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☆ Silvergate's deepening crisis jolts crypto stocks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Manya Saini | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The crypto-focused bank said late on Friday that it had made a "risk-based decision" to discontinue the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) effective immediately. "The SEN is Silvergate's main flagship product that previously was the key attraction for depositors to bring funds to the bank," said analysts at Wedbush. Shares of crypto lending peer Signature Bank (SBNY.O) also fell roughly 2.5% in morning trade, while crypto exchange Coinbase Global (COIN.O) was down nearly 1%. Crypto firm Riot Platforms Inc (RIOT.O), and BTC mining machine makers Ebang International and Canaan Inc (CAN.O) drop between 1% and 2%. "The crypto market reacted to the negative news from Silvergate Bank, with both bitcoin and ethereum down about 4.8% for the week," analysts at brokerage Bernstein said.

☆ Meta Slashes Price for Quest Pro VR Headset Months After Launch
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Sabela Ojea | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

With its Quest Pro virtual-reality headsets, Meta Platforms is going after the professional computing market. Meta Platforms Inc. is cutting the prices of its Quest Pro virtual-reality headset months after its launch. Starting Sunday, the social-media giant’s Meta Quest Pro headsets will be priced at $999.99 from $1,499 previously in the U.S. and Canada.

☆ Meta lowers Quest VR headsets prices to lure customers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 3 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) cut the prices of its virtual reality headsets in hopes of stirring demand for its VR hardware, as its bold bets on the metaverse have struggled to make a big splash. Its flagship Meta Quest Pro will retail for $999, down from its launch price of $1,499, and Quest 2 256 GB version for $429 from $499, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a broadcast on its social media platform Instagram on Friday. Late last year, the company launched Quest Pro, positioning it as its most-advanced VR headset with capabilities to push the use-cases further. While VR headsets have added more advanced capabilities of late, their adoption outside of the gaming community has been slow. Last month, Tencent, the world's largest video game publisher, shelved plans to venture into VR hardware, while it has been in talks to distribute Meta Quest line of products in China.

☆ Facebook Parent Delivers Mixed Response to Suggestions on Controversial VIP Program
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Jeff Horwitz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta has described its ‘cross check’ program as a quality-control effort on content of heightened public interest. Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. said it would work to implement many of an outside advisory group’s recommendations to reform a system for VIP users called “cross check,” but rejected important provisions intended to enhance transparency and prevent political favoritism. Meta made the announcements Friday in a formal response to 32 recommendations issued in a December report about cross check from its oversight board, an outside body that the company empowered to make binding decisions on specific content-moderation controversies and offer suggestions on broader topics.

☆ Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Apple, Meta, Costco, Marvell, C3.ai and more
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Hakyung Kim | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Costco Wholesale — The retailer's shares dropped 3.4% after the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings missed analysts' expectations. Marvell Technology — The chip stock lost 7.3% after Marvell Technology reported mixed quarterly results and provided weak guidance. The move comes after Bumble announced it would price a secondary offering of 13.75 million shares of its common stock at $22.80 per share. The company earned an adjusted 37 cents per share, above the 29 cents expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv. The company posted a loss of 6 cents per share, compared to Refinitiv analysts' estimates for a 22 cent loss.

☆ Democratic Senators Call on Meta to Stop Plan to Release Metaverse App to Teens
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Salvador Rodriguez | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta says the company in June released supervision tools for its Quest headsets. Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg should halt the company’s plan to release its fledgling Horizon Worlds metaverse app to teens ages 13 to 17, according to a letter to him sent Thursday from two U.S. senators. “In light of your company’s record of failure to protect children and teens and a growing body of evidence pointing to threats to young users in the metaverse, we urge you to halt this plan immediately,” the letter from Sens. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) wrote.

☆ Musk: 'AI stresses me out'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Joseph White | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

"AI stresses me out," Musk said near the end of a more than three-hour presentation to Tesla investors about company plans. But when asked by an analyst if AI could help Tesla build cars, Musk took a less optimistic line. "I'm a little worried about the AI stuff," Musk said from a stage where he was flanked by 16 Tesla executives, including Autopilot head. "We need some kind of, like, regulatory authority or something overseeing AI development," Musk said. Tesla's effort to enable its cars to drive themselves safely is "obviously useful" AI, Musk said.

☆ FTC bans online mental health company BetterHelp from sharing user data for targeted ads, as federal crackdowns on info misuse intensify
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Aaron Mcdade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The FTC announced a settlement with BetterHelp over allegations of sharing user data with third parties. BetterHelp will be banned from sharing the data with outside parties for advertising, and pay $7.8 million in partial refunds. Users who signed up from August 2017 through 2020 may have had their data improperly shared, per the FTC. He continued: "Instead, BetterHelp betrayed consumers' most personal health information for profit. The company was similarly banned from sharing the health information of its users with advertisers, and agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine.

