ReportWire

Tag: Online media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———

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

    Source link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed from New York.

    Source link

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

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

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

    Source link

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

    Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era takes hold on platform

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———

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

    Source link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Last month, Baltimore prosecutors dropped charges against Syed.

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

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

    Source link

  • Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover

    Widespread Twitter layoffs begin a week after Musk takeover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    As of Friday, Musk and Twitter had given no public notice of the coming layoffs, according to a spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department. That’s even though the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week. He did not say how much revenue had dropped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———

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

    Source link

  • BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

    BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ———

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

    Source link

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

    General Mills, Audi pause Twitter ads, will evaluate site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source link

  • Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Argentina announce they are married

    Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Argentina announce they are married

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source link

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

    Musk emerging as Twitter’s chief moderator ahead of midterms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But some still have their worries about Musk opening the platform to a flood of online toxicity that’s bad for their brands. General Motors has said it will suspend advertising on Twitter as it monitors the platform under Musk, and others are facing pressure to review their own plans. On Tuesday, more than three dozen advocacy organizations sent an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Some longtime Twitter observers have expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of Musk’s planned content moderation council. In part, that’s because Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

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

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

    ——-

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

    Source link

  • BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

    BBC tries to understand politics by creating fake Americans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source link

  • Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

    Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source link

  • Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

    Musk floats paid Twitter verification, fires board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source link

  • Instagram trying to reconnect users locked out of accounts

    Instagram trying to reconnect users locked out of accounts

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Source link

  • Musk now gets chance to defeat Twitter’s many fake accounts

    Musk now gets chance to defeat Twitter’s many fake accounts

    Twitter’s unending fight against spam accounts is now a problem for new owner Elon Musk, who pledged in April to defeat the bot scourge or “die trying!”

    He later cited bots as a reason to back out of buying the social platform. Now that the billionaire has completed the deal, he’s faced with the task of delivering on his promise to clean up the fake profiles that have preoccupied him and bedeviled Twitter since long before he expressed interest in acquiring it.

    The challenge carries high stakes. The bot count matters because advertisers — Twitter’s chief revenue source — want to know roughly how many real humans they are reaching when they buy ads. It’s also important in the effort to stop bad actors from amassing an army of accounts to amplify misinformation or harass political adversaries.

    “The bigger picture in my mind is: How do we make Twitter a better place for everybody,” said bot-counting expert Emilio Ferrara, who worked over the summer to investigate the problem for Musk. He cited the “value of the platform as a societal experience, as a collective place to have civilized discourse and talk freely without interference from nefarious accounts,” or scams, spam, pornography and harassment.

    To find out just how bad the bots are, Musk hired Ferrara and other data scientists to investigate. At the time, he sought to prove that Twitter was misleading the public when it said fewer than 5% of its daily active users are fake or spam accounts. If Twitter lied or withheld crucial information about the bot count, Musk could argue that he was justified in terminating the $44 billion agreement.

    Ferrara, an associate professor of computer science and communications at the University of Southern California, said he had no real interest in whether Musk ultimately ended up owning the platform.

    Instead, he hoped that “any findings would be able to help improve the platform,” Ferrara told The Associated Press, speaking for the first time about his planned role as Musk’s expert trial witness.

    The question now is what Musk will do with that information. Ferrara’s presentation — some 350 pages of analysis and supporting documents — is locked up in confidential court filings, and he said he can’t disclose his conclusions.

    Twitter’s former leaders and its lawyers said Musk wildly exaggerated the problem because he had buyer’s remorse. Precise counts are “almost impossible” because any bot estimate is based on assumptions that can lead to bias, said Filippo Menczer, a researcher who has been studying social bots for more than a decade and was consulted by Twitter earlier this year.

    “Nobody knows exactly how bad the problem is,” said Menczer, director of Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, who said he was speaking from his role as an academic researcher, not a consultant. “I would guess it’s not as bad as Musk said and not as good as Twitter claimed.”

