check out their phones,” urged the father of one of these young victims. “It’s not about privacy — this is their lives.”

Of course, there are legitimate privacy concerns to worry about here, and just as kids’ use of social media can be deadly, social apps can also be used in healthy ways. LGBTQ children who aren’t accepted in their families or communities, for example, can turn online for support that is good for their mental health. Now, their parents will potentially be able to see this content on their accounts.

I hope groups that serve children who are questioning their gender and sexual identities and those that work with other vulnerable youth will adapt their online presences to try to serve as resources for educating parents about inclusivity and tolerance, too. This is also a reminder that vulnerable children need better access to mental health services like therapy — they’re way too young to be left to their own devices to seek out the support they need online.

But, despite these very real privacy concerns, it’s simply too dangerous for parents not to know what our kids are seeing on social media. Just as parents and caregivers supervise our children offline and don’t allow them to go to bars or strip clubs, we have to ensure they don’t end up in unsafe spaces on social media.

The other huge challenge the Utah law helps parents overcome is the amount of time kids are spending on social media. A 2022 survey by Common Sense Media found that the average 8- to 12-year-old is on social media for 5 hours and 33 minutes per day, while the average 13- to 18 year-old spends 8 hours and 39 minutes every day. That’s more time than a full time-job.

The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that lack of sleep is associated with serious harms in children — everything from injuries to depression, obesity and diabetes. So parents in the US need to have a way to make sure their kids aren’t up on TikTok all night (parents in China don’t have to worry about this because the Chinese version of TikTok doesn’t allow kids to stay on for more than 40 minutes and isn’t useable overnight).

Of course, Utah isn’t an authoritarian state like China, so it can’t just turn off kids’ phones. That’s where this new law comes in requiring social networks to implement these settings. The tougher part of Utah’s law for tech companies to implement will be a provision requiring social apps to ensure they’re not designed to addict kids.

Social networks are arguably addictive by nature, since they feed on our desires for connection and validation. But hopefully the threat of being sued by children who say they’ve been addicted or otherwise harmed by social networks — an outcome for which this law provides an avenue — will force tech companies to think carefully about how they build their algorithms and features like bottomless feeds that seem practically designed to keep users glued to their screens.

TikTok and Snap didn’t respond to requests for comment from CNN about Utah’s law, while a representative for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said the company shares the goal to keep Facebook safe for kids but also wants it to be accessible.

Of course, if social networks had been more responsible, it probably wouldn’t have come to this. But in the US, tech companies have taken advantage of a lack of rules to build platforms that can be dangerous for our kids.

States are finally saying no more. In addition to Utah’s measures, California passed a sweeping online safety law last year. Connecticut, Ohio and Arkansas are also considering laws to protect kids by regulating social media. A bill introduced in Texas wouldn’t allow kids to use social media at all.

There’s nothing innocent about the experiences many kids are having on social media. This law will help Utah’s parents protect their kids. Parents in other states need the same support. Now, it’s time for the federal government to step up and ensure children throughout the country have the same protections as Utah kids.

Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988. The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you and your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States. En Español: Linea de Prevencion del Suidio y Crisis: 1-888-628-9454.

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April 12, 2021
Where TikTok users may go if the app gets banned | CNN Business

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On the eve of a high-profile TikTok hearing this week, the company shared that it now has more than 150 million US monthly active users. But after the heated, hours-long hearing, filled with lawmakers telling TikTok’s CEO the app should be banned, some may now be wondering where all those users will go next if the social network disappears.

The answer: probably other big American tech platforms.

Many of the largest US social media companies have spent years copying TikTok’s features, which would make a shift away from the platform easier for its creators and users. Instagram, for example, introduced its own short-form video tool in 2020 called Reels. Snapchat has Spotlight, YouTube has Shorts and even Spotify has a TikTok-like video feed with recommended music and other content.

“Obviously, if a ban is approved and enforced, the content, user count and engagement, and likely ad dollars for Snap, Instagram, and YouTube will increase,” said Ali Mogharabi, an analyst at financial services firm Morningstar, in a recent investor’s note.

In other words, Washington’s efforts to crack down on TikTok over national security concerns could ultimately benefit some of the same American tech companies that Washington has scrutinized for other reasons, including their market dominance and impact on teens.

Even if a ban does not happen, it could still benefit these companies. “This uncertainty could push some TikTok content creators to focus more on, and possibly begin, pushing their audiences to other social network platforms,” Mogharabi said.

At least one company is already seeing a boost. Snap’s stock rose in the days leading up to TikTok’s appearance before Congress amid renewed talks among federal officials of a TikTok ban.

