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  • Twitter’s former CEO has a new app that looks a lot like Twitter | CNN Business

    Twitter’s former CEO has a new app that looks a lot like Twitter | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The buzzy new social media app of the moment looks so much like Twitter it’s almost hard to distinguish the two. The profiles, timelines and colors are nearly identical. Even the creator is the same.

    But under the hood, Bluesky, developed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, is vastly different.

    The app, which launched in a closed beta on iOS in February and on Android this month, runs on a decentralized network which provides users with more control over how the service is run, data is stored, and content is moderated.

    In recent days, it’s gained traction among journalists, politicians and celebrities, from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to model Chrissy Teigan and the 90s band Eve 6.

    Here’s what you should know:

    Bluesky calls itself “a new social network for microblogging.” With the app, users can post and follow short updates on a timeline, just as they would on Twitter, though with some differences. There are currently no hashtags – a central feature on Twitter – and no direct messages.

    Bluesky was formed independently of Twitter while Dorsey was serving as CEO but it was funded by the company until it became an independent organization in February 2022. In a tweet introducing the idea in 2019, Dorsey said it also plans to “build an open community around it, inclusive of companies & organizations, researchers, civil society leaders,” but warned “this isn’t going to happen overnight.”

    In a tweet last year, Dorsey said the “biggest issue and my biggest regret is that [Twitter] became a company.” He later clarified that if a service was a protocol it “can’t be owned by a state, or company.”

    If the idea of a decentralized social network sounds familiar, it’s likely because of Mastodon, another Twitter alternative that also gained attention late last year.

    Like Mastodon, Bluesky appeals to a number of Twitter users who are frustrated with the direction of the platform under owner Elon Musk. In the six months since Musk took over Twitter, he has made a number of controversial changes to its features and policies, including the removal of blue check marks from prominent users.

    Some of the same high-profile users now testing out Bluesky have also been openly critical of Musk’s moves at Twitter.

    According to data.ai, the company formerly known as App Annie, Bluesky has been downloaded more than 375,000 times from the Apple App Store and the waitlist continues to be flooded with signup requests. On the Google Play Store, Bluesky is described as having been downloaded more than 100,000 times. (By comparison, Twitter reported having more than 200 million monetizable daily active users last year before Musk completed his acquisition.)

    Bluesky did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    It’s unclear if Bluesky has staying power or will lose steam as Mastodon did. But Mark Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who writes about online privacy, said the early shift toward Bluesky is a positive one, as it gives social media users more choice over where they spend their time.

    “Competition might actually help users find the product features they want, like greater privacy protection, portability, and more significant content moderation,” he said. “Social media platforms have features that users dislike but they still feel like they must accept them to just be in the online space where everyone else is.”

    All it took, he said, was Musk taking steps “to sabotage his own platform.”

    For now, Bluesky is invite-only as it ramps up support for the implementation of its network. Existing users get one invite code to share with someone for every two weeks they’re on the app. Not surprisingly, the sense of exclusivity has only added to the excitement of joining Bluesky.

    As Eve 6 wrote on Twitter: “Bluesky invite codes are the new blue check.”

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  • Twitter’s new encrypted message feature criticized by security and privacy experts | CNN Business

    Twitter’s new encrypted message feature criticized by security and privacy experts | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Privacy and security experts widely panned a new feature that Twitter unveiled Wednesday that encrypts some direct messages between users, raising questions about the future of user safety on the platform.

    Twitter’s early efforts at securing direct messages with encryption appear to be riddled with caveats, flaws and risks that may endanger users, the experts said after the company rolled out its initial release.

    With the first iteration of the feature, only users who are paying subscribers to Twitter Blue or whose organizations have paid to be verified with the company may use encrypted messages.

    In addition, encrypted messages may only be sent between two individuals, not groups. Encrypting images, video and other media is not supported. Both participants must either have exchanged direct messages in the past, or the recipient of an encrypted message must already follow the sender.

    Perhaps most crucially, Twitter acknowledged that even with the encryption feature enabled, the company itself, and other third parties, can still potentially access user messages.

    “I’m trying to be positive about Twitter deploying encrypted DMs even though there are so many things about this system that make it feel like a v0.1 release, or are just obnoxious,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer and computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a tweet.

    Twitter’s former chief information security officer, Lea Kissner, publicly pleaded with Twitter’s current engineering team to improve the feature quickly.

    “Twitter folks, seriously. I left some design docs somewhere. Please use them,” Kissner said on Bluesky, a rival platform.

    Twitter has described encrypted messaging as key to the company’s future of becoming “the most trusted platform on the internet.” But the rollout provides another example of how, under CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has forged ahead with significant changes to the platform over the warnings of independent researchers about potential unintended consequences stemming from incomplete or poorly implemented updates.

    In a blog post Wednesday, Twitter said users of its latest app will be eligible to participate in encrypted direct messages. And it announced that its goal is to provide a similar level of protection as other privacy-preserving apps that come highly recommended by security experts, such as Signal.

    “The standard should be, if someone puts a gun to our heads, we still can’t access your messages,” the blog post said. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re working on it.”

    But the company also acknowledged the feature’s limitations, including the fact that the new encryption option does “not offer protections against man-in-the-middle attacks.”

    “As a result, if someone — for example, a malicious insider, or Twitter itself as a result of a compulsory legal process — were to compromise an encrypted conversation, neither the sender or receiver would know,” Twitter’s blog post said.

    The lack of so-called end-to-end encryption makes Twitter’s implementation largely meaningless, security experts said.

    “The ENTIRE PURPOSE of End-to-end encryption is to protect you against whoever controls the messaging servers,” said Marcus Hutchins, also known as MalwareTech, on Bluesky.

    John Scott-Railton, a cybersecurity and disinformation researcher, tweeted that this caveat means it is “not safe for anyone worried about privacy & safety to assume that this has equivalent protections to things like [Signal].”

    Twitter’s new feature also encrypts messages at the conversation level, not each individual message. That means that if a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to the keys, they could view the entire message chain. A stronger approach would be to assign each message its own encryption key, a feature that already exists in other apps.

    Jonathan Mayer, a computer scientist at Princeton University and a former chief technologist of the Federal Communications Commission, said Twitter’s version of encryption would fail basic principles taught in an Information Security 101 course.

    “We literally teach the students not to do exactly what Twitter is doing,” Mayer said.

    One of the feature’s biggest dangers to users is that they could come away with a false sense of security, Hutchins added, which would be far worse than Twitter offering no encryption at all, because users may be lulled into sharing more in Twitter messages than they otherwise would.

    In an apparent response to the wave of criticism, Musk tweeted early Thursday: “Try it, but don’t trust it yet.”

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  • Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

    Birth date: June 14, 1946

    Birth place: New York, New York

    Birth name: Donald John Trump

    Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer

    Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump

    Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)

    Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977

    Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968

    As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.

    He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

    Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.

    For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

    1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.

    1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.

    1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.

    1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.

    1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.

    1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.

    1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.

    1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

    1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.

    1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

    October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.

    February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.

    January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.

    November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

    2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.

    February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.

    March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

    June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

    June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

    June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”

    July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.

    July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

    August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

    September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

    December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

    May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.

    July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

    July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.

    September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

    October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.

    October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

    October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.

    November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.

    November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.

    December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.

    January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.

    January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.

    January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.

    January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.

    February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.

    May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.

    May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.

    May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.

    May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

    June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.

    July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

    August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.

    August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.

    August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.

    September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.

    September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

    September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.

    December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.

    December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.

    January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”

    January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.

    March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.

    March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.

    March 23, 2018 – The White House announces that it is adopting a policy, first proposed by Trump via tweet in July 2017, banning most transgender individuals from serving in the military.

    April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.

    April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.

    May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.

    May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

    May 31, 2018 – The Trump administration announces it is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

    June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.

    June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.

    June 14, 2018 – The New York attorney general sues the Trump Foundation, alleging that the nonprofit run by Trump and his three eldest children violated state and federal charity law.

    June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.

    July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”

    August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.

    October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

    November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

    December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.

    December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.

    January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”

    January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.

    February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.

    February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.