    Many experts also doubt Musk’s ability to easily make improvements, which he’s suggested would rely on using algorithms to track and remove fake accounts and implementing new measures to “authenticate” real people.

    Earlier this month, Ferrara was preparing to travel to the East Coast to testify in Delaware, where Musk was defending against Twitter’s lawsuit asking a court to force him to close the deal. But two weeks before the scheduled Oct. 17 trial, Musk changed his mind and said he would go ahead with the $44 billion acquisition. It closed Thursday.

    Most legal experts didn’t think Musk had much of a case. The court’s head judge seemed likely to side with Twitter based on the specific terms and conditions of the April purchase agreement.

    But that’s not to say Musk didn’t have a point about the bots, according to Ferrara and other researchers hired by Musk’s legal team.

    The analysis firm CounterAction, which worked with Ferrara, said it concluded in a July 18 report submitted to the court that Twitter’s spam rate for monetizable accounts — those of value to advertisers — was at least 10% and could be as high as 14.2%, depending on how the rate is measured.

    Trevor Davis, the firm’s founder and CEO, said that analysis was based on a “firehose” of internal data that Twitter gave to Musk, but the company declined to provide additional data sought by Musk’s team.

    “We expect that access to the withheld data would reveal an even higher true spam rate,” Davis said in a prepared statement.

    Musk has long been preoccupied with Twitter spambots promoting cryptocurrency schemes, in part because as a celebrity user with more than 110 million followers, he sees a lot of them. Some scammers have opened accounts mimicking Musk’s name and likeness to try to get people to think he’s endorsing something.

    Not all bots are bad. Twitter encourages the use of automated accounts that report the weather, earthquakes or post humor or lines from literary classics. Twitter also allows for anonymity, which protects free speech and privacy — especially in authoritarian regions. But that practice can make it harder to root out malicious fake accounts.

    Ferrara first caught Twitter’s attention in the aftermath of revelations that Russia used social media to meddle in the U.S. presidential election in 2016, when he led a research group that estimated that 9% to 15% of Twitter’s active English-language accounts were bots.

    In a blog post soon after, Twitter complained that such outside research “is often inaccurate and methodologically flawed.” The company has repeatedly reported the under-5% number in its quarterly filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, though it also cautions that it could be higher.

    Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter said it removed 1 million spam accounts each day. To calculate how many accounts are malicious spam, Twitter reviews thousands of accounts sampled at random, using both public and private data such as IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation and how the account behaves when it is active.

    But over the past months, Musk and Twitter have tussled over the methodology. Twitter uses a metric it calls mDAU, for monetizable daily active usage.

    That “is literally a metric they invented,” Ferrara said. “You cannot contrast and compare that metric with any other service.”

    When Musk first started publicly raising questions about the bot numbers after agreeing to buy the company, another firm, Israel-based Cyabra, said it had the answer.

    “That elusive number you are looking for … we have it. It’s 13.7%,” the firm tweeted on May 17, flagging Musk’s Twitter handle to get his attention.

    Cyabra’s machine-learning technology works by scanning a large number of social media profiles to track behavioral patterns, trying to pick out which are behaving like humans. Such guesswork can misfire — but the tweet caught the attention of people close to Musk, if not the billionaire himself.

    Cyabra CEO Dan Brahmy said the company started working with the Musk camp by the end of May. Regardless of what the true count is, he said it’s not going to be an easy problem to solve.

    “Some bots are definitely nefarious,” Brahmy said. “The trade-offs are between being extremely high on sign-up standards and information security versus being extremely open minded in a way” that fosters freedom of speech and creativity.

    Source link

  • India cricket star Virat Kohli “paranoid” over hotel video

    India cricket star Virat Kohli “paranoid” over hotel video

    SYDNEY — India cricket star Virat Kohli says he is paranoid over his privacy after an “appalling” incident in which intruders allegedly filmed inside his hotel room during the Twenty20 World Cup.