At the hearing on Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Chew was grilled by lawmakers who expressed deep skepticism about his company’s attempts to protect US user data and ease concerns about its ties to China. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing and subject to Chinese data request laws that could require it to hand over user data to the government.

Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opened Thursday’s hearing by telling Shou: “Your platform should be banned.” As the hearing was taking place, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he supports legislation that would effectively ban TikTok and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said TikTok should be “ended one way or another.”

If that happens, Lian Jye Su, an analyst with ABI Search, believes users will follow their favorite TikTok influencers and content creators wherever they go.

“Most users will flock to where the content creators go next,” Su said. “Instagram, Snapchat, and Youtube Shorts stand to benefit the most as content creators will still prefer places where they can monetize their content.”

Smaller platforms have the opportunity to gain ground, too, Su said. Short-form video platform Triller, which reportedly has over 450 million users, is actively courting popular content creators from TikTok with cash bonuses, partnerships and other incentives to switch platforms. Meanwhile, Dubsmach – a Reddit-owned short video platform – and Clash, which allows people to create 21-second looping videos, are other platforms that could be increasingly appealing to creators.

For now, talk of a TikTok ban may still be premature. The Biden administration has threatened to ban TikTok from the United States unless the app’s Chinese owners agree to spin off their share of the social media platform.

“I strongly doubt this app will go dark,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi told CNN during a primetime special about TikTok on Thursday. He said a sale is most likely.

If the app is sold, that could complicate matters for some US tech platforms.

“For Snap, which has a weaker network effect than Meta, a possibly more trusted US TikTok may make it more difficult to attract users away from or keep them from migrating to TikTok,” Moghaharbi wrote in the investor’s note.

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April 12, 2021
Meta opens up its Horizon Worlds VR app to teens for the first time, prompting outcries from US lawmakers | CNN Business

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Meta is forging ahead with plans to let teenagers onto its virtual reality app, Horizon Worlds, despite objections from lawmakers and civil society groups that the technology could have possible unintended consequences for mental health.

On Tuesday, the social media giant said children as young as 13 in Canada and the United States will gain access to Horizon Worlds for the first time in the coming weeks.

The app, which is already available to users above the age of 17, represents Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for a next-generation internet, where users can physically interact with each other in virtual spaces resembling real life.

“Now, teens will be able to explore immersive worlds, play games like Arena Clash and Giant Mini Paddle Golf, enjoy concerts and live comedy events, connect with others from around the world, and express themselves as they create their own virtual experiences,” Meta said in a blog post.

Zuckerberg has pushed to spend billions developing VR hardware and software, even as Meta has scaled back significantly in other parts of its business. Last year alone, the company spent nearly $16 billion in its Reality Labs segment and warned investors not to expect profitability from that unit anytime soon.

Tuesday’s expansion reflects Meta’s attempt to capture early adopters in a key demographic. But it immediately triggered criticism from lawmakers who had pleaded with the company to postpone its plan.

“Meta is despicably attempting to lure young teens to Horizon Worlds in an attempt to boost its failing platform,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who last month, along with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, urged Zuckerberg to reconsider letting teens use the app.

Lawmakers have previously raised alarms about the impact of some of Meta’s other products, including Instagram, on younger users.

“Meta has a record of abject failure to protect children and teens, and yet again, this company has chosen to put young users at risk so that it can make more money,” Markey said, accusing Meta of “inviting digital disaster.”

“I’m calling on the company to reverse course and immediately abandon this policy change,” Markey added.

Those calls were echoed earlier this month by dozens of civil society groups who wrote in an open letter that Meta’s VR offerings could expose users to new privacy risks through the collection of biometric and other data; new forms of unfair and deceptive marketing; and abuse or bullying.

Meta said in its announcement that in opening up Horizon Worlds to teens, the company would provide protective guardrails, such as by using default settings to make teenage users’ profiles and activity less visible to other users and by applying content ratings to potentially mature virtual spaces. Meta added that its safety controls were developed with input from parents and online safety experts.

“I hope no one is assuming there is any inclination on our part to simply open the floodgates,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, told CNN during a recent tech demonstration at the company’s Washington offices. “Clearly we can’t do that. We have to build experiences which are tailored to the unique vulnerabilities of teens.”

Meta’s announcement Tuesday came as other US government officials said they were beefing up scrutiny of social media’s potential effects on mental health.

The Federal Trade Commission is “actively working” on hiring in-house psychologists to address concerns linking social media use to teen mental health harms, said Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner.

In recent weeks, members of the FTC have been consulting with public health officials and medical professionals to understand the available scientific evidence on the matter, Bedoya told lawmakers on a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

“There is evidence that some uses of social media do, in fact, hurt certain groups of teenagers and children,” Bedoya said, though he cautioned that there were important nuances and caveats in the research. “This is not some moral panic. There is a ‘there’ there.”