    March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.

    March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.

    April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.

    May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.

    June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.

    June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.

    June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.

    June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.

    June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.

    July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

    July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.

    July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

    July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.

    August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.

    September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.

    September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.

    September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.

    September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.

    September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.

    October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.

    October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.

    October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.

    October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.

    November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.

    November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.

    November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.

    December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

    December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.

    December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.

    December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.

    January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

    January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.

    January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.

    January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

    January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.

    February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.

    May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.

    July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

    October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.

    November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.

    November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.

    December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

    January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.

    January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

    January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.

    January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.

    February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.

    May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.

    June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.

    July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.

    February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.

    May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.

    August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.

    August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.

    September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

    October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

    November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

    November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.

    December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.

    February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.

    March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

    April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.

    May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

    May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

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  • Elon Musk says Twitter has ‘no actual choice’ about government censorship requests | CNN Business

    Elon Musk says Twitter has ‘no actual choice’ about government censorship requests | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Criticized for giving into governments’ censorship demands, Elon Musk on Sunday claimed that Twitter has “no actual choice” about complying those requests.

    The comment comes after Musk has previously called himself a “free speech absolutist” and said he wanted to buy Twitter to bolster users’ ability to speak freely on the platform. Shortly after agreeing to acquire Twitter, Musk explained his approach to free speech by saying: “Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”

    He added at the time that Twitter would “be very reluctant to delete things” and “be very cautious with permanent bans,” and that the platform would aim to allow all legal speech.

    But Musk has faced blowback in recent weeks for appearing to cave to government censorship demands, including by removing some accounts and tweets at the behest of the government of Turkey ahead of the country’s elections (which the company later said it would attempt to fight in court). And in an interview with the BBC last month, Musk was asked about whether Twitter had removed a documentary about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the Indian government, and said he didn’t know “what exactly happened.”

    Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias on Sunday tweeted an article suggesting that Twitter has complied with a majority of government takedown requests since Musk took over as the platform’s owner. Musk replied: “Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it.”

    Musk has previously said the company would comply with laws governing social media companies around the world, although such laws in some cases appear to conflict with his free speech vision. Twitter did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    In last month’s interview with the BBC, Musk said, “the rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country … If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” At another point in the interview, Musk said: “If people of a given country are against a certain type of speech, they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it.”

    “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law,” Musk said in a tweet last year about his vision for Twitter. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”

    In some countries, Twitter could risk substantial fines and other penalties — including, potentially, bans of the platform — for not complying with local laws.

    However, prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter frequently fought government takedown requests in court, including from India and Turkey, in addition to publicly releasing detailed information about such requests and how it handled them. In many cases, Twitter led the charge among social media companies in protecting its users’ rights around the world.

    In last recent removal request report before Musk’s takeover, Twitter said it received more than 47,000 removal requests between July and December 2021, and complied with 51% of them. In many cases, when it did comply with a removal request because of a certain country’s laws, it removed the violating content only in that country, rather than globally.

    Musk was also criticized for backing down on his “free speech” vision when Twitter temporarily banned the accounts of several high-profile journalists in December, claiming that they had violated a new “doxxing” policy on the site. None of the banned journalists appeared to have shared Musk’s precise real-time location — the restrictions came after they reported on Twitter’s removal of an account that posts the updated location of Musk’s private jet.

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  • Teachers are on the front lines of a battle to change how teens use social media | CNN Business

    Teachers are on the front lines of a battle to change how teens use social media | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A high school English class may not sound like the typical forum for educating kids on the risks of social media, but that hasn’t stopped Jennifer Rosenzweig.

    Each school year, the 10th graders in her class at Scarsdale High School in New York watch “The Social Dilemma,” a 2020 documentary about the harms of social media. She also teaches her students about how companies can manipulate algorithms to make platforms addictive and is part of the school’s leadership team that hosts related social media training sessions for teachers and parents.

    Rosenzweig argues the subject is so important that it should be discussed in all courses.

    “It’s really important to give students lots of opportunities to talk about, think about, write about how social media affects their lives,” she said. “They just happened to be born in a really complicated, overstimulating and demanding time – and we handed them these devices without knowing what effect they would have.”

    Rosenzweig is one of a growing number of educators who find themselves on the front lines of a fight to change how students use social media, both in schools and at home, after rising concerns about the impact these services can have on the mental health of teens. And recently, there has been a push for more schools to effectively follow their example and develop programs to help educate students on the dangers of social media.

    As part of US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s watershed report last month on the “profound risks” of social media for teens, he recommended policymakers push for “digital and media literacy curricula in schools” that help students “recognize, manage, and recover from online risks” such as harassment, abuse and “excessive social media use.”

    Other politicians have suggested the same. Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an education bill that prohibits students from accessing certain social media platforms on school Wi-Fi and requires instruction on the negative impacts of social media.

    These efforts come amid heightened bipartisan pressure from lawmakers for social media companies to do more to protect their youngest users. But in the absence of any new federal legislation, the burden falls on parents and schools, the latter of which faces significant challenges to address the issue.

    Schools must grapple with limited resources, students who develop online habits at a very young age and staff who may not be well versed to discuss the ins and outs of algorithmic rabbit holes and cyberbullying.

    At the Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois, conversations around the impact of social media are happening in the classroom on a daily basis, according to Chris English, the head of school.

    Teachers openly remind students how their social media history lives on and how it can be perceived among colleges and employers, English said. Teachers also discuss how dopamine plays a role in why teens feel the need to keep checking platforms as well as general best practices.

    “We are always thinking about the social-emotional learning component … and how it applies to social media use,” said English, referring to teaching kids skills to manage their feelings and relationships.

    Chris English, head of school at The Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois, said the school has seen success from participating in the

    As with other education efforts, however, he believes social media literacy campaigns are much easier to do when class sizes in school are lower, allowing teachers to put more significant time and energy into each student.

    The Roycemore school is one of hundreds of schools across the US leaning on programs such as The Organization for Social Media Safety to provide digital literacy assemblies to students. The organization offers practical steps to address the varying dangers they may encounter on social media, from bullying and hate to trafficking and pressured sexting, as well as how algorithms can push problematic content to young users. The program is part of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) curriculum.

    “Many students don’t even understand most of these dangers,” said Marc Berkman, director of The Organization for Social Media Safety. “They can’t protect themselves from the dangers if they don’t know what they are.”

    Devorah Heitner, author of “Screenwise, Speaker: Raising Kids in the Digital Age,” previously told CNN that schools of all sizes should embrace digital literacy because teens need to learn how to properly function in online communities, as that is the expectation both going into college and in their professional lives.

    “Literacy should not just be ‘don’t look at pornography’ or ‘stay off bad sites’ or ‘don’t cyberbully;’ that’s so limited,” she said. “It should also be understanding how algorithms work, how teens can respond or what to do when feeling excluded, or if they’re feeling insecure. We need to help kids with all these things.”

    The Organization for Social Media Safety provides parent workshops and community guidelines for guardians to reference as issues surface. Although Berkman said he’s encouraged by more teachers talking to students about the dangers of social media, he advises them to undergo formal training on the subject because it’s “not a check the box exercise” and requires “up to date knowledge on the rich landscape of how teens are using” these platforms.

    Digital literacy is not only playing out in high schools. Gillian Feldman, principal of Brawerman Elementary School in Los Angeles, said the school works with the Organization of Social Media Safety to provide educational sessions for parents of pre-teen and younger students to help them navigate social platforms.

    “Our kids are 12 when they leave our school, but they’re already using Fortnite and Roblox and other platforms which have social media components, with the ability to chat, post and Like things on these games,” Feldman said. “The [sessions] have been eye opening for parents and help them set better parameters for kids.”

    Feldman said the school is also taking a social-emotional approach to teaching its young students about social platforms, such as how they shouldn’t rely on “someone else’s approval to fill up your own [emotional] bucket.”

    While trying to teach students to develop a better relationship with technology, some schools are also pushing for them to ditch their devices entirely — at least during school hours.

    In September, Rosenzweig and her colleagues at Scarsdale High School introduced “Off and Away for the Day,” an effort that encourages students to keep smartphones in their book bags during the day.

