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☆ I worked on Netflix's 'The Jeffrey Dahmer Story' and the experience was so bad it broke me. The aftermath proved there are no safe spaces for Black women to talk about Hollywood.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Eboni Boykin-Patterson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

It's not always easy being a Black crew member on a major production, because you'll often be one of the few. But the worst experience I ever had as a Black woman on a production was "Dahmer." The experience I had was tied in with the lack of diversity within the crew: Black crew members did not last long on this show. Black people — Black women specifically — have it hard enough already. Editor's note: Netflix declined to comment on human resource matters between employees and the number of Black crew members on this production.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it was watching Twitter with "deep concern" after these three privacy and compliance officers quit. Twitter did not respond to requests for comment on a potential bankruptcy, the FTC warning, or the departures. Wheeler was the face of Twitter for advertising after Musk took over. Musk has saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt, on which it faces interest payments totaling close to $1.2 billion in the next 12 months. It joined other brands including General Motors (GM.N) that have paused advertising on Twitter since Musk took over, concerned that he will loosen content moderation rules.

Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty have also resigned, according to an internal message seen by Reuters. He announced plans to cut half its workforce last week, promised to stop fake accounts and is charging $8 a month for the Twitter Blue service that will include a blue check verification. "We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern," Douglas Farrar, the FTC's director of public affairs, told Reuters. "Elon puts rockets into space, he's not afraid of the FTC," the attorney quoted Spiro as saying. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on the FTC warning, the note from the attorney or the departures.

[1/2] The iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are displayed at the Apple Fifth Avenue store, in Manhattan, New York City U.S. September 16, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File PhotoNov 9 (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) were accused in an antitrust lawsuit on Wednesday of conspiring to drive up iPhone and iPad prices by removing nearly all other resellers of new Apple products from Amazon's website. Prices rose more than 10%, while Apple stabilized the prices it charged in retail stores, the complaint said. The combined product revenue of Cupertino, California-based Apple and Seattle-based Amazon topped $125 billion in this year's third quarter. Last month, an Italian administrative court scrapped a 173.3 million euro ($173.6 million) fine against Apple and Amazon by Italy's antitrust regulator for alleged price collusion.

☆ Microsoft's president warns of talent shortage for tackling climate change
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 2 (Reuters) - Thousands of businesses will fail to meet pledges to combat climate change unless they start training employees on sustainability, Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) President Brad Smith told Reuters. Microsoft sells software for organizations to track their environmental impact. Still, companies need more than technology to address global warming, said Smith, announcing plans to develop green education materials including on LinkedIn, which Microsoft owns. The findings primarily stemmed from interviews and surveys with Microsoft and eight other large companies in sectors such as finance and consumer goods. "Employers really need to step back and take a broader look at their investment in employee learning and training."

Cloud services for years has been one of the largest and most dependable sources of growth for some of the biggest tech companies, including during the pandemic as people worked and studied from home. Growth in Amazon Web Services (AWS), the firm's lucrative cloud unit serving enterprises, has ticked down consistently in the past four quarters, adjusted for changes in forex. "The AWS slowdown is a clear sign that businesses are beginning to trim costs, so this will likely put more of a squeeze on Amazon's bottom line in the coming quarters," said Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. Alphabet's Google Cloud revenue grew 38% in the quarter, beating estimates. Cloud services typically help companies save money so budget cuts in this sector could be especially worrying, indicating that companies think cost is king going into tougher times.

☆ In Europe, consumer businesses like Amazon face holiday reckoning
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The extraordinary plummet put Europe in the spotlight for a company typically hurting from expansion in more emerging markets. Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, told reporters: "Fuel cost and the impacts of the Ukraine war are hitting the economies in Europe even harder than the U.S., and that's showing up in consumer spend." "Consumer sentiment in Europe is at an all time low," Unilever PLC (ULVR.L) Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly told reporters, warning likewise of rising inflation and depleted household savings. Mastercard Inc's (MA.N) chief financial officer said Thursday that the credit card provider so far noticed little change in European consumer spending volumes. Still, a wide range of multinational companies have warned of weakness in European markets.

Oct 27 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) on Thursday forecast a slowdown in sales growth for the holiday season, disappointing Wall Street and warning that inflation-wary consumers and businesses had less money to spend. In a call with reporters, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said the company was bracing for slower economic growth. Amazon forecast net sales of between $140 billion and $148 billion, or growth as little as 2% from a year earlier. The Amazon logo is seen at the company's logistics centre in Boves, France, October 6, 2021 REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File PhotoPrior holiday quarter sales growth was 9% in 2021 and 38% in 2020. Amazon's cloud sales growth has ticked down consistently in the past year.

☆ 'American Horror Story: NYC' plays like Ryan Murphy's Jeffrey Dahmer companion
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Brian Lowry | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Producer Ryan Murphy has premiered three series in roughly a month, so a degree of overlap is perhaps understandable. Even so, the new season of his long-running FX franchise, this one dubbed “American Horror Story: NYC,” feels like a companion in its central themes to “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” which premiered last month on Netflix. This being “American Horror Story,” though, the emphasis skews toward the serial killing, dropping hints and clues about who might ultimately be responsible. “American Horror Story” has hardly been known for its restraint, which made the relative lack of bloody excess in these episodes notable, with less emphasis on the horror than the serial-killer aspect. FX will air back-to-back “American Horror Story” episodes over the next four weeks (with subsequent availability on Hulu), by which time the monster’s identity should be revealed.

