Source: Facebook, Instagram to charge EU users for ad-free service

WASHINGTON, United States - Meta is proposing to offer European users a subscription-based version of Instagram and Facebook if they would rather not be tracked for ads, a source said on Tuesday.

The idea, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as the social media giant seeks to comply with a growing list of EU regulations designed to curb the power of US big tech.

The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg makes its billions of dollars in profit by offering advertisers highly individualized data on users, but new European regulations and EU court decisions have made that harder.

The proposal has been put to EU regulators and is another example of big tech companies having to adapt long-held practices to meet oncoming EU rules.

The source close to the matter said subscribers in Europe could pay 10 euros ($10.50) a month for a desktop version of Instagram or Facebook, or 13 euros a month for Instagram on their phones.

Social media platforms have increasingly floated the idea of charging users for access to their sites, whether to comply with data privacy regulations or better guarantee the identity of users.

But the practice would be a major shift for the social media industry that grew exponentially over the past decade on an advertising model that made the site free for users in return for being tracked and ads seen highly personalized.

The proposal could help meet several regulations including the Digital Markets Act that imposes a list of do's and don'ts on big tech companies in Europe, including a ban on tracking users when they surf other sites if their consent hasn't been clearly granted.

It also follows the recommendation of the EU's highest court, which in a July decision said that Meta platform users who declined to be tracked should be offered an ad free alternative "for an appropriate fee."

That ruling echoed many previous rulings against Meta and other big tech firms in which the court ruled that the US company must ask for permission to collect large amounts of personal data, striking down various workarounds that Meta had offered.

Meta declined to comment directly on the Wall Street Journal report, but said in a statement that it still "believes in the value of free services which are supported by personalized ads."

"However, we continue to explore options to ensure we comply with evolving regulatory requirements."

Meta reported second-quarter revenues of $32 billion, of which $31.5 billion came from advertising. Some $7.2bn of that came from Europe.

Agence France-Presse

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

Influencers overtaking journalists as news source: report

PARIS — TikTok influencers and celebrities are increasingly taking over from journalists as the main source of news for young people, according to a report published Wednesday by the Britain-based Reuters Institute.

The report found that 55 percent of TikTok and Snapchat users and 52 percent of Instagram users get their news from "personalities" -- compared to 33 to 42 percent who get it from mainstream media and journalists on those platforms, which are most popular among the young.

The figures were based on interviews with some 94,000 people across 46 countries, conducted for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, part of Britain's University of Oxford.

"While mainstream journalists often lead conversations around news in Twitter and Facebook, they struggle to get attention in newer networks like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok," the report said.

Lead author Nic Newman highlighted people like Britain's Matt Welland, who discusses current affairs and daily life on TikTok for his 2.8 million subscribers.

"Or it could be a celebrity like a footballer talking about a topical news event," he told AFP, such as footballer Marcus Rashford's 2020 campaign to get free school meals for children from poor families.

For young people, "news" is not just the traditional focus on politics and international relations, but "anything new that is happening in any walk of life: sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, current affairs, culture, arts, technology..." he added.

'FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE'

Facebook remains the leading source of news among social networks worldwide, but its influence is dropping, with 28 percent saying they use it to get news, compared with 42 percent in 2016.

This likely reflects Facebook's shift away from news-sharing towards a focus on friends and family, as well as young people's preference for more video-based apps like TikTok and YouTube.

TikTok now reaches 44 percent of 18-24-year-olds, and 20 percent get their news from the app, up five percent on last year.

The biggest challenge for traditional news outlets is the falling number who go direct to their websites -- just 22 percent, down 10 points since 2018 -- rather than relying on social media links.

In his foreword, Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said this shift presented "a much more fundamental change" for the news industry than even the shift from paper to digital a generation ago.

"Legacy media... now face a continual transformation of digital as generations come of age who eschew direct discovery for all but the most appealing brands, (and) have little interest in many conventional news offers oriented towards older generations' habits, interests, and values," he said.

These new audiences are aware of the risks of relying on algorithms, with only 30 percent thinking this is a good way to get a balanced diet of news -- but that is still considered better than relying on journalists, who scored just 27 percent.

None of this is good news for media firms reliant on subscribers and ad revenue.

