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☆ Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 workers, marking the second round of significant job cuts announced by the tech giant in four months. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced Tuesday, that would bring Meta’s headcount down to around 66,000. In the first months of this year, Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet and Microsoft have all confirmed major job cuts impacting tens of thousands of tech workers. When the first round of job cuts was announced in November, Zuckerberg blamed himself at the time for the company’s over-hiring earlier in the pandemic. On that call, Zuckerberg also suggested that more job cuts could be coming.

☆ Mark Zuckerberg takes on Elon Musk
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, March 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Mark Zuckerberg is eyeing Elon Musk’s turf. Meta Platforms (META.O) is exploring a stand-alone social network for sharing text updates, according to a statement from the social media network to Breakingviews on Monday. The move makes sense since Facebook and Instagram have done a better job wringing money from their users than Twitter has. Since Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, the network has been plagued by technical difficulties and fleeing advertisers. Zuckerberg has a business model that knows how to monetize users, whereas Twitter is still figuring that out.

☆ Meta Looks to Divest Kustomer Amid Efficiency Drive
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Jeff Horwitz | Juliet Chung | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta said it is exploring strategic alternatives for Kustomer, a business-software company it bought last year. Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to divest Kustomer, a business-software company it bought last year in one of its largest acquisitions, as the tech company looks to refocus on its core business, according to the company and people familiar with the planned deal. “In light of Meta’s efficiency efforts, we’ve made the decision to focus on our fastest growing business messaging offerings, including the monetization opportunity for WhatsApp,” said Ryan Moore, a spokesman for the company. “We are currently exploring strategic alternatives for Kustomer and will continue to support Kustomer’s product and customer base throughout this process.”

☆ Meta considering a standalone social network that sounds a lot like Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

The concept is similar to Reddit or Discord, but a departure from how Meta’s other platforms function. If Meta’s new platform were decentralized, it could allow third parties to build apps and features into the platform, potentially giving users experiences beyond what Meta itself might build. Meta declined to comment beyond its statement, including in response to questions about the new platform’s potential features or a timeline for launch. Many of them had an early jump in users following Musk’s takeover at Twitter, but have since struggled to gain widespread adoption. But its growth has slowed in recent months, in part as users struggle with the somewhat less straightforward and user-friendly nature of a decentralized platform.

☆ Big Companies Seeing Tax Benefits From Law Change Some of Them Fought
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Richard Rubin | Jennifer Williams-Alvarez | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Those companies now qualify for a bigger tax break for exports because of the way the research-deduction change alters their tax calculations. Photo: Dado Ruvic/REUTERSModerna saw that tax break jump to a 7.4 percentage-point benefit on its tax rate from 4.8 points in 2021, even as its cash tax payments rose. The change requiring companies to spread out research deductions was part of the 2017 tax law, and it was designed to partly offset the revenue loss from cutting corporate tax rates. PREVIEWAt the same time, the smaller research deduction means many companies can get a bigger advantage from the export tax break. The size of the FDII tax break is based in part on how much income a company has.

☆ Meta plans to cut thousands of jobs as soon as this week - Bloomberg News
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Reuters Staff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta Platforms' business group is seen in Brussels, Belgium December 6, 2022. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo(Reuters) -Meta Platforms Inc will cut thousands of jobs as soon as this week in a fresh round of layoffs, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, only a few months after the Facebook-parent reduced more than 11,000 people from its workforce. Meta declined to comment on the Bloomberg report when contacted by Reuters. Last month, the Washington Post newspaper had reported that Meta was planning to cut jobs in a reorganization and downsizing effort. Other tech companies, including Google-parent Alphabet Inc and Microsoft Corp, have also cut thousands of jobs.

☆ Snap stock surges as Congress renews efforts to ban TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is expected to unveil bipartisan legislation Tuesday afternoon that expands President Joe Biden’s authority to ban TikTok and other suspected information technology risks from the United States, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst CFRA Research, wrote in a note Monday that the “biggest beneficiaries of a TikTok ban” would be Snapchat, Facebook-parent Meta, and YouTube. “TikTok’s emphasis on short-form videos has increased engagement/time spent by consumers and has upended the entire industry, creating a headwind for META/SNAP,” Zino wrote. Shares of YouTube’s parent company Alphabet were essentially flat on Tuesday. A TikTok ban, or the possibility of it, may just be one more positive for Meta’s stock this year.