The Amazon logo is seen outside its JFK8 distribution center in Staten Island, New York, U.S. November 25, 2020. In a filing, Attorney General Letitia James agreed not to seek review of a May state court decision that had found federal law preempted her claims that Amazon violated state labor statutes. She had alleged in Feb. 2021 that Amazon had retaliated against two New York City workers protesting warehouse safety conditions. As part of the agreement, Amazon withdrew its own lawsuit against New York state, which had alleged James overstepped her bounds in pandemic dealings with the retailer. The court’s prior dismissal of the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit, and today’s agreement to end the litigation altogether, is the right outcome given our actions in response to the pandemic."

☆ Netflix is giving its critics the middle finger and taking a victory lap
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Travis Clark | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The streaming company gained over 2 million subscribers — avoiding the third straight quarter of subscriber losses. The results appear to have been enough for Netflix to take a victory lap. "We're in the business of entertaining our members with Netflix movies on Netflix," he said. It will stop providing membership guidance in future earnings reports. In other words, Netflix continues to think that the future of entertainment is still, undeniably, Netflix.

☆ Why the 'Amazonification' of startups isn't always a good thing
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Jordan Parker Erb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Plus, we've got news on actual robots, who are threatening to pit humans against machines. That's not always a good thing. Companies love to hire Amazon alumni who inject their firms with Jeff Bezos' metrics-focused style. Amazon-trained leaders (sometimes known as "Jeff Bots") have founded more than 650 startups, and swaths have joined the industry's top C-suites, contributing to the "Amazonification" of said firms. Now, humans need to determine how to synchronize our labor with the souls of new machines — before things get out of hand.

From July through September, Netflix attracted 2.4 million new subscribers worldwide, more than double the 1.07 million consensus forecast of analysts polled by Refinitiv. Netflix now has a total of 223.1 million subscribers around the world. For the third quarter, Netflix topped Wall Street projections with revenue of $7.9 billion, up 6% from a year earlier. The company's forecast of 4.5 million customer pickups by the end of 2022 came in slightly ahead of Wall Street estimates, which had averaged 4.2 million. For the fourth quarter, Netflix is projecting revenue of $7.8 billion -- a sequential decline it blamed on the strong value of the U.S. dollar.

Netflix added 2.4 million new subscribers in its most recent quarter, topping expectations that it would add 1 million. According to a Wedbush survey of Netflix users, he said, people most likely to opt into the ad-supported tier are those who would have otherwise quit the platform. Netflix has also foreshadowed a crackdown on password sharing, with plans to launch a paid family offering next year. Netflix estimates 100 million households worldwide are using shared passwords — 30 million of them in North America. On Monday, it introduced a “Profile Transfer” feature designed to let users who may be sharing a subscription opt into new a Netflix membership.

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) workers have so far voted 150 to 76 against forming a union at their upstate-New York warehouse, with more ballots to be counted as of Tuesday morning. At ALB1, the retailer's fulfillment center in Castleton-on-Hudson, employees had the chance to decide whether to join the Amazon Labor Union in the company's fourth union election of the year. The longer-established Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union also was unable to organize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama this year, though that result is not yet final. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterThe ALU is now managing the fourth Amazon union vote count of 2022 after tackling various challenges. More than 50% of voting Amazon workers would have to opt to join the ALU for the upstate-New York facility to unionize.

☆ Netflix Looks to Put an End to Subscriber Losing Streak
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Sarah Krouse | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Investors have one big question ahead of Netflix Tuesday earnings report: Was the streaming giant able to once again gain subscribers, after two back-to-back quarters of shedding them? Netflix said in July that it expected to add 1 million net new subscribers in the third quarter. Between July and September, it released a number of popular shows, including the second set of “Stranger Things: Season 4” episodes, “Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” the fourth season of “Virgin River” and the fifth season of “Cobra Kai,” as well as films including the “The Gray Man,” “The Sea Beast” and “Purple Hearts.”

☆ Amazon workers' ballots to be counted Tuesday in retailer's 4th union vote this year
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

At ALB1, the retailer's fulfillment center in Castleton-on-Hudson, hundreds of employees had the chance to decide whether to join the Amazon Labor Union. The longer-established Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union also was unable to organize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama this year, though that result is not yet final. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterThe ALU is now heading in to the fourth Amazon union vote count this year after tackling various challenges. Just this month, it petitioned to hold a union vote in an Amazon warehouse in Southern California, and it backed a staff protest of work conditions in Staten Island following a fire; Amazon suspended some workers afterward. A simple majority of valid ballots submitted by Amazon workers will determine if the upstate-New York facility unionizes.

