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Tag: social media

  • Elon Musk is under federal investigation over his Twitter deal, Twitter claims | CNN Business

    Elon Musk is under federal investigation over his Twitter deal, Twitter claims | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Federal authorities are investigating Elon Musk in connection with his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the social media platform said in a court filing Thursday.

    It is not clear which agencies may be carrying out the probe, and Twitter did not identify what specific actions by Musk US officials may be investigating. Twitter’s filing merely said authorities are looking into Musk’s “conduct” linked to the deal.

    The company’s court filing elsewhere accused Musk’s legal team of failing to produce draft communications with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission as part of the two sides’ ongoing litigation over whether Musk can walk away from the deal.

    Musk first attempted to terminate the deal in July, alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform. Twitter sued Musk to complete the acquisition, accusing the billionaire of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal that he developed buyer’s remorse over following a market decline.

    Last week, Musk proposed following through with his deal to buy the company at the originally agreed upon price of $54.20 per share. The judge overseeing the dispute later in the week ruled to pause the legal proceedings until Oct. 28 following a request from Musk.

    In response to Twitter’s Thursday filing, Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, said it was designed to distract from Twitter’s own legal problems, which arose after the company’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, accused Twitter of long-ignored security vulnerabilities in a whistleblower disclosure.

    “Twitter’s executives are under federal investigation,” Spiro said in a statement to CNN. “This misdirection was sent by Twitter to try and uncover which of their assorted misconduct they are under investigation for.”

    The Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the terms of a 2011 consent order with Twitter that Zatko alleges the company violated, has not publicly disclosed an investigation. But its chair, Lina Khan, has told Congress in public testimony that if it’s determined Twitter executives were responsible for legal violations, the FTC “absolutely” would and “won’t hesitate” to hold those executives personally accountable.

    In a separate filing on Thursday, Twitter also maintained that it did not instruct Zatko to burn several notebooks as part of a separation agreement, as Musk’s team had claimed in a filing earlier this month. Instead, Twitter claimed, Zatko destroyed the notebooks of his own volition.

    “Twitter did not ask Zatko to torch his own documents, much less demand that he do so,” Twitter’s filing read. “Twitter had no knowledge of Zatko’s notebooks and no idea what information they contained.”

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  • Boost Your Brand Using Social Media Platforms That Are Often Overlook

    Boost Your Brand Using Social Media Platforms That Are Often Overlook

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Did you know that there are at least 133 social media platforms in existence? Clearly, with so many, it’s not practical to be on all platforms. Therefore, it’s key for you to choose the networks that make sense for your brand strategically.

    Instead of focusing on the most common social media platforms out there (think Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram), we’re going to discuss some extremely invaluable social networks that brands quite often overlook. Let’s discuss their benefits and how they can assist you in connecting with your customers, boosting brand awareness and increasing leads and, thus, sales.

    1. What type of business do you have?

    Are you a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) brand? You want to establish a social media presence where your core target audience is. A B2B business, for example, fares better with networks like LinkedIn, where you can establish a digital relationship with key individuals within organizations you wish to enter into business with. B2C companies (especially those with physical products) can thrive on a picture-based site like Pinterest or Reddit, where super fans can start discussion threads.

    Related: The Business of Harnessing the Power of Social Media

    2. Which channel best fits your social goals?

    Knowing your audience is essential, but so is being aware of your social goals. Are you looking to interact with customers and get feedback? Do you want to showcase your offerings? Or are you simply looking to sit in chat rooms to hear what the masses want? There’s a unique platform for each of these needs. Below are five such platforms and how each can align with your social media strategies.

    3. Which channels are competitors using?

    You know how the saying goes: Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. An easy way to see which platforms could work best for you is to simply research which networks your current competitors are active on. You’ll be able to see their engagement, the type of content that’s popular and how often you should post. Instead of trying to acquire as much social media real estate as you can, focus instead on what’s working for others.

    Now, onto platforms that brands often overlook and why they should be considered to help increase your brand awareness, reach your target audience and drive sales.

    Related: How to Succeed on Social Media By Using Your Competitors

    The world’s largest professional network: LinkedIn

    Most professionals use LinkedIn, but are you using it to boost your brand awareness? As of July 2022, there was a whopping 849.6 million worldwide users — its top users being boomers, Gen X and millennials.

    The platform gives you a powerful search engine to conduct market research and learn who’s who in your industry. It enables you to link up directly with peers you wish to collaborate with. It also acts as a lead generation funnel through features like the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program. Here you can learn and gain resources, such as how-to guides on building a robust newsletter list and guidance on developing content ideas to grow your audience.

    You also have the opportunity to build your brand by becoming a thought leader when you publish authoritative niche content. The best part about using LinkedIn is that you can build a massive network with just their basic free service.

    The leading local business connector: Nextdoor

    As of July 2022, Nextdoor boasted 69 million users. With a user demographic consisting of boomers, Gen X, and millennials, this B2C platform is best used by those seeking to boost brand awareness and desire to market locally.

    Founded in 2008, Nextdoor is a social networking platform explicitly designed to help people from different neighborhoods stay up to date on the latest neighborhood news and find local service-provider recommendations.

    The best way to connect with buyers is to claim your free business page. This helps you establish a presence within your local community. Secondly, you can ask loyal customers to leave recommendations to help rank your page, so your business appears in neighborhood search results.

    Stay in touch with the community through business posts where you can share news and press releases. Lastly, advertising your sales and promotions via Nextdoor Ads is a cost-effective way to generate leads and convert them into willing buyers.

    Related: Are Nextdoor Ads the Best New Way to Gain Local Customers?

    The biggest visual discovery engine: Pinterest

    Pinterest is like a storehouse of pictures. It’s a repository where you’ll find images to draw inspiration for your own campaigns. 85% of people on the platform use it as the starting point for new projects.

    The platform’s global reach means it has a strong following, with 433 million worldwide users as of July 2022. It’s a popular site among millennials, but Gen X, Gen Z, and boomers also command a strong presence.

    Pinterest is B2C-focused and can be used for brand discovery. Use it to establish and curate your brand through visual means. You can successfully leverage this social media platform by investing in quality product/service pictures and optimizing them as you upload them to Pinterest. Moreover, by ensuring your pictures link back to your website, Pinterest becomes a vehicle that drives your sales and traffic. Just look at the numbers: 80% of active Pinterest users claim to discover new products and or brands while browsing the platform.

    That’s not all, however. Thanks to Pinterest’s high domain authority, any published content on the platform has greater visibility on different search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

    The new kid on the block: Clubhouse

    Clubhouse was all the rage in 2020 when the platform first launched. The audio-only app’s biggest marketing hack had been its elitist “invite-only” strategy.

    However, as the platform moved from its iOS-exclusive offering and more people joined, the hype died down. That’s not to say B2B and B2C companies can’t use it to engage the mostly millennial user base. With a strong user base of at least 10 million and a plethora of virtual discussions taking place in different rooms, there’s no shortage of places where you can learn from other professionals within your industry and the needs and wants of your consumer.

    You can also take advantage of the platform to hear reviews directly from your consumers in real time. Host live discussions, Q&A sessions and different types of virtual events. Participate in relevant conversations by joining industry-specific rooms and collaborate with peers by engaging in their conversations.

    You can gain insight into new campaigns and even products by paying attention to different niche conversations. By actively listening, you can easily identify gaps in your industry that you could potentially meet based on what people are complaining about.

    When it comes to drawing attention to your brand and generating leads, you can do this by hosting brand-affiliated interviews, fireside chats and panels. In addition, you can also sponsor room events. Team members can engage in these events if needed. Otherwise, most hosts are happy to give sponsoring brands a shoutout to promote your product or service during the session.

    Related: 5 Foolproof Ways to Generate Leads Through Social Media

    The go-to social news site and forum: Reddit

    Reddit is nearly as old as Facebook, having been founded in Medford, Massachusetts, in 2005. And like most social media apps, it is free to join hence its 48 million monthly U.S. user base. The platform is a news website-slash-social-forum making it great for both B2B and B2C brands. With 64% of Reddit’s users being 18 to 29-year-olds, the site positions itself as a powerful marketing tool if your products or services have this demographic as a target audience.

    Growing your brand on the platform can be done in various ways. You can interact with customers by asking them to share pictures of themselves for shoutouts or to win prizes, start sub-Reddit threads to discuss features of your products or answer troubleshooting questions, create sub-Reddit threads with brand-loyal super fans who’re willing to monitor and curate threads, and announce your latest news and any upcoming conferences, webinars and events.

    The point is there are more social media platforms besides Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. So take time to develop a social media strategy for each new platform. Curate your presence within the different subcultures and communities existing online.

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    Adebukola Ajao

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  • Transform Your Social Media Will These Content Marketing Practices

    Transform Your Social Media Will These Content Marketing Practices

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Content marketing has become one of the mainstays of most brands’ digital marketing strategies. Relevant, relatable content draws users in and persuades them to visit a website, download an eBook or share their personal details. Social media channels are among the most popular outlets for content marketing across the U.S. But is your brand maximizing the power of your social media pages?

    The rise of social media marketing

    Over the last two decades, social media channels have transformed from platforms designed purely for entertainment and personal connections to powerful marketing tools. According to Statista, more than 90% of marketers in United States-based companies with 100 or more employees use social media as part of their content marketing strategy.

    While the platforms had been designed to connect people to others, marketers quickly realized they were the perfect places to connect people to brands. At this time, more than 80% of the entire population of the United States has at least one social media networking profile, and social media usage continues to grow. Worldwide, more than four billion people are using social media channels.

