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  • Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms | CNN Business

    Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms | CNN Business


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A wide range of businesses, internet users, academics and even human rights experts defended Big Tech’s liability shield Thursday in a pivotal Supreme Court case about YouTube algorithms, with some arguing that excluding AI-driven recommendation engines from federal legal protections would cause sweeping changes to the open internet.

    The diverse group weighing in at the Court ranged from major tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and Microsoft to some of Big Tech’s most vocal critics, including Yelp and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Even Reddit and a collection of volunteer Reddit moderators got involved.

    In friend-of-the-court filings, the companies, organizations and individuals said the federal law whose scope the Court could potentially narrow in the case — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — is vital to the basic function of the web. Section 230 has been used to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content.

    The question at the heart of the case, Gonzalez v. Google, is whether Google can be sued for recommending pro-ISIS content to users through its YouTube algorithm; the company has argued that Section 230 precludes such litigation. But the plaintiffs in the case, the family members of a person killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, have argued that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm can be held liable under a US antiterrorism law.

    In their filing, Reddit and the Reddit moderators argued that a ruling enabling litigation against tech-industry algorithms could lead to future lawsuits against even non-algorithmic forms of recommendation, and potentially targeted lawsuits against individual internet users.

    “The entire Reddit platform is built around users ‘recommending’ content for the benefit of others by taking actions like upvoting and pinning content,” their filing read. “There should be no mistaking the consequences of petitioners’ claim in this case: their theory would dramatically expand Internet users’ potential to be sued for their online interactions.”

    Yelp, a longtime antagonist to Google, argued that its business depends on serving relevant and non-fraudulent reviews to its users, and that a ruling creating liability for recommendation algorithms could break Yelp’s core functions by effectively forcing it to stop curating all reviews, even those that may be manipulative or fake.

    “If Yelp could not analyze and recommend reviews without facing liability, those costs of submitting fraudulent reviews would disappear,” Yelp wrote. “If Yelp had to display every submitted review … business owners could submit hundreds of positive reviews for their own business with little effort or risk of a penalty.”

    Section 230 ensures platforms can moderate content in order to present the most relevant data to users out of the huge amounts of information that get added to the internet every day, Twitter argued.

    “It would take an average user approximately 181 million years to download all data from the web today,” the company wrote.

    If the Supreme Court were to advance a new interpretation of Section 230 that safeguarded platforms’ right to remove content, but excluded protections on their right to recommend content, it would open up broad new questions about what it means to recommend something online, Meta argued in its filing.

    “If merely displaying third-party content in a user’s feed qualifies as ‘recommending’ it, then many services will face potential liability for virtually all the third-party content they host,” Meta wrote, “because nearly all decisions about how to sort, pick, organize, and display third-party content could be construed as ‘recommending’ that content.”

    A ruling finding that tech platforms can be sued for their recommendation algorithms would jeopardize GitHub, the vast online code repository used by millions of programmers, said Microsoft.

    “The feed uses algorithms to recommend software to users based on projects they have worked on or showed interest in previously,” Microsoft wrote. It added that for “a platform with 94 million developers, the consequences [of limiting Section 230] are potentially devastating for the world’s digital infrastructure.”

    Microsoft’s search engine Bing and its social network, LinkedIn, also enjoy algorithmic protections under Section 230, the company said.

    According to New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, it is virtually impossible to design a rule that singles out algorithmic recommendation as a meaningful category for liability, and could even “result in the loss or obscuring of a massive amount of valuable speech,” particularly speech belonging to marginalized or minority groups.

    “Websites use ‘targeted recommendations’ because those recommendations make their platforms usable and useful,” the NYU filing said. “Without a liability shield for recommendations, platforms will remove large categories of third-party content, remove all third-party content, or abandon their efforts to make the vast amount of user content on their platforms accessible. In any of these situations, valuable free speech will disappear—either because it is removed or because it is hidden amidst a poorly managed information dump.”

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  • Felix Auger-Aliassime’s loss means every player featured in Netflix’s ‘Break Point’ is no longer in Australian Open | CNN

    Felix Auger-Aliassime’s loss means every player featured in Netflix’s ‘Break Point’ is no longer in Australian Open | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    And then there were none. Felix Auger-Aliassime’s fourth-round loss at the Australian Open means none of the stars of Netflix’s new tennis documentary ‘Break Point’ have made it through to the second week in Melbourne.

    Such poor showing from the series’ stars has led to talk of a ‘Netflix curse’ as player after player crashed out of the tournament.

    Canada’s Auger-Aliassime was the last one standing, but the sixth seed fell 6-4 3-6 6-7 (2-7) 6-7 (3-7) to the Czech underdog Jiri Lehecka.

    The first five episodes of the documentary, which focuses on the next generation of tennis stars, was streamed earlier this month.

    Its aim is to showcase the sport’s younger talent to the world, the ones tipped to step out of the shadows of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic (and, at the time of filming, Roger Federer and Serena Williams as they hadn’t yet retired).

    Maria Sakkari, Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud, Matteo Berrettini, Ons Jabeur, Thanasi Kokkinakis have all been eliminated from the first grand slam of the year – which began on January 16 – while Nick Kyrgios, Ajla Tomljanovic and Paula Badosa withdrew before the start of the tournament because of injuries.

    It means none of the show’s players, who have all featured in the world’s top 10 at some point in their careers, have made it to the quarterfinals.

    Speaking earlier this week, Auger-Aliassime laughed off talk of a so-called curse.

    “I thought it was funny,” he told reporters. “I don’t know; I don’t think it’s connected.

    “Maybe the players that lost, maybe they do feel like it’s connected, somehow. I don’t think they do. I don’t think it’s connected, anyhow. It’s funny how things work out sometimes.”

    The hashtag ‘NetflixCurse’ has been trending on Twitter, with many users writing that the “Netflix curse is now complete” following the Canadian’s exit.

    Earlier this week, Netflix’s UK & Ireland Twitter account tweeted: “To clarify: this is purely a coincidence,” in response to a tweet about the so-called curse.

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  • Teachers are adapting to concerns about a powerful new AI tool | CNN Business

    Teachers are adapting to concerns about a powerful new AI tool | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    When Kristen Asplin heard about a powerful new AI chatbot tool called ChatGPT going viral online recently with its ability to write frighteningly good essays in seconds, she worried about how her students could use it to cheat.

    Asplin, a professor at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, soon joined a new Facebook group for teachers like herself to swap concerns and suggestions on how to restructure their lessons and assignments in response to ChatGPT. The tool, which launched in late November, can create detailed responses to simple prompts like “Who was the 25th president of the United States?” as well as answers to more complex questions like “What political developments led to the fall of the Roman Empire?”