    During free periods, the students are allowed to listen to music, podcasts or meditation apps but phones must be out of sight during class. Students can “briefly check phones if needed” during homeroom or lunch but not scroll social media or play games.

    A poster for Scarsdale High School's

    The decision came after teachers at Scarsdale High School observed a correlation between screen time and declining reading abilities and focus among its students. The school is currently working to develop consequences and formal guidelines, she said.

    “I would never claim that everyone is supportive of this initiative, and yes, students do roll their eyes about it for sure,” Rosenzweig said. “But what I do strongly claim is that when you speak to students for more than five minutes about this topic, they appreciate that we are talking about it and really do want the help.”

    English’s school has also embraced the “Away for the Day” policy, where students put smartphones out of sight while on campus. It’s part of a bigger grassroots movement of the same name developed by the co-producers of the 2016 documentary “Screenagers,” which looks at the lives of teens growing up in the digital age.

    Students are told to keep phones out of sight during the school day at The Roycemore School.

    Sabine Polack, who spoke to CNN in 2021 about how her 14-year-old daughter was struggling with depression and had contemplated suicide stemming from pressures around social media, is now an advocate of the “Away for the Day” movement to create phone free schools.

    “It’s especially relevant now that we have the Surgeon General issuing advisories which includes calling for ‘tech free spaces’ as a tool to help mitigate the mental health crisis our children are facing,” said Polack, who is on the board of nonprofit Fairplay, which aims to protect kids from harmful marketing and excessive screentime.

    Rosenzweig said she aims to expand “Off and Away” to other schools in the Scarsdale School District and is hopeful it can be a leading force making a change in their community and beyond.

    “Schools have so much power,” Rosenzweig said. “We are with these kids five days of the week and we can make those days look like whatever we can look like.”

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  • ‘We no longer know what reality is.’ How tech companies are working to help detect AI-generated images | CNN Business

    ‘We no longer know what reality is.’ How tech companies are working to help detect AI-generated images | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    For a brief moment last month, an image purporting to show an explosion near the Pentagon spread on social media, causing panic and a market sell-off. The image, which bore all the hallmarks of being generated by AI, was later debunked by authorities.

    But according to Jeffrey McGregor, the CEO of Truepic, it is “truly the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come.” As he put it, “We’re going to see a lot more AI generated content start to surface on social media, and we’re just not prepared for it.”

    McGregor’s company is working to address this problem. Truepic offers technology that claims to authenticate media at the point of creation through its Truepic Lens. The application captures data including date, time, location and the device used to make the image, and applies a digital signature to verify if the image is organic, or if it has been manipulated or generated by AI.

    Truepic, which is backed by Microsoft, was founded in 2015, years before the launch of AI-powered image generation tools like Dall-E and Midjourney. Now McGregor says the company is seeing interest from “anyone that is making a decision based off of a photo,” from NGOs to media companies to insurance firms looking to confirm a claim is legitimate.

    “When anything can be faked, everything can be fake,” McGregor said. “Knowing that generative AI has reached this tipping point in quality and accessibility, we no longer know what reality is when we’re online.”

    Tech companies like Truepic have been working to combat online misinformation for years, but the rise of a new crop of AI tools that can quickly generate compelling images and written work in response to user prompts has added new urgency to these efforts. In recent months, an AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket went viral and AI-generated images of former President Donald Trump getting arrested were widely shared, shortly before he was indicted.

    Some lawmakers are now calling for tech companies to address the problem. Vera Jourova, vice president of the European Commission, on Monday called for signatories of the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation – a list that includes Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok – to “put in place technology to recognize such content and clearly label this to users.”

    A growing number of startups and Big Tech companies, including some that are deploying generative AI technology in their products, are trying to implement standards and solutions to help people determine whether an image or video is made with AI. Some of these companies bear names like Reality Defender, which speak to the potential stakes of the effort: protecting our very sense of what’s real and what’s not.

    But as AI technology develops faster than humans can keep up, it’s unclear whether these technical solutions will be able to fully address the problem. Even OpenAI, the company behind Dall-E and ChatGPT, admitted earlier this year that its own effort to help detect AI-generated writing, rather than images, is “imperfect,” and warned it should be “taken with a grain of salt.”

    “This is about mitigation, not elimination,” Hany Farid, a digital forensic expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told CNN. “I don’t think it’s a lost cause, but I do think that there’s a lot that has to get done.”

    “The hope,” Farid said, is to get to a point where “some teenager in his parents basement can’t create an image and swing an election or move the market half a trillion dollars.”

    Companies are broadly taking two approaches to address the issue.

    One tactic relies on developing programs to identify images as AI-generated after they have been produced and shared online; the other focuses on marking an image as real or AI-generated at its conception with a kind of digital signature.

    Reality Defender and Hive Moderation are working on the former. With their platforms, users can upload existing images to be scanned and then receive an instant breakdown with a percentage indicating the likelihood for whether it’s real or AI-generated based on a large amount of data.

    Reality Defender, which launched before “generative AI” became a buzzword and was part of competitive Silicon Valley tech accelerator Y Combinator, says it uses “proprietary deepfake and generative content fingerprinting technology” to spot AI-generated video, audio and images.

    In an example provided by the company, Reality Defender highlights an image of a Tom Cruise deepfake as 53% “suspicious,” telling the user it has found evidence showing the face was warped, “a common artifact of image manipulation.”

    Defending reality could prove to be a lucrative business if the issue becomes a frequent concern for businesses and individuals. These services offer limited free demos as well as paid tiers. Hive Moderation said it charges $1.50 for every 1,000 images as well as “annual contract deals” that offer a discount. Realty Defender said its pricing may vary based on various factors, including whether the client needs “any bespoke factors requiring our team’s expertise and assistance.”

    “The risk is doubling every month,” Ben Colman, CEO of Reality Defender, told CNN. “Anybody can do this. You don’t need a PhD in computer science. You don’t need to spin up servers on Amazon. You don’t need to know how to write ransomware. Anybody can do this just by Googling ‘fake face generator.’”

    Kevin Guo, CEO of Hive Moderation, described it as “an arms race.”

    “We have to keep looking at all the new ways that people are creating this content, we have to understand it and add it to our dataset to then classify the future,” Guo told CNN. “Today it’s a small percent of content for sure that’s AI-generated, but I think that’s going to change over the next few years.”

    In a different, preventative approach, some larger tech companies are working to integrate a kind of watermark to images to certify media as real or AI-generated when they’re first created. The effort has so far largely been driven by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA.

    The C2PA was founded in 2021 to create a technical standard that certifies the source and history of digital media. It combines efforts by the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and Project Origin, a Microsoft- and BBC-spearheaded initiative that focuses on combating disinformation in digital news. Other companies involved in C2PA include Truepic, Intel and Sony.

    Based on the C2PA’s guidelines, the CAI makes open source tools for companies to create content credentials, or the metadata that contains information about the image. This “allows creators to transparently share the details of how they created an image,” according to the CAI website. “This way, an end user can access context around who, what, and how the picture was changed — then judge for themselves how authentic that image is.”

    “Adobe doesn’t have a revenue center around this. We’re doing it because we think this has to exist,” Andy Parsons, Senior Director at CAI, told CNN. “We think it’s a very important foundational countermeasure against mis- and disinformation.”

    Many companies are already integrating the C2PA standard and CAI tools into their applications. Adobe’s Firefly, an AI image generation tool recently added to Photoshop, follows the standard through the Content Credentials feature. Microsoft also announced that AI art created by Bing Image Creator and Microsoft Designer will carry a cryptographic signature in the coming months.

    Other tech companies like Google appear to be pursuing a playbook that pulls a bit from both approaches.

    In May, Google announced a tool called About this image, offering users the ability to see when images found on its site were originally indexed by Google, where images might have first appeared and where else they can be found online. The tech company also announced that every AI-generated image created by Google will carry a markup in the original file to “give context” if the image is found on another website or platform.

    While tech companies are trying to tackle concerns about Ai-generated images and the integrity of digital media, experts in the field stress that these businesses will ultimately need to work with each other and the government to address the problem.