    Related: 10 Social-Media Marketing Strategies for Companies

    As a result, content marketers cannot afford to ignore social media channels. The importance of this outlet is reflected in the marketing spend associated with social media. In 2021, U.S. marketers were expected to spend $17 billion on social media marketing. This marks an increase of ten billion compared to 2014.

    This increase is a clear indicator of the growing importance of social media marketing. However, these digital marketing channels are not without challenges. Judging the effectiveness of content marketing on social media pages remains a concern for brands.

    What makes social media content marketing effective?

    Whether on social media or other channels, high-quality content marketing works by drawing an audience toward a brand. Rather than interrupting potential customers, as an advert would, great pieces of content solve a problem, offer users information they were looking for in a search query, or are otherwise helpful and relevant.

    What effective content marketing on social media means in practice can vary from brand to brand. A compelling piece of content helps the brand achieve the goals set out in its content marketing strategy. Goals could include growing the subscriber numbers for a YouTube channel, generating white paper downloads, or increasing website traffic. If a brand’s content marketing helps achieve these targets, it is effective.

    Related: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

    Measuring effectiveness

    Clearly defined, smart goals are a prerequisite of effective content marketing, but measuring effectiveness is equally important. For marketers, that means connecting pieces of content with outcomes and starting to isolate the factors that influence these outcomes.

    Regarding social media marketing, many brands find that releasing content on specific days of the week or at set times influences their results. The reason is simple — consumers have preferred times for engaging with social media content. Without knowing what these times are, it is impossible to optimize campaigns for effectiveness. Measuring and reviewing the performance of each piece of content is critical.

    How to improve the effectiveness of your social media content marketing

    Timing content launches correctly is one aspect of improving the effectiveness of content marketing on social media. But there are several other factors that marketers can use to enhance the performance of their content marketing campaigns.

    First and foremost, brands need to provide engaging content. Storytelling is one of the most effective ways of connecting with users and potential customers. Authentic stories touch their audience emotionally and build a deeper connection between brands and audiences than a simple list of facts can do. They also have the potential to inspire long-term customer loyalty.

    The power of stories has been proven scientifically. By using storytelling to share a brand’s story, marketers are using one of humanity’s oldest traditions. Look closely, and it becomes obvious that the entire network of social media is built on the attraction between people and stories. Utilizing storytelling for content marketing is extremely useful to make a brand’s content marketing more effective.

    Second, avoid focusing on your brand. This may sound wrong, but content marketing is not about what brand marketers try to promote. Instead, it is all about providing value for the audience. Marketers can provide value by sharing expertise or insights through their content. Focus on content only this brand can provide, and do not shy away from sharing opinions or viewpoints.

    Related: 5 Steps to Creating a Killer Marketing Strategy

    Third, it is important to be consistent in any content marketing efforts. When consumers or users choose to follow a brand, they are investing emotionally in that brand. With investment comes an expectation of a return on investment (ROI). Regular, relevant, helpful content that provides information not available anywhere else provides this kind of ROI.

    Consistency applies to the regularity with which a brand publishes its content. Marketers must ensure their content creates a consistent image to establish a brand’s voice and values. Most brands have clearly defined brand values. The audiences of your content marketing should be able to recognize those principles through your content marketing on social media.

    Fourth, remember that content includes more than words. Images, links, and videos are only three examples of media that can enrich a brand’s social media content marketing strategy and deliver stronger results.

    Social media channels lend themselves to content marketing. These channels are excellent places to share brand stories, offer expertise and insights, and create a deeper connection with audiences. Measuring the effectiveness of existing social media content marketing is the first step toward increasing it through storytelling, focusing on the audience, being consistent, and enriching content.

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    Jessica Wong

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

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

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

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    Ad misleads on treaty regulating global arms trade

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden just announced that he is adding the U.S. as a signatory to the United Nations “Small Arms Treaty,” which would “establish an international gun control registry” in which other countries can “track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world.”

    THE FACTS: There is no “U.N. Small Arms Treaty.” A separate U.N. agreement, the Arms Trade Treaty, regulates the international trade of a range of weapons, but does not track domestic gun sales. The false claim about an “international gun control registry” was shared in a Facebook advertisement by a gun rights group stoking fears about threats to the Second Amendment. The group, the “American Firearms Association,” claims in its Facebook ad that Biden “has just announced that he is adding America as a signatory to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, setting the stage for a full ratification vote in the U.S. Senate.” “The U.N. Small Arms Treaty would establish an international gun control registry, allowing Communist China, European socialists, and 3rd World dictators to track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world,” continues the post, which links to a petition asking for users’ contact information. The post calls on supporters of the Second Amendment to oppose the treaty. But there is no treaty called the “U.N. Small Arms Treaty,” and the treaty that is being referenced does not record private gun sales in any country, experts say. The actual treaty, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, deals not only with small arms such as rifles and pistols, but battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships and more, the AP has reported. The U.N. in 2013 adopted the treaty to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists and human rights violators. The treaty prohibits countries that ratify it from exporting conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes, or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. It does encourage its parties to maintain national records regarding exports of conventional arms and says such records should include the “end user.” But that’s a recommendation about recording exports that a country makes to another country, not gun sales to individuals within a country, said Jennifer Erickson, an associate professor of political science and international studies at Boston College. Experts note that the treaty was written to explicitly make clear it has no bearing on domestic gun rights or sales. The treaty’s preamble, for example, states that the agreement is “Reaffirming the sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” The U.N. has “no gun control registry in terms of private ownership, whatsoever,” Erickson said. Erickson said the U.S. government already uses “end-use” monitoring by recording where it sends weapons. “There is only in the Arms Trade Treaty a focus on cross-border transfers, so not domestic sales or ownership,” said Rachel Stohl, vice president of research programs at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank focused on international security. “It’s really looking at sales between governments. And it applies to the entire range of conventional weapons, not just small arms and light weapons.” The U.S. signed the treaty in 2013, though the Senate never ratified it — which means the country is a signatory of the agreement, but not an official party and bound by it. In 2019, Trump announced that he was revoking the country’s status as a signatory, though that move was symbolic. The U.N. still lists the U.S. as a signatory to the treaty, though in a footnote online it acknowledges that, in a July 2019 communication, the U.S. said it did not intend to become a party to the treaty and that it has no legal obligations in relation to it. Contrary to the ad’s claim, Biden has not yet taken any action to reverse the U.S.’s public position on the treaty, Stohl said. An inquiry to one of the directors of the American Firearms Association was not immediately returned.

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

    Baseless claims about safety of mRNA vaccines circulate online

    CLAIM: Humans and other mammals injected with an mRNA vaccine die within five years.

    THE FACTS: There is no scientific evidence to suggest humans or other mammals given an mRNA vaccine die within five years, experts told the AP. Social media users are reviving concerns that mRNA-based vaccines, including those that are used to combat COVID-19, are extremely deadly. “No mammal injected with mRNA has ever survived longer than 5 years. The die-off has begun,” one user on Twitter wrote in a post that’s been liked or shared more than 17,000 times. But there’s no scientific proof that the mRNA vaccination shortens life expectancy or has led to mass die offs in humans or other mammals since research began on them decades ago, experts told the AP “Nothing of the scale suggested has happened,” Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told the AP. “The vast majority of the millions who have been injected are doing just fine.” Vaccines utilizing messenger RNA, or mRNA, teach cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response that protects a person from becoming seriously ill from a disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The molecule was first discovered in the early 1960s and research into its uses in medical treatment progressed into the 1970s and 1980s, according to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health. A flu vaccine based on mRNA was tested on mice in the 1990s, but the first vaccines for rabies and influenza weren’t tested on humans until recently. Kuritzkes said no deaths from those vaccines were reported in those trials. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been inoculated against COVID-19 in the last couple of years and reports of death after vaccination remain rare. Healthcare providers are required to report any death after a COVID-19 shot to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. More than 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. from December 2020 through last week, according to the CDC. During that time, there have been more than 16,500 preliminary reports of death, or 0.0027% of those that have received a COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, the CDC has identified just nine deaths causally associated with rare blood clots caused by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is not mRNA based like those produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Kuritzkes also notes that mRNA only lasts in the body for a short period of time before rapidly degrading, making it unlikely that it would cause long term effects. “The fact that we’re just now getting to the five-year mark for some of the earliest studies is not evidence that people die from the vaccines,” he said. “Just evidence that five years have yet to elapse for many trials. Sort of like saying nobody who voted in the 2020 presidential election has lived more than five years.”

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

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    Video of traffic at the Finnish-Russian border misrepresented

    CLAIM: Video shows lines of cars waiting at the Russian-Finnish border after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists on Wednesday amid the war in Ukraine.