    Kohli took to social media on Monday to denounce the video, in which a stranger walks through the room filming every step of the way.

    A second person was in the room when the video was shot, but no faces are shown in the footage.

    The video is labelled ’King Kohli’s Hotel Room,” and shows the star batsman’s neat and organized belongings.

    It remains unclear in which hotel room the video was taken, or how it came into Kohli’s possession.

    “I understand that fans get very happy and excited seeing their favorite players and get excited to meet them and I’ve always appreciated that,” Kohli wrote to his 221 million followers on Instagram.

    “But this video here is appalling and it’s made me feel very paranoid about my privacy. If I cannot have privacy in my own hotel room, then where can I really expect any personal space at all??

    “I’m NOT okay with this kind of fanaticism and absolute invasion of privacy. Please respect people’s privacy and not treat them as a commodity for entertainment.”

    Kohli played in India’s five-wicket loss to South Africa in Perth on Sunday night. The 33-year-old made only 12 runs and dropped an easy catch in the deep.

    India plays its next match at the T20 World Cup on Wednesday against Bangladesh in Adelaide.

    ———

    More AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

    Source link

  • Witnesses describe ‘a hell’ inside South Korean crowd surge

    Witnesses describe ‘a hell’ inside South Korean crowd surge

    SEOUL, South Korea — In one moment, thousands of Halloween revelers crammed into the narrow, vibrant streets of Seoul’s most cosmopolitan neighborhood, eager to show off their capes, wizard hats and bat wings.

    In the next, a surge of panic spread as an unmanageable mass of people jammed into a narrow alley in Itaewon. Toppled revelers were trapped for as long as 40 minutes, stacked on one another “like dominoes” in a chaotic crush so intense that clothes were ripped off.

    A stunned Seoul was just beginning on Monday to put together the huge scope of the crowd surge on Saturday night that killed at least 153, mostly people in their 20s and 30s, including foreign nationals. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said it expected more deaths because there were more than 130 injured, many in serious condition.

    Witnesses described a nightmarish scene as people performed CPR on the dying and carried limp bodies to ambulances, while dance music pulsed from garish clubs lit in bright neon. Others tried desperately to pull out those trapped at the bottom of the crush of people, but often failed because there were too many of the fallen on top of them.

    “We were just stuck together so tightly we couldn’t even shift to call out and report the situation,” said one survivor, surnamed Lee. “We were strangers, but we held each others’ hands and repeatedly shouted out, ‘Let’s survive!’”

    Kim Mi Sung, who works for a non-profit organization in Itaewon, told The Associated Press that nine out of the 10 people she gave CPR to eventually died. Many were bleeding from their noses and mouths. Most were women who dressed as witches or were in other Halloween costumes; two were foreigners.

    “It was like a hell,” Kim said. “I still can’t believe what happened.”

    In this ultra-wired, high-tech country, anguish, terror and grief — as well as many of the details of what happened — are playing out most vividly on social media. Users posted messages desperately seeking friends and loved ones, as witnesses and survivors described what they went through.

    “I thought I was dying,” one woman said in posts on Twitter. “My entire body was stuck among everyone else, while people laughed from a terrace and videotaped us. I thought I would really die if I cried out. I stretched my hands out to (others) who were above me and I managed to get out.”

    An unidentified woman in her 20s wept as she described the scene to the Yonhap news agency: “It looked like the graves of people piled upon one another. Some of them were slowly losing consciousness and others seemed to have already died.”

    A man, surnamed Kong, said he managed to escape to a nearby bar with his friends after the crush happened. He saw through the bar windows that people were falling on top of each other “like dominoes,” Yonhap reported.

    When a 27-year-old office worker who gave only his surname, Choi, left the bar he’d been in during the crush, he saw dozens of police and paramedics. “It kind of looked like a war zone,” he said.