    “We’re going to need cooperation from the Twitters of the world and the Facebooks of the world so they start taking this stuff more seriously, and stop promoting the fake stuff and start promoting the real stuff,” said Farid. “There’s a regulatory part that we haven’t talked about. There’s an education part that we haven’t talked about.”

    Parsons agreed. “This is not a single company or a single government or a single individual in academia who can make this possible,” he said. “We need everybody to participate.”

    For now, however, tech companies continue to move forward with pushing more AI tools into the world.

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  • Twitter’s future is in doubt as Threads tops 100 million users | CNN Business

    Twitter’s future is in doubt as Threads tops 100 million users | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter has weathered months, if not years, of mismanagement as well as mass layoffs, frequent service disruptions and an exodus of top advertisers, but the launch of a rival app from Meta could prove to be the final straw.

    Threads surpassed 100 million users this weekend, less than a week after it launched, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday, marking a staggering feat for any social network and one that puts it on pace to rapidly pass Twitter’s audience size.

    Meanwhile, multiple internet traffic analysts reported noticeable declines in Twitter usage in just the past few days. The results underscore the risk Meta poses to Twitter’s business and raise questions about how, or if, Twitter can stem its losses.

    Twitter traffic had already been trending downward for months, according to data from the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare and the web analytics firm Similarweb. But the pace of decline appears to have accelerated in recent days, both companies said, likely reflecting strong interest in Threads and a mass migration from the platform owned by Elon Musk to the one run by Zuckerberg.

    Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    On Sunday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince shared a chart showing Twitter’s popularity relative to other websites it tracks. “Twitter traffic tanking,” Prince said as he posted the chart.

    The chart showed that in January, Twitter was ranked 32nd on the list; the next month, it had fallen to 34th. For much of the spring, Twitter fluctuated between 35th place and 37th. But the beginning of July showed a rapid falloff in popularity, as Twitter plunged to 40th place. (Cloudflare defines popularity as the “size of a population of users that look up a domain per unit of time.”)

    Similarweb told CNN Monday it has witnessed comparable trends in Twitter traffic.

    “In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, [last] Thursday and Friday, web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week and down 11% compared with July 6 and 7, 2022,” said David Carr, a senior insights manager at Similarweb. “We’ve been reporting for a while that Twitter is down compared with last year – June traffic was down 4% – but Threads seems to be taking a bigger bite out of it.”

    Bolstering the traffic reports were the anecdotal experiences of some Threads users. Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, said Saturday he ran an “unscientific test” of how the same post he shared on Twitter, Threads and Mastodon, another rival, performed with his audience over a 23-hour period.

    The identical content Stamos created on each platform saw significantly more engagement on Threads than on Twitter as measured by likes and replies — despite having a fraction of his usual reach on the newer platform, he said.

    Stamos, who has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter but only a tenth of that number on Threads, added that strong Threads engagement with his posts describing the “research” also supported the original findings. The quality of the replies to his posts were also much higher on non-Twitter platforms, he observed.

    “From my perspective, Twitter is done as a platform for serious tech conversations,” Stamos said, who previously was the chief security officer at Facebook.

    Fueling Threads’ rapid growth has been Meta’s use of Instagram as a springboard to sign up new users, along with what many Threads users have identified as a dissatisfaction with Twitter.

    Threads started out with a number of celebrity accounts prepopulating its platform but has since gained additional high-profile users including Kim Kardashian and Jeff Bezos. An account that had been banned from Twitter that tracks the movements of Musk’s private jet has also joined the new platform.

    More than 100 US lawmakers have signed up as well, Axios reported last week, though few world leaders appear to be on Threads at the moment.

    Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri have emphasized that Threads is about more than replacing Twitter and that the app seeks to tap audiences outside of Twitter’s traditional user base. That means Threads will not actively elevate news or political content, Mosseri said, describing those topics as “not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.”

    Over the weekend, Mosseri’s stance on news and politics triggered a debate over Threads’ approach to those topics. Some users praised it as a way to make the platform more accessible to average users, who may never have embraced Twitter before. Others argued that many of the topics Mosseri characterized as non-political, including music, fashion and entertainment, are their own source of news and can be inherently political.

    Even as Meta’s executives look to put some daylight between Threads and Twitter, the rapid rise of Threads only appears to have deepened Musk’s longtime feud with Zuckerberg. The app’s launch prompted threats of litigation as Twitter has accused Meta of trade secret theft, not to mention talk of a physical cage fight between Musk and Zuckerberg.

    On Sunday, Musk, who is known for erratic behavior and incendiary remarks, made it even more personal as he lobbed a sexual insult at Zuckerberg and proposed comparing the size of their respective genitalia.

    Zuckerberg has not directly responded to the insult. But after a Threads user pointed out that the new app was not featured in Twitter’s trending topics tab, Zuckerberg replied “Concerning” with a crying-laughter emoji. And he used the same emoji to reply to a post by the fast-food brand Wendy’s, which had suggested Zuckerberg should “go to space just to really make him mad lol.”

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  • Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

    Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    After Twitter announced in February it would begin charging third parties to access its platform data, academic researchers warned that the vaguely worded plan could threaten important studies about how misinformation, harassment and other malicious activity spreads online.

    Now, as Twitter has released more pricing information, many of those same academics are saying their fears were well-founded, complaining that Twitter’s new tiered paywall not only charges “outrageously expensive” prices but that it also restricts the amount of accessible data so heavily that what little researchers can see, even on the most expensive tiers, is not useful for studies at any rigorous level.

    Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under CEO Elon Musk, automatically responded to a request for comment with an email containing a poop emoji.

    In an open letter this week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research — a group representing dozens of researchers and civil society organizations — said free and open access to Twitter data has historically enabled systematic, large-scale research on social media’s role in public health initiatives, foreign propaganda, political discourse, and even the bots and spam that Musk has blamed for ruining Twitter.

    But Twitter’s new tiered access system undercuts all of that, the researchers said. The company’s pricing that launched last week, starting at $100 per month for a “basic” amount of data, does not provide nearly enough volume for users at the low end, while the high end “ranges from $42,000 to $210,000 per month [and] is unaffordable for researchers,” the letter said.

    The new basic tier limits users to reading just 10,000 tweets per month. That represents 0.3% of what researchers used to be able to collect in a single day, the letter said.

    Even under the most expensive “enterprise” tier costing upwards of $2.5 million a year, Twitter is offering only a fraction of the tweets it used to, the letter continued. Before the change, researchers could pay about $500 a month for the ability to access up to 10% of the roughly 1 billion tweets a month that flow across Twitter’s platform.

    Now, though, “the most expensive Enterprise tier would cut that by 80% at about 400 times the price,” the researchers’ letter said.

    Asking researchers to pay orders of magnitude more for a fifth of the access they once had represents a barrier to accountability and transparency, the letter added.

    “Under the new pricing plans, studying the communications and interactions of even a small population—such as the 535 Members of the U.S. Congress or the 705 Members of the European Parliament—will be unfeasible,” the letter said. “The new pricing plans will also end at least 76 long-term efforts, including dashboards, tools, or code packages that support other researchers, journalists, first-responders, educators, and Twitter users.”

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

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

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • New York MTA resumes transit alerts on Twitter | CNN Business

    New York MTA resumes transit alerts on Twitter | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would resume posting automated transit alerts to Twitter on Thursday after the social media company backtracked on a plan to charge public service accounts for access to the platform.

    In a statement Thursday, MTA Acting Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara said Twitter had tried to charge the MTA more than $500,000 a year for access to its platform, but that the MTA refused.

    “We’re glad that Twitter has committed to offering free API access for public service providers,” the MTA tweeted, referring to the software interface that enables third parties to create automated posts on Twitter.

    In another tweet, it added: “We know that customers missed us, so starting today, we’ll resume posting service alerts on @NYCTSubway, @NYCTBus, @LIRR, and @MetroNorth.”