    THE FACTS: The video was filmed at the Vaalimaa border crossing point between Russia and Finland on Aug. 29, weeks before Putin announced the partial mobilization of Russian reservists to Ukraine. Following Putin’s announcement, social media users misrepresented a video showing traffic at the border crossing point in Finland, about a three hour drive from St. Petersburg, Russia. The original video, which was posted to YouTube and TikTok on Sept. 19, shows a long line of cars at the border crossing point. Social media users then took the clip out of context, falsely claiming that it captured Russians fleeing to Finland. “#Breaking: just in – The traffic jam at the border with#Russia/#Finland has pilled up to 35KM and is rising by the hour, it is the only border who is still open for Russian civilians with shengen visas, after#Putin announced he will send 300.000 new troops to#Ukraine,” a tweet with more than 2.7 million views falsely claimed. Igor Parri, the TikTok user who posted the original video confirmed to The Associated Press in an email that he filmed it on Aug. 29. He sent the AP the original video to verify that he filmed it and noted that the video “was just depicting the quite typical line” at the border. The Finish border authority on Wednesday publicly responded to the claims circulating widely on social media, noting that traffic conditions at the border remained normal. “Situation at Finnish Russian border is normal, both at green border and in border traffic,” Matti Pitkäniitty, a senior official with the Finnish border authority wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “Just talked to our officers in charge. There is normal queuing in border traffic…” Pitkäniitty then tweeted on Thursday that traffic from Russia was at a “higher level than usual,” but was comparable to weekend traffic. In a statement to reporters on Thursday, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that the country was considering ways to reduce Russian transit to Finland, after Putin’s announcement. Putin’s announcement on Wednesday sparked anti-war demonstrations across the country that resulted in almost 1,200 arrests, the AP reported. Some Russians rushed to buy plane tickets to flee the country.

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    Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay, not 9th

    CLAIM: When the Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took office, Florida ranked 26th in the nation for teacher pay. Today the state ranks 9th in teacher pay.

    THE FACTS: Florida most recently ranked 48th in the nation in average public school teacher pay and was ranked 47th when DeSantis took office, according to the National Education Association, which compiles the data annually. The Florida Republican Party misled social media users this month when it posted on its verified Twitter and Facebook accounts that the state was among the best in the nation for teacher pay. “When Governor DeSantis took office Florida ranked 26th in the nation for teacher pay, today we are 9th,” the party wrote. “Every year he fights to ensure Florida teachers get the support and funding they need.” However, national salary data contradicts those numbers. The National Center for Education Statistics and several other online sources for such data get their salary information from the NEA, the nation’s largest teacher’s union, which compiles most of its data from state education departments. NEA data shows that in the 2018-2019 school year, when DeSantis entered office, Florida ranked 47th in the nation for average public school teacher pay, giving teachers an average annual salary of $48,314. It ranked 48th in the 2020-2021 school year, giving teachers an average of $51,009. The state is estimated to continue to rank 48th for the 2021-2022 school year, according to Staci Maiers, an NEA spokesperson. The governor’s press office in a news release in March touted the 9th-in-the-nation ranking, but referred to starting salary, rather than average teacher salary. “In 2020, the average starting salary for a teacher in Florida was $40,000 (26th in the nation), and with today’s funding, it will now be at least $47,000 (9th in the nation),” the release said. Those numbers also aren’t an exact match for the NEA’s data, which show that in the 2019-2020 school year, Florida ranked 29th in the nation for average public school teacher starting salary, according to Maiers. Estimates for the 2020-2021 school year show Florida ranking 16th in the nation on this benchmark. And based on the data from that school year, which is the most recent data available, a $47,000 starting salary would place Florida at 11th in the nation, not 9th. Cassandra Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education, explained that the press release from March featured previous data from the NEA, which was later updated. She said Florida’s estimated starting salary for the 2022-2023 school year is more than $48,000 per year, which would rank 9th in the nation according to NEA data. The Florida Republican Party didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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

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

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

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    Harris comments on addressing climate inequity misrepresented

    CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris said that Hurricane Ian relief will be distributed based on race, with communities of color receiving aid first.

    THE FACTS: Speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum in Washington last week, Harris discussed distributing resources equitably to help vulnerable groups, such as communities of color, recover from disasters related to climate change. She did not describe the structure that would be used to allocate aid to victims of the recent hurricane. Widespread social media posts mischaracterized Harris’ comments during her conversation with actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas to claim she said communities of color would be prioritized in the distribution of relief for this storm. A Facebook video with a clip of Harris at the event on Sept. 29 alleged: “Kamala Harris tells hurricane victims in Florida they may not get aid because of their skin color?!” The video was viewed more than 211,000 times. The post refers to Harris’ response to a multipart question from Chopra Jonas in which she asked first about Hurricane Ian aid, and then, separately, about long-term efforts related to climate change. “Can you talk a little bit about the relief efforts, obviously, of Hurricane Ian and what the administration has been doing to address the climate crisis in the states?” Chopra Jonas asked, according to a full recording of the event. Chopra Jonas continued: “But — and just a little follow up, because this is important to me: We consider the global implications of emissions, right? The poorest countries are affected the most. They contributed the least and are affected the most. So how should voters in the U.S. feel about the administration’s long-term goals when it comes to being an international influencer on this topic?” Harris mentioned Hurricane Ian in passing, but did not talk about specific relief efforts the federal government would undertake. She instead referenced money allocated to address climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and spoke about what she believes needs to be done to address the effects of climate change broadly, including the equitable distribution of resources. Pivoting to address the second part of Chopra Jonas’ question related to addressing disparities, Harris continued: “But also what we need to do to help restore communities and build communities back up in a way that they can be resilient — not to mention, adapt — to these extreme conditions, which are part of the future.” Harris then elaborated: “In particular on the disparities, as you have described rightly, which is that it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” she said, adding: “We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work.” Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates told the AP that claims Harris announced in this response that Ian aid would be race-based are “inaccurate.” He said Harris was discussing long-term goals for addressing climate change, having “explicitly moved on to answering the second question.” FEMA Director of Public Affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg also told the AP that claims the process will be race-based are false, and that Hurricane Ian aid will be given to all those affected by the storm. “The Vice President was talking about a different issue at that time and her comments were focused on long term climate investments,” she wrote in an email.

    — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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    World Cup ‘rules’ graphic created by citizens group, not Qatari officials

    CLAIM: Qatar’s government created an infographic with instructions on how to behave during the 2022 World Cup, including rules that ban alcohol, homosexuality and dating.

    THE FACTS: The infographic being shared online ahead of the 2022 World Cup, which opens in Qatar next month, was not created or released by the government there, according to the state agency in charge of organizing the event. It was created by a Qatari citizens group and published on social media as part of a campaign called “Reflect Your Respect.” The graphic, shared on social media with claims that it listed official rules on how to behave in the Muslim-majority country during the event, states: “Qatar welcomes you! Reflect your respect to the religion and culture of Qatari people by avoiding these behaviors.” The poster cites eight specific examples, including “drinking alcohol, homosexuality, immodesty, profanity,” and not respecting places of worship. Playing loud music, dating and taking people’s pictures without permission are also noted. Images representing each of those areas are featured on the infographic and are covered by a circle with a slash through it. “Qatar’s rules for people who will attend the World Cup 2022 in the country,” a tweet with the infographic claimed. But the infographic does not reflect official policies from Qatar related to conduct during the World Cup, according to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, the state entity organizing the tournament. “The ‘Qatar Welcomes You’ graphic circulating on social media is not from an official source and contains factually incorrect information,” a committee spokesperson wrote in a statement to the AP. “We strongly urge fans and visitors to rely solely on official sources from tournament organisers for travel advice for this year’s FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.” Qatar is easing its stance on alcohol for the tournament. World Cup organizers have finalized a policy that would allow alcoholic beer to be served to fans inside stadiums and fan zones, the AP has reported. Qatari law calls for a prison sentence of one to three years for adults convicted of consensual gay or lesbian sex. Despite same-sex relationships being criminalized, the AP reported that Qatari officials insist that LGBTQ couples would be welcomed and accepted in Qatar for the World Cup, complying with FIFA rules promoting tolerance and inclusion. Still a senior leader overseeing security for the tournament told the AP earlier this year that rainbow flags may be taken away from fans to protect them from being attacked for promoting gay rights. Planners involved with Reflect Your Respect did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    ___

    No, COVID shots don’t change human DNA to a ‘triple helix’

    CLAIM: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines alter recipients’ DNA by changing its shape to a “triple helix.”

    THE FACTS: There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines are editing humans’ DNA, experts have told the AP. The false claim, which has been shared repeatedly on social media, has surfaced again, this time in posts that allege the mRNA shots change DNA to a “triple helix.” DNA is made of two linked strands that appear like a twisted ladder, referred to as a double helix. RNA is closely related to DNA, and one type, called messenger RNA or mRNA, sends instructions to the cell for different purposes. The mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccines helps train the body to recognize a protein from the coronavirus to trigger an immune response. In one TikTok video that also appeared on Instagram, a woman claims: “The magic potion, if you actually read the patents, it is adding a triple helix.” Another Instagram video claims that “this new technology they came out with introduces a third strand, through mRNA messaging technology it actually breaks a strand and puts in a third strand, which creates a triple helix.” But the videos distort the science, experts said. The video attempts to back up its assertion by showing language from a Moderna patent application published in 2014 that at one point states: “According to the present invention, the nucleic acids, modified RNA or primary construct may be administered with, or further encode one or more of RNAi agents, siRNAs, shRNAs, miRNAs, miRNA binding sites, antisense RNAs, ribozymes, catalytic DNA, tRNA, RNAs that induce triple helix formation, aptamers or vectors, and the like.” But Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told the AP the patent document was discussing RNA presenting as a triple helix, not changing humans’ DNA to a triple helix. “If you actually read the patent, it has nothing to do with forming a triple helix of the RNA therapeutic with the host DNA,” Kuritzkes said. It’s that the RNA molecule could theoretically form a triple helix, he said. For certain therapeutic applications, a triple helical RNA could be useful, he said. The patent was broad and not specific to Moderna’s eventual COVID-19 vaccine. “The messenger RNA from the vaccine does not form a triple helix, and it certainly doesn’t intercalate with the DNA to form a triple helix in any way,” Kuritzkes said. Experts emphasized that the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines is not transforming humans’ DNA. “There is no mechanism for them to alter anyone’s DNA,” said Emily Bruce, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Vermont. “It’s something that’s temporarily translated into protein and then the body gets rid of it.”