Several businesses specializing in selling lingerie through livestreaming have had their sessions cut short after they featured a female model and their brush with internet censorship came to light in January. A man poses in a white dress and robe set posted on Chinese video-sharing platform Douyin on December 17, 2022. The emergence of male lingerie models has caused mixed views online in China, from merriment and annoyance to reluctant acceptance. Male models are not the only workaround. Even outside of China, platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have faced criticism for restricting the sharing of images involving partial nudity, especially of women.

☆ Facebook revamps controversial content moderation process for VIPs
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Meta’s Oversight Board said in the wake of the report that Facebook had failed to provide it with crucial details about the system. The board — an entity financed by Meta but which says it operates independently — urged the company to “radically increase transparency” about the cross-check system and how it works. On Friday, Meta said it would implement in part or in full many of the more than two dozen recommendations the Oversight Board made for improving the program. Meta will also refine its process for temporarily removing or hiding potentially harmful content while it’s pending additional review. Meta’s Oversight Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Meta’s planned policy changes.

☆ Meta is cutting prices for its VR headsets
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Meta is cutting prices for two of its virtual reality headsets as it continues trying to boost adoption for the nascent technology on which it has bet its future. The company announced Friday that it is slashing the price of its higher-end Meta Quest Pro headset by some $500, bringing its cost to $999, roughly six months after it was released. The Quest Pro price drop will take effect the same day in the United States and Canada and on March 15 in all other countries where it is sold. Facebook rebranded as Meta in late 2021 as it outlined a bold vision to build a future, immersive version of the internet called the “metaverse,” powered by VR technology. Meta lost $13.7 billion last year in its “Reality Labs” unit, which houses its VR and metaverse efforts.

☆ Democratic senators urge Meta not to market its metaverse app to teens
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Washington CNN —Two Democratic senators urged Meta this week to suspend a reported plan to offer Horizon Worlds, the company’s flagship virtual reality app, to teens between the ages of 13 and 17, arguing the technology could harm young users’ physical and mental health. The lawmakers, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, called Meta’s plan “unacceptable” in light of the company’s “record of failure to protect children and teens,” in a letter dated Wednesday to company CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Horizon Worlds is already available to adults 18 and older. The calls for caution come as social media platforms have faced years of scrutiny over their impact on young users, including their potential to lead teens down harmful rabbit holes. Other platforms, including Instagram and Snapchat, have similarly rolled out additional parental controls and features that encourage teens to take a break and set boundaries.

☆ 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.

☆ Mark Zuckerberg looks to ‘turbocharge’ Meta’s AI tools after viral success of ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is creating a new “top-level product group” to “turbocharge” the company’s work on AI tools, as it attempts to keep pace with a renewed AI arms race among Big Tech companies. In a Facebook post late Monday, Zuckerberg said the elite new group will initially be formed by pulling together teams across the company currently working on generative AI, the technology that underpins the viral AI chatbot, ChatGPT. Those AI features may include new Instagram filters as well as chat tools in WhatsApp and Messenger, he said. Generative AI tools are built on large language models that have been trained on vast troves of online data to create written and visual responses to user prompts. Already, both Microsoft and Google’s AI tools have run into controversies for producing some inaccurate or uncanny responses.

☆ ‘Take It Down’ Tool Helps Young People Remove Explicit Online Images
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Ginger Adams Otis | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms are among the initiative’s participating apps. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children launched a tool Monday that allows young people to remove explicit images of themselves that appear online, or block such photos from being shared. The platform, known as Take It Down, allows young adults from anywhere in the world to submit an anonymous report about explicit or intimate images of themselves posted on certain online spaces. Young adults who are over 18 but appear in imagery taken when they were underage can also submit a report to have the images removed from certain platforms, according to the center, a nonprofit.

☆ Corporate Stock Buybacks Help Keep Market Afloat
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Hannah Miao | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Facebook parent Meta’s $40 billion buyback plan is among the biggest share-repurchase announcements. U.S. stocks have received support from a key source during 2023’s shaky market environment: companies repurchasing their own shares. Stock buybacks by companies in the S&P 500 are projected to top $1 trillion in 2023 for the first time in a calendar year, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Authorizations for repurchases are picking up pace: As of Feb. 17, they totaled more than $220 billion, a record for that point in the year, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis of S&P 500 and Russell 3000 companies.