    In recent weeks, Twitter has sought to charge businesses for the ability to access its platform. Its paid plans cost as much as $2.5 million a year for top-tier access. The paywall’s introduction in March prompted widespread warnings by public services of possible disruptions to weather and transit alerts.

    Amid the outcry, Twitter changed course on Tuesday and said that verified government accounts would once again be able to post automated tweets for free.

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  • Meta releases clues on how AI is used on Facebook and Instagram | CNN Business

    Meta releases clues on how AI is used on Facebook and Instagram | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    As demand for greater transparency in artificial intelligence mounts, Meta released tools and information Thursday aimed at helping users understand how AI influences what they see on its apps.

    The social media giant introduced nearly two dozen explainers focused on various features of its platforms, such as Instagram Stories and Facebook’s news feed. These describe how Meta selects what content to recommend to users.

    The description and disclosures came in the face of looming legislation around the world that may soon impose concrete disclosure requirements on companies that use AI technology.

    Meta’s so-called “system cards” cover how the company determines which accounts to present to users as recommended follows on Facebook and Instagram, how the company’s search tools function and how notifications work.

    For example, the system card devoted to Instagram’s search function describes how the app gathers all relevant search results in response to a user’s query, scores each result based on the user’s past interactions with the app and then applies “additional filters” and “integrity processes” to narrow the list before finally presenting it to the user.

    Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, tied the company’s new disclosures to a global debate about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence that range from the spread of misinformation to a rise in AI-enabled fraud and scams.

    “With rapid advances taking place with powerful technologies like generative AI, it’s understandable that people are both excited by the possibilities and concerned about the risks,” Clegg wrote in a blog post Thursday. “We believe that the best way to respond to those concerns is with openness.”

    A longer blog post describing how Facebook content ranking works, meanwhile, identifies detailed factors that go into determining what information the platform presents first.

    Those factors include whether a post has been flagged by a third-party fact checker, how engaging the account that posted the material may be, and whether you may have interacted with the account in the past.

    Meta’s new explainers coincide with the release of new tools for users to tailor the company’s algorithms, including the ability to tell Instagram to supply more of a certain type of content. Previously, Meta had only offered the ability for users to tell Instagram to show less, not more, Clegg wrote.

    On both Facebook and Instagram, he added, users will now be able to customize their feeds further by accessing a menu from individual posts.

    Finally, he said, Meta will be making it easier for researchers to study its platforms by providing a content library and an application programming interface (API) featuring a variety of content from Facebook and Instagram.

    Meta’s announcement comes as European lawmakers have swiftly advanced legislation that would create new requirements for explanation and transparency for companies that use artificial intelligence, and as US lawmakers have said they hope to begin working on similar legislation later this year.

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  • Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024 | CNN Business

    Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024 | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Meta has made cuts to its teams that tackle disinformation and coordinated troll and harassment campaigns on its platforms, people with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN, raising concerns ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections in the US and around the world.

    Several members of the team that countered mis- and disinformation in the 2022 US midterms were laid off last fall and this spring, a person familiar with the matter said. The staffers are part of a global team that works on Meta’s efforts to counter disinformation campaigns seeking to undermine confidence in or sow confusion around elections.

    The news comes as Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is celebrating the unparalleled success of its new Threads platform, surpassing 100 million users just five days after launch and opening a potential new avenue for bad actors.

    A Meta spokesperson did not specify, when asked, how many staffers had been cut from its teams working on elections. In a statement to CNN on Monday night, the spokesperson said, “Protecting the US 2024 elections is one of our top priorities, and our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry.”

    The spokesperson did not answer CNN questions about what additional resources had been deployed to monitor and moderate its new platform. Instead, Meta said the social media giant had invested $16 billion in technology and teams since 2016 to protect its users.

    But the decision to lay off staffers ahead of 2024, when elections will not only take place in the United States but also in Taiwan, Ukraine, India and elsewhere, has raised concerns among those with direct knowledge of Meta’s election integrity work.

    The disparate nature of Meta’s work on elections makes it difficult for even people inside the company to say specifically how many people are part of the effort. One group of relevant employees hit harder by the layoffs were “content review” specialists who manually review election-related posts that may violate Meta’s terms of service, a person familiar with the cuts told CNN.

    Meta is trying to offset those cuts by more proactively detecting accounts that spread false election-related information, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

    For years, the social media giant has invested heavily in teams of personnel to root out sophisticated and coordinated networks of fake accounts. That “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” as Meta calls it, began in the lead up to the 2016 election when an infamous Russian government-linked troll operation ran amuck on Facebook.

    The team tasked with combating the influence campaigns – which includes former US government and intelligence officials – has been generally seen as the most robust in the social media industry. The company has published quarterly reports in recent years that expose governments and other entities found to have been operating covert campaigns pushing disinformation on Meta’s platforms.

    Those teams investigating disinformation campaigns now must further prioritize which campaigns and countries to focus on, another person familiar with the situation said, a trade-off that could result in some deceptive efforts going unnoticed.

    The person emphasized that Meta still has a dedicated team of professionals working on these issues, many of whom are widely respected in the cyber and information security communities.

    But while artificial intelligence and other automated systems can help detect some of these efforts, unearthing sophisticated disinformation networks is still a “very manual process” that involves intense scrutiny from expert staff, another person with direct knowledge of Meta’s counter disinformation efforts told CNN.

    The person said they feared Meta was regressing from progress it had made from learning from past mistakes. “Lessons that were learned at great costs,” they said, citing the company’s 2018 admission that its platforms were used to incite violence in Myanmar.

    In addition to its in-house team, Meta and other social media companies rely on tips from academics and other researchers who specialize in monitoring covert disinformation networks.

    Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said he has sent the company valuable tips in recent months, but Meta’s response time has slowed significantly.

    Linvill, who has a long track record of successfully identifying covert online accounts, including helping to unearth a Russian election meddling effort in Africa in 2020, said that Meta recently removed a network of Russian language accounts that were posting both pro and anti-Ukraine content on Facebook and Instagram.

    “They were trying to stoke anger on both sides of the debates,” he said.

    Launched last Thursday, Threads has become an instant success with celebrities, politicians, and journalists flocking to the platform.

    The new Twitter-style app is tied to users’ existing Instagram accounts, rather than being linked directly to Facebook. Currently, Threads shares the same community standards as Instagram, but the platforms differ on issues relating to Meta’s methods to combat disinformation.

    Meta also applies labels to state-controlled accounts on Facebook and Instagram, such as Russia’s Sputnik news agency and China’s CCTV. However, these labels do not appear on state-controlled accounts on Threads.

    The launch of Threads even as Meta trims its disinformation-focused personnel comes at a turbulent and transformative time for those tasked with writing and implementing rules on social media platforms.

    Elon Musk, the billionaire who bought Twitter last year, has all but torn up that platform’s rule book and gutted the team that worked on implementing policies designed to combat disinformation efforts.

    Last month, YouTube, which has also made job cuts, announced it would allow videos that feature the false claim the 2020 US presidential election was stolen, a reversal of its previous policy.

    The rule reversals come as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives investigates interactions between technology companies and the federal government.

    Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    The restrictions and the scrutiny could give cover to social media companies that may want to pull back on some of their platforms’ rules around election integrity, said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook official who helped lead the company’s global election efforts until 2021.

    “I can [almost] hear [Meta Global Affairs President] Nick Clegg saying that ‘we’re going to be cautious of what we do, because we wouldn’t want to run afoul of the law,’” Harbath said.

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  • Shein and Temu’s battle for US bargain shoppers is getting nasty | CNN Business

    Shein and Temu’s battle for US bargain shoppers is getting nasty | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Temu has sued Shein in the United States, accusing its rival of violating antitrust laws by trying to monopolize suppliers and engaging in other allegedly illegal behavior.

    The lawsuit, filed Friday in Massachusetts federal court, is a dramatic escalation of a contentious legal battle the two fast fashion upstarts have been embroiled in for months.

    It follows another complaint from Shein, which sued Temu in December for allegedly mobilizing social media influencers to disparage Shein online.

    In the new suit, Temu claims that Shein has “engaged in a campaign of threats, intimidation, false assertions of infringement, and attempts to impose baseless punitive fines” on apparel makers thought to be working with Temu.