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April 12, 2021
How Elon Musk upended Twitter and his own reputation in 6 months as CEO | CNN Business

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When Elon Musk first agreed to buy Twitter, he promised to make the company “better than ever,” with greater transparency, fewer bots, a stronger business and more of what he called “free speech.”

But six months after Musk took control of Twitter, the future of the company and the platform have never been less certain.

After acquiring the social media platform for $44 billion in late October, Musk reportedly now values Twitter at around $20 billion — and some who track the company believe even that estimate is likely high. Musk repeatedly warned that Twitter could be at risk of filing for bankruptcy only to claim he had brought it back from the brink thanks to his slashing costs, both by laying off 80% of Twitter’s staff and allegedly by failing to pay some of its bills, according to multiple lawsuits. But it’s not clear just how and when Musk might return Twitter to growth.

He has antagonized journalists and news outlets that have long been central to the platform’s success, overseen policy changes that threaten to make Twitter less safe or reliable, made the platform less transparent to researchers and scared away many top advertisers. Musk’s primary plan to grow Twitter’s business through an overhauled subscription strategy has resulted in much chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

In the process, Musk has also upended his own reputation. Once known by much of the public primarily for his innovative efforts to launch rockets and build electric cars, Musk has instead spent much of the past six months in the headlines for controversial policy and feature changes at Twitter, draconian cuts to staff resulting in frequent service disruptions, and briefly banning several prominent journalists. He’s also tweeted a long list of eccentric remarks from his personal Twitter account, including sharing conspiracy theories and publicly mocking a Twitter worker with a disability who was unsure whether he’d been laid off.

“If he had done nothing except cut costs, then Twitter would have been okay,” said Leslie Miley, a former Twitter engineering manager who started its product safety and security team and left the company in 2015. He has since held roles at Google, Microsoft and the Obama Foundation. “If you had just let everyone go, treated them with respect, and just let the service run for two years, you probably would be okay.”

Now, though, Miley said he expects Twitter will “eventually go down the road of MySpace.”

“It’s going to take a little bit longer … [but] I think Twitter is on its way to irrelevance,” he said, “there is no strategy to acquire or retain users because you are offering them no value.”

Twitter, which has slashed much of its public relations team under Musk, responded to CNN’s request for comment on this story with the auto-reply from its press email that it has used for weeks: a poop emoji.

For years, what differentiated Twitter from other social platforms was that it served as a central hub for real-time news. It was a place for ordinary people to read and even engage in conversation with celebrities, business leaders and other newsmakers.

Many of Musk’s recent moves at the platform threaten to undermine that purpose, not to mention the larger information ecosystem — and it’s not clear the efforts will improve the company’s business.

“Twitter has never been perfect, it had a lot of problems but it was critical global infrastructure for information that Elon Musk is now systematically, frankly, vandalizing,” former Twitter chair of global news Vivian Schiller told CNN in a recent interview.

Most recently, Musk removed the legacy blue check marks that verified the identities of prominent users, saying he would instead make the checks available only to those who pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue in the interest of “treating everyone equally.”

“There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities,” Musk said in a tweet earlier this month.

But the move may make it easier for bad actors to impersonate high-profile people and harder for users to trust the veracity and authenticity of information on the platform. What’s more, Musk then decided to sponsor the blue checks for certain celebrities, including Stephen King and LeBron James, in effect creating exactly the “different standard” for famous users he’d professed to want to avoid.

Now, Musk says content from verified users will be promoted on the platform, potentially making it harder for users who can’t afford a subscription, or simply don’t want to pay Musk for one, to find an audience on the platform. And the new paid verification system won’t necessarily rid the platform of bots, an issue Musk spent months railing on while trying to get out of the acquisition deal last year, according to Filippo Menczer, a computer science professor at Indiana University and director of the Observatory on Social Media.

“You can create fake accounts and pay $8 [for a blue check] … so if you are a well-funded bad actor, you can do more damage now than you could before,” Menczer said. “And if you are a reliable source and you’re not well-funded, your information will not be as visible as before.”

Menczer added that the result could be “less free speech, because you’re drowning out the speech of regular people [with speech] by people who either have the technical skills or the money to manipulate the system.”

Twitter’s move to charge users of its API will also make it harder for researchers to identify and warn the platform about inauthentic activity, Menczer said, and could disrupt other positive uses of the platform that contributed to its reputation as a news hub. Weather agencies, for example, have warned that the change could make it harder for them to release automated emergency weather alerts.

Any social network lives or dies based on its ability to retain and attract users — and there’s real reason for Twitter to be worried.