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

    ___

    Inflation is worse than it was a year ago, despite online claims

    CLAIM: New data shows that inflation has dropped to half of what it was a year ago, marking a win for President Joe Biden.

    THE FACTS: While inflation has slowed in recent months, the latest government estimates show that prices are still higher in August 2022 than they were in August 2021. As steep consumer price hikes continue to strain Americans’ budgets, a tweet downplaying the severity of recent inflation spread online. “BREAKING: New data has dropped that inflation has dropped to half of what it was a year ago,” read the tweet, which amassed more than 28,000 likes. ”That’s a Biden Win!” The tweet’s claim isn’t supported by data, economists told the AP. While the Consumer Price Index, a measure of change in consumer prices and a common metric of inflation published by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, was up just 0.1% in August from July, the index is still up 8.3% since August 2021. “There is no hard evidence of either inflation falling sharply on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, on a semi-annual basis, on a yearly basis, or announcement of any substantial revision of official statistics,” said Alessandro Rebucci, an associate professor of economics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did report that consumer prices increased 0.3% in August 2021 from July 2021, which is a higher monthly rate of change compared to the 0.1% monthly increase reported in August 2022. While the monthly change in consumer prices was lower in August 2022 than it was in August 2021, comparing those rates alone doesn’t accurately reflect how prices have changed during that 12-month timeframe, experts say. Lower gas prices slowed U.S. inflation for the second straight month in August, but most other prices kept rising, the AP reported. This jump in “core” prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, outpaced expectations and continues to pose a significant burden for U.S. households. “There’s still a fair amount of inflation embedded in the economy,” said Stephan Weiler, a professor of economics at Colorado State University, adding that Americans’ overall purchasing power has been reduced by 8.3%. The August CPI “basically means that things are getting more expensive,” said Yun Pei, an assistant professor of economics at the University at Buffalo. He characterized the idea that inflation has been halved over the last year as “clearly not true.”

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

    ___

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

    ___

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • Poll: Most in US say misinformation spurs extremism, hate

    Poll: Most in US say misinformation spurs extremism, hate

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    Americans from across the political spectrum say misinformation is increasing political extremism and hate crimes, according to a new poll that reflects broad and significant concerns about false and misleading claims ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

    About three-quarters of U.S. adults say misinformation is leading to more extreme political views and behaviors such as instances of violence based on race, religion or gender. That’s according to the poll from the Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    “We’re at a point now where the misinformation is so bad you can trust very little of what you read in the media or social media,” said 49-year-old Republican Brett Reffeitt of Indianapolis, who participated in the survey. “It’s all about getting clicks, not the truth, and it’s the extremes that get the attention.”

    The Pearson Institute/AP-NORC survey shows that regardless of political ideology, Americans agree misinformation is leaving a mark on the country.

    Overall, 91% of adults say the spread of misinformation is a problem, with 74% calling it a major problem. Only 8% say misinformation isn’t a problem at all.

    Big majorities of both parties — 80% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans — say misinformation increases extreme political views, according to the survey. Similarly, 85% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans say misinformation increases hate crimes, including violence motivated by gender, religion or race.

    Overall, 77% of respondents think misinformation increases hate crimes, while 73% say it increases extreme political views.

    “This is not a sustainable course,” said independent Rob Redding, 46, of New York City. Redding, who is Black, said he fears misinformation will spur more political polarization and violent hate crimes. “People are in such denial about how dangerous and divisive this situation is.”

    About half say they believe misinformation leads people to become more politically engaged.

    Roughly 7 in 10 Americans say they are at least somewhat concerned that they have been exposed to misinformation, though less than half said they are that worried that they were responsible for spreading it.

    That’s consistent with previous polls that have found people are more likely to blame others than accept responsibility for the spread of misinformation.

    Half of U.S. adults also believe misinformation reduces trust in government.

    “Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true,” said 74-year-old Shirley Hayden, a Republican from Orange, Texas. “A lot of it is opinions and a lot of it is just troublemaking. I don’t believe any of it anymore.”

    The poll finds that Americans who rate misinformation as a major problem are more likely to say it contributes to extreme political beliefs and distrust of government than those who do not. They’re also more likely to try to reduce the spread of misinformation by running claims by multiple sources or fact-checking websites.

    Overall, roughly three-quarters of adults say they have decided not to share something on social media at least some of the time because they didn’t want to spread misinformation, including about half who do that most of the time. Similar percentages regularly check the sources of news they encounter and check other sources of information to ensure they’re not encountering misinformation.

    Only 28% of Americans consult fact-checking sites or tools “most of the time,” though an additional 35% do some of the time. About a third say they do so hardly ever or never.

    “My Facebook page is loaded with this stuff. I see it on TV. I see it everywhere,” 63-year-old Democrat Charles Lopez from the Florida Keys said of the misinformation he encounters. “Nobody does the research to find out if anything is fake or not.”

    Whether it’s lies about the 2020 election or the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, COVID-19 conspiracy theories or disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, online misinformation has been blamed for increased political polarization, distrust of institutions and even real-world violence.

    The spread of misinformation in recent decades has coincided with the rise of social media and declines in traditional, often local journalism outlets.

    The results of the Pearson Institute/AP-NORC poll didn’t surprise Alex Mahadevan, director of MediaWise, a media literacy initiative launched by the Poynter Institute that works to equip individuals with defenses in the fight against misinformation.

    “You have uncertainty, polarization, the decline of local news: it’s a perfect storm that’s created a flood of misinformation,” Mahadevan said.

    People can teach themselves how to spot misinformation and avoid falling for dubious claims, according to Helen Lee Bouygues, founder and president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation, which researches and promotes critical thinking in the internet age.

    First, rely on a variety of trusted, established sources for news and fact checks, Bouygues said.

    She also encouraged people to double-check claims that seem designed to play on emotions like anger or fear, and to think twice about reposting content that relies on loaded language, personal attacks or false comparisons.

    “There are steps people can take — simple steps — to protect themselves,” Bouygues said.

    Lopez, the survey respondent from Florida, said he has lost friends after pushing back on misinformation they posted online and that new laws are needed to force tech companies to do more to address misinformation. Maybe that will happen, he said, if voters can pierce the fog of misinformation ahead of next month’s election.

    “You can always have hope,” Lopez said. “We’ll see what happens after this election. You may want to call me back then.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Nuha Dolby in New York contributed to this report.

    ___

    The poll of 1,003 adults was conducted Sep. 9-12 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

    Learn more about the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at www.apnorc.org.

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  • Police: Missing Georgia toddler believed dead, mom a suspect

    Police: Missing Georgia toddler believed dead, mom a suspect

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    A Georgia toddler reported missing by his mother last week is believed to be dead, according to police, and his mother has been named a suspect in the boy’s death

    SAVANNAH, Ga. — A Georgia toddler reported missing by his mother last week is believed to be dead, according to police, and his mother has been named a suspect in the boy’s death.

    In a tweet late Wednesday, the Chatham County Police Department said, “We are saddened to report that CCPD and the FBI have notified Quinton Simon’s family that we believe he is deceased. We have named his mother, Leilani Simon, as the prime suspect in his disappearance and death.”

    No arrests have been made and no charges have been filed, the tweet said.

    Simon told officers on Oct. 5 that her 20-month-old son Quinton had been in his playpen before she discovered he was missing, Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley said then.

    Police fanned out across a neighborhood just outside Savannah to search for the toddler, described as last seen wearing a Sesame Street T-shirt and black pants. Hours later he still had not been found.

    “We’re very concerned about Quinton,” Hadley told reporters at the time. “We’re hoping we can find him safe and bring him home to his parents.”

    The police chief said officers had contacted the boy’s biological father and did not believe he was involved. Officers also performed a cursory search of the child’s home but didn’t find him hiding inside, he added.

    No Amber Alert was issued for the missing boy, Hadley said, because that would require police to first determine the child had been abducted.

    Hadley will hold a news conference Thursday to discuss the case.

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  • NBC reporter’s comment about Fetterman draws criticism

    NBC reporter’s comment about Fetterman draws criticism

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    NEW YORK — An NBC News correspondent who interviewed Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman says an on-air remark she made about him having difficulty following part of their conversation should not be seen as a commentary on his fitness for office after he suffered a stroke.

    But reporter Dasha Burns’ comment that Fetterman appeared to have trouble understanding small talk prior to their interview has attracted attention — and Republicans have retweeted it as they seek an advantage in the closely followed Senate race between Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz.

    Fetterman, a Democrat, suffered a stroke on May 13, and his health has emerged as a major issue in the campaign.

    Burns’ Friday interview with Fetterman, which aired Tuesday, was his first on-camera interview since his stroke. He used a closed-captioning device that printed text of Burns’ questions on a computer screen in front of him.

    Fetterman appeared to have little trouble answering the questions after he read them, although NBC showed him fumbling for the word “empathetic.” Burns said that when the captioning device was off, “it wasn’t clear he was understanding our conversation.”

    “This is just nonsense,” business reporter and podcaster Kara Swisher, who had a stroke herself in 2011, said on Twitter. “Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk.”