    Shein has also “forced” exclusivity deals on clothing manufacturers to prevent them from working with Temu, the complaint states.

    Both companies originated in China and made their names as online retailers specializing in a supersonic version of fast fashion, defined as the rapid design and production of cheap goods that respond to fleeting trends.

    In some ways, they’re beating industry stalwarts like Zara and H&M

    (HNNMY)     at their own game, by making items more quickly and being more digitally savvy with customers.

    Shein overtook the two giants in US market share during the pandemic, while Temu has clinched a strong position since its launch last year, according to analytics firm Bloomberg Second Measure.

    However, the new litigation illustrates how the race is heating up on an emerging industry battlefield.

    “This shows how competitive the environment is getting,” said Michael Felice, a partner in Kearney’s communications, media and technology practice.

    In its lawsuit filed last week, Temu claimed its recent entry into the United States had rattled Shein.

    Temu, which is owned by PDD along with hugely popular Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, launched in September. It operates as an online general store for everything from home goods to apparel to electronics at strikingly low prices.

    The company’s platform quickly became the most downloaded app in the United States, where it currently remains in the top two on iOS and Android app stores, according to Sensor Tower.

    As a result of its fast growth, “Shein now views itself as being ‘at war’ with Temu and has engaged in an elaborate and anticompetitive scheme aimed at stymieing Temu’s business,” Temu said in a court filing.

    “The US market is the primary theater of this war.”

    To force the hand of manufacturers, Shein tried to “lock up the supply chain” by forcing them to sign loyalty agreements, vowing not to do business with Temu, the latter alleged.

    It also claimed that Shein issued fines and penalty notices to suppliers that did work Temu, in an effort to send a stern warning to businesses that it would “not tolerate any manufacturer’s doing business with Temu.”

    Like Shein, most of Temu’s suppliers are based in China and “are not familiar with the US legal system and lack the funds to pursue independent advice,” Temu said.

    “The intent and effect of Shein’s anticompetitive conduct is to exclude Temu so that Shein can charge higher prices to consumers while offering a smaller selection and lower quality than Shein would if it faced competition,” Temu argued.

    In response, a Shein spokesperson told CNN that “we believe this lawsuit is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves.”

    Shein took off in the United States two years ago, luring young customers to its platform through an addictive mobile shopping experience and wide selection of trendy apparel.

    The firm is now “by far” the market leader in ultra-fast fashion, commanding more than 75% of US market share last year, according to Temu.

    But there are signs its smaller rival is catching up or even racing ahead: In May, total US spending on Temu eclipsed that of Shein by 20%, according to Second Measure.

    In recent months, the two have increasingly turned on one another, with battle lines being drawn on social media.

    Shein sued Temu in Illinois federal court in December, alleging that the latter had enlisted online influencers “to make false and deceptive statements” about Shein to promote its own goods.

    It claimed that Temu had required them to make statements such as: “Shein is not the only cheap option for clothing! Check Temu.com out, cheaper and way better quality.”

    The newcomer provided influencers with guidelines to make those statements, creating false advertising, Shein alleged.

    Temu has filed to dismiss the suit, but the case is still pending.

    The company has said it “strongly and categorically rejects all allegations, and is vigorously defending its rights.”

    “For a long time, we have exercised significant restraint and refrained from pursuing legal actions,” Temu told CNN in a statement Tuesday about the new lawsuit.

    “However, Shein’s escalating attacks leave us no choice but to take legal measures to defend our rights and the rights of those merchants doing business on Temu, as well as the consumers’ rights to a wide variety of affordable products.”

    Temu also claims that Shein “unilaterally changed its contract” with manufacturers, forcing them to effectively give up their intellectual property rights to Shein, which it then used to go after “the very same merchants” on Temu.

    Shein’s onslaught has already hurt Temu’s business, the latter claims.

    The company has falsely accused its smaller competitor numerous times of copyright infringement “to disrupt sales of products that are offered for sale on Temu,” the latter said in its complaint.

    As a result, more than 10,000 product listings have been pulled from Temu since last October, it added.

    The ongoing spats demonstrate how “obviously each [company] is a threat to the other,” said Felice.

    “Given this dynamic, the lawsuits are not a surprise, and each seems to be trying to establish legitimacy in the courts by delegitimizing the other.”

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  • Where TikTok users may go if the app gets banned | CNN Business

    Where TikTok users may go if the app gets banned | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

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

    The answer: probably other big American tech platforms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • ‘It’s an especially bad time’: Tech layoffs are hitting ethics and safety teams | CNN Business

    ‘It’s an especially bad time’: Tech layoffs are hitting ethics and safety teams | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, as online platforms began facing greater scrutiny for their impacts on users, elections and society, many tech firms started investing in safeguards.

    Big Tech companies brought on employees focused on election safety, misinformation and online extremism. Some also formed ethical AI teams and invested in oversight groups. These teams helped guide new safety features and policies. But over the past few months, large tech companies have slashed tens of thousands of jobs, and some of those same teams are seeing staff reductions.

    Twitter eliminated teams focused on security, public policy and human rights issues when Elon Musk took over last year. More recently, Twitch, a livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, laid off some employees focused on responsible AI and other trust and safety work, according to former employees and public social media posts. Microsoft cut a key team focused on ethical AI product development. And Facebook-parent Meta suggested that it might cut staff working in non-technical roles as part of its latest round of layoffs.

    Meta, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, hired “many leading experts in areas outside engineering.” Now, he said, the company will aim to return “to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles,” as part of cuts set to take place in the coming months.

    The wave of cuts has raised questions among some inside and outside the industry about Silicon Valley’s commitment to providing extensive guardrails and user protections at a time when content moderation and misinformation remain challenging problems to solve. Some point to Musk’s draconian cuts at Twitter as a pivot point for the industry.

    “Twitter making the first move provided cover for them,” said Katie Paul, director of the online safety research group the Tech Transparency Project. (Twitter, which also cut much of its public relations team, did not respond to a request for comment.)

    To complicate matters, these cuts come as tech giants are rapidly rolling out transformative new technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality — both of which have sparked concerns about their potential impacts on users.

    “They’re in a super, super tight race to the top for AI and I think they probably don’t want teams slowing them down,” said Jevin West, associate professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. But “it’s an especially bad time to be getting rid of these teams when we’re on the cusp of some pretty transformative, kind of scary technologies.”

    “If you had the ability to go back and place these teams at the advent of social media, we’d probably be a little bit better off,” West said. “We’re at a similar moment right now with generative AI and these chatbots.”

    When Musk laid off thousands of Twitter employees following his takeover last fall, it included staffers focused on everything from security and site reliability to public policy and human rights issues. Since then, former employees, including ex-head of site integrity Yoel Roth — not to mention users and outside experts — have expressed concerns that Twitter’s cuts could undermine its ability to handle content moderation.

    Months after Musk’s initial moves, some former employees at Twitch, another popular social platform, are now worried about the impacts recent layoffs there could have on its ability to combat hate speech and harassment and to address emerging concerns from AI.

    One former Twitch employee affected by the layoffs and who previously worked on safety issues said the company had recently boosted its outsourcing capacity for addressing reports of violative content.

    “With that outsourcing, I feel like they had this comfort level that they could cut some of the trust and safety team, but Twitch is very unique,” the former employee said. “It is truly live streaming, there is no post-production on uploads, so there is a ton of community engagement that needs to happen in real time.”

    Such outsourced teams, as well as automated technology that helps platforms enforce their rules, also aren’t as useful for proactive thinking about what a company’s safety policies should be.

    “You’re never going to stop having to be reactive to things, but we had started to really plan, move away from the reactive and really be much more proactive, and changing our policies out, making sure that they read better to our community,” the employee told CNN, citing efforts like the launch of Twitch’s online safety center and its Safety Advisory Council.

    Another former Twitch employee, who like the first spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of putting their severance at risk, told CNN that cutting back on responsible AI work, despite the fact that it wasn’t a direct revenue driver, could be bad for business in the long run.