    Asplin eventually decided to tweak her approach to written assignments. Instead of focusing just on the final product, which could potentially be spit out easily by ChatGPT, she’s now asking students to hand in their papers at various stages of the writing process.

    “I am emphasizing and being more vigilant about the early steps in the writing process so I can see their progress,” Asplin said about her new approach to class assignments. “This will give students more confidence in the process of writing so they are less likely to be desperate enough to cheat. It will also show me their work along the way so they can’t just type a prompt in the program and have the computer do their work for them.”

    In the weeks since the artificial intelligence research group OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which is trained on a massive trove of information online to create its responses, the tool has been used to write articles (with more than a couple factual inaccuracies) for at least one news publication; penned lyrics in the style of various artists (one of whom later responded, “this song sucks”) and drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists.

    But while many may view the tool as a novelty with unknown long-term consequences, a growing number of schools and teachers are concerned about its immediate impact on students and their ability to cheat on assignments. The Facebook group that Asplin joined, for example, has added more than 800 members in just the few weeks since it was created.

    Some educators are now moving with remarkable speed to rethink their assignments in response to ChatGPT, even as it remains unclear how widespread use is of the tool among students and how harmful it could really be to learning. In interviews with CNN, some college instructors said they are shifting back to in-classroom essays for the first time in years, and others are requiring more personalized essays. Some teachers said they’ve also heard of students being required to film short videos that elaborate on their thought process. Public schools in New York City and Seattle, meanwhile, have already banned students and teachers from using ChatGPT on the district’s networks and devices.

    While there have been some anecdotes of cheating cases circling the internet and stirring fears of more to come, some teachers are urging their peers not to overreact to a new technology.

    “There’s been a mass hysteria response to ChatGPT potentially ruining writing, while other people think it’s actually a good thing,” said Alan Reid, an associate professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. “We have to try to straddle the two sides and recognize the drawbacks alongside the positives.”

    In recent weeks, Kevin Pittle, an associate professor at Biola University in California, has found himself thinking about what ChatGPT knows.

    “Before assigning materials, I thoroughly interrogate ChatGPT to see what it does or does not ‘know’ about the material or have access to,” he said. With that in mind, he said he’s now requiring his students to show citations of specific sources that are unavailable to ChatGPT, including textbooks, articles behind paywalls, and materials produced after ChatGPT was trained on internet data available as of 2021.

    And he’s not stopping there.

    “ChatGPT doesn’t ‘have soul’ – its fictional reflections are generally pretty lifeless – so in one course I am requiring much more ‘soul-searching’ and reflective journaling than ChatGPT seems able to fake,” he said.

    OpenAI previously told CNN it made ChatGPT available as a preview to learn from real world use. A spokesperson called that step a “critical part of developing and deploying capable, safe AI systems.”

    “We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system,” the spokesperson said. “We look forward to working with educators on useful solutions, and other ways to help teachers and students benefit from artificial intelligence.”

    Some companies such as Turnitin are already actively working on ChatGPT plagiarism detection tools that could help teachers identify when assignments are written by the tool. (Turnitin already works with 16,000 schools, publishers and corporations with its other plagiarism detection tools). Princeton student Edward Tuan told CNN more than 95,000 people have already tried the beta version of his own ChatGPT detection feature, called ZeroGPT, noting there has been “incredible demand among teachers” so far.

    The concern extends beyond the United States. Alex Steel, the director of teaching strategy and a professor of law at the University of New South Wales, said a number of universities across Australia have announced a move back to closed book exams.

    “There is an increasing number of academics concerned that they will not be able to detect AI-written answers,” he told CNN. “Partly the concerns are driven by a lack of understanding from teachers of what sort of questions might be susceptible … so staff may push for return to exams until [these issues] can be addressed.”

    Not all teachers are looking for ways to crack down on ChatGPT. Reid, the professor at Coastal Carolina University, believes teachers should work with ChatGPT and teach best practices in the classroom.

    Reid said teachers could encourage students to plug an assignment question into the tool and have them compare that result to what they personally wrote. “This could also allow a teaching opportunity for students to see what they missed, analyze the various approaches they could have taken or use it as a starting point to help with an outline,” Reid said.

    He argued there will always be ways for students to cheat online, so teaching them how ChatGPT may improve their own writing could be a practical step forward.

    “The burden falls onto the educators – and many don’t want to be police in the classroom,” he said. “The way to handle it is for teachers to examine their own practices and think about how it can be used positively. If they ignore this thing and don’t know anything about it, that leaves the door open for students to use it to cheat and get away with it.”

    The OpenAI website ChatGPT about page on laptop computer arranged in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023.

    Leslie Layne, an English and linguistics professor at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, agrees. She now plans to teach students how ChatGPT could improve their writing.

    “ChatGPT can give students a running start, so they’re not starting on a blank page. But it doesn’t come close to a finished product,” she said. “We want students to include more sourcing and evidence, so it could be used as something to build on.”

    She likened ChatGPT to the outcry around calculators when they first came out. “People were very concerned we would lose the ability to do basic math,” she said. “Now we carry one wherever we go with our phones, and it is so helpful.”

    Layne said teachers could consider having students critique how ChatGPT handled an assignment question, teach students how to find the best prompt for the best response, and have ChatGPT argue one side of a topic and a student argue the other side.

    “Like with other new technologies, this could be a tool instructors use to help students express their ideas,” she said. “Students just have to learn how to improve its writing and adapt it to their own voice.”

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  • Elon Musk wants Twitter users to pay an even higher subscription fee to not see ads

    Elon Musk wants Twitter users to pay an even higher subscription fee to not see ads

    In tweets posted Saturday, the mercurial billionaire wrote, “Ads are too frequent on Twitter and too big. Taking steps to address both in coming weeks. Also, there will be a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads.”

    A user replied that using Instagram is a “complete garbage experience” because it shows “an ad every 3 pictures,” adding, “If you make ads less intrusive here and offer features that appeal visual communities, there are millions of users over there ready to migrate.”

    Musk replied “That’s the plan!”

    Currently the company sells its Twitter Blue premium offering for $11 per month when users sign up through the iOS or Android app. Otherwise it’s $8 per month, since the commission on in-app purchases doesn’t apply.

    Fewer or no ads on Twitter?

    Seeing fewer ads, as opposed to none, has been a selling point of Twitter Blue. Another has been the ability to get a blue check mark, which before Musk’s takeover indicated Twitter had verified the identity of a prominent user.

