Musk threatens lawsuit as Twitter rival Threads takes off

WASHINGTON — Twitter threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk.

In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of "unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."

The letter accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information."

Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of the world's biggest social media platforms, despite its struggles.

Zuckerberg's latest move against Musk further heightened the rivalry between the two multibillionaires who have even agreed to meet for hand to hand combat in a cage match.

Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 2300 GMT on Wednesday (7 a.m. Thursday in Manila), and early feedback noted its close, but scaled back, resemblance to Twitter.

Within a few hours, more than 30 million people had downloaded Threads, Zuckerberg said Thursday.

"Feels like the beginning of something special, but we've got a lot of work ahead to build the app," Zuckerberg wrote on his official Threads account.

Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Oprah Winfrey and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets including The Washington Post and The Economist.

Zuckerberg wrote: "It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it."

"Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will."

Twitter has said it has more than 200 million daily users.

Musk meanwhile retweeted an image that said the Threads logo resembled a tapeworm. "Metaphorically too," he added.

In another post referencing Twitter's potential legal action against Meta, Musk noted that "competition is fine, cheating is not."

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said on Threads: "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee -- that's just not a thing."

'BE KIND' 

Threads was introduced as a spin-off of Instagram, giving it a built-in audience of more than two billion users and sparing the new platform the challenge of starting from scratch.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told users that Threads was intended to build "an open and friendly platform for conversations."

"The best thing you can do if you want that too is be kind," he said.

Zuckerberg is taking advantage of Musk's chaotic ownership of Twitter to push out the new product, which Meta hopes will become the go-to platform for celebrities, companies and politicians.

Analyst Jasmine Engberg from Insider Intelligence said Threads only needs one out of four Instagram monthly users "to make it as big as Twitter."

"Twitter users are desperate for an alternative, and Musk has given Zuckerberg an opening," she added.

Under Musk, Twitter has seen content moderation reduced to a minimum with glitches and rash decisions scaring away celebrities and major advertisers.

He also fired more than half of Twitter's staff, some of whom presumably went to other tech companies, including Meta.

EU 'MANY MONTHS' AWAY 

Meta has its legion of critics too, especially in the major market of Europe, which could slow the growth of Threads.

The company has been criticized for its handling of personal data, the essential ingredient for targeted ads that help it rake in billions of dollars in profits.

Mosseri said he regretted that the launch was delayed in the European Union, but had Meta waited for regulatory clarity from Brussels, Threads would have been "many, many, many, months away."

According to a source close to the matter, Meta was wary of a new law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that sets strict rules for the world's "gatekeeper" internet companies.

One rule restricts platforms from moving user data between products, as would potentially be the case between Threads and Instagram.

Globally, the Threads hashtag on Twitter has garnered three million tweets, with many users jokingly suggesting people will return to Musk's platform.

Others expressed privacy concerns.

"Meta loves to collect private information and I don't trust the way it treats private information," a Japanese user tweeted.

"I also have the impression that this is a company hated by EU, so I'm reluctant."

But some said they would permanently move to Threads.

One Threads user wrote: "Now I truly can say goodbye to Twitter forever."

Agence France-Presse 

Facebook owner Meta to launch Twitter-like 'Threads' app

WASHINGTON -- Facebook owner Meta's new Threads app, meant to compete with Twitter, was available for pre-order on mobile app stores on iPhone and Android operating systems on Monday.

Listed as "Threads, an Instagram app," the new program should be available in the coming days, and is described on Apple's app store as "Instagram's text-based conversation app."

"Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what'll be trending tomorrow," says the app's description on the store.

Thread's launch comes after a period of uncertainty at Twitter since Tesla owner Elon Musk took over in October, with the billionaire restructuring the company, firing thousands and placing many features behind a subscription paywall.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced in mid-March that it was working on a new social network whose description made it a potential competitor to Twitter.

Threads will enable users to "connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things -- or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world," according to its app store description.

"We're thinking about a decentralized, independent social network for sharing written messages in real time," the group said in a statement sent to AFP.

Twitter provoked ire last week when Musk announced that the platform would limit the number of tweets that could be read per day, with people not paying for subscriptions -- by far the majority of users -- limited to 1,000 tweets a day.

The stated aim of the decision was to limit the use of the social network's data by third parties, in particular companies feeding artificial intelligence models.

Agence France-Presse

Twitter has long been more talk than money

NEW YORK, United States - Billionaire Elon Musk is capturing a social media prize with his deal to buy Twitter, which has become a global stage for companies, activists, celebrities, politicians and more.

Despite its reach and impact, the San Francisco-based one-to-many messaging platform has struggled to generate the kind of revenue seen by social media peers such as Facebook and TikTok.

Since its founding in March of 2006, Twitter has amassed 217 million daily active users, more than 80 percent of them outside the United States.

Twitter did not taste profit until the end of 2017, and the following year was its first to finish financially in the black.

Twitter reported a loss of $221 million last year.

While often associated with the giant Silicon Valley social media platforms, to the extent that co-founder and then-chief Jack Dorsey has been grilled by US legislators, it is vastly eclipsed by its peers when it comes to profit and share value.

A challenge that has vexed Twitter since its inception is how to weave in ads or other money-making tactics into the real-time flow of posts by users without ruining the experience people love on the platform.

The fleeting nature of tweets has meant that marketing messages in posts may not spend much time in the spotlight for Twitter users to see.

An added challenge is how to make sure ads, sometimes in the form of tweets promoted to the tops of feeds, do not wind up next to vitriol, misinformation or other troubling content that brands do not want to be associated with.

However, politicians, institutions and marketers have learned how to turn Twitter to their advantage with clever or controversial posts that get shared as "retweets." But while these can spark viral online conversations, they do not necessarily result in Twitter directly making money from them.

Town square? 

Some have opined that Twitter, while hard to squeeze money out of, has become an internet version of the "town square," and is so important that it should almost be considered a public utility and come with free speech protections.