    The bodies of 10 to 15 people were lined up in front of the King Kebab restaurant on the asphalt and were being covered up with blue tarps as he walked by.

    “It looked like they were sleeping — eyes closed, mouth opened. They looked like mannequins,” Choi said.

    Friends and family members gathered at a local government office to try to find news about the missing.

    One Twitter user posted a series of messages asking for information about a 17-year-old friend who had gone to Itaewon to celebrate wearing a hairband that looked like cat ears.

    “I lost contact with her. She’s been a friend of mine for 12 years, and we were like family. Please help me,” the message said.

    Even after the crush, witnesses said they saw some revelers not immediately making way for emergency vehicles, rescuers and police officers. One viral video clip on Twitter showing a crowd of young people dancing and singing near the carnage drew several insults from South Koreans.

    Ken Fallas, a Costa Rican architect who has worked in Seoul for the past eight years, watched stunned as a dozen or more unconscious partygoers were carried out from a narrow backstreet packed with youngsters dressed like movie characters.

    Fallas said police and emergency workers pleaded with people to step up if they knew how to give CPR because they were overwhelmed by the large number of injured.

    “I saw a lot of (young) people laughing, but I don’t think they were (really) laughing because, you know, what’s funny?” Fallas said. “They were laughing because they were too scared. Because to be in front of a thing like that is not easy. Not everyone knows how to process that.”

    ———

    AP journalists Juwon Park in Seoul, South Korea, and Jee-won Jeong and Kiko Rosario in Bangkok contributed to this story.

    Source link

  • Musk tweets link to an unfounded conspiracy theory

    Musk tweets link to an unfounded conspiracy theory

    WASHINGTON — Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted a link to an unfounded rumor about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, just days after Musk’s purchase of Twitter fueled concerns that the social media platform would no longer seek to limit misinformation and hate speech.

    Musk’s tweet, which he later deleted, linked to an article by a fringe website, the Santa Monica Observer, an outlet that has previously asserted that Hillary Clinton died on Sept. 11 and was replaced with a body double.

    In this case, the article recycled a baseless claim that the personal life of Paul Pelosi, the speaker’s husband, somehow played a role in an intruder’s attack last week in the couple’s San Francisco home, even though there is no evidence to support that claim.

    Musk did so in reply to a tweet by Hillary Clinton. Her tweet had criticized Republicans for generally spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” and said, “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result.”

    In response to Clinton’s tweet, Musk provided a link to the Santa Monica Observer article and added, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”

    The Los Angeles Times, the dominant news organization in the Southern California area where the Observer is located, has said the Observer is “notorious for fake news.”

    Police in San Francisco have said the suspect in last week’s attack, identified as David DePape, 42, broke into the Pelosi family’s Pacific Heights home early Friday and confronted Paul Pelosi, demanding to know, as the AP has reported, “Where is Nancy?”

    The two men struggled over a hammer before officers responding to a 911 call to the home saw DePape strike Paul Pelosi at least once, police said. DePape was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, elder abuse and burglary. Prosecutors plan to file charges on Monday and expect his arraignment on Tuesday.

    Police say the attack was “intentional” and not random but have not stated publicly what they consider to be the motive.

    The exchange between Musk and Clinton occurred a day after Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, tweeted that the company’s policies toward “slurs” and “hateful conduct” were still in place.

    “Bottom line up front: Twitter’s policies haven’t changed. Hateful conduct has no place here,” Roth wrote.

    Shortly after Musk took control of Twitter, some accounts on the platform began tweeting messages ranging from racist slurs to political misinformation, such as “Trump won,” to see what Twitter will now tolerate.

    Musk himself said Friday that he would form a “content moderation council” for Twitter and promised advertisers that the website would not devolve into a “free for all hellscape.” Musk has also described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”

    But at least one major advertiser, General Motors, has said it will suspend advertising on Twitter while it monitors the direction of the platform under Musk.