    In November, Musk’s company paused Twitter Blue after verified trolls used it to impersonate celebrities and brands like Eli Lilly. The latter appeared to announce, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” forcing the drugmaker to release an awkward apology over something it never said.

    It wasn’t the only misstep since Musk too over Twitter for $44 billion in late October. Last month, he admitted in a Twitter Spaces conversation that suspending the account of respected venture capitalist Paul Graham had been “a mistake.” Graham had run afoul of a short-lived policy banning links to competing social networks. 

    Advertiser exodus

    Another misstep might have been alienating advertisers, who left in droves after his takeover, worried about Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” reducing content moderation. Last month, Musk claimed advertisers were returning.

    But revenue at Twitter, which relies heavily on advertising, was down 35% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to a report this week by The Information, and a similar result could be in store for this quarter. 

    In other changes this week, Twitter quietly updated its developer agreement to make clear it was cutting off makers of apps like Tweetbot and Twitterific, as reported by Engadget. That came after such services were abruptly cut off with no warning.

    Twitterrific’s Sean Heber wrote in a blog post on Thursday: “We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter.”

    Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.

    Steve Mollman

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  • Top Russia official threatens West with ‘global catastrophe’ over weapons to Ukraine

    Top Russia official threatens West with ‘global catastrophe’ over weapons to Ukraine

    Continued deliveries of arms to Ukraine by its allies in the West will lead to retaliation with “more powerful weapons,” a top official in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime said on Sunday.

    Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, threatened Europe and the U.S. with “global catastrophe” over their continued military support to the government in Kyiv, which is trying to continue retaking territory it lost in the Russian invasion.

    Volodin directly invoked the use of nuclear weapons in his statement over messaging app Telegram.

    “Arguments that the nuclear powers have not previously used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts are untenable. This is because these states have not faced a situation in which the security of their citizens and the territorial integrity of their countries were threatened,” the Russian official wrote in his social media post.

    The threat comes amid arguments over whether Germany will send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion. Kyiv has requested the German-made tanks, which it says it needs to renew its counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces. But Berlin has so far resisted the call from Ukraine and its allies to send the tanks without the U.S. making the first move, over fears of an escalation in the conflict.

    Berlin also hasn’t approved deliveries of the tanks from its allies, as Germany gets a final say over any re-exports of the vehicles from countries that have purchased them.

    Newly appointed German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is planning a trip to Ukraine, which could come in the next month, German newspaper Bild, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, reported on Sunday, citing an interview. Asked about the Leopard tanks, Pistorius said: “We are in very close dialogue on this issue with our international partners, above all with the U.S.”

    In his Telegram post, Russia’s Volodin said: “With their decisions, Washington and Brussels are leading the world to a terrible war … foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries.”

    It’s not the first time that top Russian politicians threaten a nuclear escalation. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has invoked the use of nuclear weapons more than once since the outbreak of the conflict 11 months ago.

    Carlo Martuscelli

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  • Instagram rolls out ‘quiet mode’ for when users want to focus | CNN Business

    Instagram rolls out ‘quiet mode’ for when users want to focus | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    Instagram on Thursday announced a new feature called “quiet mode,” which aims to help users focus and set boundaries with friends and followers.

    When the option is enabled, all notifications will be paused and the profile’s activity status will change to ‘In quiet mode.” If someone sends a direct message during this time, Instagram will automatically send an auto-reply notifying the sender that “quiet mode” is activated.

    While the feature applies to all users, Instagram appears to be focusing on teens. Instagram is pitching it as a tool to help with studying and prompting teens to turn on the feature “when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night.”

    The tool will roll out to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and plans to add it to more countries in the future.

    The tool is the latest example of instagram offering users more ways to manage their usage, after years of scrutiny over how much time people – and especially teens – spend on various social media applications, and the harms it can pose to their mental health.

    “These updates are part of our ongoing work to ensure people have experiences that work for them, and that they have more control over the time they spend online and the types of content they see,” the company said in a blog post.

    As part of that effort, the platform is also introducing features to give users more control over what shows up in their Explore feed. For example, it’s now possible to mark content with a “Not Interested” label to prevent similar content from showing up in the future. Instagram is also introducing an option to block words or lists of words, emojis or hashtags, such as #fitness or #recipes, from being recommended in the Explore feed.

    Instagram is updating its parental supervision tools, too. When a teen updates a setting, parents can receive a notification so they can talk to their teen about the change. Parents will also be able to view accounts their teen has blocked.

    In a series of congressional hearings in 2021, executives from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat faced tough questions from lawmakers over how their platforms can lead younger users to harmful content, damage mental health and body image (particularly among teenage girls), and lacked sufficient parental controls and safeguards to protect teens.

    The social media companies vowed to make changes, and Instagram in particular has made many. It has since introduced an educational hub for parents with resources, tips and articles from experts on user safety, and rolled out a tool that allows guardians to see how much time their kids spend on Instagram and set time limits.

    Another Instagram feature encouraged users to take a break from the app, such as suggesting they take a deep breath, write something down, check a to-do list or listen to a song, after a predetermined amount of time. The company has also said it’s taking a “stricter approach” to the content it recommends to teens and actively nudges them toward different topics, such as architecture and travel destinations, if they’ve been dwelling on any type of content for too long.

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  • Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers

    Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers

    Pedestrians outside Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Oct. 6, 2022.

    David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Twitter’s full-time headcount has dwindled to approximately 1,300 active, working employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title, according to internal records viewed by CNBC. Around 75 of the company’s 1,300 employees are on leave including about 40 engineers.

    The company’s trust and safety team, which makes policy recommendations, design and product changes with the aim of keeping all of Twitter’s users safe, is down to fewer than 20 full-time employees.

    Internal records indicate that there are also about 1,400 non-working employees of Twitter who are still being paid, but are no longer expected to fulfill their old responsibilities at the social media company. Many of them resigned when CEO Elon Musk sent out a “pledge” asking them to commit to “hardcore” work at Twitter 2.0 including long hours. 

    Musk tweeted early Saturday that there are around 2,300 “active, working” employees at Twitter. “There are still hundreds of employees working on trust & safety, along with several thousand contractors,” he added.

    Under Musk‘s management, Twitter has slashed headcount through mass layoffs, other terminations and changes that compelled many to resign, including the end of a work-from-home forever policy that had been put in place under former CEO Jack Dorsey.