Twitter was the preferred method of communication during former US President Donald Trump's four years in office, as opposed to press briefings at which he would face questions from reporters.

Investors had essentially steered clear of Twitter stock, which prior to Musk's uninvited takeover bid launched three weeks ago was worth 12 percent less than it was priced when the company's shares first went public more than eight years ago.

Twitter last year introduced a "Blue" subscription tier offering exclusive content and features, and Musk has made it clear he is a fan of such models at the platform.

There is a risk though, that if Musk follows through on his vow to let people say pretty much anything they want on Twitter, moderate users will not want to pay subscriptions to be in a platform turned hostile, said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter.

Money over mindfulness?

Musk taking Twitter private will provide more room to maneuver, but will not guarantee success, according to analysts.

As a private company, Twitter will be free to make changes that might irk shareholders or take longer than they like to pay off.

Musk and his partners buying Twitter will be able to focus more intently on the financial side of the business, and not fret over issues such as diversity that might be important to shareholders at a public firm.

And despite talk of making the software running Twitter more transparent, the business side would have to disclose less to the public as a private operation.

Musk will be able to shrug off concerns about the environment, diversity or political correctness and decide "to hell with it", running Twitter the way he thinks is best, William Lee of the Milken Institute told AFP.

Agence France-Presse

Elon Musk, a tech visionary turns social media king

Sometimes it feels like it's Elon Musk's world and we just live in it.

The endlessly innovative, endlessly eccentric billionaire has struck a deal to buy Twitter, giving him control of the social media network on which the world debates, mobilizes and bickers. 

It is just the latest conquest for Musk, who has revolutionized the car industry, sent his own rocket to space, built the world's biggest fortune – and created fountains of moral outrage and celebrity gossip along the way.

Musk, 50, last year became the world's richest person – taking the title from Amazon's Jeff Bezos – following the meteoric rise of Tesla, his electric automaker founded in 2003.

His takeover of Twitter caps a rollercoaster of announcements and counter-announcements – which he characteristically punctuated by gleefully firing jabs at the company on its own platform.

And Musk's new guise as a social media overlord will fuel controversy over his political views, business methods and outsized personality. 

He is libertarian, anti-woke, impulsive and promotes himself as a champion of free speech. Some would call him right-wing, while his critics accuse him of being autocratic and bullying.

All this has come in a month in which Musk also made headlines with Tesla opening a "gigafactory" in Texas, after the company left California following a dispute over his efforts to defy a state shutdown of his plant to stop the spread of COVID-19.

And there's more – his space transport firm SpaceX is currently breaking yet another boundary as a partner in a three-way venture that sent the first fully private mission to the International Space Station.

But Musk also makes news of a less flattering kind: Tesla has faced a series of lawsuits alleging discrimination and harassment against Black workers as well as sexual harassment.

In parallel with the whiplash-inducing stream of business news, Musk's penchant for living by his own rules in the private sphere also keeps the world wide-eyed.

It recently emerged Musk has had a second child with his on-again off-again partner, the musician Grimes: a girl they named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk – although the parents will mostly call her Y.

He is even expected to make an appearance – in person or not – at the ongoing celebrity defamation trial pitting Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard, who formerly dated Musk.

One way or another, Musk has become one of the most ubiquitous figures of the era. So how did he get where he is today?

- To Mars ... and beyond? -

Born in Pretoria, on June 28, 1971, the son of an engineer father and a Canadian-born model mother, Musk left South Africa in his late teens to attend Queen's University in Ontario.

He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years and earned bachelor's degrees in physics and business.

After graduating from the prestigious Ivy League school, Musk abandoned plans to study at Stanford University.

Instead, he dropped out and started Zip2, a company that made online publishing software for the media industry.

He banked his first millions before the age of 30 when he sold Zip2 to US computer maker Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999.

Musk's next company, X.com, eventually merged with PayPal, the online payments firm bought by internet auction giant eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

After leaving PayPal, Musk embarked on a series of ever more ambitious ventures.

He founded SpaceX in 2002 – now serving as its chief executive officer and chief technology officer – and became the chairman of electric carmaker Tesla in 2004.

After some early crashes and near-misses, SpaceX perfected the art of landing booster engines on solid ground and ocean platforms, rendering them reusable, and late last year sent four tourists into space, on the first ever orbital mission with no professional astronauts on board.

Musk's jokingly named The Boring Co. is touting an ultra-fast "Hyperloop" rail transport system that would transport people at near supersonic speeds.

And he has said he wants to make humans an "interplanetary species" by establishing a colony of people living on Mars.

To this end, SpaceX is developing a prototype rocket, Starship, which it envisages carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond – with Musk saying he feels "confident" of an orbital test this year.

Musk, who holds US, Canadian and South African citizenship, has been married and divorced three times -- once to the Canadian author Justine Wilson and twice to actress Talulah Riley. He has seven children. An eighth child died in infancy.

Forbes estimates his current net worth at $266 billion.

Agence France-Presse

Elon Musk buys large stake in Twitter, sending stock soaring

NEW YORK - Elon Musk has taken a major stake in Twitter, regulatory filings showed Monday, sending the social media network's stock soaring and igniting speculation he could seek an active role in its operations.

Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla, is a frequent Twitter user who often posts controversial messages and announcements, and has long been critical of social media companies.

In one recent post he questioned Twitter's adherence to free speech and hinted at launching his own platform. 

According to a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the South African-born billionaire acquired nearly 73.5 million Twitter shares -- a 9.2 percent stake in the company.

Based on Friday's closing price of the company's stock, his investment amounts to nearly $2.9 billion.

Investors responded quickly. At 7.15 am in New York (1115 GMT) Twitter's stock was trading at about $49, up by around 26 percent.

"We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter," analysts Daniel Ives and John Katsingris of Wedbush wrote in a note.

