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☆ Rep. George Santos pushes back on 'insane' reports he took funds for veteran's dying dog
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Kevin Breuninger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

"The reports that I would let a dog die is shocking & insane," the freshman lawmaker from New York tweeted Thursday morning. Santos' office did not immediately provide any of those photos when asked by CNBC. Santos then became elusive, and finally told Osthoff he had moved the money into his charity to use "for other dogs," the veteran told Patch. If Santos were to leave office, it would likely trigger a competitive special election in New York for his seat. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., made a similar argument Thursday when asked by CNN whether he believed Santos should resign.

☆ Twitter is bracing for further layoffs as Elon Musk shrinks the employee headcount to its lowest level in over a decade
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Twitter is seeing rolling layoffs despite Elon Musk's claims that he was done laying people off. Musk says Twitter is in dire financial straits. Layoffs are picking up again at Twitter about six weeks after Elon Musk told his new employees he was done with such actions. By the end of these cuts, the company could see its lowest headcount in over a decade. Employees are expecting that plans to close many international offices and several smaller offices in the U.S. will result in even more layoffs.

☆ Twitter is closing or getting kicked out of many international offices as Elon Musk skips rent and dramatically shrinks operations
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Twitter is leaving at least a dozen international offices due to closures or not paying rent. Elon Musk is closing many of its international Twitter offices as he continues to cut costs and try to find ways the company can make money. Twitter previously had more than two dozen international offices spanning nearly all regions of the world. The Singapore office, which first opened in 2015, even expanded last year, with more office space and engineers brought on to grow in the region. As for other international offices, most were smaller outposts for business operations, including engineering and ad sales.

Twitter on Saturday blocked searches for a series of hashtags and keywords used to promote the sale of child sex abuse material (CSAM) following an investigation by NBC News posted the day before. NBC News observed the hashtags over a period of several weeks, and counted dozens of users who collectively published hundreds of tweets daily. Irwin said in the last six weeks Twitter had been analyzing thousands of hashtags for a project that was scheduled for completion in the next few weeks. In a review of hashtags and tweets last week, NBC News confirmed that searches related to the file-sharing site Mega had been blocked. A former employee who asked to remain anonymous because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement said that many of the employees specifically tasked with child safety issues had departed the company.

☆ KeyBanc upgrades Bumble, says shares can rally more than 30% as consumers continue turning to online dating
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

It's time for investors give shares of Bumble a little more love, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. Analyst Justin Patterson upgraded shares of the mobile dating company to overweight from a sector weight rating, citing increasing conviction in Bumble's ability to capitalize on online dating trends. As demand for online dating holds up, Patterson expects the company to benefit from further expansion in international markets, moderating foreign exchange headwinds and growth within its compliments offering. "We believe Bumble is benefiting from a secular trend toward online dating globally, and a search for more meaningful relationships," Patterson said. "By focusing deeply on product, brand, and trust and safety, we believe Bumble has created a business that can garner a meaningful user base across geographies."

☆ Former Twitter employees get severance offer after months of waiting. Many are unhappy with it
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —After months of uncertainty and feeling left in the dark, many former Twitter employees impacted by a mass layoff in early November began receiving their severance offers over the weekend. The severance offer promises one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs. The former Twitter employees are now stuck deciding whether to accept the money or join the hundreds of others who have already filed arbitration demands or lawsuits against the company. “We’ve been hearing from hundreds of Twitter employees who are considering their options and not happy about only being offered one month severance, after they were promised much more,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, another lawyer working on behalf of former Twitter employees, told CNN in a statement Monday. The severance offer would also require that employees who sign agree not to cooperate as a witness in any legal actions brought by third parties against Twitter.

☆ Twitter further cuts staff overseeing global content moderation, Bloomberg reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Jan 7 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc made further staff cuts in the trust and safety team handling global content moderation and in the unit related to hate speech and harassment, Bloomberg news reported on Saturday. Workers on teams handling policy on misinformation, global appeals and state media on the platform were also eliminated, the report added. Twitter's vice president of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, confirmed to Reuters that Twitter made some cuts in the trust and safety team on Friday night but did not give details. "We have thousands of people within Trust and Safety who work content moderation and have not made cuts to the teams that do that work daily," she said via email. The company was also was hit with a lawsuit last month that claimed the social media company disproportionately targeted female employees in layoffs.

☆ Twitter further cuts staff overseeing global content moderation -Bloomberg News
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Jan 7 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc made further staff cuts in the trust and safety team handling global content moderation and in the unit related to hate speech and harassment, Bloomberg news reported on Saturday. At least a dozen more cuts on Friday night affected workers in the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Twitter, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reporting by Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Twitter accounts that offer to trade or sell child sexual abuse material under thinly veiled terms and hashtags have remained online for months, even after CEO Elon Musk said he would combat child exploitation on the platform. The tweets reviewed by NBC News offer to sell or trade content that is commonly known as child pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The tweets do not show CSAM, and NBC News did not view any CSAM in the course of reporting this article. The problem has been pervasive enough to catch the attention of some Twitter users. In 25 tweets, users tagged Musk using at least one of the major hashtags to alert him to the content.