    Swisher recently conducted an interview with Fetterman for her podcast and said, “I was really quite impressed with how well he’s doing. Everyone can judge for themselves.” Swisher has called attacks on Fetterman because of his health “appalling.”

    A New York magazine reporter, Rebecca Traister, who interviewed the candidate for a cover story titled “The Vulnerability of John Fetterman,” tweeted that his “comprehension is not at all impaired. He understands everything. It’s just that he reads it and responds in real time … It’s a hearing/auditory challenge.”

    Burns said she understands that different reporters had different experiences with Fetterman.

    “Our reporting did not and should not comment on fitness for office,” Burns tweeted on Wednesday. “This is for voters to decide. What we push for as reporters is transparency. It’s our job.”

    Stories about the interview aired on “NBC Nightly News” and the “Today” show.

    Fetterman, 53, has been silent about releasing medical records or allowing reporters to question his doctors. He’s been receiving speech therapy and released a letter in June from his cardiologist, who said he will be fine and able to serve in the Senate if he eats healthy foods, takes prescribed medication and exercises.

    Problems with understanding and using language are common in recovering stroke victims, said Kevin Sheth, director of the Yale University Center for Brain and Mind Health. Some completely recover, some have continued impairments, he said.

    “There is an arc to the trajectory of recovery that varies from person to person,” Sheth said.

    But he cautioned that, without an examination, people should not make judgments about Fetterman’s condition based on his use of a language-assistance device.

    Burns’ statement about Fetterman has already been tweeted by political opponents, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee.

    The conservative website Townhall.com tweeted Burns’ quote, without making clear she had been referring to small talk and not the interview itself.

    Doug Andres, press secretary for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, tweeted that it was weird to see liberals attack a reporter for doing her job.

    “It’s almost like that whole thing about respecting and trusting the media is only true when it’s convenient for them,” he wrote.

    Swisher said in her podcast that her mother, a Pennsylvania resident, told her she didn’t think Fetterman should be in the U.S. Senate after suffering a stroke — even though her own daughter had recovered from one.

    Swisher said producers of the podcast refrained from cleaning up Fetterman’s interview — such as removing extraneous phrases like “um” or “you know” — so listeners could get an unvarnished view of how Fetterman responded to questions.

    In the podcast, Fetterman had little trouble with the word “empathy.”

    “Listen to the interview,” Swisher tweeted this week. “Even my rabidly GOP mother had to admit she was wrong.”

    ———

    Associated Press correspondent Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

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  • Why Thinking in the Short Term Will Help You in the Long Term

    Why Thinking in the Short Term Will Help You in the Long Term

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When starting a company of any sort, one of the most important things a new owner can do is set up a direction for the future. Strategy is the guiding factor to maintaining a competitive edge.

    To build a game plan, you have to take a step back and assess where the business is at the moment and where you want it to be in the future. This sets up a long-term goal that you eventually want to achieve in the near future. That can be anything from growing the company with more employees, filling a certain number of orders by the end of a specific time frame, increasing sales or growing the revenue stream. These long-term goals are aims that can take a while to achieve.

    Related: How This Shipping Startup Rocketed to Unicornhood

    Reaching the bigger goals in a quicker time

    Short-term goals are almost like checkpoints you aim to hit along the way to your desired result. By evaluating the business and being able to weed out the important tasks from the non-important ones, your game plan becomes a lot more focused but also a lot smarter. This also prevents you or your employees from wasting hours working on a project that may seem important but does not really contribute to the bigger picture. Those efforts can be put in somewhere else that has a long-term effect.

    The way you believe you will achieve success is based on an evaluation of the company. You are choosing the direction the company is going in and the way it’s implemented. However, like any plan, along the way, things will change including the long-term ideals. Outside forces like the government, competitors, environmental forces, or any unforeseen circumstance can completely change the trajectory of your business at any given time. New methods and efficiencies may also change the plan overall, causing your company to shift into new directions to achieve a new long-term goal.

    Related: 3 Books to Help Entrepreneurs Generate Winning Employee Cultures

    Learning from the pandemic

    COVID-19 was an unanticipated force that either forced businesses to adjust, shift into new markets or shut down completely. The restaurant industry specifically suffered since its entire model is based on hospitality and interacting face-to-face with its customers. Not being able to seat people and serve food took many eateries out of business regardless of how reputable they were. On the other hand, some shifted their efforts completely and started doing takeout service to stay afloat. Some establishments got creative and started setting up tables on the street where people could stand, drink and eat as restrictions eased up. This even helped many restaurants permanently add outdoor dining options to their seating, adding more opportunities to seat patrons despite the strict guidelines.

    If your business is operating without any goal or direction, what is its purpose? The hopes of generating more profit and revenues, growing larger or becoming more affluent can only really be achieved with a game plan in mind. It’s ever-changing and always essential to every business.

    Related: The Future of Customer Loyalty

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    Erica Dushey Sarway

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  • Elon Musk’s unsolicited idea for Taiwan welcomed by Beijing, slammed in Taipei | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s unsolicited idea for Taiwan welcomed by Beijing, slammed in Taipei | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN Business
     — 

    As tensions between China and Taiwan simmer at their highest point in decades, officials in both places have clashed in recent days over an unsolicited idea from billionaire Elon Musk.

    The world’s richest man suggested in an interview that hostilities between the two could be resolved if Taipei handed some control of the democratically governed island to Beijing, prompting praise from China and predictable outrage in Taiwan.

    “My recommendation … would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy,” Musk told the Financial Times in an interview published on Friday. “And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

    China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, thanked Musk for his suggestion in a tweet Saturday, calling for “peaceful unification and one country, two systems.”

    But Taiwan’s representative to the US, Bi-khim Hsiao, wrote: “Taiwan sells many products, but our freedom and democracy are not for sale.”

    China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite having never governed it, and has long vowed to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary. Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million people, strongly objects to Beijing’s claims to the island.

    Beijing has offered Taiwan a “one country, two systems” system of governance, similar to Hong Kong, but that has been rejected by all of the island’s mainstream political parties and the proposal has received very little public support.

    In a briefing on October 7, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the “Taiwan question is China’s internal affair.”

    “China’s position on resolving the Taiwan question is consistent and clear. We remain committed to the basic principle of peaceful reunification and ‘one country, two systems,’” she said. “At the same time, we will resolutely defeat attempts to pursue the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist agenda, push back interference by external forces, and safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

    Wang Ting-yu, a senior lawmaker for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, slammed Musk in a Facebook post on Saturday. “Musk’s solution is all about victim concessions,” he said.

    Musk’s comments about Taiwan come days after he angered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for tweeting a “peace” plan between Russia and Ukraine, proposing that Kyiv permanently cede Crimea to Moscow and hold new referendums in regions annexed by Russia – this time under the supervision of the United Nations.

    “Which Elon Musk do you like more?” Zelensky asked his Twitter followers, using the social media platform’s poll function.

    “One who supports Ukraine,” or “One who supports Russia.”

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  • Elon Musk’s deposition in Twitter dispute postponed amid revived talks to complete acquisition | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s deposition in Twitter dispute postponed amid revived talks to complete acquisition | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Lawyers for Elon Musk and Twitter have agreed to postpone the Tesla CEO’s deposition in the court fight over their $44 billion acquisition agreement, a source familiar with the negotiations told CNN. The decision comes as the two sides renew negotiations to complete the deal.

    Musk’s deposition had been set to begin Thursday, per a notice filed earlier this week.

    The two sides are in the midst of negotiations over how to proceed with the deal after Musk on Monday sent a letter proposing to complete the acquisition on the originally agreed upon terms. In the letter, Musk said his offer to proceed was contingent on staying the litigation proceedings over his initial effort to pull out of the deal and adjourning the trial that is set to begin in less than two weeks.

    As of Wednesday, the two sides had yet to reach a deal, a separate source told CNN. Delaware Chancery Court chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the judge who is overseeing the litigation, said in a Wednesday court filing that neither side had filed to stay the proceedings and she was continuing to prepare for trial to begin on Oct. 17.

    On Thursday, McCormick filed a letter to both sides laying out deadlines for responding to discovery motions, noting that the “trial is fast approaching.”

    Legal experts have said that Twitter

    (TWTR)     may want to continue the litigation process as a way to keep pressure on Musk until the acquisition is completed. But the postponement of Musk’s deposition may be a sign that the two sides are nearing an agreement, some legal experts say.

    It’s not clear whether a new date has been set for Musk’s deposition, but Twitter could end up pushing to complete it early next week if a deal is not reached.

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  • TikTok going big on US e-commerce? Job listings offer clues

    TikTok going big on US e-commerce? Job listings offer clues

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    NEW YORK — TikTok appears to be deepening its foray into e-commerce with plans to operate its own U.S. warehouses, the kind of packing and shipping facilities more associated with Amazon or Walmart than the social media platform best known for addictive short videos.

    In the past two weeks, TikTok has posted several job listings on LinkedIn looking for candidates to help it develop and grow its “Fulfillment by TikTok Shop” in the U.S. to accommodate sellers using the app. According to the listings, TikTok plans to provide warehousing, delivery and item return options to sellers.

    A company spokesperson declined to comment on TikTok’s e-commerce plans in the U.S.

    But the U.S. job listings offer a window into a possible U.S. e-commerce expansion. In some listings, TikTok says it is looking for a candidate who can manage a free return program, plan how to move inventory from one warehouse or business to another, and develop its fulfillment service in the U.S. In another listing for a position in Seattle, the company refers to a global e-commerce team and a team member who will be responsible for building a global warehousing network, signaling its plans could be much larger.