    Also on Sunday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she didn’t trust Musk to run Twitter.

    Referring to antisemitic attacks and the QAnon conspiracy theory that were advanced online by DePape, the suspect in the attack, Klobuchar said, “I think you have to have some content moderation.”

    “If Elon Musk has said now that he’s going to start a content moderation board,” the senator said, “that was one good sign. But I continue to be concerned about that. I just don’t think people should be making money off of passing on this stuff that’s a bunch of lies.”

    Source link

  • Musk tweets link to an unfounded conspiracy theory

    Musk tweets link to an unfounded conspiracy theory

    WASHINGTON — Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted a link to an unfounded rumor about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, just days after Musk’s purchase of Twitter fueled concerns that the social media platform would no longer seek to limit misinformation and hate speech.

    Musk’s tweet, which he later deleted, linked to an article by a fringe website, the Santa Monica Observer, an outlet that has previously asserted that Hillary Clinton died on Sept. 11 and was replaced with a body double.

    In this case, the article recycled a baseless claim that the personal life of Paul Pelosi, the speaker’s husband, somehow played a role in an intruder’s attack last week in the couple’s San Francisco home, even though there is no evidence to support that claim.

    Musk did so in reply to a tweet by Hillary Clinton. Her tweet had criticized Republicans for generally spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” and said, “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result.”

    In response to Clinton’s tweet, Musk provided a link to the Santa Monica Observer article and added, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”

    The Los Angeles Times, the dominant news organization in the Southern California area where the Observer is located, has said the Observer is “notorious for fake news.”

    Police in San Francisco have said the suspect in last week’s attack, identified as David DePape, 42, broke into the Pelosi family’s Pacific Heights home early Friday and confronted Paul Pelosi, demanding to know, as the AP has reported, “Where is Nancy?”

    The two men struggled over a hammer before officers responding to a 911 call to the home saw DePape strike Paul Pelosi at least once, police said. DePape was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, elder abuse and burglary. Prosecutors plan to file charges on Monday and expect his arraignment on Tuesday.

    Police say the attack was “intentional” and not random but have not stated publicly what they consider to be the motive.

    The exchange between Musk and Clinton occurred a day after Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, tweeted that the company’s policies toward “slurs” and “hateful conduct” were still in place.

    “Bottom line up front: Twitter’s policies haven’t changed. Hateful conduct has no place here,” Roth wrote.

    Musk himself said Friday that he would form a “content moderation council” for Twitter and promised advertisers that the website would not devolve into a “free for all hellscape.” Musk has also described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”

    But at least one major advertiser, General Motors, has said it will suspend advertising on Twitter while it monitors the direction of the platform under Musk.

    Also on Sunday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she didn’t trust Musk to run Twitter.

    Referring to antisemitic conspiracy theories that were advanced online by DePape, the suspect in the attack, Klobuchar said, “I think you have to have some content moderation.”

    “If Elon Musk has said now that he’s going to start a content moderation board,” the senator said, “that was one good sign. But I continue to be concerned about that. I just don’t think people should be making money off of passing on this stuff that’s a bunch of lies.”

    Source link

  • Patriots’ Kraft, school statements denounce antisemitism

    Patriots’ Kraft, school statements denounce antisemitism

    New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and other members of the sports world are condemning recent incidents of hate speech toward Jewish people — not just the antisemitic comments by the music mogul formerly known as Kanye West, but also outside of a college football game in Florida on Saturday night.

    A day after the NBA and Brooklyn Nets issued disapproving statements in response to Kyrie Irving’s apparent support for an antisemitic film, other team executives and athletes are speaking out against hatred and intolerance, on and off the field.

    At some point during the football game between Florida and Georgia on Saturday night, the phrase “Kanye is right about the jews” was projected on the outside of one of the end zones at the TIAA Bank Field stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a reference to recent antisemitic comments that Ye has made on social media and in interviews — comments that have led to him losing partnerships with Adidas and several other companies.