☆ Former Facebook Execs Launch Startup, Adding to Efforts to Improve Ad Measurement
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Salvador Rodriguez | Patience Haggin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Two former executives of Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. are seeking to solve one of the social-media industry’s biggest challenges in recent years: allowing marketers to measure the effectiveness of their ads while maintaining user privacy. Graham Mudd and Brad Smallwood each spent more than a decade building Meta’s advertising system, which allowed the company to offer granular data about how ad campaigns worked with individual users, often by tracking their web and mobile activity. Apple Inc. took steps in 2021 to allow users to limit most tracking, making it far more difficult to gauge the success of online advertising and upending the way social-media companies made money.

☆ Want Better Customer Service? Join the (Membership) Club
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Katie Deighton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Others such as online travel agent Booking.com and Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation provide priority customer service for high-ranking members of their loyalty programs. Other companies that offer premium customer support also say the perk is often a small part of more comprehensive packages, and that its introduction doesn’t mean their standard customer service is lacking. “We’ve always provided fantastic customer service, but what we added was another layer on top of that,” said Genaro Perez, senior vice president of marketing for P.F. Other companies offer priority customer service to customers who have ascended to the upper tiers of loyalty programs that do not cost extra to join. The strategy may help profits, but could create the perception that “free” customer service is low-quality and amplify inequality by deprioritizing lower-income customers, she said.

☆ TikTok's potential ban in U.S. could be boon for Meta and Snap
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesInvestors in Meta , Snap and other U.S. digital media companies have been looking for signs of a rebound after a tumultuous 2022. Meta climbed 1% on Wednesday, and Snap was unchanged. She said that Meta's Facebook, Snap and Google's YouTube could be "huge beneficiaries" if the ban ultimately takes place. watch now"A U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide," a TikTok spokesperson said Wednesday. Andrew Boone, an analyst at JMP, said that Meta likely stands to benefit the most should TikTok face a U.S. ban.

☆ TikTok to set one-hour daily screen time limit by default for users under 18
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —TikTok announced Wednesday that every user under 18 will soon have their accounts default to a one-hour daily screen time limit, in one of the most aggressive moves yet by a social media company to prevent teens from endlessly scrolling. Teenage TikTok users will be able to turn off this new default setting, which will roll out in the coming weeks. The move comes after TikTok and other social media platforms have faced years of scrutiny over their impact on young users, including their potential to lead teens down harmful rabbit holes. TikTokKeenan added that if a teen decides to turn off this new default limit and spends more than 100 minutes on TikTok a day, they will be prompted to set a daily screen time limit for themselves. Parents will be able to filter videos with words or hashtags they don’t want to appear in their teen’s feed, set a custom daily screen time limit for their teen, and set a custom schedule to mute TikTok notifications sent to their teen.

☆ Reuters reporters' online accounts faked to approach China activists
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( James Pomfret | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

[1/3] The Chinese flag is seen across the Victoria Harbour during sunset, in Hong Kong, China October 12, 2022. The impersonator or impersonators were seeking information about a group linked to protests the same month against China's strict COVID-19 controls, according to screenshots and several accounts provided to Reuters. An Australia-based Chinese activist and dissident artist known as Badiucao first disclosed the impersonations on Saturday on Twitter. "Hello everyone," an imposter wrote in a Telegram chatroom, according to screenshots seen by Reuters that were provided by Badiucao. Telegram did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the impersonations of the journalists' accounts on that platform.

☆ Meta builds A-team focused on AI products
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] A smartphone with a displayed Meta logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken February 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationFeb 27 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) is creating a new top-level product group focused on generative artificial intelligence (AI), Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, as the AI race among Big Tech firms heats up. "We're starting by pulling together a lot of the teams working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful experiences around this technology," Zuckerberg said in an Instagram post. Shares of Meta Platforms closed down 0.5% on Monday. Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini GanguliOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Facebook Parent, Snap Embrace AI Technology That Powers ChatGPT Chatbot
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Meghan Bobrowsky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Snapchat’s chatbot is designed to help answer user questions and generate ideas in the chat tab on the app. Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Snap Inc. are embracing the much talked-about artificial-intelligence technology popularized by OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT chatbot. Meta is establishing a group aimed at accelerating adoption of the so-called generative AI technology across the company, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Monday. Meta, which also owns Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp, is centralizing staff who are working on the AI technology from across the company to achieve faster breakthroughs it can apply to different products, Mr. Zuckerberg said.