    “The e-commerce industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and has become a hotly contested space amongst leading Internet companies, and its future growth cannot be underestimated,” the company wrote in the job listings. “With millions of loyal users globally, we believe TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better e-commerce experience to our users.”

    Axios first reported on the job postings.

    Shopping on social media sites, known as social commerce, is a $37 billion market in the U.S., led by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, according to Insider Intelligence. ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns TikTok, already runs a thriving social media marketplace on Douyin, its twin video app for the Chinese market. The TikTok spokesperson said the company is focused on “providing merchants with a range of product features and delivery options” in places it currently has e-commerce programs, such as Southeast Asia and the United Kingdom.

    Insider Intelligence projects about 23.7 million U.S. shoppers are expected to make at least one purchase through TikTok this year by using affiliated links or conducting a transaction on the platform itself.

    Some of those sales are already having an effect. Communities such as #BookTok, a corner of TikTok devoted to literature and reading, has been credited with driving a spike in the sales of print romance books this year. To accommodate more purchases on its app, TikTok said last summer it would partner with the Canadian e-commerce company Shopify to allow users to buy items directly on the app.

    TikTok has been intensifying competition with Meta and other rivals, luring younger users — as well as popular influencers — from YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. The site’s bite-sized, entertaining clips are served up by an algorithm that often seems to know what people want before they do.

    The results are difficult to ignore. In July, Meta posted its first revenue decline in history, due in part to competition from TikTok. YouTube, meanwhile, recently said it would make the creators of short-form videos eligible to join its revenue-sharing program. Previously, YouTube only allowed revenue sharing for longer videos.

    Compared to digital advertising, ecommerce is a tiny source of revenue for Meta, and will likely be for TikTok for the foreseeable future. At the same time, TikTok executives are likely looking to broaden the company’s revenue sources beyond ads — a market dominated in the U.S. by Meta and Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google.

    Neil Saunders, managing director for GlobalData Retail, said TikTok’s reach and influence are helping it become a powerful force in advertising and sales and building out that capability with warehouses and other facilities would enable it to offer a complete service.

    “This would both be an additional revenue stream and would improve the quality of the shopping experience for consumers,” Saunders said. But a serious move into warehousing would be an expensive undertaking, and TikTok would face established competitors in the likes of Amazon and Walmart.

    “However, TikTok has a massive audience and a massive customer base, so it has more than enough demand for this to make sense,” Saunders said. “Provided TikTok maintains its popularity it could pose a threat to incumbents and prove to be a highly disruptive force.”

    Others are taking a different tone.

    “It’s idiotic,” said Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. “They have no chance of competing and it is a complete waste of money and time.”

    ——————

    Associated Press writer Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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  • Uvalde school superintendent announces retirement

    Uvalde school superintendent announces retirement

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    UVALDE, Texas — The superintendent of the Texas school district where a gunman killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers last May announced his retirement Monday, according to his wife’s Facebook page.

    In the statement posted to Donna Goates Harrell’s Facebook page, Uvalde school Superintendent Hal Harrell said he would remain in office throughout this school year until the school board hires his successor.

    After an executive session, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District board unanimously voted Monday night to begin a search immediately for Harrell’s successor.

    The Facebook posting was first reported by CNN. The superintendent asked his wife “to post this message since he doesn’t have Facebook.”

    Harrell, the Uvalde school board and other school district officials have faced heavy criticism over the May 24 Robb Elementary School massacre in which officers allowed a shooter with an AR-15-style rifle to remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than 70 minutes.

    “My heart was broken on May 24th and I will always pray for each precious life that was tragically taken and their families,” the Facebook post said.

    “My wife and I love you all and this community that we both grew up in, therefore this decision was a difficult one for us. I have been blessed to work among amazing educators and staff who believe in education for more than 30 years, which have all been in our beautiful community. These next steps for our future are being taken after much reflection, and is completely my choice,” Harrell said in the post.

    “I am truly grateful for your support and well wishes,” Harrell said.

    The announcement came a week after Uvalde school district officials suspended the entire school district police force. That move came a day after the district fired a former state trooper after she was revealed to have not only been on the Robb Elementary School campus during the May attack as a Texas state trooper but was also under investigation over her actions that day.

    That the developments all came one month into the new school year in the South Texas community underscores the sustained pressure that families of some of the 19 children and two teachers killed earlier this year have kept on the district.

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  • Elon Musk commissioned this bot analysis in his fight with Twitter. Now it shows what he could face if he takes over the platform | CNN Business

    Elon Musk commissioned this bot analysis in his fight with Twitter. Now it shows what he could face if he takes over the platform | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Spam and fake accounts are more prevalent on Twitter than on comparable social platforms, according to a data analysis firm hired by Elon Musk as part of his legal battle with Twitter.

    The claim by Cyabra — in the company’s first public interview since conducting a study commissioned by Musk that found spam and bot accounts make up an estimated 11% of Twitter’s total user base — highlights the headache that may await Musk now that he appears ready to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

    Cyabra CEO Dan Brahmy told CNN last week that in addition to studying Twitter

    (TWTR)    , his company has done similar assessments of the company’s rivals — although he declined to name any specific platforms — and that the fake-account problem appears to be comparatively worse for Twitter

    (TWTR)     than its peers. Using a machine-learning algorithm that analyzes “hundreds” of parameters, he said, Cyabra provides estimates of whether certain online accounts and content are authentic.

    “We have a number for all the social media platforms, because that’s our job,” he said, adding that Cyabra’s estimate for Twitter is “definitely not in the low end” relative to its competitors (although the company had more access to data about Twitter when it conducted its analysis for Musk).

    Bots on Twitter have been central to the dispute over Musk’s initial attempt to get out of the acquisition deal. Less than three months after signing the deal, and waiving due diligence in the process, Musk moved to terminate the agreement, citing claims that Twitter had misstated the number of bots on its platform, despite having previously said that he wanted to buy the company to address its bot problem.

    Twitter has for years said that bots make up less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU). In a series of tweets in May, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal acknowledged that “spam harms the experience for real people on Twitter,” and added that, “as such, we are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day.”

    Twitter sued Musk to complete the deal, accusing him of using bots as a pretext to exit the deal after getting buyer’s remorse, and the deal was set to go to trial later this month. But last week, Musk told Twitter he is now ready to move ahead with the deal at the original price, and the judge overseeing the case gave the two sides until Oct. 28 to close the deal or face trial.

    The dispute over the true number of fake accounts on Twitter — and how to accurately calculate it — has also shone a spotlight on the small army of data scientists, artificial intelligence experts and misinformation researchers both within and outside tech companies who spend their days hunting for patterns or anomalies that can uncover whether a given account, or a network of accounts, represents a living, breathing human being or, potentially, automated accounts or bad actors aiming to spread covert influence, false information or spam.

    With Musk and Twitter now expected to close the acquisition deal, the public may never get a close look at the evidence each side gathered on the issue or a court ruling on Musk’s claims that bots are more pervasive on the platform than it has let on. But Cyabra is coming forward now, Brahmy said, after the company’s work for Musk’s team was revealed in court filings and hearings in the acquisition dispute. The Israel-based company has roughly 40 employees and counts the US State Department and various consumer brands as customers of its digital authenticity measurement tools, he said. Among its investors is the Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund.

    Many practitioners in the field caution that estimating spam or fake accounts can be an extremely subjective exercise, and that anyone claiming to have a definite number likely doesn’t grasp the complexity of the issue. Even the creator of Botometer, another service Musk used to estimate of the number of bots on Twitter, has emphasized the challenges behind defining the term “bot” and cautioned that context, intent and even the way an account is managed can complicate matters. There are also good bots designed to share information or entertaining content that are allowed on Twitter and many of which transparently self-identify as automated on the platform.

    In the interview last week prior to the revived deal talks, Brahmy acknowledged there are clear limits to his company’s use of machine learning algorithms to determine whether accounts may be authentic, which is why his firm’s report about Twitter expresses a maximum confidence level of about 80%. The company’s algorithms would likely flag Brahmy’s own grandmother as a suspicious account holder, he said, given her propensity to whiplash randomly from topic to topic and to post at unusual hours with numerous grammatical mistakes.

    Twitter declined to comment for this story.

    Twitter lawyers in a hearing earlier this month said that neither Cyabra’s analysis, nor an analysis Musk commissioned by another firm that estimated with 90% confidence that bots make up 5.3% of the platform’s user base, support Musk’s claim in his deal termination letter that the amount of spam is “wildly higher than the Twitter estimate” of less than 5% of mDAU.

    Cyabra first made waves in May, after Musk’s deal was first announced. Using publicly available data, the company claimed at the time that spam and bot accounts represented 13.7% of accounts on Twitter. Soon thereafter, the company was hired by Musk’s team to perform a second analysis, this time based on the “firehose” of data that Twitter had provided directly to the Tesla CEO, according to Brahmy.

    That second analysis, which has since been referenced in court filings, concluded with roughly 80% confidence that spam and bot accounts represent 11% of Twitter’s total user base. The finding offers a look at the hurdle Musk may face if he takes over Twitter after previously saying he wanted to “defeat the spam bots or die trying.”

    “The request was precise: Spam and bot accounts, tell us the number, tell us the methodologies and tell us the confidence level,” Brahmy said. Brahmy said Cyabra did not work with the other data analysis firms used by Musk’s team, and he declined to discuss whether or how much Cyabra was paid to perform the commissioned analysis.