    The University of Florida and University of Georgia issued a joint statement Sunday morning condemning the hate speech on the stadium and “the other anti-Semitic messages that have appeared in Jacksonville.” The schools also said they “together denounce these and all acts of anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred and intolerance. We are proud to be home to strong and thriving Jewish communities at UGA and UF, and we stand together against hate.”

    Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said on social media his northeast Florida city is “made better because of its diversity. Those who spread messages of hate, racism and antisemitism will not be able to change the heart of this city or her people. I condemn these cowards and their cowardly messages.”

    And Shad Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who play in the TIAA Bank Field stadium, said on social media that he was “personally dismayed” by the rhetoric, calling it, “hurtful and wrong.”

    “It has to stop. I’m asking everyone to make it their mission to end the ignorance and hate,” Khan said. “Let’s be better.”

    Last year, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 2,717 incidents of harassment, vandalism or violence targeting Jews — the highest annual total since it began tracking these incidents in 1979. The recent antisemitic incidents come four years after the deadliest attack on American Jews, when 11 people were killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and just days before the contentious midterm elections throughout the U.S.

    A nonprofit founded by Kraft took the extra step of planning to air an ad during the Patriots-New York Jets game on Sunday that condemned anti-Jewish hate speech and encouraged people who are not Jewish to speak up against antisemitism.

    “Recently many of you have spoken up,” the 30-second ad from Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism said. “We hear you today. We must hear you tomorrow. There are less than 8 million Jewish people in this country. Fewer than are watching this ad. They need you to add your voice.”

    The ad, which was scheduled to air during the first quarter of the game, ends with the hashtag: #StandUptoJewishHate.

    “I have committed tremendous resources toward this effort and am vowing to do more,” Kraft said in a statement. “I encourage others to join in these efforts. My hope is this commercial will continue to enhance the national conversation about the need to speak out against hatred of all types, and particularly to stand up to Jewish hate.”

    Also this week, Nets owner Joe Tsai said he was disappointed by Irving, a seven-time All-Star who appeared to support a film Tsai said was “based on a book full of antisemitic disinformation” when he posted a link for the film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” on Twitter on Thursday.

    Nets coach Steve Nash said the organization had “spoken to Kyrie about it” but didn’t give specifics. The NBA also spoke up Saturday, saying that “hate speech of any kind is unacceptable.”

    “We believe we all have a role to play in ensuring such words or ideas, including antisemitic ones, are challenged and refuted and we will continue working with all members of the NBA community to ensure that everyone understands the impact of their words and actions,” the league said.

    Irving, however, responded in a postgame news conference Saturday, claiming to believe in all religions and saying he is “not a divisive person when it comes to religion.” He added he wouldn’t “stand down on anything I believe in.”

    “Did I do anything illegal? Did I hurt anybody?” Irving said. “Did I harm anybody? Am I going out and saying that I hate one specific group of people?”

    Texas A&M’s football team changed up how it entered the field Saturday night before its 31-28 loss to No. 15 Mississippi. After coming out to “Power” by Ye since 2012, the Aggies instead entered to an instrumental of “Bonfire” by Childish Gambino. Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork criticized West’s comments earlier this week.

    The fallout around Ye’s comments also includes Donda Sports, a brand management agency he founded. Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald and Boston Celtics swingman Jaylen Brown terminated their associations with the agency, with Donald and his wife, Erica, denouncing the “displays of hate and antisemitism” by Ye.

    The high-profile basketball team at Ye’s Donda Academy in California also has been affected, with the Los Angeles Times reporting Friday that it had confirmed four major tournaments had dropped the school.

    ———

    AP Pro Football Writer Mark Long, AP Pro Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney and AP Sports Writer Erica Hunzinger contributed to this report.

    ———

    More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

    Source link