Musk launched a poll on Twitter on March 25, saying "free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" 

More than two million people voted in the poll, with over 70 percent saying "no."

"Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?" he continued the next day.

"Is a new platform needed?"

"Just buy twitter," was one of the first responses from tens of thousands of users.

MUSK, TWITTER AND CONTROVERSY

Musk has wielded Twitter polls to conduct business before: in November last year, he offloaded $5 billion in Tesla shares days after asking fellow social media users if he should sell 10 percent of his stake.

In the summer of 2018 Musk published a tweet where he claimed that he had the appropriate funding to take Tesla private, without providing proof.

The tweet caused a brief spike in Tesla's share price but the SEC said the statements on Twitter were "false and misleading."

The mogul then agreed that any tweets capable of moving Tesla's share price would be screened by lawyers, as part of a deal that saw him pay $20 million to settle a fraud case brought by the SEC.

Then in early March, Musk asked a New York judge to overturn the agreement with the stock market watchdog on his tweets. 

His lawyer said the dispute with the SEC was "yet another attempt to harass Tesla and silence Mr Musk."

Musk has also used Twitter to court controversy away from the business world: in March he challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight, with the fate of Ukraine at stake; and in February he drew condemnation for a tweet comparing Canadian leader Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

Agence France-Presse

New York Times digital 'NFT' article sells for $563,000

NEW YORK, United States - A New York Times columnist on Thursday sold one of his articles in digital form for $563,000, the latest example of the craze surrounding "non fungible tokens," which collectors are snapping up.

Keven Roose's article entitled "Buy This Column on the Blockchain" was itself aimed at trying to test the market as to what sort of items would sell in the form of an "NFT."

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital object, such as a drawing, piece of music, photo, or video, with a certificate of authenticity created by blockchain technology.

This authentication by a network of computers is considered inviolable. 

The virtual object, which is actually a computer file, can be exchanged or sold with its certificate.

NFTs have become popular in the past 6 months, as wealthy collectors turn to the digital market during the pandemic.

On Monday, the first message ever posted on Twitter sold for $2.9 million when its sender, Twitter co-founder and chief Jack Dorsey, accepted the winning bid at auction.

Earlier this month, a digital collage by American artist Beeple sold for $69.3 million at Christie's, setting a new record for an NFT.

"Why can't a journalist join the NFT party, too?" asked Roose in his column.

At the end of the 24-hour auction, a collector calling himself Farzin won the article with 350 Ethereum, a major cryptocurrency, worth $563,000. 

"Fully just staring at my monitor laughing uncontrollably," Roose, a tech columnist, wrote on Twitter after the sale.

Roose had indicated that the proceeds, after the 15 percent fee deducted by the Foundation platform on which the auction was organized, would go to charities supported by The New York Times. 

Agence France-Presse

Facebook exec says 'no plans' to end Trump ban

Facebook does not intend to lift the suspension on outgoing President Donald Trump, the platform's second in command Sheryl Sandberg said Monday. 

"Our ban is indefinite. We have said at least through the transition. But we have no plans to lift it," Facebook's chief operating officer said at an online forum organized by Reuters. 

The social network last week suspended Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the aftermath the violent invasion of the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters, which disrupted the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's election victory.

Twitter went a step further on Friday by deleting Trump's account, depriving him of his favorite megaphone. 

Trump also was hit with suspensions from services like Snapchat and Twitch. 

"Our policies are applied to everyone," Sandberg said, noting that the platform has removed posts by the president's son and "other world leaders."

"This shows that even a president is not above the policies we have." 

In announcing the suspension last week, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Trump used the platform to incite violent and was concerned he would continue to do so. 

Zuckerberg in late October warned about the potential for social unrest after the election.

Sandberg admitted that the platform faced some hiccups in the 2016 US presidential election, failing to do enough against manipulative campaigns orchestrated from Russia, but she said Facebook had learned from its errors.

Before the November 3 presidential election, the social network stepped up efforts to combat disinformation campaigns and suspended many accounts, groups and pages with violent or hate-filled content. 

Facebook said Monday that it is taking similar precautions leading up to the inauguration of Biden as president on Jan. 20, using the same teams to battle misinformation and content that could incite violence.

Content containing the phrase "stop the steal" will be removed from Facebook and Instagram, according to executives Monika Bickert and Guy Rosen.

A group by that name was removed from the social network late last year, Facebook said.

"We’ve been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue," Bickert and Rosen said in a post.

"But, with continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the US presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in DC, we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration."

Facebook is also keeping in place a pause on all ads in the US about politics or elections, meaning no ads from politicians including Trump, according to Bickert and Rosen.

Asked about criticism the social media titans exert outsized power, Sandberg said she was in favor of more regulation and said she hoped to work with the Biden administration, which will take office on January 20. 

"We are a private company and we have a service we provide and it is our responsibility to make sure that service is not used for things it shouldn't be used for, like what happened last Wednesday," she said.

Agence France-Presse

US seeks data on how Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others use personal data

WASHINGTON - The Federal Trade Commission is seeking information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media and video streaming companies about how they use the personal information that they collect on their users, the U.S. agency said on Monday.

In addition to Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc, the orders requesting data were sent to Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, Amazon.com Inc, China's ByteDance unit TikTok, Discord Inc, Reddit Inc, Snap Inc, and Google subsidiary YouTube LLC.

The FTC is seeking to learn how the companies collect data on users, how they decide which advertisements to show and how algorithms are used, among other information, the agency said in a statement. It is also seeking information about how the companies' practices affect children and teenagers.

The companies have 45 days to respond to the orders, which are usually used to generate policy or recommend legislation.

In a joint statement, two Democratic members of the commission, Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Slaughter, and one Republican, Christine Wilson, noted their impetus for the order.

