Check out this week's Business Briefs, an encompassing look at top business news this week from the Associated Press, with a special spotlight on national business and the economy.Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk's Twitter at a crossroadsThe discourse was never all that civil on Twitter.
It's one thing for the CEO of Wendy's or Chick-fil-A to endorse a political party, said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who studies social media and politics. It's a whole other thing, though, for the owner of one of the world's most high-profile information ecosystems to do so.
But in their platform policies and content moderation, tech companies such as Facebook , Google and even Twitter have taken great pains to appear politically neutral, even as they are routinely criticized — largely by conservatives but also by liberals — for favoring one side over the other. The suspended accounts include that of Nikolas Ferreira, who garnered more votes in the October race than any other candidate for a seat in the Lower House. According to orders issued by the electoral authority, Ferreira’s account and most others were blocked for sharing a live video from an Argentinian digital influencer questioning the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system.
In early 2016, a tech blog quoted an anonymous former Facebook contractor who said the site downplayed news that conservatives are interested in and artificially boosted liberal issues such as the “BlackLivesMatter” hashtag. The blog did not name the person, and no evidence was provided for their claim.
Musk's tweet garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and many retweets Monday on the day before the final votes are cast in thousands of races around the country. But in replies and retweets, many prominent Twitter personalities expressed criticism for the Tesla CEO — often poking fun at him. For Smith, that's a sign Musk may not quite be a billionaire political kingmaker that some of his peers, like venture capitalist Peter Thiel, are aspiring to be.
The developments are causing concern as the U.S. midterm elections culminate on Tuesday. Though millions of Americans have already cast early and absentee ballots, millions more are expected to go to the polls to cast in-person votes. Election watchers fear the platform may not be equipped to handle hate speech, misinformation that could impact voter safety and security, and actors seeking to cast doubt on the legitimate winners of elections around the country.
Musk gutted teams working on marketing, communications and editorial curation of what people see on Twitter. But his decision to retain most of Twitter’s content moderation team came as a welcome surprise to some inside and outside the company. Musk, after all, promised to let free speech flourish by loosening Twitter's content restrictions and restoring accounts banned for violating those rules. He has also pledged to end the current user verification system in favor of a $7.
Roth has become the public face of Twitter's content moderation since Musk took over and has regularly defended Twitter's ongoing efforts to fight harmful misinformation. Musk, a prolific tweeter with more than 110 million followers, has frequently pointed to Roth's Twitter feed as the most reliable account of the company's adherence to integrity standards.
Franks said there's always been a tension within Twitter and other social media companies between making money and protecting democracy and freedom of expression. She said that's only getting harder under Musk, who has shown Twitter can act quickly in banning a comedian who made fun of him by impersonating his account, but who has otherwise expressed hostility towards Twitter's anti-abuse standards.
In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world's richest man said. Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.The $8 verified accounts are Musk's way of democratizing the service, he claims.
If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn't happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday's midterm elections. Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.
The settlement stems from some Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler diesel vehicles sold in the U.S. from model year 2016 and earlier. Bosch said in a statement that it “neither acknowledges the validity of the claims ... nor does it concede any liability.” But it said its “robust compliance systems, as well as its full cooperation” aided the settlement. It also said that since 2015, the company's “already existing extensive compliance policies and procedures have been substantially enhanced.”
Walgreens push into comprehensive care picks up momentum Walgreens extended its push into more comprehensive health care with its VillageMD unit acquiring another urgent and primary care chain, Summit Health-CityMD, in a deal worth close to $9 billion. In what the companies are calling a “strategic collaboration,” Evernorth, a subsidiary of health insurance giant Cigna Health, is also making an undisclosed investment in the deal and will become a minority owner of VillageMD.
Summit Health and CityMD have more than 2,800 providers at more than 370 locations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Central Oregon. Summit is based in New Jersey. The company announcement Sunday gave no details but said the factory operated by Foxconn in the central city of Zhengzhou is “operating at significantly reduced capacity.”
The lockdown is expected to cause further disruptions to the plant, which in recent weeks has seen a spate of coronavirus infections and an exodus of workers, some of whom fled the factory on foot. In a post on the Zhengzhou plant's WeChat social media account Sunday, the company said a “closed loop” system would restrict its employees’ travel between their dormitories and the factory area to manage risks of COVID-19 transmission.
Michael Taylor, a former Green Beret, was sentenced in July last year in Tokyo District Court to two years in prison, while his son Peter Taylor was sentenced to one year and eight months. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons online site lists Michael Taylor as at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles and set for release Jan. 1, 2023.
“Capital is one of the biggest impediments to wealth-building, particularly for BIPOC entrepreneurs,” Wu Tsai told The Associated Press in an interview. “We thought that investing in this segment was how we could create wealth, not only for the entrepreneurs, but also through all the different jobs that they are going to create.”
Last year, the Tsais’ Social Justice Fund launched the “EXCELerate” initiative that provided no-interest loans to Black-owned small businesses in Brooklyn that needed help recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. Wu Tsai said the investments through BK-XL will help new businesses that are ready to expand.
Acheampong said that kind of support – which he calls social capital and inspiration capital – is as important as the investment capital. “The partnership here is something I’m really excited about,” he said. Wu Tsai said any profits from investments into the BK-XL startups will be re-invested into Brooklyn businesses. “I think the best proof of our belief in Brooklyn and Black businesses is by investing in them and showing the world that these are good investments,” she added.
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. Shares of publicly traded companies with heavy exposes to crypto fell sharply as well, with Coinbase and Robinhood seeing double-digit percentage declines.
Binance's public announcement caused a crypto-like bank run at FTX, with major investors trying to pull their money in the last 48 hours. Bankman-Fried said neither the U.S. operations of Binance or FTX are involved in the deal announced Tuesday. EU's Call of Duty: Probe Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal BRUSSELS — The European Union has launched an investigation into Microsoft’s planned takeover of video game giant Activision Blizzard, fearing the $69 billion deal would distort fair competition to popular titles like Call of Duty.
At the heart of the dispute is who gets to control future releases of Activision Blizzard's most popular games, especially the first-person military shooter franchise Call of Duty. Activision this week said its latest installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, has already made more than $1 billion in sales since its Oct. 28 launch.
“Sony, as the industry leader, says it is worried about Call of Duty, but we’ve said we are committed to making the same game available on the same day on both Xbox and PlayStation," Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday. “We want people to have more access to games, not less.” Saudi Arabia also has signed off on the deal, but it still awaits important decisions from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and authorities in the U.K. and EU.
“These titles require thousands of game developers and several years to complete, and there are very few other games of similar caliber or popularity,” according to a September report from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority.Disney posts Q4 results below Wall Street estimates The Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday posted lower-than-expected profit and revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter even as its streaming services did well, sending its shares lower in after-hours trading.