A number of users, celebrities and media organizations have said they plan to leave Twitter over Musk’s recent policy changes — which often appear to be made on a whim without any real principles.

NPR, BBC and CBC left Twitter after opposing a controversial new “government-funded media” label that they say was misleading. CenterLink, a global nonprofit that represents hundreds of centers providing services to LGBTQ communities, said it would no longer use Twitter after the platform removed protections for transgender users from its hateful conduct policy. And some high-profile users, such as bullying activist Monica Lewinsky, have threatened to exit the platform over the blue check change, now that they may be at greater risk of impersonation on Twitter.

There remain few alternatives that offer similar features and scale to Twitter, but a growing list of upstart competitors has emerged since Musk’s takeover. At least one large rival, Facebook-parent Meta, has also confirmed it’s working on a service that sounds a lot like Twitter.

“Almost everything he said he was going to do, he has screwed up in any number of ways,” Miley said. “If it weren’t so damaging to people and organizations who have depended upon the platform, it would be funny. But it’s not actually funny because it has degraded people’s ability to communicate effectively.”

All of the chaos has made it difficult to convince advertisers, which previously made up 90% of Twitter’s revenue, to rejoin the platform, after many halted spending in the wake of Musk’s takeover over concerns about increased hate speech, as well as confusion about layoffs and the platform’s future direction.

Just 43% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers as of September — the month before Musk’s takeover — were still advertising on the platform in April, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

Musk, for his part, has said that Twitter’s usage has increased since his takeover and that advertisers are steadily returning to the platform. But because he took the company private, he is not obligated to make financial disclosures and followers of the company are left to take him at his word.

Musk built his reputation by overhauling Tesla, helping to launch a widespread shift away from gas cars to electric vehicles and growing SpaceX into a space transport juggernaut. Now, he appears to be attempting a similar overhaul at Twitter — upending the tried-and-true digital advertising business in favor of a subscription model that no other social media platform has yet been able to find large scale success with.

“I give him some credit for trying a different business model, I think the business model based on user data is quite abusive,” said Luigi Zingales, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, although Musk has also attempted to improve Twitter’s targeted advertising business.

Some other tech companies have followed his lead in some places. Facebook-parent Meta copied Twitter by launching a paid verification option. And Meta, along with a number of other tech companies, have undergone multiple rounds of cost-cutting since last fall. Twitter appears to have given cover for some of these ideas, and other firms’ somewhat more principled approaches made them look better by comparison.

For Twitter and Musk, the stakes for success are high: Musk’s relationships with banks and investors for future endeavors could hinge in part on his performance at the social media firm, which he took on billions of dollars in debt to purchase. Banks “will sit down and say, what kind of cred does this guy have? Will we find him making these shoot-from-the-lip sort of dictates that, in fact, throw our money down a hole?” said Columbia Business School management professor William Klepper.

Any change to Musk’s reputation from his time leading Twitter could also ultimately have ripple effects for his broader business empire, causing potential investors, recruits and customers to think twice about betting on one of his companies. Tesla

(TSLA) shareholders recently complained to the company’s board that Musk appears “overcommitted.”

“His reputation has been diminished significantly with Twitter … and once you lose it, it’s very difficult to recover,” Klepper said. “It would be a good opportunity for [Musk] to rethink whether or not … he’s really leadership material.”

Musk in December pledged to step down as Twitter CEO after millions of users voted in favor of his exit in a poll he posted to the platform. But for now, he remains “Chief Twit.”

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April 12, 2021
Meta sells Giphy at a significant loss after UK breakup order | CNN Business

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CNN
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Stock-photo website Shutterstock on Tuesday said it will acquire Giphy and its online repository of animated images for $53 million, after UK antitrust regulators forced Meta to spin off the company last year.

The value of the deal is sharply lower than the $315 million Meta was widely reported to have paid to acquire Giphy in 2020.

UK officials had alleged that Meta’s acquisition would reduce competition in advertising and social media, and an appeals court upheld that decision last year, prompting Meta to say it would sell Giphy to comply with the UK’s breakup order.

The deal will add GIFs and reaction stickers to Shutterstock’s digital content library while expanding Shutterstock’s access to Giphy’s 1.7 billion users, the company said in Tuesday’s announcement.

The transaction is expected to close in June.

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April 12, 2021
Malaysia to take legal action against Meta over ‘undesirable’ content | CNN Business

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Malaysia said Friday it would take legal action against Facebook parent company Meta for failing to remove “undesirable” posts, the strongest measure the country has taken to date over such content.

Last year’s closely fought national election has led to a rise in ethnic tensions, and since coming to power in November, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration has vowed to curb what it calls provocative posts that touch on race and religion.