    Before Musk led a $44 billion leveraged buyout of Twitter last year, Twitter’s headcount stood at about 7,500 employees. Layoffs were rumored internally and expected to take place whether Musk’s takeover went through or not. However, Musk has cut Twitter personnel far more than many expected — or by about 80% according to the internal records and two recent employees who spoke with CNBC.

    According to an engineer who resigned from the company, the loss of employees and reduced headcount will make it harder to maintain the service reliably while still building new features.

    This person, who asked to remain unnamed while discussing a prior employer, explained that the company’s code base is massive, and it requires knowledge of different platforms and programming languages to maintain different parts of Twitter — advertising services versus the core timeline, for instance. Engineers’ skill sets, they said, are not necessarily transferrable across all of these. And it will be hard to train engineers after losing so much institutional knowledge, this person added.

    In addition to around 1,300 full-time working employees, Musk also has authorized about 130 people from his other businesses, including Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Company, as well as talent from venture funds and other firms, to work at Twitter.

    Since taking over Twitter, Musk has faced a shareholder backlash at Tesla for being distracted, for stirring up political controversy with his strategy at Twitter, and for selling billions of dollars worth of his Tesla shares to finance his Twitter takeover.

    Clarification: This story has been updated to note that the 1,300 people are active, working employees at Twitter. Another 1,400 people are non-working, but paid employees of Twitter.

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  • TikTok vs. Europe: Could EU data privacy law slay the

    TikTok vs. Europe: Could EU data privacy law slay the

    London — The social media platform TikTok has been in American lawmakers’ crosshairs for months, and the sentiment is spreading across the Atlantic. European legislators are voicing increasing concern about the Chinese-owned app’s data policies and its influence on young people, and Europe’s regulators may have more potent legal weapons at their disposal to challenge the company.

    French President Emmanuel Macron has been the highest-profile European leader to criticize the social platform whose parent company ByteDance is based in China. At an event on mental health in December, Macron called TikTok “the most disruptive” social media outlet for young people, warning that it was “deceptively innocent” and addictive.

    “We remain vigilant in any situation that would lead to a compromise in the protection of our citizens’ data,” Jean-Noel Barrot, France’s Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, told CBS News, adding that he meets “on a regular basis” with TikTok managers in France to discuss “data protection issues and content moderation and protection of minors.”

    German Member of the European Parliament Moritz Körner has been pushing EU regulators to get tough on TikTok for years.

    “From a geopolitical perspective, the EU’s inactivity towards TikTok has been naïve,” he told CBS News. “The data dragon TikTok must be placed under the surveillance of the European authorities.”


    ByteDance probe finds employees gained access to some of TikTok’s U.S. user data

    04:26

    Körner said the EU has been slow to implement oversight of the platform, arguing that Tiktok “poses several unacceptable risks” for users, including “data access by Chinese authorities, censorship and the tracking of journalists.”

    Maximilian Funke-Kaiser, a spokesman for Germany’s liberal FDP party, told CBS News that TikTok has been guilty of “systematic data misuse” and said that security concerns about the app are “justified.” 

    “To be clear: If you do business here and earn a lot of money with it, you must also comply with applicable law. Otherwise, there is no room for the company here,” he said. 

    Funke-Kaiser said steps taken by the U.S. government to ban the platform for employee use were something that should be replicated in Germany. 

    “I consider the ban on TikTok on working equipment of officials of the U.S. government to be appropriate in view of the data protection and security risks,” he said. 

    Responding to the concerns voiced by European officials, a TikTok spokesperson told CBS News in an email that the company had responded to the ban in the U.S. by putting together “a comprehensive package of measures with layers of government and independent oversight to ensure that there are no backdoors into TikTok that could be used to manipulate the platform.”

    “These measures go beyond what any peer company is doing today on security,” the TikTok spokesperson said. 

    Legal challenges

    While the United States has taken the step of banning TikTok on government devices in the name of national security, wide-ranging EU data protection laws already on the books could become an even bigger headache for TikTok executives.

    TikTok is currently the subject of two investigations by Ireland’s data protection regulator over transfers of user data to China that may breach the country’s laws, as well as possible violations of children’s privacy.


    Amid concerns about smartphone apps collecting data, how can users protect their privacy?

    06:56

    The company may also come under a direct audit and face fines of up to 6% of the platform’s annual revenue under the EU’s new Digital Services Act, if it’s found to have failed to comply with that law.

    It was in this context that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew flew last week to Brussels. The head of the social media outlet was on a charm offensive, trying to assuage concerns, but high-level European policy chiefs sent him home with stark warnings.

    “I count on TikTok to fully execute its commitments to go the extra mile in respecting EU law and regaining trust of European regulators. There cannot be any doubt that data of users in Europe are safe and not exposed to illegal access from third-country authorities,” European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová told media after the meeting.

    A TikTok spokesperson told CBS News that the company has a “clear plan that we’re already implementing to reassure our community that they can trust us with their data… This includes storing European user data in our data center operations in Ireland, starting this year; further reducing employee access to data; and minimizing data flows outside of Europe.”  

    “Europe must finally wake up” 

    Tiktok’s relationship with the Chinese government is complex. The platform’s parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing, and while the company has denied sharing data with Chinese authorities, TikTok admitted in a policy update last November that Chinese employees could be granted “remote access” to European user data.

    That admission sparked fears that the Chinese government could legally force ByteDance to hand over any user data to which the company has access. Given that China’s ruling Communist Party has complete control over all business conducted on the country’s soil — with no checks or balances on that power, it’s not a far-fetched concern.

    ByteDance collects a sizable amount of data through TikTok and other digital properties. According to the company’s own privacy policy, TikTok collects the names of users, passwords, phone numbers, private messages on the app, the mobile networks used by its users, their contacts, satellite location information, and payment details such as credit card info.

    And TikTok is growing fast. As of June 2022, there were 227.81 million users in Europe. To put that in context, there were fewer than 100 million Twitter users in Europe as of 2022, according to DataReportal. 

    Körner believes it’s high time for European lawmakers to reign in the video sharing app by simply enforcing existing laws.

    “TikTok’s success is the result of a European policy failure,” he told CBS News. “Europe must finally wake up… If TikTok refuses to abide by EU laws, it should be banned.”

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  • Climate misinformation ‘rocket boosters’ on Musk’s Twitter

    Climate misinformation ‘rocket boosters’ on Musk’s Twitter

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Search for the word “climate” on Twitter and the first automatic recommendation isn’t “climate crisis” or “climate jobs” or even “climate change” but instead “climate scam.”