    The finding can’t be compared directly to Twitter’s own estimate that fake and spam accounts comprise less than 5% of mDAU — Brahmy said Cyabra was unable to make an estimate of the prevalence of bots as a percentage of mDAU rather than total Twitter users. He declined to elaborate on why, but it may be due to the fact that Twitter’s firehose of data used to conduct the analysis does not show which accounts are or aren’t considered mDAU and only shows those accounts that actively tweet rather than those who, for example, only use the platform to read tweets.

    (For its part, Twitter’s disclosures about spam and fake accounts note that its calculation relies on “significant judgment” and the company has not made claims about how the prevalence of such accounts on its platform compares to competitors.)

    Factors built into Cyabra’s algorithm used to measure how likely an account is to be fake or spam include the members in that account’s social network and where they’re located; what the account talks about, how frequently and at what hours; whether the account uses one or multiple languages and how fluently it uses those languages; and the type of engagement the account’s content tends to generate, among many others.

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  • The econ Nobel offers a timely warning about central banks’ power | CNN Business

    The econ Nobel offers a timely warning about central banks’ power | CNN Business

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    This story is part of CNN Business’ Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free, here.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    The Nobel in economics is sort of the step-cousin of the Nobel family.

    It came about nearly 70 years after its literature and sciences counterparts, in 1969, and is technically called the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences.” It is awarded by the Swedish central bank, in honor of the namesake renaissance man Alfred Nobel who established the prizes.

    Some scholars really dislike the economics prize, including one of Nobel’s own descendants, who dismissed it as a “PR coup by economists.”

    But hey, it still comes with a cash prize. And it’s also pretty useful in reminding the world that economics as an academic field is, frankly, a barely understood hodge-podge of studies that is constantly evolving and so variable it’s almost useless outside of academia. (And I mean that with the utmost respect to economists, who, not unlike journalists, knew what they were doing when they chose their life of suffering.)

    Here’s the thing: Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman who guided the US economy through the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, was awarded the Nobel in economics along with two other economists, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig. (Congrats to all the winners, with apologies to Doug and Phil, who will forever be referred to in headlines about the Nobel as “and two other economists.”)

    Bernanke, who previously taught at Princeton and earned his Ph.D from MIT, received the award for his research on the Great Depression. In short, his work demonstrates that banks’ failures are often a cause, not merely a consequence, of financial crises.

    That was groundbreaking when he published it in 1983. Today, it’s conventional wisdom.

    WHY IT MATTERS

    The timing is everything here. The Nobel committee has been known to play politics (see: that time Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after being in office for just eight months). And right now, it is using its spotlight to call attention to the high-stakes gamble playing out at central banks around the world, most notably the Fed.

    The rapid run-up in interest rates, led by the US central bank, is causing markets around the world to go haywire. And it’s especially bad news for emerging economies.

    Monetary tightening — especially when it is aggressive and synchronized across major economies — could inflict worse damage globally than the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic, a United Nations agency warned earlier this month. It called the Fed’s policy “imprudent gamble” with the lives of those less fortunate.

    LESSONS FROM HISTORY

    On Monday, Diamond, one of the three newly minted Nobel laureates, acknowledged that the rate moves around the world were causing market instability.

    But he believes the system is more resilient than it used to be because of hard lessons learned from the 2008 crash, my colleague Julia Horowitz reports.

    “Recent memories of that crisis and improvements in regulatory policies around the world have left the system much, much less vulnerable,” Diamond said.

    Let’s hope he’s right.

    Oh hey, speaking of the Fed inflicting pain: We’re about to see big job losses, according to Bank of America.

    Under the rate hikes imposed by Jay Powell & Co, the US economy could see job growth cut in half during the fourth quarter of this year. Early next year, the bank expects to see losses of about 175,000 jobs a month.

    The litigation between Elon Musk and Twitter is officially on hold. The two sides now have until October 28 to work out a deal or once again gear up for a courtroom battle.

    The big question now is all about the money.

    Here’s the deal: Not even the world’s richest person has this kind of cash just lying around. Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, which he can’t easily offload for a whole bunch of reasons. He needs to borrow the money, which means he’s got to get banks to pony up.

    By most accounts, he’ll be able to make it happen. But the Twitter deal is a harder pitch to make now than it was back in April, when Musk said he’d lined up more than $46 billion in financing, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions, my colleague Clare Duffy writes.

    Musk has spent the past several months trashing Twitter as he sought to renege on his offer. Meanwhile, tech stocks have been hammered, ad revenues are declining, and the global economy has inched closer to a recession, sapping investor appetite for risk.

    Musk’s legal team said last week the banks that had committed debt financing previously were “working cooperatively to fund the close.”

    Twitter is, understandably, skeptical, given the many curve balls Musk has thrown at them since he got involved with the company earlier this year. The company raised concerns last week that a representative for one of the banks testified that Musk had not yet sent a borrowing notice and “has not otherwise communicated to them that he intends to close the transaction, let alone on any particular timeline.”

    What’s Musk’s endgame?

    No one knows, perhaps least of all Musk. But many legal experts following the case say Musk understood he’d likely lose at trial and then be forced to buy Twitter anyway. He’d rather buy the entire company than be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers and do further damage to Twitter in a trial.

    And the banks may not be able to walk away even if they want to.

    “The only way they could get out of it is to claim a material adverse effect and that Twitter has changed so much since they agreed to the deal that they no longer want to finance the deal,” said George Geis, professor of strategy at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

    Even if the banks succeeded there, Musk may not be off the hook. The judge in the case could rule that Musk was at fault for the financing falling through — not a far-fetched notion after all the trash-talking — and order him to sue Morgan Stanley to provide the funds or close the deal without it.

    Bottom line, it seems like Musk will end up owning Twitter one way or another. And given his only vague musings about what he’d actually do with it, there are a whole host of unknowns lurking in Twitter’s future.

    Enjoying Nightcap? Sign up and you’ll get all of this, plus some other funny stuff we liked on the internet, in your inbox every night. (OK, most nights — we believe in a four-day work week around here.)

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  • Twitter, Instagram block Kanye West over anti-Semitic posts

    Twitter, Instagram block Kanye West over anti-Semitic posts

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    Kanye West once suggested slavery was a choice. He called the COVID-19 vaccine “the mark of the beast”. Earlier this month, he was criticised for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

    Now the rapper who is legally known as Ye is again embroiled in controversy — locked out of Twitter and Instagram over anti-Semitic posts the social networks said Sunday violated their policies. In one post on Twitter, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”, according to internet archive records, making an apparent reference to the United States defence-readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

    “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” he said in the same tweet posted late Saturday, which was removed by Twitter.

    The comment drew a sharp rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, which called the tweet “deeply troubling, dangerous, and antisemitic, period”.

    “There is no excuse for his propagating of white supremacist slogans and classic antisemitism about Jewish power, especially with the platform he has,” a statement said.

    Representatives for Ye did not return requests for comment.

    Ye has alienated even ardent fans in recent years, teasing and long tinkering with albums that have not been met with the critical or commercial success of his earlier recordings. Those close to him, like ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, have ceased publicly defending him after the couple’s bitter divorce and his unsettling posts about her recent relationship with comedian Pete Davidson.

    But the social media lockouts cap a whirlwind week for Ye, even by his standards. On October 3 he wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt while debuting his latest fashion line in Paris, prompting harsh criticism. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, White Lives Matter is a neo-Nazi group.

    Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs posted a video on Instagram saying he did not support the shirt and urged people not to buy it. On Instagram, Ye posted a screenshot of a text conversation with Diddy and suggested he was controlled by Jewish people, according to media reports.

    Adidas said Thursday it was placing its lucrative sneaker deal with Ye under review. And on Saturday, Instagram locked out posts by the rapper-entrepreneur over content violations. His Twitter account was locked Sunday, just a day after he returned to the platform following a nearly two-year hiatus — and was welcomed back by Elon Musk.

    “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend,” posted Musk, who last week renewed his $44bn offer to buy Twitter following a months-long legal battle with the company. The billionaire and Tesla CEO has said he would remake Twitter into a free speech haven and relax restrictions, although it is impossible to know precisely how he would run the influential network if he were to take over.

    The social media policies for Twitter and Instagram prohibit posting offensive language.

    Ye’s Twitter account is still active but he cannot post until the lockout ends. Sanctions by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, may include temporary restrictions on posting, commenting or sending direct messages. Such muzzles can last as little as 12 hours or for days, depending on how serious the violation was or how many other times the account broke the rules.

    While a step below a full account suspension, enough of these restrictions can eventually lead to a person being kicked off the social media platforms — temporarily or, in rare circumstances, permanently.

    As of Monday afternoon, neither account had posted anything, indicating Ye is still restricted. Neither Twitter nor Meta would say how long they will restrict Ye’s accounts, or how close he might be to becoming suspended or even permanently booted.

    Controversial years

    Ye has earned a reputation less for his music and more for stirring up controversy since 2016 when he was hospitalised in Los Angeles because of what his team called stress and exhaustion. It was later revealed he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

    That year, he ended a show in Sacramento, California, after just four songs but not before a 10-minute tirade about Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, the radio and MTV. West soon decided to scrap the entire tour.

    Since then he has regularly made headlines: Running for president, continuing his feud with Taylor Swift, causing an uproar when he suggested slavery was a choice, publicly defending R Kelly, and once inviting Marilyn Manson and DaBaby on stage with him as they faced sexual assault and anti-gay allegations, respectively.