☆ A fake tweet spurred an anti-vaccine harassment campaign against a doctor
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Brandy-Zadrozny-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | Brandy Zadrozny | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

When Dr. Natalia Solenkova woke up Monday morning, she was greeted with a flood of Twitter notifications on her phone. It was what misinformation researchers call a “cheap fake,” a term for a piece of fake media such as an image or video that takes little effort to produce. Someone had clumsily altered one of Solenkova’s posts to portray a blind, even deadly, zealotry for Covid vaccines and a vilification of anti-vaccine activists. “And then disinformation became rampant.”Despite the overwhelming success of the covid vaccines — which have prevented millions of severe infections and deaths — an aggressive and politicized anti-vaccine community has persevered. There were obvious tells that the tweet attributed to Solenkova was a fake, likely fabricated with what’s known as a tweet generator.

☆ Factbox: Tech firms leading job cuts in Corporate America
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

Jan 9 (Reuters) - Big Tech firms are leading a string of layoffs across corporate America as companies look to rein in costs to ride out the economic downturn. Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O):The software giant laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions in October, Axios reported, citing a source. However, Bloomberg later reported Twitter was reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs, asking them to return. HP Inc (HPQ.N):The computing devices maker said it expected to cut up to 6,000 jobs by the end of fiscal 2025. CNN:Warner Bros Discovery-owned (WBD.O) CNN's top boss Chris Licht informed employees in an all-staff memo that job cuts were underway.

☆ Elon Musk's Twitter lifts ban on political ads
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( Sheila Dang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 4 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc will reverse its 2019 ban on political ads, the company's head of trust and safety confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday, as the Elon Musk-owned company seeks to grow revenue. The change brings Twitter's policies closer to Meta Platform's (META.O) Facebook and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube, which allow political advertising. One platform that still bans political ads is Chinese video app TikTok. "We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics," the social media company tweeted. Twitter banned political ads in 2019 after it and other social media companies faced widespread criticism for allowing election misinformation to spread.

☆ It's hard to see what an avowed far-right militant 'would be doing much differently' than Elon Musk with his Twitter policies, extremism expert says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Hannah Getahun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

Berger, a researcher on extremism and extremist movements on social media, explained what constitutes extremism and how Musk fits into the right-wing extremist ecosystem. Elon Musk wouldn't be considered a right-wing extremist, right? It's hard to say if he's an extremist, but he is most definitely implementing policies that favor extremism. Is Elon Musk just bad at his job and unintentionally letting these right-wing extremists through or is it more sinister than that? There's a mythology of the center that the far right advances and that is the mythological center that Elon Musk is interested in promoting.

☆ Biden signs TikTok ban for government devices amid security concerns
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( David Ingram | David Ingram Covers Tech For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

President Joe Biden approved a limited TikTok ban Thursday when he signed the 4,126-page spending bill into law. The ban prohibits the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by its agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes. Since 2020, a bubbling movement led largely by conservatives has maintained a minor interest in a TikTok ban. “We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” the company said in a statement. It added that the proposed security agreement with the Biden administration would address the security concerns of lawmakers and regulators.

☆ Elon Musk slams 'corporate journalism' over its response to the Twitter Files: 'Why is it rushing to defend the state instead of the people?'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk accused "corporate journalism" of failing to side with the people over the Twitter Files. Musk retweeted a Substack article that criticized CNN for a report that denied his accusations. Musk added: "Why is corporate journalism rushing to defend the state instead of the people?" FBI agents then sent emails to Twitter staff suggesting certain accounts be banned for spreading misinformation about issues such as election integrity, per the Twitter Files. But Musk and some freelance journalists are annoyed that the Twitter Files haven't received more support from the press.

☆ Elon Musk laughed when asked about Twitter layoffs and said a focus on working hard 'was not Twitter's prior culture' before he took over
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Musk spoke about his "roller coaster" first two months at Twitter on the "All-In Podcast." When asked how he decided who to lay off, Musk laughed before saying that "exceptional" staff should stay on. Venture capitalist and podcast cohost Chamath Palihapitiya asked Musk how he decided what "the efficient frontier of employees" needed to be to make Twitter better. He noted that staff also needed to be "up for working hard," adding that that wasn't part of Twitter's "prior culture." Other Twitter workers, meanwhile, chose to quit their jobs, saying Musk had changed the company's culture and they were worried about the site's future.