    Clicking on the recommendation yields dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change and making misleading claims about efforts to mitigate it.

    Such misinformation has flourished on Twitter since it was bought by Elon Musk last year, but the site isn’t the only one promoting content that scientists and environmental advocates say undercuts public support for policies intended to respond to a changing climate.

    “What’s happening in the information ecosystem poses a direct threat to action,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit. “It plants those seeds of doubt and makes people think maybe there isn’t scientific consensus.”

    The institute is part of a coalition of environmental advocacy groups that on Thursday released a report tracking climate change disinformation in the months before, during and after the U.N. climate summit in November.

    The report faulted social media platforms for, among other things, failing to enforce their own policies prohibiting climate change misinformation. It is only the latest to highlight the growing problem of climate misinformation on Twitter.

    Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, allowed nearly 4,000 advertisements on its site — most bought by fossil fuel companies — that dismissed the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticized efforts to respond to it, the researchers found.

    In some cases, the ads and the posts cited inflation and economic fears as reasons to oppose climate policies, while ignoring the costs of inaction. Researchers also found that a significant number of the accounts posting false claims about climate change also spread misinformation about U.S. elections, COVID-19 and vaccines.

    Twitter did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. A spokesperson for Meta cited the company’s policy prohibiting ads that have been proven false by its fact-checking partners, a group that includes the AP. The ads identified in the report had not been fact-checked.

    Under Musk, Twitter laid off thousands of employees and made changes to its content moderation that its critics said undercut the effort. In November, the company announced it would no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation. Musk also reinstated many formerly banned users, including several who had spread misleading claims about climate change. Instances of hate speech and attacks on LGBTQ people soared.

    Tweets containing “climate scam” or other terms linked to climate change denial rose 300% in 2022, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit Advance Democracy. While Twitter had labeled some of the content as misinformation, many of the popular posts were not labeled.

    Musk’s new verification system could be part of the problem, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another organization that tracks online misinformation. Previously, the blue checkmarks were held by people in the public eye such as journalists, government officials or celebrities.

    Now, anyone willing to pay $8 a month can seek a checkmark. Posts and replies from verified accounts are given an automatic boost on the platform, making them more visible than content from users who don’t pay.

    When researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed accounts verified after Musk took over, they found they spread four times the amount of climate change misinformation compared with users verified before Musk’s purchase.

    Verification systems are typically created to assure users that the accounts they follow are legitimate. Twitter’s new system, however, makes no distinction between authoritative sources on climate change and anyone with $8 and an opinion, according to Imran Ahmed, the center’s chief executive.

    “We found,” Ahmed said, “it has in fact put rocket boosters on the spread of lies and disinformation.”

    __

    This story has been updated to correct the last name of Imran Ahmed.

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  • Social media hunting stars and their company ordered to pay more than $100,000 and probation for illegal hunts | CNN

    Social media hunting stars and their company ordered to pay more than $100,000 and probation for illegal hunts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Josh and Sarah Bowmar, a couple with a strong following on social media for their hunting videos, were sentenced Tuesday as part of a plea agreement for breaking hunting regulations during some of the events they posted online.

    The couple – along with their company, Bowmar Bowhunting – were placed on three years probation and ordered to pay more than $130,000 in fines, restitution and forfeiture.

    The terms of their probation include that the couple “shall not hunt or otherwise engage in any activities associated with hunting, limited to within the District of Nebraska,” according to court documents.

    The Bowmars were accused of conspiring with a hunt guiding and outfitting company in Nebraska to illegally hunt deer using bait traps. Under Nebraska law, it is illegal to set food to attract animals to a hunting site. Prosecutors also alleged Sarah Bowmar killed a wild turkey without a valid permit.

    It is a violation of the federal Lacey Act to break hunting laws in one state and take the illegally obtained game to another state, and federal prosecutors alleged the Bowmars took the deer and turkey they illegally killed in Nebraska out of state.

    The Bowmars and their company entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy and the government dropped four other counts.

    The couple received no jail time.

    In a statement sent to CNN, Josh and Sarah Bowmar said that they felt that the prosecutors’ decision to drop the baiting and poaching charges was “fair and true to what happened with that outfitter 9 years ago.”

    “We did plead guilty to conspiracy, which means we should have known better about hunting at that outfitter and should have paid more attention to what was going on behind closed doors—but we did not, and for that, we take complete responsibility,” their statement said.

    “We’ve learned some very valuable lessons from this experience and our mistakes and we look forward to doing our best to leave a positive footprint on the hunting community and involving our children in the boundless joys of the great outdoors.”

    The Bowmar Bowhunting YouTube channel has more than 300,000 subscribers and its page has more than 340,000 followers on Instagram.

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  • Microsoft joins list of tech companies to announce sweeping layoffs

    Microsoft joins list of tech companies to announce sweeping layoffs

    Microsoft joins list of tech companies to announce sweeping layoffs – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    Microsoft became the latest tech giant to announce widespread layoffs as the industry grapples with cost-cutting. James Rogers, financial columnist for MarketWatch, joined CBS News to discuss the announcement.

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  • Twitter is auctioning off espresso machines and kegerators from its San Francisco headquarters

    Twitter is auctioning off espresso machines and kegerators from its San Francisco headquarters

    Elon Musk Twitter page seen on mobile with his poll to step down as head of Twitter

    Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

     

    Twitter is auctioning off espresso machines, kegerators, computers, and even oversized neon displays with the company’s logo as the social messaging service reportedly has fallen behind on office rent payments.

    Interested buyers can peruse an assortment of goods that Twitter wishes to sell via the website of Heritage Global Partners, which is conducting the auction.

    Among the numerous kitchen supplies that Twitter is selling includes a rotisserie cooker, multiple refrigerators and pizza ovens. Some of the office equipment include numerous televisions, desks, and conferencing gear.

    The company is even selling a neon electrical sign that prominently displays the company’s corporate bird logo. As of Monday afternoon, someone has placed a bid of $17,500 for the neon sign.

    The gear comes from the company’s San Francisco office and appears to be another sign that new owner Elon Musk is looking to slash costs amid numerous financial difficulties, as several companies have halted their advertising campaigns on Twitter.

    Multiple civil rights groups have urged businesses to stop advertising on Twitter over allegations that the company is failing to prevent the spread of hate speech and other offensive content on its platform.

    Musk himself has alluded to the company’s dire financial straits, although in late December he reportedly said it’s no longer in the “fast lane” to bankruptcy. In December, The New York Times reported that Twitter had stopped paying for rent in all of the company’s office space.