Facebook

(FB) has recently been “plagued by” a significant volume of undesirable content relating to race, royalty, religion, defamation, impersonation, online gambling and scam advertisements, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement.

It also said Meta had failed to take sufficient action despite the body’s repeated requests and that legal action was necessary to promote accountability for cybersecurity and protect consumers.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The commission also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what legal action might be taken.

Race and religion are thorny issues in Malaysia, which has a majority of Muslim ethnic Malays alongside significant ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian minorities.

Commentary on the country’s revered royals is also a sensitive issue, and negative remarks toward them can be tried under sedition laws.

The action against Facebook comes just weeks ahead of regional elections in six states that are expected to pit Anwar’s multi-ethnic coalition against a conservative Malay Muslim alliance.

Facebook is Malaysia’s biggest social media platform, with an estimated 60% of its population of 33 million having a registered account.

Globally, big social media firms that include Meta, Google’s

(GOOGL) YouTube, and TikTok are often under regulatory scrutiny over content posted on their platforms.

Some Southeast Asian governments have frequently requested that content be taken down.

In 2020, Vietnam threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it did not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform. The authorities said last year that social media platforms operating in Vietnam removed more than 3,200 posts and videos in the first quarter that contained false information and violated the country’s law.

In Indonesia in 2019, Facebook took down hundreds of local accounts, pages and groups linked to a fake news syndicate.

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April 12, 2021
Meta could become even more dominant in social media with Threads | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
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In less than 48 hours, Meta’s Twitter rival Threads has surpassed 70 million sign-ups, upended the social media landscape and appears to have rattled Twitter enough that it is now threatening legal action against Meta.

But even as users signed up for Threads in droves, with some clearly eager to flee the chaos of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the sudden success of Meta’s app could raise a new set of concerns.

Meta has long been criticized for its market dominance, and for allegedly trying to choke off competition by copying and killing rival applications. Now, some competition experts and even some Threads users worry that if the new app’s traction continues, it may simply lead to the accumulation of even more power and dominance for Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“The prospect of total monopoly by Meta, yikes,” wrote one user. “It’s a real problem for society when a few dozen people and companies own every single thing so that no alternative paradigms can exist that they don’t co-opt from the cradle,” replied another.

Twitter had always been much smaller than Meta’s platforms, but it had an outsized influence in tech, media and politics. As Twitter faltered under Musk, though, a cottage industry emerged of smaller apps trying to capture some of its magic. Now more than any of them, Meta seems best positioned to claim the crown.

Threads’ blockbuster launch this week highlights the uncomfortable reality of the modern digital economy: To potentially beat some of the biggest players in the industry, you might have to be a giant yourself.

The overnight success of Threads is a testament both to the dissatisfaction with Musk’s ownership of Twitter and to the unique power and reach of one of Meta’s most important properties: Instagram.

Instagram has more than two billion users, far more than the 238 million users Twitter reported having in the months before Musk took over. When new users sign up for Threads, which they do using an Instagram account, the app prompts them to follow all of their existing Instagram contacts with a single tap. It’s optional, but is easy to accept, and it takes a conscious decision to decline.

By promoting Threads through Instagram, and by sharing Instagram user data with Threads to let people instantly recreate their social networks, Meta has significantly greased the onboarding process. That frictionless experience has allowed Threads to leapfrog what’s known in the industry as the “cold start” problem, in which a new platform struggles to gain new users because there are no other users there to attract them.

Thanks to the Instagram integration, “that biggest problem, the chicken-egg problem, has been solved from the jump,” Reddit co-founder and venture investor Alexis Ohanian said in a video Thursday (posted, naturally, on Threads).

That Threads appeared to clear that hurdle easily, Ohanian said, makes him “bullish” on the new app.

But that same innovation that made signing up so many users so quickly may raise competition concerns, particularly in Europe where new antitrust rules for digital platforms are set to go into effect in a matter of months.

“From a competition perspective this can be problematic because Meta can use it to leverage its market power and raise barriers to entry, as other rivals would not have the customer base Meta has via Instagram,” said Agustin Reyna, director of legal and economic affairs at the Brussels-based consumer advocacy organization BEUC.

Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), “digital gatekeepers” — a term that’s expected to cover Meta and/or its subsidiaries — will be prohibited from combining a user’s data from multiple platforms without consent, Reyna said. Another restriction forbids requiring users to sign up for one platform as a condition of using another.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri appeared to acknowledge those issues this week in an interview with The Verge. Threads won’t be launching in the EU for now, he said, because of “complexities with complying with some of the laws coming into effect next year” — a statement The Verge suggested was a reference to the DMA.