"Never before has there been an industry capable of surveilling and monetizing so much of our personal lives," they wrote. "Social media and video streaming companies now follow users everywhere through apps on their always-present mobile devices. This constant access allows these firms to monitor where users go, the people with whom they interact, and what they are doing. ... Too much about the industry remains dangerously opaque.

Discord said it looked forward to answering the FTC's questions. "We make no money from advertising, selling user data to advertisers, or sharing users' personal information with others. Instead, the company generates its revenue directly from users through a paid subscription service," a spokesperson said in an email statement.

None of the other companies immediately responded to a request for comment. 

(Reporting by Diane Bartz Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Richard Chang)

-reuters-

Twitter flags 'president-elect Biden' posts as premature

Twitter on Friday flagged as premature posts referring to Joe Biden as "president-elect," as the vote count continued in the knife-edge US election with the Democrat leading Donald Trump in several key states.

Tweets referring to the former vice president with the victor's title and his running mate Kamala Harris as "vice president-elect" were tagged with messages saying counts were not yet final.

"Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted," read a message below a post from Democratic Coalition co-founder and podcaster Scott Dworkin using the two titles for Biden and Harris.

The notice came with a link to information about the status of the election.

Twitter and Facebook have been scrambling to flag, mask and limit the spread of premature claims of victory or false attacks on the voting process since the polls closed late Tuesday.

"As votes are still being counted across the country, our teams continue to take enforcement action on tweets that prematurely declare victory or contain misleading information about the election broadly," Twitter said.

"This is in line with our civic integrity policy and our recent guidance on labeling election results."

Unfounded claims by Trump regarding the voting process as well as premature claims of victory about either candidate in the race have been flagged or masked, with links provided to reliable sources of information.

Twitter's action made the comments less visible, and users seeking to read the posts were required to click through a warning.

'STRONG MANDATE TO LEAD'

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, on Friday called Biden the "president-elect" of the United States after he pulled ahead in key election results.

"This morning it is clear that the Biden-Harris ticket will win the White House," Pelosi told reporters after Biden overtook President Donald Trump in the potentially decisive state of Pennsylvania.

"President-Elect Biden has a strong mandate to lead," she said.

It is "a happy day for our country. Joe Biden is a unifier, because he is determined to bring people together."

Pennsylvania would be enough to put Biden past the magic number of 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College, which determines the presidency.

Biden also took a razor-thin lead in votes counted from Georgia, which Trump until late in the campaign did not consider to be in play.

The Democrat has stopped short of declaring victory but said he expected that he and his vice presidential pick Harris would triumph.

Trump has angrily made unsubstantiated claims of fraud and sought to halt vote counting after prematurely declaring victory himself following the close of polls Tuesday.

Biden's performance came despite projections that Democrats will lose several seats in the House of Representatives, a major disappointment for the party which had hoped to expand its majority.

Pelosi played down the losses but said that the next House election in 2022 "will be a steeper climb" without Trump on the ballot.

The party of the president nearly always loses seats in Congress in the first midterm election.

Agence France-Presse

Twitter, TikTok discuss potential combination: WSJ

NEW YORK, United States - Twitter is in preliminary discussions for a possible combination with TikTok, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, after US President Donald Trump said he would ban the app, calling it a threat to national security.

Trump declared Thursday that the popular Chinese video app TikTok and social network WeChat "threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."

In an executive order, Trump gave Americans 45 days to stop doing business with the platforms, effectively setting a deadline for a sale of TikTok by its Chinese parent firm ByteDance.

He has also demanded that a significant portion of the sale go to the US Treasury.

Microsoft has been the primary suitor for TikTok, saying it was in talks to buy the company's US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations.

The Financial Times reported Thursday that Microsoft has expanded negotiations and was now after the app's entire global operations.

As a smaller company, Twitter would have a long-shot bid for TikTok, but the social media platform believes it would come under less antitrust scrutiny than larger corporations such as Microsoft, the WSJ said, citing people familiar with the talks.

Twitter, however, would likely need the support of other investors to complete the combination.

While Twitter does allow for the sharing of videos, most posts contain short text messages and photos or GIFs. 

In 2012, Twitter acquired the platform Vine, which allowed users to share short videos, but shut down the service in 2016.

Agence France-Presse

Clint Bondad trends after posting cryptic messages days after messaging Sam Milby

MANILA – Clint Bondad became a top trending topic on Twitter Philippines after he posted several cryptic messages on Instagram Story Wednesday night.

This comes just days after he sent a direct message to actor Sam Milby, asking if he wants to become his "client." Milby is currently in a relationship with Bondad’s ex-girlfriend, Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray.

While Bondad’s posts seemed random, some of them contained the word “Sam” although it is unclear what he’s actually pertaining to.

He also posted that that "dating app" is not equivalent to "church," which made some netizens wonder if Bondad is alluding to how Milby and Gray met.

He also said in three consecutive posts that there’s no need to worry because he is only the ex.

Towards the latter part, Bondad posted “Become my Client, Friend.” 

Bondad also wrote “P.S. I create Queens” followed by another post which says “Because I push Yiu Beyond all your Limits.”

Aside from Bondad, Gray also trended on Twitter early Thursday morning.

news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter disables Trump campaign tribute to George Floyd due to copyright complaint

Twitter Inc has disabled US President Donald Trump's campaign's tribute video to George Floyd saying there has been a copyright complaint.

The tribute video, three minutes and forty five seconds long, was posted on June 3 on Twitter.

-reuters-

Facebook's Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

Facebook employees critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to remove an inflammatory comment from US President Donald Trump took their dissent public over the weekend on Twitter, praising the rival social media firm for taking action and rebuking their own employer.

Many tech workers at companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon have become active on social justice issues in recent years and urged their employers take action and change policies.

Still, the criticism of Zuckerberg marked a rare case of high-level employees publicly taking their own CEO to task, with at least three of the seven critical posts seen by Reuters coming from people who identified themselves as senior managers.

“Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind," wrote Ryan Freitas, whose Twitter account identifies him as director of product design for Facebook’s News Feed. He added he had mobilized "50+ likeminded folks" to lobby for internal change.

Jason Toff, identified as director of product management, wrote: "I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard."

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the employee dissent.

Twitter on Friday hid a tweet from Trump that included the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" behind a warning label. It explained the tweet violated Twitter's rules against "glorifying violence" but was being left up as a "public service exception."

Facebook declined to take action on the same message, with Zuckerberg saying in a Facebook post on Friday that while he found the remarks "deeply offensive," the company decided they did not violate its policy against "incitements to violence."

Some of the dissenting employees directly praised Twitter's response.

"Respect to @Twitter’s integrity team for making the enforcement call," wrote David Gillis, identified as a director of product design. In a long Twitter thread he said he understood the logic of Facebook's decision, but said: "I think it would have been right for us to make a 'spirit of the policy' exception that took more context into account."

Toff was one of several Facebook employees who were organizing fundraisers for non-profit groups assisting protesters in Minnesota. Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post early Monday that the company would contribute an additional $10 million to social justice causes.

"Giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy," wrote another Facebook manager, Andrew Crow, head of design for the Portal product. "I disagree with Mark’s position and will work to make change happen." (Reporting by Fanny Potkin in Singapore. Editing by Jonathan Weber and Chizu Nomiyama)

-reuters-

Widower asks Dorsey to remove Trump’s false tweets. Twitter says no.

The widower of Lori Klausutis, whose death President Donald Trump has used to smear MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, is asking Twitter to remove the president’s tweets on the subject.

Twitter said Tuesday that it would not.

In a letter to Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, last week, Timothy Klausutis said Trump had violated Twitter’s terms of service by falsely suggesting that Scarborough killed Lori Klausutis in 2001 when he was a Florida congressman and she was an intern in his office. Lori Klausutis, then 28, actually died as a result of a heart condition that caused her to collapse at work and hit her head on her desk.

“An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet,” Timothy Klausutis wrote in the letter, which was published Tuesday by The New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher, “but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.”

Trump has repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theory against Scarborough, who has criticized the president on his MSNBC show “Morning Joe.” In a series of tweets over the past several weeks, Trump has urged law enforcement authorities in Florida to “open a cold case” and suggested falsely that Scarborough “got away with murder.” He had tweeted about the same conspiracy as far back as 2017.

“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Klausutis wrote in his letter. “My wife deserves better.”

Twitter said Trump’s tweets did not violate the company’s terms of service, even though its policies say users “may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so.” The company has long been hesitant to remove posts from world leaders, even when they contain disinformation. It has said posts from leaders are newsworthy.

There have been exceptions, especially during the coronavirus pandemic: In March, Twitter deleted posts by Presidents Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil in which they promoted unproven cures for COVID-19. But it has not deleted any of Trump’s posts.

Twitter said, for example, that Trump’s assertion that hydroxychloroquine showed “tremendous promise” in treating COVID-19 did not violate its policies because it was not a clear call to action that would harm the public.

Dorsey has faced multiple calls over the years to remove Trump’s misleading or false statements from the platform, including the president’s suggestion during a White House briefing last month that injecting disinfectant or using ultraviolet light could combat the coronavirus. Although Trump did not write about those subjects on Twitter himself, his statements led to a flood of other posts, videos and comments about false virus cures, which Twitter and other social media companies largely left standing.

While Trump has been tweeting repeatedly about Klausutis and Scarborough — including a pair of tweets Tuesday morning, after Swisher published Timothy Klausutis’ letter — he has barely spoken about the death toll from the coronavirus, which will soon reach 100,000 in the United States.

Twitter clarified its policy this month, stating that it would label tweets containing misinformation about the virus, including those posted by world leaders, with three broad categories: “misleading information,” “disputed claim” and “unverified claim.”

But the company said it would not label Trump’s tweets about Lori Klausutis.

“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” a Twitter spokesman, Nick Pacilio, said in a statement in response to Timothy Klausutis’ letter. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”

Pacilio did not elaborate on what changes the company would make to its product or policies.

In his letter, Klausutis said the persistence of the conspiracy theory, nearly two decades after his wife’s death, was deeply painful.

“As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life,” he wrote. “There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.”

-Maggie Astor and Davey Alba, The New York Times-

Adele takes social media by storm with slimmer look

Adele broke her social media hiatus on Wednesday when she posted a new photo of her showing off her figure after a noticeable weight loss.

The “Hello” singer looked stunning in a black dress while standing behind a huge wreath in what appears to be just outside her house.

Adele is currently celebrating her 32nd birthday.

View this post on Instagram

Thank you for the birthday love. I hope you’re all staying safe and sane during this crazy time. I’d like to thank all of our first responders and essential workers who are keeping us safe while risking their lives! You are truly our angels ♥️ 2020 okay bye thanks x

A post shared by Adele (@adele) on May 5, 2020 at 9:38pm PDT

“Thank you for the birthday love. I hope you’re all staying safe and sane during this crazy time,” she wrote in the caption of her post.

“I’d like to thank all of our first responders and essential workers who are keeping us safe while risking their lives! You are truly our angels,” she added.

Immediately after her post, the Grammy winner became the top trending topic on Twitter Philippines.

news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter sales top estimates, sees rebound from Asia's eased coronavirus rules

OAKLAND - Twitter Inc on Thursday said its ads sales slightly rebounded in Asia after a plunge due to the coronavirus outbreak and it had accelerated work on tools to attract advertisers, becoming the latest tech company to report a lighter blow from the pandemic than forecast.

Twitter shares jumped 11 percent in premarket trading.

The San Francisco-based social media company announced greater first-quarter revenue and a smaller loss than financial analysts had expected. Daily users who can view ads grew 24% to 166 million, about 2 million above estimates, as people looked to Twitter for information related to the virus.