☆ Meta launches a tool to proactively prevent sextortion of teens
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

CNN —Meta is taking steps to crack down on the spread of intimate images of teenagers on Facebook and Instagram. To create a hash of an explicit image, a teen can visit the website TakeItDown.NCMEC.org to install software onto their device. Meanwhile, President Biden demanded in his latest State of the Union address more transparency about tech companies’ algorithms and how they impact their young users’ mental health. Meta recommends teens who have multiple copies of the image or edited versions make a hash for each one. “There’s no one panacea for the issue of sextortion or the issue of the non-consensual sharing of intimate images,” Davis said.

☆ 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.

☆ A generation of high-profile women tech leaders have stepped aside. What’s next?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The tech industry has now lost an entire generation of trailblazing women leaders and replaced them mostly with men. And in the wake of the pandemic, women leaders in corporate America more broadly are more likely than ever to quit, according to the most recent Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. Now that she’s departing, Big Tech is facing a new reckoning over its failure to promote and support women leaders, and what this could mean for the next generation of women in the industry. “Without women in the C-suite who have come before them, it could make this transition period tougher for next generation women leaders,” Kray said. “I think that what she achieved and what she modeled will be something that will live on beyond the fact that now we don’t have a female Big Tech CEO.”

☆ Meta in Talks to Reboot China Business With VR Headsets
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Raffaele Huang | Newley Purnell | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Tencent Holdings Ltd. is in talks to sell Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.’s popular virtual-reality headset in China, home to the world’s biggest pool of internet users. Tencent, China’s biggest videogame company, has proposed to Meta that it become the exclusive seller of Meta’s Quest 2 headsets in China, people familiar with the discussion said. Tencent has also sought to publish Chinese versions of existing videogames for the device, they said.

☆ Tencent in Talks to Sell Meta’s Quest 2 VR Headset in China
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Raffaele Huang | Newley Purnell | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Facebook Parent Launching ‘Meta Verified’ Subscription Service
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-19 | by ( Alexandra Bruell | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Meta’s headquarters in California. The company is going to launch a paid subscription service. Meta Platforms Inc. is launching a paid subscription service that enables users to verify their accounts with government identification and receive direct access to customer support. The aim of Meta Verified is to increase security and authenticity across the company’s services, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Sunday in social-media posts. It is also meant to “help up-and-coming creators grow their presence and build community faster,” according to a Meta spokesperson.

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☆ Silly Meta, Roblox isn’t just for kids
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Feb 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Video-game and social-media hub Roblox (RBLX.N) isn’t playing around when it comes to expanding its audience. The company behind MeepCity and Royale High has been racing alongside Meta Platforms (META.O) to turn the metaverse into more than just a vague buzzword. Despite being unprofitable and considerably smaller than Facebook’s owner, it is putting up a solid fight. Meta is mulling ways to attract younger users, including maybe opening the game up to minors older than 13. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Retailers Hope to Bargain for Lower Ocean-Freight Rates
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Paul Berger | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Richard Galanti, chief financial officer of Costco Wholesale Corp. , said lower freight rates should lead to price cuts at the members-only retailer, which imports more than 200,000 containers a year from Asia. An International Monetary Fund study found that when ocean-freight rates double it causes inflation to rise by 0.7 percentage point. Jonathan Ostry, a Georgetown University professor and a co-author of the study, said cutting shipping rates in half should reduce inflation by the same amount. In the ocean-shipping spot market, where importers book containers without a contract, rates have dropped to $1,000 on some trans-Pacific routes. But they say lower ocean shipping expenses will help in steadying prices.

☆ Microsoft’s Bing AI demo called out for several errors
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Microsoft’s public demo last week of an AI-powered revamp of Bing appears to have included several factual errors, highlighting the risk the company and its rivals face when incorporating this new technology into search engines. At the Bing demo at Microsoft headquarters, the company showed off how integrating artificial intelligence features from the company behind ChatGPT would empower the search engine to provide more conversational and complex search results. When asked, “What were Meta’s fourth quarter results?” the Bing AI feature gave a response that said, “according to the press release,” and then listed bullet points appearing to state Meta’s results. But Bing stated information that appeared to be attributed to the article that was, in fact, not actually there. For example, Bing said one crib had a “water-resistant mattress pad,” but that information was listed nowhere in the article.

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