The DMA was passed specifically to deal with the antitrust concerns raised by large tech platforms. That Threads apparently cannot (yet) comply with rules designed to protect competition underscores uncertainty about the app’s potential competitive impact.

Meta’s approach to Threads could also revive longstanding criticisms about the company’s alleged practice of copying and killing rivals, particularly as Twitter has warned Meta it may sue over claims of trade secret theft (an allegation Meta denies).

The issue isn’t limited to the realm of social media. As the world races to develop artificial intelligence, Threads represents a huge new opportunity for Meta to gather training data for its own AI technology, in a way that could help it catch up to industry leaders such as OpenAI and Google. That could complicate any attempt at a comprehensive analysis of what Threads means for competition in tech.

Part of what makes the debate so complicated is Threads’ seemingly very real threat to Twitter.

If Threads puts pressure on Twitter to improve its service, that is a form of competition between apps, said Geoffrey Manne, founder of the Portland, Oregon-based International Center for Law and Economics.

But, he added, if it leads to a concentration of power in the social media industry more broadly, it could mean a reduction in competition overall. It all depends on how you define the market.

“I’m inclined to say it does both simultaneously, and the ultimate consequences aren’t so clear,” Manne said.

Rather than viewing it through the lens of a social media market, one helpful way to look at the issue is from the perspective of the advertising market, he said. It’s possible that once Threads introduces advertising — which Zuckerberg has said won’t happen until the app has increased to significant scale — Threads simply reinforces Meta’s advertising market power, Manne said. That could lead to further antitrust scrutiny for Meta even if the question about competition in social media is ambiguous.

Jeff Blattner, a former DOJ antitrust official, said it can only benefit consumers to have Threads as a rival to Twitter.

“Two platforms run by maniac billionaires are better than one,” he wrote on Threads — though if Threads is so successful as to effectively knock out Twitter altogether, then in some ways the original question about Meta’s dominance will still stand.

Threads has one thing going for it that may nip any competition concerns in the bud: A commitment to integrate with the same open protocols used by other distributed social media alternatives, such as Mastodon.

That would give users the option to migrate their accounts, along with all their follower data intact, to a rival like Mastodon that isn’t controlled by Meta.

While that interoperability isn’t available yet, Mosseri has repeatedly highlighted it as a priority on his to-do list.

When and if it happens, that could be a significant step. What may appear now as an audience grab by Meta could someday wind up being how millions of people were onboarded to a massive, decentralized social networking infrastructure that is not controlled by any single company, individual or organization.

“This is why we think interoperability requirements are so important,” said Charlotte Slaiman, a competition expert at the Washington-based consumer group Public Knowledge. If users could port their entire social graph from one rival to another whenever they wanted, she said, “we could have more fair competition based on the quality of the product, not just incumbency advantage.”

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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Elon Musk’s move over the weekend to rebrand Twitter and replace its iconic bird logo with an X is just the latest step in his effort to make over the billionaire’s longtime favorite platform in his image.

When Musk bought Twitter late last year, he laid out a vision for an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more. Last June — prior to his takeover — Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like China’s WeChat, where he said users “basically live on” the app because “it’s so usable and helpful to daily life.”

The vision for the rebrand may go all the way back to Musk’s creation of the original X.com in 1999, which Musk hoped would be an all-in-one financial platform and which eventually became PayPal.

Despite Musk’s longstanding ambitions — and the heightened stakes since he shelled out $44 billion to purchase the social network — ditching Twitter’s branding in service of a future super app is a significant risk.

Twitter still has a long way to go if Musk wants to build out the kind of services WeChat is known for — everything from ordering groceries and booking yoga classes to paying bills and chatting with friends. And that’s not to mention the financial and competitive challenges the company faces merely existing in its current form, let alone launching a massive expansion. It’s also not clear how much demand there is for such a super app outside of China, given that efforts by other platforms to simply sell users on added shopping features have been slow to take off.

“While Musk’s vision is to turn ‘X’ into an ‘everything app,’ this takes time, money, and people -— three things that the company no longer has,” Mike Proulx, research director and vice president at Forrester, said in an investor note. By ditching Twitter’s name, Proulx added, Musk “will have singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” leaving him to start fresh at a precarious time for the company.

The X branding has already started taking over Twitter.

Musk — who bought Twitter with a company called X Corp. — tweeted on Sunday that X.com now redirects to Twitter. (Musk reportedly bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017.)

On Sunday night, the new stylized X logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters. And by Monday, the bird logo had been replaced by an X on Twitter’s website. Musk even told followers that tweets should instead be called “x’s.”