Twitter provided neither its usual guidance on sales for the current quarter nor any comment on whether U.S. ad sales had bounced back as well. It did warn of smaller increases in non-advertising revenue. Making the development of ad tools its No. 1 priority also could complicate efforts to maintain user growth late into the year.

But the first-quarter results and signs of recovery mirrored those seen over the last week from Twitter's main competitors for advertisers, including Facebook Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Snapchat maker Snap Inc.

Shares of those companies, including Twitter, have surged in the last week, erasing most or all their declines for the year.

The novel coronavirus halted travel, retail and entertainment in much of the world by March, leading to sudden budgets cuts at many advertisers and generating concerns about the prospects of ad sellers.

About 84% of Twitter's revenue comes from ads on its service and partner apps, and those sales were 27% lower in the last three weeks of March than the same period in 2019, the company said on Thursday. But sales bounced back in Asia during late March as lockdowns lifted there, Twitter said, without providing specific figures.

In addition, Twitter said it hoped to release tools earlier than planned this year to attract business from mobile games and other app makers. Those companies are trying to gain market share among consumers stuck at home and are continuing to buy what the ad industry calls "direct response" ads.

Google on Wednesday also said it expected revenue from direct response ads sold by its YouTube unit to return to normal faster than from other ad types.

SLASHING COSTS, PRIORITIZING SALES

Twitter's first-quarter revenue was $808 million, or 3% growth compared with a year earlier, above the average estimate of $776 million among analysts tracked by Refinitiv.

Twitter had rescinded on March 23 its first-quarter revenue outlook of between $825 million and $885 million because of virus-related uncertainty.

The company said that sales growth from licensing users' posts to researchers and marketers, which was 17% in the first quarter, is expected to "moderate" the rest of the year.

Twitter lost $8 million in the first quarter, or a penny per share, better than the average estimate of two cents per share.

The opening of a new data center to host tweets and user information could be pushed back because the virus made it difficult to acquire materials and required spending on improving some existing infrastructure, Twitter said.

Twitter is aiming to stem losses by slashing its own budgets, including by limiting hiring to product development, research and user support. Expense growth in 2020 is likely to be in "the low teens," versus earlier plans to spend 20% more than last year, Twitter said.

Focusing its product teams on advertiser tools could pose challenges for Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey. He pledged in February to launch new features for users this year at a faster pace to stoke growth, while committing to activist investor Elliott Management on March 9 that he would increase daily users by at least 20% this year.

The growth goal was part of an agreement allowing Dorsey to remain CEO as a revamped board of directors evaluates Twitter's leadership structure and CEO succession plan. Elliott had expressed concern about Dorsey, who is also CEO of financial tech company Square Inc, taking on too much.

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Nick Zieminski)

-reuters-

Social media challenges keep lockdown boredom at bay

With the coronavirus continuing to upend familiar rhythms of life, leaving schools shuttered, millions out of work and billions stuck at home, those looking for ways to pass the time have gotten creative.

In the absence of jam-packed calendars, people are turning to social media challenges in droves. Some bring together families for choreographed dance routines while others spark the inner artist or unlock hidden engineering skills. All of them hold the promise of warding off boredom and — maybe — earning users a moment of online celebrity.

Here are some of the biggest challenges sweeping the world during the lockdown.

#FliptheSwitch

Early last month, the lyrics “I just flipped the switch” from the Drake song “Nonstop” inspired a viral challenge on TikTok that eventually made its way to Instagram. All over, people began swapping clothes, poses and sometimes attitudes when the lights are switched off and then back on. A version featuring Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kate McKinnon of “Saturday Night Live” went viral, as did a clip of Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez.

#DontRushChallenge

The song “Don’t Rush” by the British hip-hop outfit Young T & Bugsey provided the backdrop for this challenge. In some videos, participants pass around a makeup brush like a wand that magically upgrades their look. One popular take featured New Orleans police officers passing around their hats while another video highlighted disabled women and men.

#PillowChallenge

This challenge attracts creative fashionistas who aim to turn everyday pillows into striking quarantine couture, often using belts to fashionably fasten the pillows around their waists. Actresses Halle Berry, Tracee Ellis Ross and Anne Hathaway all participated in the craze.

#BinIsolationOuting

In Australia, where lockdowns have halted nearly 30 years of economic growth, residents have begun dressing up as superheroes, Disney characters and sometimes dinosaurs to wheel the trash to the curb. A Facebook group called “Bin Isolation Outing,” which has quickly racked up nearly 1 million members, features photos and videos of residents dressing up for the usually mundane task.

“So basically the bin goes out more than us so let’s dress up for the occasion!” reads a description of the group. “Fancy dress, makeup, tutu … be creative. Post photos to cheer us up, after all laughter is the best medicine.” The challenge has since spilled over onto Instagram and Twitter.

#BetweenArtandQuarantine

While the pandemic has shuttered most public institutions, museumgoers have shifted their focus online, where people are cleverly replicating famous artworks. Participants use toilet paper, food, old clothes and more to form a living archive of creativity in isolation. The Instagram account @tussenkunstenquarantaine collects and posts submissions from locked-down artists all over. Thousands of replicas appear under the hashtags #tussenkunstenquarantaine and #betweenartandquarantine. There’s also a Russian Facebook group called “Isolation” that features at-home replicas of sculptures, paintings and movie scenes.

#TrickShot

When boredom sets in, silly tasks are sometimes the most entertaining, as evidenced by the millions of TikTok, Instagram and Twitter videos posted with the hashtag #trickshot. The objective is to land the shot, no matter how many obstacles or how ridiculous the task. Some popular videos show Ping-Pong balls bouncing off pots and pans or going through complicated courses. Although Ping-Pong balls are commonly used, people have recorded their own #trickshot videos using basketballs, soccer balls and golf balls.