    “Problems are going to come up, especially now that AI is becoming part of the mainstream conversation,” they said. “Safety, security and ethical issues are going to become more prevalent, so this is actually high time that companies should invest.”

    Twitch declined to comment for this story beyond its blog post announcing layoffs. In that post, Twitch noted that users rely on the company to “give you the tools you need to build your communities, stream your passions safely, and make money doing what you love” and that “we take this responsibility incredibly seriously.”

    Microsoft also raised some alarms earlier this month when it reportedly cut a key team focused on ethical AI product development as part of its mass layoffs. Former employees of the Microsoft team told The Verge that the Ethics and Society AI team was responsible for helping to translate the company’s responsible AI principles for employees developing products.

    In a statement to CNN, Microsoft said the team “played a key role” in developing its responsible AI policies and practices, adding that its efforts have been ongoing since 2017. The company stressed that even with the cuts, “we have hundreds of people working on these issues across the company, including net new, dedicated responsible AI teams that have since been established and grown significantly during this time.”

    Meta, maybe more than any other company, embodied the post-2016 shift toward greater safety measures and more thoughtful policies. It invested heavily in content moderation, public policy and an oversight board to weigh in on tricky content issues to address rising concerns about its platform.

    But Zuckerberg’s recent announcement that Meta will undergo a second round of layoffs is raising questions about the fate of some of that work. Zuckerberg hinted that non-technical roles would take a hit and said non-engineering experts help “build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.”

    Many of the cuts have yet to take place, meaning their impact, if any, may not be felt for months. And Zuckerberg said in his blog post announcing the layoffs that Meta “will make sure we continue to meet all our critical and legal obligations as we find ways to operate more efficiently.”

    Still, “if it’s claiming that they’re going to focus on technology, it would be great if they would be more transparent about what teams they are letting go of,” Paul said. “I suspect that there’s a lack of transparency, because it’s teams that deal with safety and security.”

    Meta declined to comment for this story or answer questions about the details of its cuts beyond pointing CNN to Zuckerberg’s blog post.

    Paul said Meta’s emphasis on technology won’t necessarily solve its ongoing issues. Research from the Tech Transparency Project last year found that Facebook’s technology created dozens of pages for terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. According to the organization’s report, when a user listed a terrorist group on their profile or “checked in” to a terrorist group, a page for the group was automatically generated, although Facebook says it bans content from designated terrorist groups.

    “The technology that’s supposed to be removing this content is actually creating it,” Paul said.

    At the time the Tech Transparency Project report was published in September, Meta said in a comment that, “When these kinds of shell pages are auto-generated there is no owner or admin, and limited activity. As we said at the end of last year, we addressed an issue that auto-generated shell pages and we’re continuing to review.”

    In some cases, tech firms may feel emboldened to rethink investments in these teams by a lack of new laws. In the United States, lawmakers have imposed few new regulations, despite what West described as “a lot of political theater” in repeatedly calling out companies’ safety failures.

    Tech leaders may also be grappling with the fact that even as they built up their trust and safety teams in recent years, their reputation problems haven’t really abated.

    “All they keep getting is criticized,” said Katie Harbath, former director of public policy at Facebook who now runs tech consulting firm Anchor Change. “I’m not saying they should get a pat on the back … but there comes a point in time where I think Mark [Zuckerberg] and other CEOs are like, is this worth the investment?”

    While tech companies must balance their growth with the current economic conditions, Harbath said, “sometimes technologists think that they know the right things to do, they want to disrupt things, and aren’t always as open to hearing from outside voices who aren’t technologists.”

    “You need that right balance to make sure you’re not stifling innovation, but making sure that you’re aware of the implications of what it is that you’re building,” she said. “We won’t know until we see how things continue to operate moving forward, but my hope is that they at least continue to think about that.”

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  • ‘Verified’ Twitter accounts share fake image of ‘explosion’ near Pentagon, causing confusion | CNN Business

    ‘Verified’ Twitter accounts share fake image of ‘explosion’ near Pentagon, causing confusion | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A fake image purporting to show an explosion near the Pentagon was shared by multiple verified Twitter accounts on Monday, causing confusion and leading to a brief dip in the stock market. Local officials later confirmed no such incident had occurred.

    The image, which bears all the hallmarks of being generated by artificial intelligence, was shared by numerous verified accounts with blue check marks, including one that falsely claimed it was associated with Bloomberg News.

    “Large explosion near the Pentagon complex in Washington DC. – initial report,” the account posted, along with an image purporting to show black smoke rising near a large building.

    The account has since been suspended by Twitter. It was unclear who was behind the account or where the image originated. A spokesperson for Bloomberg News said the account is not affiliated with the news organization.

    Under owner Elon Musk, Twitter has allowed anyone to obtain a verified account in exchange for a monthly payment. As a result, Twitter verification is no longer an indicator that an account represents who it claims to represent.

    Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

    The false reports of the explosion also made their way to air on a major Indian television network. Republic TV reported that an explosion had taken place, showing the fake image on its air and citing reports from the Russian news outlet RT. It later retracted the report when it became clear the incident had not taken place.

    “Republic had aired news of a possible explosion near the Pentagon citing a post & picture tweeted by RT,” the outlet later posted on its Twitter account. “RT has deleted the post and Republic has pulled back the newsbreak.”

    In a statement Tuesday, the RT press office said, “As with fast-paced news verification, we made the public aware of reports circulating and once provenance and veracity were ascertained, we took appropriate steps to correct the reporting.”

    In a post on the Russian social media platform VKontakte Tuesday, RT tried to make light of its apparent error.

    “Is the Pentagon on fire? Look, there’s a picture and everything. It’s not real, it’s just an AI generated image. Still, this picture managed to fool several major news outlets full of clever and attractive people, allegedly,” a post from RT read.

    In the moments after the image began circulating on Twitter, the US stock market took a noticeable dip. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 80 points between 10:06 a.m. and 10:10 a.m., fully recovering by 10:13 a.m. Similarly, the broader S&P 500 went from up 0.02% at 10:06 a.m. to down 0.15% at 10:09 a.m.. By 10:11 a.m., the index was positive again.

    The building in the image does not closely resemble the Pentagon and, according to experts, shows signs it may have been created using AI.

    “This image shows typical signs of being AI-synthesized: there are structural mistakes on the building and fence that you would not see if, for example, someone added smoke to an existing photo,” Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and digital forensic expert told CNN.

    The fire department in Arlington, Virginia, later responded in a tweet, stating that it and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency were “aware of a social media report circulating online about an explosion near the Pentagon. There is NO explosion or incident taking place at or near the Pentagon reservation, and there is no immediate danger or hazards to the public.”

    – CNN’s David Goldman contributed reporting.

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  • Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

    Pro-Chinese online influence campaign promoted protests in Washington, researchers say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research.

    The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity.

    One of the protests was against a US government ban on goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where US officials have accused the Chinese government of systematic repression of the Uyghurs. The other protest was on the sidelines of a June conference on international religious freedom, Mandiant said.

    One of the protests only attracted roughly a dozen people but it showed the scope and ambition of the pro-China efforts.

    The hired protesters, who included self-proclaimed musicians and actors in the Washington, DC, area, apparently had no idea they were being enlisted in a pro-China influence campaign, the Mandiant researchers said.

    The campaign backed by the Chinese firm, Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd., is “intended to sow discord in US society,” Ryan Serabian, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told CNN.

    In both cases, protesters carry placards and chant slogans about racial discrimination and abortion in the US. Haixun, the Chinese firm, distributed videos of the protesters online to further the influence campaign, according to Mandiant.

    Shanghai Haixun Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

    Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was unaware of the details of the research. “China has always adhered to non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs,” Liu said in an email to CNN.

    The Washington Post first reported on the Mandiant research.

    In the runup to the 2016 US presidential elections, Russian operatives used social media to organize protests on American soil as part of Moscow’s election interference, according to US intelligence officials. Such divisive tactics are no longer confined to the Russians, according to election security experts.