    Ye’s involvement aside, social media restrictions like this incident have been largely routine for the platforms. Twitter took action on nearly 4.3 million accounts between July and December of 2021, according to the latest available data from a transparency report it publishes twice a year. About 1.3 million accounts were suspended in the same period.

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  • How Elon Musk could change Twitter | CNN Business

    How Elon Musk could change Twitter | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Nearly three months after Elon Musk told Twitter he wanted out of his $44 billion agreement to buy the social media company, the Tesla CEO now once again wants to move forward with the deal.

    The reversal, if finalized, not only has the potential to create upheaval for Twitter employees but also for the hundreds of millions of people around the world who use the platform daily.

    In the first weeks after agreeing to buy the company in April, and before his move to bail on the deal, Musk repeatedly stressed that his goal was to bolster “free speech” on the platform and work to “unlock” Twitter’s “extraordinary potential.” He suggested he would rethink Twitter’s approach to content moderation and permanent bans on the platform, with potential impacts on civil discourse and the political landscape. He also talked about his desire to rid the platform of bots, even as he later made the number of bots central to his argument to abandon the deal.

    In private and public statements over the past six months, Musk has tossed out a wide range of other possible changes for the platform, from enabling end-to-end encryption for Twitter’s direct messaging feature to suggesting this week that Twitter become part of an “everything” app called x, possibly in the style of popular Chinese app WeChat.

    There have been more far-fetched suggestions, too. In one text exchange with his brother Kimbal Musk, revealed last week in court documents, the two appeared to discuss the possibility of asking users to pay for each tweet they post with small amounts of the cryptocurrency DogeCoin.

    Perhaps the biggest immediate impact if the deal goes through: Musk has indicated that he would restore former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform, which could be a huge advantage if Trump decides to make another bid for the White House in 2024.

    Now, with a deal that has long been in doubt appearing to be closer than ever to completion, some of those theoretical changes could soon become reality.

    Here’s what users should know:

    For years under former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, Twitter emphasized its work to bolster “healthy conversations.” The company banned many accounts promoting abuse and spam, added labels for false or misleading information and banned the misgendering of transgender people.

    Under Musk’s ownership, Twitter could unwind steps taken to make the platform more palatable for its most vulnerable users, typically women, members of the LGBTQ community and people of color, according to safety experts.

    Musk has said Twitter, under his leadership, would have more lenient content moderation policies. “If in doubt, let the speech exist,” Musk said in one on-stage interview in April. “If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”

    Musk has also said he wants to make Twitter’s algorithm open source and make it more transparent to users when, for example, a tweet has been emphasized or demoted in their feed. (Leaders at Twitter have previously expressed support for moving in that direction, and the company often makes clear when it is demoting certain tweets or types of content.)

    But the most striking early change could come from who is and is not allowed on a Musk-owned Twitter.

    Musk has said he thinks Twitter should be more “reluctant to delete things” and “very cautious with permanent bans.” That could mean a long list of controversial far right figures and conspiracy theorists, among others, soon find their way back on the platform.

    Musk, for his part, has focused on bringing back one of Twitter’s most prominent former users: Trump.

    “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said in May. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … But my opinion, and Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear, shares this opinion, is that we should not have perma-bans.”

    Dorsey tweeted following Musk’s May remarks that he does “agree” there shouldn’t be permanent bans on Twitter users. “There are exceptions … but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work,” he said.

    Trump has said he does not want to rejoin Twitter and will instead remain on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

    But if Trump were to accept a Musk offer to return to Twitter, it could restore a significant following he hasn’t had since being banned from the platform in January 2021, just as the 2024 US Presidential race ramps up. On Truth Social, Trump has only 4 million followers; on Twitter, he reached an audience of more than 88 million followers.

    Another notable change is simply who may be making these sensitive decisions.

    Musk has a mixed reputation in the tech industry. He is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious and successful innovators and entrepreneurs of this era, but he is also someone who has courted controversy, often from his own Twitter profile, where he has more than 100 million followers.

    Over the years, Musk has used Twitter to make misleading claims about the Covid-19 pandemic, to make a baseless accusation that a man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand is a sexual predator, to mock people who display their gender pronouns on the platform and to make countless jokes involving the numbers 420 and 69. He has also tweeted a (since deleted) photo comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler and has compared Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal to Joseph Stalin.

    Musk also previously sought to remove a Twitter account dedicated to tracking the movements of his private jet by offering to pay off the college freshman running the account (the account owner declined).

    The same day he sent his letter to Twitter attempting to revive the deal, Musk was widely panned for comments he made on the platform about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He suggested making Crimea, a region Russia invaded and annexed from Ukraine in 2014, “formally part of Russia.” Most followers responded “no” to his poll and Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk replied in a tweet: “F— off is my very diplomatic reply to you.” In a follow-up tweet, an apparently frustrated Musk seemed to blame the results of his poll on a “bot attack.”

    Until now, Twitter has, at least to some extent, been accountable for its policy decisions to advertisers, shareholders and its board. But those guardrails won’t necessarily exist under Musk’s leadership.

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  • Kanye West’s Twitter, Instagram locked over offensive posts

    Kanye West’s Twitter, Instagram locked over offensive posts

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    Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts have been locked because of posts by the rapper, now known legally as Ye, that were widely deemed antisemitic.

    A Twitter spokesperson said Sunday that Ye posted a message that violated its policies.

    In a tweet sent late Saturday, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records. That’s an apparent reference to the U.S. military readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

    In the same tweet, which was removed by Twitter, he said: “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

    Earlier this month, Ye had been criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

    Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs posted a video on Instagram saying he didn’t support the shirt, and urged people not to buy it.

    On Instagram, Ye posted a screenshot of a text conversation with Diddy and suggested he was controlled by Jewish people, according to media reports.

    Ye’s account on Instagram was locked Friday for policy violations, according to media reports. Spokespeople for Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms, didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm the reports.

    Under their policies, the two social networks prohibit the posting of offensive language. Ye’s Twitter account is still active but he can’t post until the suspension ends, after an unspecified period.

    Ye had returned to Twitter on Saturday following a nearly two-year hiatus, reportedly after Instagram locked his account.

    Billionaire Elon Musk, who last week renewed his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter following a monthslong legal battle with the company, greeted Ye’s return to the platform before his suspension by tweeting “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend.”

    Musk has said he would remake Twitter into a free speech haven and relax restrictions, although it’s impossible to know precisely how he would run the influential network if he were to take over.

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  • Kanye West’s Twitter account locked for anti-Semitic tweet | CNN

    Kanye West’s Twitter account locked for anti-Semitic tweet | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Twitter locked rapper Kanye West’s Twitter account over an anti-Semitic tweet posted on the account on Saturday.

    In the since-removed tweet, West said he was “going death con 3 [sic] On JEWISH PEOPLE,” and also that, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” without specifying what group he was addressing, according to internet archive records pulled by CNN.

    A spokesperson from Twitter confirmed to CNN that the account was locked for violating Twitter’s policies. The tweet has been replaced on the account by a message from the company saying, “This tweet violated the Twitter Rules.”

    The spokesperson did not say which policy was violated but instead sent a link to Twitter’s rules, which include guidelines against hateful conduct.

    Twitter would not say how long the account would be locked or when the user would be able to tweet again.

    On Friday, West’s Instagram account was restricted for violating the company’s policies, a Meta spokesperson told CNN.

    In a tweet, the Anti-Defamation League said, “Power. Disloyalty. Greed. Deicide. Blood. Denial. Anti-Zionism. All of these are antisemitic tropes that we break down in our #AntisemitismUncovered Guide at antisemitism.adl.org. Many of these myths have influenced @KanyeWest’s comments recently, and it’s dangerous.”

    CNN has been unable to reach a representative for West for comment.

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  • Mississippi day care employees fired over viral videos

    Mississippi day care employees fired over viral videos

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    HAMILTON, Miss. — State regulators are investigating after a video showing four day care employees scaring children at a facility in an unincorporated northeast Mississippi community went viral on social media.

    The videos on Facebook show a day care worker at Lil’ Blessings Child Care & Learning Center in Hamilton wearing a Halloween mask and yelling at children who didn’t “clean up” or “act good.”

    Children can be seen and heard crying and, at times, running away from the employee wearing the mask while another employee gives directions about which children acted good or bad. The employee in the mask is shown screaming inches away from children’s faces at times.

    Sheila Sanders, who has owned the business for the past 20 years, said she was unaware of the videos until Wednesday afternoon, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.

    Sanders said one video was filmed in September and another on Tuesday. “No one came forth to tell me it happened in September,” she said.

    The behavior shown by her former employees in the video, she said, isn’t tolerated.

    “I contacted my licensure, and she has gotten involved,” Sanders said. “The people that did those acts are no longer with us. They were fired. I wasn’t here at the time and wasn’t aware they were doing that. I don’t condone that and never have. I just want to say it’s been taken care of.”

    The Mississippi State Department of Health and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office are investigating. Liz Sharlot, director of communications at the state health department, confirmed the investigation.

    Thursday morning, parents reacted to the videos as they dropped off their children for care, expressing their support for the facility.

    “I know 100% that Ms. Sheila, the owner and director, was not aware of this situation that was going on and as soon as she found out, all parties were terminated immediately,” said Kimberly Smith, whose child can be seen in one of the videos. “The witch hunt that has been going on for her and the other ones still here, it really needs to stop. Was the situation that did happen horrible? Absolutely. But should this daycare be shut down and others be villainized that are still here, absolutely not.”

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