The report found that 39 percent of subscribers had canceled or renegotiated subscriptions, though the overall share of people paying for news across 20 countries surveyed remained stable compared with last year at 17 percent.

Agence France-Presse

US tells ByteDance to sell TikTok or be banned: report

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - The US government has told China-based ByteDance to sell its shares in the blockbuster TikTok app or face a national ban, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Western powers, including the European Union and the United States, have been taking an increasingly tough approach to the app, citing fears user data could be used or abused by Chinese officials.

Concern here ramped up earlier this year after a Chinese spy balloon was shot down in US airspace.

The White House last week welcomed a bill that would allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

A bipartisan bill "would empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services... in a way that poses risks to Americans' sensitive data and our national security," Sullivan said.

The Senate bill and the backing of the White House accelerated the political momentum against TikTok, which is also the target of a separate piece of legislation in the US House of Representatives.

Appearing tough on China is one of the rare issues with potential for bipartisan support in both the Republican-run House and the Senate, where Biden's Democratic Party holds a majority.

TikTok claims it has more than a billion users worldwide including over 100 million in the US, where it has become a cultural force, especially for young people.

Activists argue a ban would be an attack on free speech, and stifle the export of American culture and values to TikTok users around the world.

US government workers in January were banned from installing TikTok on their devices.

Civil servants in the European Union, as well as in Canada are also barred from having TikTok on their phones.

According to the Journal report, the ultimatum to TikTok came from the US agency charged with assessing risks foreign investments represent to national security.

US officials as well as TikTok declined to comment on the report.

TikTok has consistently denied sharing data with Chinese officials, and says it has been working with the US for nearly two years to address national security concerns.

Time spent by users on TikTok has surpassed that spent on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and is closing in on streaming television titan Netflix, according to market tracker Insider Intelligence.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook owner Meta to lay off 11,000 staff

PARIS - Facebook owner Meta will lay off more than 11,000 of its staff in "the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history", boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday.

He said the cuts represented 13 percent of the social media titan's workforce and would affect its research lab focusing on the metaverse as well as its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

The tech industry is in a serious slump and several major firms have announced mass layoffs -- Twitter's new owner Elon Musk fired half its staff last week.

"I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here," Zuckerberg said in a note to staff.

"I know this is tough for everyone, and I'm especially sorry to those impacted."

Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Google are suffering with advertisers looking to cut costs as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.

Zuckerberg told staff he had expected the boost in e-commerce and online activity during the Covid pandemic to continue, but added: "I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."

METAVERSE WOES

The downturn has affected companies across the sector, with Apple and Amazon also recently announcing results that disappointed investors.

But Meta also faces some unique problems of its own.

Investors have been worried about Zuckerberg's decision to devote billions of dollars to developing the metaverse, an immersive version of the web accessed via virtual reality headsets.

Zuckerberg renamed the company to Meta a year ago to reflect the commitment to the project, but the division working on metaverse technology has since made losses of more than $3.5 billion.

He has hinted several times this year that belt-tightening measures were just around the corner and said in his letter on Wednesday that staff layoffs were a "last resort".

Meta would also keep a hiring freeze going into next year, he said, and other spending cuts were envisaged.

"Fundamentally, we're making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we're operating efficiently," he wrote.

Last month, Meta announced profits of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, a 52 percent decrease year-on-year, causing its stock price to fall 25 percent.

The slump in profits comes despite its platforms dominating the world in terms of users -- Facebook alone claims to have around two billion people who log on daily. 

Agence France-Presse

Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica privacy suit

Facebook has reached a preliminary agreement in a long-running lawsuit seeking damages from the social network for allowing third parties, including the company Cambridge Analytica, to access users' private data. 

According to a document filed Friday in a San Francisco court, Facebook says it is submitting a draft "agreement in principle" and has requested a stay of proceedings for 60 days to finalize it. 

The social network did not indicate the amount or terms of the agreement in the class action. 

When asked by AFP, Facebook's parent company Meta did not respond on Saturday. 

The deal comes as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June, were due to testify in court in September as part of the scandal. 

In a lawsuit initiated in 2018, Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy rules by sharing their data with third parties including the firm Cambridge Analytica, which was linked to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. 

Cambridge Analytica, which has since shut down, had collected and exploited, without their consent, the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, to which the platform had given it access. 