☆ EU industry chief Breton says not favouring Big Telecoms over Big Tech
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Foo Yun Chee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BRUSSELS, Feb 27 (Reuters) - EU industry chief Thierry Breton on Monday defended a consultation on whether Big Tech should foot the bill for billions of euros of investments in Europe's telecoms infrastructure, saying it was not about putting Big Telecoms' interests above tech companies. Still, Breton took a swipe at the big U.S. tech companies with their large-scale data centres, their cloud-based radio access network (RAN) - the radio element of a cellular system - and their closed ecosystems. "And interoperability or openness are not currently a strong feature of their business model." "I see these two issues as currently holding back our collective potential compared to other continents," Breton said. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Dutch warn against internet toll as EU looks to Big Tech to fund networks
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Foo Yun Chee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Orange (ORAN.PA), Telefonica (TEF.MC), Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI) and other operators have long lobbied for a Big Tech contribution and have found an ally in Breton, a former chief executive at Orange. These companies account for more than half of data internet traffic, according to telecom operators. Adriaansens said the Dutch government had commissioned a study by economic consultancy Oxera which showed the drawbacks of such a tax. "I think that there is this concern that our infrastructure is not able to meet our expectations and our ambitions. According to Oxera's study, Europe's telecoms providers have not been burdened with higher network costs despite the strong growth in internet data traffic.

Meta's LLaMA, short for Large Language Model Meta AI, will be available under non-commercial license to researchers and entities affiliated with government, civil society, and academia, it said in a blog. Large language models mine vast amounts of text in order to summarize information and generate content. "Generative AI is a new application of AI that Meta has less experience with, but is clearly important for the future of their business." It described its 65-billion-parameter LLaMA model as "competitive" with Google's Chinchilla70B and PaLM-540B, which are even larger than the model that Google used to show off its Bard chat-powered search. Meta in May last year released large language model OPT-175B, also aimed at researchers, which formed the basis of a new iteration of its chatbot BlenderBot.

☆ FTC Abandons Challenge to Meta’s Acquisition of Virtual-Reality Startup
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Jan Wolfe | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The FTC had argued that Meta Platforms Inc. purchase of Within Unlimited would hurt competition in the market for virtual-reality fitness products. WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission on Friday dropped its last remaining effort to block Meta Platforms Inc.’s acquisition of a virtual-reality startup, handing a final victory to the Facebook parent. The announcement that the agency was abandoning an administrative proceeding against the deal came less than a month after a federal judge denied the FTC’s request for a court order halting Meta’s purchase of Within Unlimited. That ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila didn’t directly affect the parallel challenge brought by the FTC in its in-house administrative court, and it had been unclear if the agency would push forward with the administrative case.

[1/2] A person uses virtual reality headset at Meta stand during the ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 8, 2022. The FTC sued Meta in July to stop the Within deal, arguing that Meta's purchase would reduce competition in a new market. Judge Edward Davila of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California rejected the FTC's concerns, and declined to order a preliminary injunction. The FTC's effort had been seen as a test of the agency's ability to prevent Meta from acquiring small would-be rivals. Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Meta to launch AI language model LLaMA
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Feb 24 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said on Friday it will release a new AI large language model called LLaMA designed to generate text, conversations and summarize written material. Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

NEW YORK, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp (BofA) (BAC.N) amassed $1.2 billion in expenses for litigation and regulatory investigations last year including fines and settlements, according to a company filing on Wednesday. BofA also paid $225 million in penalties to U.S. financial regulators last year over employees' use of unauthorized messaging platforms including WhatsApp. A pair of banking regulators also fined the bank $225 million over what they called a "botched" handling of jobless benefits during the pandemic. While those three cases led to just over $800 million in combined expenses last year, BofA did not specify what accounted for the remaining $400 million. Some other U.S. banks also received hefty penalties in 2022.

☆ Comcast takes advantage of AI rally to sell more BuzzFeed shares
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

It has so far sold more than 11 million BuzzFeed shares (BZFD.O) since Jan. 30, reducing its stake to 15.% from 24%. The sale fetched Comcast about $28 million, according to a Reuters calculation. It sold roughly four million shares for an average price of around $2.90 apiece at the end of January, and most recently dumped another 500,000 shares for an average of $2.05 a share, filings by Comcast (CMCSA.O) showed. NBCUniversal, Comcast's entertainment unit, had invested $200 million in BuzzFeed in 2015 and injected another $200 million in 2016, valuing the company at around $1.7 billion. Retail investor interest in AI-related shares have been rising since last month after OpenAI drew a multi-billion dollar investment from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O).

☆ Meta preparing for fresh round of job cuts - Washington Post
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Feb 22 (Reuters) - Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) is planning a fresh round of job cuts in a reorganization and downsizing effort that could affect thousands of workers, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Last year, the social media giant said it will let go of 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, as it grappled with soaring costs and a weak advertising market. Meta plans to push some leaders into lower-level roles without direct reports, flattening the layers of management between top boss Mark Zuckerberg and the company's interns, the Washington Post reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meta, once worth more than $1 trillion, is now valued at $446 billion. More than 100,000 layoffs were announced at U.S. companies in January, led by technology companies, according to a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Meta can still appeal the verdict to a higher court. Representatives for Meta and Voxer did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Voxer said Facebook cut it off from key features of the social media platform in 2013 and misused its technology in Facebook Live and Instagram Live, which launched in 2015 and 2016. Meta asked the court to overturn the verdict or hold a new trial. The case is Voxer Inc v. Meta Platforms Inc, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, No.

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