☆ Netflix adds more than 2.4 million subscribers, reveals details about password-sharing crackdown
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Sarah Whitten | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The streamer also reported the addition of 2.41 million net global subscribers, more than doubling the adds the company had projected a quarter ago. Revenue: $7.93 billion vs $7.837 billion, according to Refinitiv survey. $7.93 billion vs $7.837 billion, according to Refinitiv survey. Expected global paid net subscribers: Addition of 2.41 million subscribers vs. an addition of 1.09 million subscribers, according to StreetAccount estimates. The majority of Netflix's net subscriber growth during the quarter came from the Asia Pacific region, which accounted for 1.43 million subscribers.

☆ Netflix threw shade at 'House of the Dragon' and 'Rings of Power' with a chart showing 'Dahmer' surpassing them in Google Trends
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Travis Clark | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Netflix touted the success of "Dahmer" by comparing it to "House of the Dragon" and "Rings of Power" on Google Trends. It shared a chart in its Q3 earnings report on Tuesday that showed "Dahmer" surpassed the shows in interest. In its third-quarter earnings letter to shareholders on Tuesday, Netflix threw shade at the two fantasy TV shows with a Google Trends chart, which showed searches for "Dahmer" surpassing both shows after its debut on September 21. The Google Trends data shows that the "Dahmer" search term skyrocketed in interest after its debut, well past the "Rings of Power" and "House of Dragon" search terms. As the Google Trends chart shows, the ability to watch all of 'Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story' helped drive significant interest in the show."

The U.S. aviation giant is looking to digital technology to accelerate production of new aircraft, said Susan Doniz, Boeing's chief information officer, at the Reuters Momentum conference in Austin on Tuesday. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterSome employees expressed reluctance over tools Boeing offered to help them, too. The metaverse, not just a place where Boeing may one day build its planes, is a concept where people can have an avatar in vast virtual lands. There even is discussion about creating "digital twins" of the real world -- and its problems, said Morgan McGuire, Roblox's chief scientist. "There's a lot of things in the real world that are really serious and are really bad," McGuire said at the conference.

☆ Netflix is going to start revealing how many people watch its shows — in the UK at least
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Ryan Hogg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Netflix will begin sharing audience viewing figures in the UK, pitting it against the BBC. The move comes alongside the launch of an ad-supported tier and increased regulatory scrutiny. Netflix will give viewing figures to the body, allowing it to be compared with UK channels from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and satellite broadcaster Sky. Netflix has closely guarded the audience figures for most of its programs, but does reveal the 10 most popular shows each week by hours viewed. The UK figures will show the total number of views for Netflix programs, as well as audience share and average daily minutes.

The U.S. aviation giant is looking to digital technology to accelerate production of new aircraft, said Susan Doniz, Boeing's chief information officer, at the Reuters Momentum conference in Austin on Tuesday. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterSome employees expressed reluctance over tools Boeing offered to help them, too. The company deployed the HoloLens, mixed-reality headsets from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), so staff could wire aircraft with manuals before them digitally. There even is discussion about creating "digital twins" of the real world -- and its problems, said Morgan McGuire, Roblox's chief scientist. "There's a lot of things in the real world that are really serious and are really bad," McGuire said at the conference.

Oct 11 (Reuters) - As online gaming platform Roblox Corp (RBLX.N) confronts a lawsuit alleging it enabled a California girl's exploitation, its chief scientist said finding dangerous content in the company's virtual world is nothing like spotting it in video. He had no comment on the recent lawsuit but said Roblox was built with safety and civility at the forefront. San Mateo, Calif.-based Roblox is deploying bots to patrol user-generated games and press buttons to detect any dangerous content that players have disguised. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register"This is more like shutting down speakeasies," he said, referring to U.S. prohibition-era bars hiding from law enforcement. McGuire said Roblox bars users from posting phone numbers or off-platform links.

☆ Jeffrey Dahmer’s latest media moment continues in ‘Conversations With a Killer’
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-06 | by ( Brian Lowry | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

In an interview with CNN, Berlinger said he hasn’t watched “Monster,” in part because he didn’t want to field questions about it. Berlinger bristled at the suggestion that any of these productions might romanticize serial killers, noting that crime has always been a source of fascination. “I thought this was an important story to tell,” Berlinger said in regard to “The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes,” noting that Dahmer – unlike Bundy and Gacy – actually exhibited “a modicum of remorse” in the unearthed audiotapes. “We want to pretend that serial killers present themselves as evil monsters all the time,” he said, noting that those featured were able to gaslight and fool even those close to them. “But it’s a larger attempt to understand where they fit in the human condition.”“Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes” premieres October 7 on Netflix.

☆ Amazon raises hourly pay for warehouse and transportation workers
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Sept 28 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's warehouse and transportation workers will receive an increased average starting pay of more than $19 per hour from $18, the world's largest online retailer said on Wednesday. The wage hike would help the company attract and retain workers in a tightening U.S. labor market as the peak season for gifting gets underway. Amazon said the pay hikes would cost the company nearly $1 billion over the next year. The online retailer's decision also comes as some workers continue to push to unionize Amazon facilities in the United States. Amazon had over 1.5 million full and part-time employees globally as of the quarter ended June 30, with a majority of workers in the United States.

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