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  • Vaccination gets a boost when people know their neighbors are doing it

    Vaccination gets a boost when people know their neighbors are doing it

    Newswise — AUSTIN, Texas — Just as a highly transmissible variant prompts officials to extend COVID-19 emergency status, one of the largest surveys ever conducted shows people are more willing to get vaccinated when health workers reveal how many others are doing so.

    The massive global survey spawned two papers — one recently published in Nature Human Behavior and another in Nature Communications—showing people greatly underestimate vaccine uptake — both worldwide and in their own communities. “Our study shows that accurate information about what most other people are doing can substantially increase intentions to accept a COVID-19 vaccine,” says Avinash Collis, co-author and assistant professor of information, risk, and operations management at The University of Texas McCombs School of Business.

    Key Takeaways:

    • Public health campaigns are more convincing when they focus on the percentage of people receiving vaccinations, as opposed to the dangers of refusing vaccination.
    • People all over the world severely underestimate vaccine uptake in their communities, in part because of wide coverage of vaccine hesitancy.
    • “But once they know that the majority has already received or are going to get the vaccine, they feel safer to get the vaccine,” says Collis.
    • The survey also found local health workers are the most trusted source of COVID-19 information, but in most countries, they don’t serve as public information sources. Politicians do — and they are the least trusted.
    • Facebook provided the survey sample and ads, yielding a record-setting 2 million responses in 67 countries.
    • The survey is a joint effort of The University of Texas at Austin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, the World Health Organization, Johns Hopkins University and Meta.
    • Other academics are now using this data in their own vaccination research — including studies on vaccination campaigns and political trust in Latin America, understanding drivers of vaccine hesitancy in South Asia, and promoting hand-washing in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, more than 40 peer reviewed papers have been published by other research teams using this data.

    Read the McCombs Big Ideas story.

    University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

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  • TikTok’s Grandma Holla Passed Away. How Twitter Is Mourning

    TikTok’s Grandma Holla Passed Away. How Twitter Is Mourning

    TikTok’s favorite grandma has taken her last bow.

    Helen Davis, better known as “Grandma Holla” from her viral videos, has died at the age of 97. According to an announcement from her granddaughter, she died in her sleep following a long battle with cancer.

    RELATED: This 22-Year-Old Is Now the Most Popular TikToker in the World

    Davis, who was often seen in a hospital bed in her videos, garnered over 800,000 followers on TikTok for her reactions and commentary, which was often caught on camera by her granddaughter Chelle. In one video, that has 5 million views, the grandmother refused to swap out her beloved frappes for protein shakes, and her reaction was priceless.

    @lotteryfrappeandlaughs

    She don’t play when it comes to her frappes

    ♬ original sound – Michelle

    Following the news, social media erupted with posts mourning the beloved grandmother.

    Sam Silverman

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  • Tech bosses could face jail as UK gov’t backs down on online harm

    Tech bosses could face jail as UK gov’t backs down on online harm

    The government has agreed to toughen the Online Safety Bill with jail sentences for tech bosses for failing to protect kids.

    Tech bosses could be jailed in Britain if their platforms fail to protect children from online harm after the government agreed to toughen a proposed law to avoid the prospect of a first parliamentary defeat for the prime minister.

    Rishi Sunak faced losing a vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday after 50 lawmakers from his Conservative Party and the main opposition party said they would support another amendment to the long-delayed Online Safety Bill.

    The rebels had tabled an amendment proposing jail sentences of up to two years for tech bosses for failing to protect children from content such as child abuse and self-harm.

    Michelle Donelan, the culture and digital minister, said in a written statement to Parliament that the government agreed to changes to the legislation so executives could be jailed if they “consent or connive” to ignoring the new rules.

    “This amendment will not affect those who have acted in good faith,” she said. But it would provide “additional teeth to deliver change and ensure that people are held to account if they fail to properly protect children”.

    This is the third time that Prime Minister Sunak, who has a majority of 67, has backed down in the face of similar revolts in Parliament since he took office in October. He previously gave in after rebellions on housing targets and restrictions on onshore wind farms.

    Britain, like the European Union and other countries, has been grappling to protect social media users, and in particular children, from harmful content without damaging free speech.

    The bill was originally designed to create one of the toughest regimes for regulating platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

    It aimed to make companies stamp out illegal content on their sites, such as revenge pornography and encouragement to commit suicide.

    However, the proposals were watered down in November, when the requirement to stop “legal but harmful content” was removed on the grounds that it could damage free speech. Instead, platforms would be required to enforce age restrictions, the government said.

    Companies could face fines of up to 10 percent of turnover if they do not take measures to remove illegal content or restrict underage access.

    Industry body techUK said threatening executives with jail would not help deliver an effective regime to protect children, but it would damage Britain’s digital economy.

    “The bill as drafted does have ‘teeth’ that will ensure compliance,” it said, adding that the amendment created “significant legal jeopardy for firms” and would make Britain a less attractive destination for investors.

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  • David “Rev” Ciancio on How To Master Restaurant Marketing

    David “Rev” Ciancio on How To Master Restaurant Marketing

    Takeaways:

    TikTok Marketing is Undeniable – David “Rev” Ciancio has over 400,000 followers across his Instagram platforms. However, he never wanted to be a “photographer” and has evolved from focusing on static images, to now nearly exclusively creating video content to post to his other growing social media accounts like TikTok.

    Simplify Your Marketing – In the current climate, social media marketing and smartphone storytelling is viewed as a major contributor to a business’ growth plan. However, David “Rev” Ciancio says that posting more is not the single, simplest way to increase your marketing. Instead, he advises restaurants to collect and send emails to customers so they remain top of mind and provide consistent Digital Hospitality.

    Restaurant Marketing Summit – Like most of us, David “Rev” Ciancio strives to learn tips, tricks, and tactics by attending industry events. But he hasn’t been very happy with the educational content out there in the current conference scene. So he created the Branded Restaurant Marketing Summit, which gathers the best marketers in the hospitality business to provide useful information to those who watch online.

    ***

    David “Rev” Ciancio knows it takes courage to tell your honest story online.

    The marketing thought-leader and entrepreneur created the Branded Restaurant Marketing Summit to highlight useful strategies and true tales from 32 of the biggest and brightest names in the hospitality industry. Restaurant Influencers host Shawn Walchef is a conference presenter (talking about “The Upside-Down Vertical Video Club”) as are former RI podcast guests Matt Plapp (America’s Best Restaurants), and Kyle Inserra (Restaurant Idea Factory Podcast).