☆ Grimes says her 2-year-old son with Elon Musk can identify 'obscure rocket design' and shadows 'engineering/strategy meetings'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-25 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Grimes said her two-year-old son with Elon Musk can identify "obscure rocket design." The Canadian singer's comments came after X Æ A-12 reportedly ran around Twitter's offices. Win win for all." She then added that her son, X Æ A-12, who was born in May 2020, "shadows engineering/strategy meetings. Grimes previously said that her son would use the f-word when his "toy rockets failed to reach orbit."

☆ Twitter restores suicide prevention feature after Reuters report
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Kenneth Li | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, after coming under pressure from some users and consumer safety groups over its removal. After publication of the story, Twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin confirmed the removal and called it temporary. In response to criticism by Twitter users, he also tweeted "Twitter doesn't prevent suicide." loadingloadingThe feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, placed a banner at the top of search results for certain topics. Its elimination had led some consumer safety groups and Twitter users to express concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users of the platform.

Its elimination had led to increased concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users on Twitter. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been on a recently dissolved Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was "extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing." AIDS United said a webpage that the Twitter feature linked to attracted about 70 views a day until Dec. 18. In one of its blog posts about the feature, Twitter had said it had responsibility to ensure users could "access and receive support on our service when they need it most." Musk has said he wants to combat child sexual abuse content on Twitter and has criticized the previous ownership's handling of the issue.

☆ Elon Musk quietly ordered the removal of Twitter's #ThereIsHelp suicide prevention feature, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Ryan Hogg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk quietly ordered the removal of a Twitter suicide prevention feature, sources told Reuters. But Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, said a replacement should go live next week. The news agency reported the #ThereIsHelp feature, which appeared when users viewed certain content, had disappeared from Twitter this week. It sought to give users credible information related to topics including HIV, mental health and suicide prevention, vaccines, and gender-based violence. But Eirliani A Rahman, who recently left Twitter's trust and safety council, told Reuters the move was "extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing."

☆ Twitter layoffs continue under Elon Musk
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Additional Twitter employees were terminated Thursday as part of ongoing, rolling layoffs under new owner Elon Musk, including from the public policy and media and entertainment teams, according to tweets from affected employees. As part of Thursday’s layoffs, the members of Twitter’s public policy team who had remained following last month’s mass layoffs were again cut down by about half to around 15 employees, a former Twitter employee with knowledge of the layoffs told CNN. Among the public policy team’s responsibilities are working with outside advisory groups such as the Twitter Trust and Safety Council, which the company disbanded earlier this month. More than 100 former Twitter employees have filed demands for arbitration or are participating in proposed class action lawsuits related to the layoffs. In the meantime, Musk may be considering finding someone else to head the social platform, after Twitter users voted over the weekend for him to step down as CEO.

☆ I was a member of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council, which is now being dissolved. The platform is no longer the Twitter I signed up for, and I worry it's no longer safe.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Eirliani Abdul Rahman is a former member of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council. Abdul Rahman and two other members resigned earlier this month, and Twitter disbanded the council days later. Abdul Rahman is the co-founder of Youth, Adult Survivors & Kin In Need (YAKIN) and a former member of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council. Earlier this month, she resigned from the council, which Twitter later disbanded via email less than an hour before the group was scheduled to meet. I loved Twitter as a platform because I felt it was so unique, and even today I don't think there's any equivalent.

☆ Google's management has reportedly issued a 'code red' amid the rising popularity of the ChatGPT AI
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google issued a "code red" in response to the rise of AI bot ChatGPT, NYT reports. CEO Sundar Pichai redirected some teams to focus on building out AI products, per the report. The move comes as talks abound over whether ChatGPT could one day replace Google's search engine. ChatGPT "is not something that people can use reliably on a daily basis," Zoubin Ghahramani, who leads the Google's A.I. Instead, Google may focus on improving its search engine over time rather than taking it down, experts told the Times.

A virtual credit card consists of a new set of numbers tied to that original credit card that you can enter whenever you're asked for your credit card information when making a purchase. Not all credit card providers offer this, but if you log into your credit card account, you might see an option to enroll and create virtual credit cards. To use these digital wallets, you have to first enter your regular credit card number (or perhaps a virtual card that you generated via your credit card issuer). "They're getting a tokenized credit card number, which is basically a virtual credit card number. Managing employee credit cards: Rather than sending all employees physical credit cards for work expenses, you could provide virtual credit cards for both convenience and control.

☆ Musk launches poll on whether he should quit as Twitter CEO
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Replying to a user on Twitter later, Musk said "There is no successor" in reference to a possible change in CEO. Minutes before the poll, Musk apologized and tweeted "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes." loadingFormer Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: "Why?". Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions. The policy change follows other chaotic actions at Twitter since Elon Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), bought the social network.

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