Your First Move Is Their Last Move

This challenge turns family living rooms and kitchens into makeshift nightclubs, where everyone gets a turn on the dance floor. The conceit: Repeat the dance move from the person in front of you, then add your own twist for the person behind you to replicate. The “Your First Move Is Their Last Move” challenge is most popular on TikTok, where there are hundreds of thousands of videos.


c.2020 The New York Times Company

Ethel Booba calls Twitter account @IAmEthylGabison ‘fake’

MANILA—A Twitter account long thought by the public to be authorized by Ethel Booba apparently isn’t.

On Thursday, the comedian, known recently for her witty social commentary, took to Instagram to say that the Twitter account with the handle @IAmEthylGabison is fake. 

@IAmEthylGabison, which had 1.6 million followers, could not be accessed at the time this story was posted.

On a number of occasions, Ethel Booba had referenced the aforementioned account, opened in January 2012, and even talked about how she manages it with other administrators.

When she announced giving birth in February, it was done on @IAmEthylGabison. An image of her newborn daughter was also shared there.

In 2016, Ethel Booba released a book, “#Charotism: The Wit and Wisdom of Ethel Booba,” which contains her viral tweets. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Why the novel coronavirus became a social media nightmare

NEW YORK - The biggest reputational risk Facebook and other social media companies had expected in 2020 was fake news surrounding the US presidential election. Be it foreign or domestic in origin, the misinformation threat seemed familiar, perhaps even manageable.

The novel coronavirus, however, has opened up an entirely different problem: the life-endangering consequences of supposed cures, misleading claims, snake-oil sales pitches and conspiracy theories about the outbreak.

So far, AFP has debunked almost 200 rumors and myths about the virus, but experts say stronger action from tech companies is needed to stop misinformation and the scale at which it can be spread online.

"There's still a disconnect between what people think is true and what people are willing to share," Professor David Rand, a specialist in brain and cognitive sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told AFP, explaining how a user's bias toward content he or she thinks will be liked or shared typically dominates decision-making when online.

Part of the reason is that social media algorithms are geared to appeal to someone's habits and interests: the emphasis is on likability, not accuracy. Changing that would require Facebook, Twitter and other such companies to alter what people see on screen.

Prompts urging users to consider the accuracy of content they are spreading on social networks are needed, said Rand, co-author of a study on COVID-19 misinformation that was published earlier this month.

DEADLY CONSEQUENCES

Using controlled tests with more than 1,600 participants, the study found that false claims were shared in part simply because people failed to think about whether the content was reliable.

In a second test, when people were reminded to consider the accuracy of what they are going to share, their level of truth awareness more than doubled.

That approach -- known as "accuracy nudge intervention" -- from social media companies could limit the spread of misinformation, the report concluded.

"These are the kind of things that make the concept of accuracy top of the minds of people," said Rand, noting that news feeds are instead filled by users' own content and commercial advertisements.

"There probably is a concern from social networking companies about accuracy warnings degrading the user experience, because you're exposing users to content that they didn't want to see. But I hope by talking about this more, we'll get them to take this seriously and try it."

What is undoubted is that misinformation about the novel coronavirus has been deadly. Although US, French and other scientists are working to expedite effective treatments, false reports have appeared in numerous countries.

In Iran, a fake remedy of ingesting methanol has reportedly led to 300 deaths, and left many more sick.

Dr. Jason McKnight, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Primary Care and Population Health at Texas A&M University, said the sharing of false information has an impact beyond the immediate risk of the virus itself.

"I have seen posts related to 'treatments' that are not proven, techniques to prevent exposure and infection that are either not proven and/or filled with a lot of misleading information, and instruction for individuals to stock up on supplies and food," he said.

McKnight highlighted two types of danger posed by inaccurate information on the virus: that it "could incite fear or panic," and "the potential for individuals to do harmful things in hope of 'curing the illness' or 'preventing' the illness." 

'IMMEDIATE POSITIVE IMPACT'

Facebook took a hammering over Russia's interference in the 2016 US election. Having been accused on Capitol Hill of ignoring the allegations, Facebook conceded the following year that up to 10 million Americans had seen advertisements purchased by a shadowy Russian agency. As evidence mounted about how Russia had used Facebook to sow division, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized.

Facebook has placed authoritative coronavirus information at the top of news feeds and intensified its efforts to remove harmful content, including through the use of third-party fact checkers.

Zuckerberg also said earlier this month that a public health crisis is an easier arena than politics to set policies and to take a harder line on questionable content.

AFP and other media companies, including Reuters and the Associated Press, work with Facebook's fact checking program, under which content rated false is downgraded in news feeds so that fewer people see it. If someone tries to share such a post, he or she is presented with an article explaining why the information is not accurate.

However, a Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on the potential for adding accuracy prompts to its platform.

A Twitter spokesman, in a statement to AFP, also did not address whether the company might consider using prompts.

"Our goal has been to make certain everyone on our service has access to credible, authoritative health information," he said.

"We've shifted our focus and priorities, working extensively with organizations like the WHO, ministries of health in a number of countries, and a breadth of public health officials."

The COVID-19 misinformation study mirrored past tests for political fake news, notably in that reminders about accuracy would be a simple way to improve choices about what people share.

"Accuracy nudges are straightforward for social media platforms to implement on top of the other approaches they are currently employing, and could have an immediate positive impact on stemming the tide of misinformation about the COVID-19 outbreak," the authors concluded.

Agence France-Presse

Surge of coronavirus misinformation stumps Facebook, Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO — First, there were conspiratorial whispers on social media that the coronavirus had been cooked up in a secret government lab in China. Then there were bogus medicines: gels, liquids and powders that immunized against the virus.

And then there were the false claims about governments and celebrities and racial unrest. Taiwan was covering up virus deaths, and the illness was spiraling out of control. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who now runs a philanthropic organization, was behind the spread of the virus. Italians were marching in the streets, accusing Chinese people of bringing the illness to their country. None of it was true.