    “It’s an online conference. You don’t have to leave your house, your office, your bedroom, wherever you consume content. It’s all video content,” explains David “Rev” Ciancio to Shawn Walchef of CaliBBQ Media.

    Restaurants and businesses consult with Rev Ciancio about building their marketing, digital, and hospitality strategies both in person and online. With an online following of around 500,000 across his social media platforms — and a truly unique voice in a space of a billion voices — the marketing expert understands the power of the creator economy and Digital Hospitality despite early reluctance to accept the reality.

    “I was like, ‘I didn’t want to be a photographer for the first part, and I don’t want to make videos. I’m not interested,'” shares David Ciancio. “But then, the TikTok thing became undeniable.

    “As somebody who does marketing and tells restaurants what to do with their marketing, it’s like, I gotta master this. I look like a fraud if I don’t master this. So I embraced it.”

    Even with the embracing of new marketing executions, he believes wholeheartedly in tried-and-true methods for acquiring and expanding a business’ customer base. According to David Rev Ciancio, keeping it simple can help businesses create a pathway to sustainable growth.

    “What’s the fastest, easiest way to get your brand in front of my eyeballs? Email.” he said. “So if I was going to simplify marketing for an independent operator it would be to collect guest emails and email them at least every ten days.”

    Strategies and tools like the aforementioned email strategy marketing is the focus of the Branded Restaurant Marketing Summit. The 2023 online event will take place on January 25-26 and registration is free.

    For those wanting a deeper experience, there is a VIP package available that includes on-demand access to training and other elements to help you grow, such as the Social Media Order Igniter, which maps out a posting schedule and ideas for business owners.

    “I don’t want to talk about operations. I don’t want to talk about the labor shortage. I don’t want to talk about any of the stuff that gets talked about at any of the other conferences. I literally want to show you how to get and keep more guests.”

    ***

    ABOUT RESTAURANT INFLUENCERS:

    Restaurant Influencers is brought to you by Toast, the powerful restaurant point of sale and management system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales and create a better guest experience.

    Toast — Powering Successful Restaurants. Learn more about Toast.

    Shawn P. Walchef

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  • To Becomes Bitcoin’s Go-To Platform, Nostr Will Have To Solve Its Key Management Issues

    To Becomes Bitcoin’s Go-To Platform, Nostr Will Have To Solve Its Key Management Issues

    This is an opinion editorial by Shinobi, a self-taught educator in the Bitcoin space and tech-oriented Bitcoin podcast host.

    I suggest, before reading this, that you read the prior article I wrote explaining what Nostr is and how it works at a high level. You should then have a good idea of the core design of the system at that point, so now let’s take a look at likely problems that are going to occur as it grows in adoption. With the platform becoming a popular one for the Bitcoin community, these problems are ones to be aware of.

    Shinobi

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  • How to Outrank AI-Generated Content

    How to Outrank AI-Generated Content

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    ChatGPT, an AI-powered content creation tool, has gained widespread popularity. GPT stands for Generative Pre-training Transformer. It is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can generate human-like content by analyzing language patterns and a knowledge database. Marketers are using it to produce massive quantities of high-quality content, but it lacks credibility without a recognized author. That’s where you can leverage Google EAT and other tactics to outrank GPT spammers and your competition.

    What is Google EAT?

    EAT — or Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness — is a ranking signal in Google’s algorithm. Real people called “quality raters” use it to determine the quality and relevance of search results based on Search Quality Rater Guidelines. This feedback helps train Google’s algorithm to deliver better results to users.

    • Expertise is the author’s depth of knowledge on the topic. You can demonstrate expertise through educational credentials, professional experience and published works.

    • Authority is the author’s reputation within an industry or community. You can demonstrate authority through media mentions, industry awards and speaking engagements.

    • Trustworthiness is the credibility and reliability of the content and its source. You can demonstrate trustworthiness through references and citations, transparent author bios and clear contact information.

    In general, websites with high EAT are more likely to appear higher on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) compared to other content where all other factors are equal. EAT is especially important for websites in industries where accurate and reliable information is critical, such as healthcare, finance and legal.

    Related: 7 Best SEO Tools to Help You Rank Higher in Google

    Why Google EAT matters during an explosion of machine-generated content

    As ChatGPT and other automated content creation tools become more popular, we can expect a surge in search engine spam. These tools can produce content quickly and inexpensively. Consequently, Google must adjust its algorithm to prioritize credible writers. A viable solution is to give more weight to the EAT ranking signal. They’ll continue to prioritize articles associated with trusted authors and fine-tune their algorithm to detect the legitimacy and quality of content attributed to them. Google must also score content according to the value of the information contained and stylistic attributes such as engagement and readability.

    I recently described how human writers have some advantages over AI on a podcast. People have imagination and can generate original data with surveys and experiments. We can then use data storytelling to make our content stand out in SERPs. We can also grow our audience on social media and drive traffic to our pages. This “social signal” can increase the legitimacy of our content.

    Related: Top 5 Ways AI Can Enhance Your Content-Creation Process

    What to do when you can’t demonstrate EAT on your own

    If you have a limited amount of influence, you can leverage the Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness of established authors and influencers to grow your brand. Here’s how:

    1. Pay top influencers in your industry to write articles, record videos and create other content they agree not to publish elsewhere until after Google indexes your pages. Be sure to disclose payments when legally required to do so.

    2. Identify, quote and write about well-respected people in your industry. Then, contact them, or tag them in social posts that point back to your content. Some of these people will share your content with their audiences.

    3. Build genuine relationships with famous people in your industry. You can network with influencers at events, on LinkedIn and on other social platforms. Transform those relationships into mutually beneficial collaborations to grow your authority.

    Related: How Influencer Marketing Took Power, and What the Future Holds

    Machine-generated content will improve, and platforms will use it to deliver personalized content. Authors can use it for ideation, outlines and summaries. However, spammers will use it for gaming search engines. To future-proof yourself as a content creator, optimize for Google EAT, and create unique articles that only humans can initiate.

    Dennis Consorte

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  • MLK Statue in Boston Gets Mixed Reactions Online

    MLK Statue in Boston Gets Mixed Reactions Online

    A statue designed by Brooklyn-based artist Hank Willis Thomas called “The Embrace,” imagined as a monument to the love of Coretta Scott King, was unveiled in Boston on Friday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


    Mayor’s office

    The Embrace, designed to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

    The statue was commissioned by entrepreneur Paul English — who co-founded travel site Kayak and the Boston Venture Studio — “as a result of calls for a memorial to Dr. King spanning several decades,” the mayor’s office said in 2021. The Boston Art Commission selected Thomas, a conceptual artist based in Brooklyn, along with collaborator MASS Design Group, in 2019, and approved the final plan unanimously, the mayor’s office added.