On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to confirm Musk’s vision for the company. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

Walter Isaacson, the legendary tech journalist who has been shadowing Musk to write his biography, tweeted on Sunday that Musk told him even before the Twitter acquisition that he wanted to use the social platform to fulfill his original, decades-old vision for X.com. “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” Musk texted Isaacson at 3:30 a.m. one morning last October, just ahead of his takeover, according to the writer.

On Monday, Musk explained the move in a tweet saying, “The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.”

“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context.”

(The rebrand also seems to be a continuation of a sort of obsession with the letter “X,” which also features in the name of one of Tesla’s cars, the Model X; the name of his rocket company, SpaceX; the name of his new artificial intelligence firm, xAI; and the name of two of his children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl.)

In recent weeks, Twitter has quietly begun its effort to build out a payments business called Twitter Payments — the company was granted money transmitter licenses in four US states since last month, including Arizona and Michigan. Musk has discussed his desire to promote longer videos on Twitter. And he’s tried to shift Twitter’s business model away from advertising by allowing users to pay for verification, a strategy that has resulted in some chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

Still, Musk faces obvious hurdles to turning Twitter into a fully-developed super app. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has fired around 80% of its staff, scared away many of the advertisers that made up its core user base and frustrated many of its users with controversial policy decisions. And now, Twitter faces steep competition from Meta’s rival app Threads, which launched to stunning success, although its usage has petered off slightly in recent days.

Musk last week also said that Twitter still has negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in ad revenue.

Even if Musk does add new features to Twitter, many US tech platforms have struggled to succeed in imitating WeChat. Deloitte said in a report published last year that Western markets are unlikely to see “a single, dominant super-app like WeChat in the near term” because the services such apps would aim to bundle together, such as digital payments and ride hailing, already “have too many well-established players.”

A 2019 effort by the social media giant then known as Facebook to create its own digital currency and payments system that the company said would make it easier to buy things online officially flopped last year following intense regulatory scrutiny. And both TikTok and Instagram have reportedly scaled back their ambitions to incorporate e-commerce onto their platforms after their shopping features failed to gain significant traction with users.

And until Musk rolls out significant changes to the platform, observers of the company say ditching Twitter’s well-known brand is a risky move.

“To rebrand without significant new features seems like a desperate attempt for attention,” especially in the wake of Meta’s launch of Threads, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University. “This is akin to buying Coke and changing the bottle and name without changing the formula — likely a mistake.”

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April 12, 2021
FTC says Meta should be barred from monetizing data from younger users | CNN Business

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CNN
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The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Facebook-parent Meta of violating its landmark $5 billion privacy settlement and called for toughening up restrictions on the company, after alleging Meta has improperly shared user data with third parties and failed to protect children as it has promised.

The proposal to update the binding 2020 settlement with Meta marks a new front in the FTC’s long-running battle with the social media company, which has included multiple lawsuits aimed at breaking up the tech giant or preventing it from growing larger.

The FTC said Meta should be banned from monetizing data it collects from younger users. It added that the company should be barred from releasing any new features or products until a third-party auditor determines the company’s privacy policies do enough to protect users. It also called for new limitations on how Meta can use facial recognition technology.

If approved, the sweeping proposal could threaten the future of Meta’s business, including its expansion into virtual reality.

In a statement on Wednesday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the FTC proposal “a political stunt” and vowed to contest the effort.

“Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory,” Stone said. “FTC Chair Lina Khan’s insistence on using any measure – however baseless – to antagonize American business has reached a new low.”

The FTC proposal comes as policymakers at all levels of government have increasingly blamed social media for furthering a mental health crisis among young people, prompting calls for strict regulations on how tech platforms can use the personal information of users under 18, target them with automated recommendations or seek to boost their engagement in other ways. Many of those proposals have taken the form of broad-based legislation, but the FTC proposal would represent a novel approach by amending a past consent order in connection with a single company that influences more than a billion users.

As part of the FTC’s call for changes, the agency said Meta had misled the public about its compliance with the historic settlement that resolved allegations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica data fiasco, as well as prior agreements with the agency.

Meta had allowed personal information to leak to apps that users of the platform were no longer using, the FTC alleged. That data sharing, the FTC claimed, contrasted with Meta’s public statements about how it cuts off a third-party app’s access to Facebook users’ information if the users stop using the third-party app for 90 days.

The FTC also alleged that multiple coding errors in a messaging app marketed to children, Messenger Kids, allowed users to connect to “unapproved contacts” in group video calls, and that the flaws went unresolved for weeks.

Those flaws meant parents could not control who their kids were speaking to on the app, in contrast to claims by Meta that they could, according to the FTC.