    During the 2022 US midterm elections, pro-China propagandists showed signs of engaging in “Russia-style influence activities” that stoke American divisions, FBI officials told reporters last year. The FBI pointed to Facebook’s shutdown of accounts originating in China that posted memes mocking President Joe Biden and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

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  • Meta’s Threads gets a highly requested ‘following feed’ | CNN Business

    Meta’s Threads gets a highly requested ‘following feed’ | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Meta on Tuesday launched a highly anticipated “following feed” option in its Threads app as part of its latest batch of updates that could help the new social platform further chip away at Twitter’s position in the market.

    The option to see a reverse chronological feed of posts from only accounts a user follows had been one of the most requested features since Threads launched earlier this month. On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied to a post requesting the feature, saying, “Ask and you shall receive.”

    The following feed, one of the central features of the Twitter experience, can be accessed on Threads by double tapping on the app’s home button.

    Meta has been steadily rolling out updates to Threads as it tries to keep users engaged in the new app. Threads had a hugely successful launch, topping 100 million sign-ups in its first week, but engagement has declined somewhat since then.

    Meta rolled out Threads as a barebones app — missing popular features such as direct messages and a robust search function — to take advantage of a weak moment at rival Twitter. Now, Meta executives have acknowledged that they must continue building out the app to keep the momentum going.

    “I’m very optimistic about how the Threads community is coming together,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the platform last week. “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily … The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention.”

    Tuesday’s round of updates also includes automatic translation of posts into a users’ default language, the ability for users to see posts they’ve liked in their settings, the option for private users to batch “approve all” follow requests and buttons to filter the activity feed by various types of interactions, according to the company.

    The changes followed another batch of updates last week, which included a translation button and the option to subscribe and receive notifications from accounts a user doesn’t follow.

    Meta’s ongoing work on Threads comes as the chaos at Twitter continues. Earlier this week, owner Elon Musk began doing away with the platform’s iconic bird branding and replacing it with “X” in hopes of building an “everything” app similar to China’s WeChat.

    As Musk rebrands the app, he could face a different threat from Meta: Facebook’s parent company is one of many businesses that already have intellectual property rights to the letter “X.”

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  • Twitter says portions of source code leaked online | CNN Business

    Twitter says portions of source code leaked online | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Twitter said parts of its proprietary code were posted online and had been exposed until Friday, when the company had the material removed from the web and filed for a court order to hunt down the source of the leak.

    The leak saw excerpts of Twitter’s source code — the programming that powers the Twitter platform and its internal tools — posted to the online software repository GitHub, according to a court filing Friday by a Twitter attorney. The files were posted by a pseudonymous GitHub user, identified only by the handle FreeSpeechEnthusiast. The account was created on Jan. 3 and does not appear to have posted any other material besides the Twitter code.

    The code leak represents the latest mishap for Twitter as CEO Elon Musk has sought to reverse a sharp decline in revenues through substantial layoffs and other cost cutting measures that some experts had already said risked making the platform less safe. Leaked source code can not only provide insight into how a company designs its product but can also give criminals the chance to find or exploit security flaws and vulnerabilities.

    Twitter has launched an effort to identify the person or group behind the FreeSpeechEnthusiast GitHub account, as well as anyone who may have interacted with the leaked code. On Friday, Twitter filed for a subpoena at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, which Twitter hopes will compel GitHub to hand over IP addresses, contact information, and access logs associated with the incident.

    “The purpose for which Twitter’s DMCA Subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers, and such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting Twitter’s rights,” Twitter wrote in its filing to the court.

    GitHub removed the content on Friday after Twitter submitted a copyright claim to the company. GitHub declined to comment on the matter but said it publicly posts all copyright takedown requests and referred CNN to Twitter’s request. Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under Musk, automatically responded to a request for comment with an email containing a poop emoji.

    The leak was first reported by The New York Times.

    The leak comes as Musk has sought to place more of his own imprint on the social media platform he purchased last year. The acquisition prompted a wave of advertisers to flee the platform over fears the deal would lead to a rise in hate speech and an increase in reputational risks for brands. Musk has blamed the advertiser revolt for steep losses at the company, and has aggressively pushed the company’s subscription service, Twitter Blue, as an alternative revenue stream. He has also said Twitter will charge fees for other software applications to access Twitter’s platform.

    On Saturday, reports on an internal memo by Musk outlining employee stock awards suggested that Twitter was valued at about $20 billion, or less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for the company. (CNN has not independently confirmed the memo’s existence or its contents.) In the memo, Musk reportedly defended the changes he has made at the company and claimed that Twitter’s valuation could someday exceed $250 billion.

    The same day, Musk tweeted that prior to the changes he made, Twitter only had $1 billion in cash, which he said represented about four months’ worth of expenses and an “extremely dire situation.” But, he added, things are looking up.

    “Now that advertisers are returning, it looks like we will break even in Q2,” he said.

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  • Musk’s Twitter promised a purge of blue check marks. Instead he singled out the New York Times | CNN Business

    Musk’s Twitter promised a purge of blue check marks. Instead he singled out the New York Times | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Some VIP Twitter users woke up on Saturday expecting to have lost their coveted blue verification check marks in a previously announced purge by Elon Musk. Instead, Twitter appeared to target a single account from a major publication Musk dislikes and changed the language on its site in a way that obscures why users are verified.

    Twitter had said it would “begin winding down” blue checks granted under its old verification system — which emphasized protecting high-profile users at risk of impersonation — on April 1. In order to stay verified, Musk said, users would have to pay $8 per month to join the platform’s Twitter Blue subscription service, which has allowed accounts to pay for verification since December.

    Most legacy blue check holders found this weekend that their verification marks had not disappeared, but rather had been appended with a new label reading: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.” The language, which shows up when users click on the check mark, makes it unclear whether verified accounts are actually notable individuals or simply users who have paid to join Twitter Blue.

    But one high-profile account did lose its blue check over the weekend: the main account for the New York Times, which had previously told CNN it would not pay for verification.

    After an account that often engages with Musk posted a meme this weekend about the Times declining to pay for verification, Musk responded in a tweet saying, “Oh ok, we’ll take it off then.” Musk then lashed out at the Times — just the latest instance of the billionaire slamming journalists or media outlets — in a series of tweets that claimed the outlet’s coverage is boring and “propaganda.”

    The weekend moves are just the latest example of Twitter creating confusion and whiplash for users over feature changes — and in this case, not just any users, but many of the most high-profile accounts that have long been a key selling point for the platform. It also highlights how Musk often appears to guide decisions about the platform more by whims than by policy.

    Although the New York Times’ main account lost its blue check, its other accounts, such as those for its arts, travel and books content, remained verified. After its blue check was removed, a spokesperson for the New York Times reiterated to CNN that it does not plan to pay for verification.

    Twitter, which laid off most of its public relations staff last fall, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Musk has been threatening to take away “legacy” blue check marks from users verified under Twitter’s old system since shortly after he bought Twitter last fall.

    In early November, Twitter launched the option for people paying for its Twitter Blue subscription service to receive blue checks. The program was quickly put on pause after being plagued by a wave of celebrity and corporate impersonators, and was relaunched in December.

    Twitter also rolled out a color-coded verification system with differently colored marks for companies and government entities, but Musk continued to say that individual users would eventually have to pay for blue checks.

    In the days leading up to the blue check purge that wasn’t, prominent users such as actor William Shatner and anti-bullying activist Monica Lewinksy pushed back against the idea that, as power users that draw attention to the site, they should have to pay for a feature that keeps them safe from impersonation.

    By muddying the reason accounts are verified, the new label could risk making it easier for people to scam or impersonate high-profile users. Experts in inauthentic behavior have also said it’s not clear that reserving verification for paid users will reduce the number of bots on the site, an issue Musk has raised on and off over the past year.

    Musk, for his part, has previously presented changes to Twitter’s verification system as a way of “treating everyone equally.”

    “There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities,” he said in a tweet last week. The paid feature could also drive revenue, which could help Musk, who is on the hook for significant debt after buying Twitter for $44 billion.

    Musk last week also said that starting on April 15, only verified accounts would be recommended in users’ “For You” feeds alongside the accounts they follow.

    –CNN’s Oliver Darcy contributed to this report.

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