This information was allegedly used to develop software steering US voters in favor of Trump. 

In 2019, federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion for misleading its users and imposed independent oversight of its personal data management. 

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information available to developers in general, and made it easier for users to calibrate restrictions on personal data sharing.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook use plunges among US teens: survey

US teens have left Facebook in droves over the past seven years, preferring to spend time at video-sharing venues YouTube and TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey data out Wednesday. 

TikTok has "emerged as a top social media platform for US teens" while Google-run YouTube "stands out as the most common platform used by teens," the report's authors wrote.

Pew's data comes as Facebook-owner Meta is in a battle with TikTok for social media primacy, trying to keep the maximum number of users as part of its multi-billion dollar ad-driven business.

The report said some 95 percent of the teens surveyed said they use YouTube, compared with 67 percent saying they are TikTok users.

Just 32 percent of teens surveyed said they log on to Facebook -- a big drop from the 71 percent who reported being users during a similar survey some seven years ago.

Once the place to be online, Facebook has become seen as a venue for older folks with young drawn to social networks where people express themselves with pictures and video snippets.

About 62 percent of the teens said they use Instagram, owned by Facebook-parent Meta, while 59 percent said they used Snapchat, researchers stated.

"A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same," the report said.

In a bit of good news for Meta's business, its photo and video sharing service Instagram was more popular with US teens than it was in the 2014-2015 survey.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the teens surveyed said they ever use Twitter, the report said.

The study also confirmed what casual observers may have suspected, 95 percent of US teens say they have smartphones, while nearly as many of them have desktop or laptop computers.

And the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has nearly doubled to 46 percent when compared to survey results from seven years ago, researchers noted.

The report was based on a survey of 1,316 US teens, ranging in age from 13 years old to 17 years old, conducted from mid-April to early May of this year, according to Pew.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook tweaks app with eye on rival TikTok

Facebook has split the news feed in two on its app, a significant change that mimics the experience on its fiercest competitor, hugely popular TikTok. 

One of the feeds unveiled Thursday is a chronological flow from the user's connections and the other option includes algorithm-driven recommendations on anything that might interest them.

The recommendations focus makes Facebook more similar to TikTok's "For You" feed, where the booming video app's algorithm aims to determine what people want to see and shows it to them.

These changes come as Facebook-owner Meta is in a battle with TikTok for social media primacy, trying to keep the maximum number of users as part of its multi-billion dollar ad-driven business.

Facebook apps will open to a personalized feed of posts called "Home", where artificial intelligence will offer posts from friends but also recommended content, the social network said.

"This system takes into account thousands of signals to help cut through the clutter and rank content in the order we think you will find most valuable," Meta said.

But if users would rather just see posts in reverse chronological order from their contacts, they can tap on the "Feeds" tab, an experience that echoes Facebook's early days.

The idea is for the "Home" page greeting Facebook users to be a venue for new content and recommendations, while the "Feeds" section is reserved for posts by people or groups someone has established connections with, according to the social network.

The firm reported early this year its first dip in daily users globally on the signature Facebook platform, a worrying signal about its future.

Meta is also working to re-orient itself after a string of controversies, including a whistleblower's claims the company put profits before users' safety.

Agence France-Presse

YouTube Shorts touts 1.5 billion users, taking on TikTok

YouTube on Wednesday said that more than 1.5 billion people monthly tune into its Shorts video service, which competes with global sensation TikTok.

Alphabet-owned YouTube and Facebook-parent Meta both added short-form video sharing formats to their services after TikTok -- which late last year said it topped a billion users -- became the rage.

YouTube Shorts went live less than two years ago, adding videos of no longer than 60 seconds to the mix of offerings on the platform.

"Shorts has really taken off and are now being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month," said YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan.

"We know the product will continue to be an integral part of the YouTube experience moving forward."

YouTube last year launched a $100 million fund to "reward creators" whose video clips attract audiences to the online stage.

YouTube has also put the Silicon Valley tech titan's advertising skills to work helping creators generate income from content on the platform, which brought in billions of dollars in revenue in 2021.

Creators are taking advantage of podcasting, shorts, and live streaming on YouTube in a "multi-platform approach," said vice president of the Americas Tara Walpert Levy.