As the coronavirus has spread across the world, so too has misinformation about it, despite an aggressive effort by social media companies to prevent its dissemination. Facebook, Google and Twitter said they were removing misinformation about the coronavirus as fast as they could find it, and were working with the World Health Organization and other government organizations to ensure that people got accurate information.

But a search by The New York Times found dozens of videos, photographs and written posts on each of the social media platforms that appeared to have slipped through the cracks. The posts were not limited to English. Many were originally in languages ranging from Hindi and Urdu to Hebrew and Farsi, reflecting the trajectory of the virus as it has traveled around the world.

Security researchers have even found that hackers were setting up threadbare websites that claimed to have information about the coronavirus. The sites were actually digital traps, aimed at stealing personal data or breaking into the devices of people who landed on them.

The spread of false and malicious content about the coronavirus has been a stark reminder of the uphill battle fought by researchers and internet companies. Even when the companies are determined to protect the truth, they are often outgunned and outwitted by the internet’s liars and thieves.

There is so much inaccurate information about the virus, the WHO has said it was confronting a “infodemic.”

“I see misinformation about the coronavirus everywhere. Some people are panicking, and looking to magical cures, and other people are spreading conspiracies,” said Austin Chiang, a gastroenterologist at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

In Taiwan, virus-related misinformation on social media has fed concerns that China might be using the crisis to undermine the government of the self-ruling island.

In recent weeks, there have been posts on Facebook and other sites claiming that Taiwan has concealed large numbers of coronavirus infections. There have been fake but official-looking documents promising giveaways of face masks and vaccines. A screen capture from a television news broadcast was doctored to say that President Tsai Ing-wen had contracted the disease and was in quarantine.

In a statement to The Times, Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, blamed China’s “internet armies” for the deluge of falsehoods, though his office declined to elaborate on how he came to that conclusion. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.

The Communist Party claims Taiwan as part of China’s territory, and Taiwanese officials have long accused Beijing of manipulating both traditional news media and social platforms to turn Taiwanese citizens against Tsai, who opposes closer ties with China.

Summer Chen, the editor-in-chief of Taiwan FactCheck Center, a watchdog group that debunks online rumors and hoaxes, said her team had been busier since the outbreak began than it was ahead of Taiwan’s presidential election in January, when the island was on high alert for potential Chinese meddling.

“Throughout this whole epidemic, people have really liked conspiracy theories,” Chen said. “Why is it that during epidemics, people don’t choose to believe accurate scientific information?”

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all said they were making efforts to point people back to reliable sources of medical information, and had direct lines of communication to the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Facebook said it bans content that could cause people harm, such as claims that discourage treatment or taking appropriate precautions against the coronavirus. Posts and videos that shared conspiracy theories were clearly marked as false, once they had been reviewed by fact checkers.

When Facebook users attempt to share them, a message pops up alerting the user that the post includes information that has been deemed false by fact checkers.

Those measures, however, have not stopped people in private Facebook groups from linking to and sharing misinformation surrounding the virus. In private Facebook groups, including one that totals more than 100,000 members, conspiracy theories spread that the coronavirus was an invention of the pharmaceutical industry, intended to sell the public on more expensive drugs and more vaccines.

While many posts simply encouraged people to take vitamins and eat a balanced diet to boost their immune system, others offered promises of immunity or cures if certain combinations of powders and drinks were consumed. Some were even more dangerous. The Food and Drug Administration referred to one “miracle mineral solution” posted many times on Facebook and Twitter as “the same as drinking bleach.”

Chiang, the gastroenterologist, recently helped start the Association for Healthcare Social Media, a group dedicated to encouraging more health care professionals to post on social media so that they can dispel some of the misinformation.

“People are looking for good sources of information because a lot of what they see, when they log into their social media platforms, is just scaring them,” he said.

While Twitter acknowledged the presence of some of this content on its network, Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, said the company has not seen “large-scale, coordinated” efforts to misinform people about the coronavirus. After The New York Times contacted Twitter with examples of tweets containing health misinformation about coronavirus, some owners of the accounts were suspended “for spam.”

Facebook said that in addition to working closely with health organizations, it was offering WHO free ad space to try to point people toward accurate information on the coronavirus. The company said that it was removing posts that discouraged people from seeking treatment or suggested remedies that could cause physical harm and that it was placing warning labels on posts that were rated false by their fact checkers.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, also said it was working closely with WHO to help combat misinformation. YouTube’s spokesman, Farshad Shadloo, said the company had policies that prohibited videos that “promoted medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment.”

Dozens of YouTube videos, however, included titles that suggested the video offered a cure for the virus. In others, the comment sections below the videos included links to pages offering a range of alternative, unsubstantiated treatments.

In some cases, those links have led people to websites that lure people in with the promise of a cure, but actually steal credit card information and other personal details.

The cybersecurity firm Check Point said more than 4,000 coronavirus-related websites that include words like “corona” or “covid” have been registered since the beginning of the year. Of those, 3 percent were considered malicious and another 5 percent were suspicious.

Research by Sophos, a cybersecurity company, has shown an uptick in these so-called spear-phishing messages targeting people in Italy, where coronavirus infections have surged in recent weeks. Those messages included a link to a Microsoft Word document that claimed to list cures for the virus. When downloaded, it installed malicious malware on people’s computers.

Last month, WHO also put out a warning about fake emails from apparent WHO representatives. The emails carried malicious code aimed at breaking into someone’s computing device.

John Gregory, the deputy health editor for NewsGuard, a startup that tries to stop false stories from spreading on the internet, said the medical element to coronavirus misinformation made it different from other conspiracies the public has dealt with.

Because the information about the virus is “playing out in real time, it’s always going to be easier for someone to make a false claim,” Gregory said. “Then, there’s a separation of a few days before anyone with a scientific background, or journalists, are able to debunk the claim.”

2020 The New York Times Company