In addition to being a breach of Meta’s prior settlements, the alleged violations surrounding Messenger Kids also ran afoul of a federal children’s privacy law known as COPPA, the FTC said, because parents were not provided an opportunity to give Meta their consent before the company collected information on their kids.

Meta will have 30 days to respond to the proposed findings and changes, the FTC said, before the commission votes to finalize them. The FTC can unilaterally approve updates to the settlement, but Meta would have the opportunity to appeal that move in federal court, according to an agency fact sheet.

The FTC voted 3-0 to issue the proposed findings and changes, but one commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, questioned whether the agency has the authority to impose such sweeping restrictions on Meta in light of the alleged violations.

In a statement, Bedoya said he was skeptical whether there was enough of a connection between Meta’s alleged harms and the proposed remedies to legally sustain a complete ban on monetizing the data of young users.

“I look forward to hearing additional information and arguments and will consider these issues with an open mind,” Bedoya said.

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April 12, 2021
First on CNN: Senators press Google, Meta and Twitter on whether their layoffs could imperil 2024 election | CNN Business

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CNN
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Three US senators are pressing Facebook-parent Meta, Google-parent Alphabet and Twitter about whether their layoffs may have hindered the companies’ ability to fight the spread of misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections.

In a letter to the companies dated Tuesday, the lawmakers warned that reported staff cuts to content moderation and other teams could make it harder for the companies to fulfill their commitments to election integrity.

“This is particularly troubling given the emerging use of artificial intelligence to mislead voters,” wrote Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Democratic Sen. Peter Welch and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by CNN.

Since purchasing Twitter in October, Elon Musk has slashed headcount by more than 80%, in some cases eliminating entire teams.

Alphabet announced plans to cut roughly 12,000 workers across product areas and regions earlier this year. And Meta has previously said it would eliminate about 21,000 jobs over two rounds of layoffs, hitting across teams devoted to policy, user experience and well-being, among others.

“We remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and continue to invest in teams and technologies to protect our community – including our efforts to prepare for elections around the world,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a statement to CNN about the letter.

Alphabet and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The pullback at those companies has coincided with a broader industry retrenchment in the face of economic headwinds. Peers such as Microsoft and Amazon have also trimmed their workforces, while others have announced hiring freezes.

But the social media companies are coming under greater scrutiny now in part due to their role facilitating the US electoral process.

Tuesday’s letter asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino how each company is preparing for the 2024 elections and for mis- and disinformation surrounding the campaigns.

To illustrate their concerns, the lawmakers pointed to recent changes at Alphabet-owned YouTube to allow the sharing of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, along with what they described as content moderation “challenges” at Twitter since the layoffs.

The letter, which seeks responses by July 10, also asked whether the companies may hire more content moderation employees or contractors ahead of the election, and how the platforms may be specifically preparing for the rise of AI-generated deepfakes in politics.

Already, candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appear to have used fake, AI-generated images to attack their opponents, raising questions about the risks that artificial intelligence could pose for democracy.

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April 12, 2021
Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta alleging copyright infringement | CNN Business

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CNN
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Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors are suing Meta and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, alleging the companies’ AI language models were trained on copyrighted materials from their books without their knowledge or consent.

The pair of lawsuits against OpenAI and Facebook-parent Meta were filed in a San Francisco federal court on Friday, and are both seeking class action status. Silverman, the author of “The Bedwetter,” is joined in filing the lawsuits by fellow authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey.

A new crop of AI tools has gained tremendous attention in recent months for their ability to generate written work and images in response to user prompts. The large language models underpinning these tools are trained on vast troves of online data. But this practice has raised some concerns that these models may be sweeping up copyrighted works without permission – and that these works could ultimately be served to train tools that upend the livelihoods of creatives.

The complaint against OpenAI claims that “when ChatGPT is prompted, ChatGPT generates summaries of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works—something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.” The authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for ChatGPT,” according to the complaint.

The complaint against Meta similarly claims that the company used the authors’ copyrighted books to train LLaMA, the set of large language models released by Meta in February. The suit claims that much of the material used to train Meta’s language models “comes from copyrighted works—including books written by Plaintiffs—that were copied by Meta without consent, without credit, and without compensation.”

The suit against Meta also alleges that the company accessed the copyrighted books via an online “shadow library” website that includes a large quantity of copyrighted material.

Meta declined to comment on the lawsuit. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The legal action from Silverman isn’t the first to focus on how large language models are trained. A separate lawsuit filed against OpenAI last month alleged the company misappropriated vast swaths of peoples’ personal data from the internet to train its AI tools. (OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.)

In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to acknowledge more needed to be done to address concerns from creators about how AI systems use their works.

“We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that,” he said at an event.

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April 12, 2021