    “The Embrace” is intended to reference a famous photo of King and his wife, Coretta, hugging after King won the Nobel Peace Prize. King met his wife, Coretta, in Boston when they were both students.

    Per the New York Times, the sculpture weighs 19 tons and is constructed from over 600 pieces of bronze. It is in the Boston Common in the 1965 Freedom Plaza, which celebrates other civil rights leaders in the City. It’s about 20 feet tall.

    Reactions have been mixed. Some praised the sculpture’s “beauty and power” while others called it a “waste of money” or even sexually suggestive. Online, the discussion also turned to issues of historicity and how to honor the civil rights leader’s legacy.

    “You never wake up and think you’d be able to contribute meaningfully to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King,” Thomas told the NYT.

    The sculpture, “differs from the singular, heroic form of many memorials to Dr. King and others, instead emphasizing the power of collective action, the role of women as leaders, and the forging of new bonds of solidarity out of mutual empathy and vulnerability,” the mayor’s office also said.

    Embrace Boston, a nonprofit focused on arts and racial justice, that helped fund the statute, said in a statement the work was “an incredible milestone in our journey towards Boston’s future.”

    Still, the statue generated a fair amount of online controversy over the weekend.

    “Y’all do everything but give us what’s owed. REPARATIONS,” musical artist Chris Crack wrote. (The Boston City Council did approve a commission to study reparations in December.)

    Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah criticized the sculpture in a Twitter thread:

    “It doesn’t sit well with me that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King are reduced to body parts– just their arms. Not their faces- their expressions,” she wrote.

    A cousin of Coretta gave an interview to the New York Post where he said the statue was a “waste of money.”

    “As to the critics – they have not seen it in person. It is hard to show in 2D something that is this magical in 3D,” English told Entrepreneur via email.

    “But I’ve been hanging out at the memorial the last few days, and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive,” he said.

    Mayor Michelle Wu’s office and Embrace did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Gabrielle Bienasz

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  • How to Never Run Out of Social Media Content for Your B2B SaaS Brand

    How to Never Run Out of Social Media Content for Your B2B SaaS Brand

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Social media is the ultimate playing field for content marketing for B2B SaaS brands. But to excel on social media, you need to be consistent. This means you must constantly churn out relevant content for your audience to keep them engaged with your brand.

    However, creating content on a regular basis is tedious. The time, ideation and creativity needed to create content constantly aren’t always there. As a result, content marketers risk failing to engage their social media audience as often as necessary.

    Twenty-seven percent of respondents say the biggest challenge content marketers face on social media is creating engaging content. This is why you need to learn how to never run out of social media content. Here are four ways to help you stay on your game consistently:

    Related: 3 Ways to Master Social Media Content Marketing

    1. Reuse your content

    Reusing content is a genius way of creating new content for your social media if you do not want to go through the stress of looking for and developing new ideas. There are different ways you can reuse your content. You can update, repurpose or simply repost your old content.

    Updating old content:

    This is great for evergreen content that needs a little touching up. However, low-performing content may gain some advantage when updated. Updating your old content may simply require replacing old facts with current facts on the topic.

    Also, you can get fresh inspiration and change other information in the content if you discover something you would have said or done differently after examining old content.

    Repurpose content:

    The results of a recent HubSpot survey revealed that 82% percent of content marketers say they repurpose content across social media channels. Repurposing content doesn’t require you to upgrade or change any information contained in your existing content. You only need to switch up the content format.

    For example, you can turn parts of a tweet into an infographic video for Instagram or TikTok. This is an exciting way to reach target audiences who enjoy such content formats.

    2. Find out what your audience wants to see

    Creating content on social media is only beneficial if your audience can engage with your content. This means that your social media content has to be something your audience is interested in seeing. Having this in mind makes the job easier. Here are ways you can find out what your audience is interested in:

    Check out your competition:

    Having to deal with competition is always great, especially if it gives you the opportunity to up your game. Chances are, they are already ahead of you on an industry trend, and you can identify a few things to try out.

    If you pay attention to your competition’s content and audience engagements, you may find inspiration to create new content from what you learn from their page.

    Use answer boards:

    While answer boards provide answers to the users’ questions, the answers may not always be as detailed as the well-thought-out content which is created to answer such questions.

    You can discover the kind of information your target audience seeks and create social media content around it. Some of the popular answer boards you can use are Reddit and Quora.

    Use keyword generator tools:

    There are lots of tools available to help content creators find relevant content ideas quickly. Keyword generator tools are great for this. You can search for keywords that are relevant to topics in your industry and get an endless supply of ideas from keywords your target audiences are looking up on the search engine. Some of the popular keyword generator tools are UberSuggest and Google Keyword Planner.

    Engage your audience:

    Interacting with your audience isn’t just a great way to build trust and good rapport for your SaaS brand, it is also a way to figure out their needs.

    Reply to comments on your post, and encourage your audience to ask questions about products, services or industry trends. That way, you can create relevant content based on the information you gather from your engagements.

    Related: How to Repurpose Your Social Media Content

    3. User-generated content

    User-generated content is a good way of engaging your audience, but it is even better for creating content for your SaaS business on social media.

    Depending on how you want to implement user-generated content, you can have your users create content for you and promote your SaaS brand while you’re at it — or you can draw from their content to make yours.

    For example, you can repost content from other users with hashtags related to your brand. This kind of user-generated content can promote your brand on social media platforms. This is why lots of businesses encourage users to create content using sponsored hashtags.

    Also, you can curate other people’s content that is relevant to your brand or industry. This way, your audience will see your platform as more than just a marketing space. Instead, your social media page will be seen as a place to get relevant information as well.

    4. Broaden your content scope

    Focusing on a single area for content creation as a SaaS brand is not only boring, but it can also hinder creativity. Imagine having to create content around bread all the time as a pastry brand when you can create content about cakes, ingredients, baking styles and tools.

    The best way to increase productivity and creativity with a broadened content scope is by categorizing your content into different areas.

    For example, as a CRM SaaS brand, you can categorize your content into explainer videos, product reviews, how-to posts, case studies and user guides. It is easier to create five content pieces a month in each category than it is to create 20 in one category.

    Having an idea of where to start is great, and starting is even better. With these four tips above, you’ll likely never run out of social media content for your SaaS business — all you need to do is start.

    Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy That Really Works

    Toby Nwazor

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