"This approach is yielding real results; channels uploading both short and long-form content are seeing better overall watch time and subscriber growth than those uploading only one format," Levy said.

She billed YouTube as a one-stop-shop for people to "flex their creative muscles."

TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, early this year began letting users upload slightly longer videos, raising the maximum length to 10 minutes from 3 minutes.

YouTube, Meta, and TikTok compete to be the platform of preference from popular online personalities with revenue-making features such as subscriptions or shares in ad revenue.

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

Internal bug promoted problematic content on Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO — Content identified as misleading or problematic were mistakenly prioritized in users' Facebook feeds recently, thanks to a software bug that took six months to fix, according to tech site The Verge.

Facebook disputed the report, which was published Thursday, saying that it "vastly overstated what this bug was because ultimately it had no meaningful, long-term impact on problematic content," according to Joe Osborne, a spokesman for parent company Meta.

But the bug was serious enough for a group of Facebook employees to draft an internal report referring to a "massive ranking failure" of content, The Verge reported. 

In October, the employees noticed that some content which had been marked as questionable by external media -- members of Facebook's third-party fact-checking program -- was nevertheless being favored by the algorithm to be widely distributed in users' News Feeds.

"Unable to find the root cause, the engineers watched the surge subside a few weeks later and then flare up repeatedly until the ranking issue was fixed on March 11," The Verge reported.

But according to Osborne, the bug affected "only a very small number of views" of content.

That's because "the overwhelming majority of posts in Feed are not eligible to be down-ranked in the first place," Osborne explained, adding that other mechanisms designed to limit views of "harmful" content remained in place, "including other demotions, fact-checking labels and violating content removals."

AFP currently works with Facebook's fact checking program in more than 80 countries and 24 languages. Under the program, which started in December 2016, Facebook pays to use fact checks from around 80 organizations, including media outlets and specialized fact checkers, on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram. 

Content rated "false" is downgraded in news feeds so fewer people will see it. If someone tries to share that post, they are presented with an article explaining why it is misleading. 

Those who still choose to share the post receive a notification with a link to the article. No posts are taken down. Fact checkers are free to choose how and what they wish to investigate.

Agence France-Presse 

Russian court bans Instagram, Facebook as 'extremist'

A Moscow court on Monday banned Facebook and Instagram as "extremist" organizations, after authorities accused US tech giant Meta of tolerating "Russophobia" during the conflict in Ukraine.

The Tverskoi district court said it had agreed to a request from prosecutors for the two social media platforms to be banned for "carrying out extremist activities", but that Meta's WhatsApp messenger service would not be prohibited because it is not a public platform.

The move is part of sweeping efforts by Moscow to crack down on social media amid its military action in pro-Western Ukraine.

During Monday's hearing, Russia's FSB security service accused Meta of working against Moscow's interests during the conflict.

"The activities of the Meta organization are directed against Russia and its armed forces," FSB representative Igor Kovalevsky told the court, Russian news agencies reported.

"We ask (the court) to ban Meta's activities and oblige it to implement this ruling immediately," he said.

After President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, authorities blocked access in Russia to Facebook and Instagram, as well as to Twitter.

Meta had announced on March 10 that the platforms would allow statements like "death to Russian invaders" but not credible threats against civilians. 

But in what appeared to be damage control, Meta's global affairs president, Nick Clegg, later said the laxer rules would only apply to people posting from inside Ukraine. 

Agence France-Presse

NBA enjoying viewership, social media growth in Philippines

The NBA has seen a spike in viewership in the Philippines, as well as Brazil and Australia, demonstrating that the league's efforts to grow the game outside of North America is bearing fruit.

The league has enjoyed growth in viewership and on social media in the Philippines. The NBA's Facebook page has more than 8.5 million followers from the Philippines, the No. 1 country outside the United States.

In Brazil, games this season are drawing a 16% larger average audience compared to last season, rising to 4th among countries outside the United States in largest total audience, the league said.

The South American nation has also seen a jump in NBA League Pass subscriptions, jersey sales and social media engagement.

Australia has seen a 35% larger average audience compared to last season, including a 27% jump in viewership for the NBA's Christmas day suite of games.

The league's opening night roster featured eight Australian players including veteran guard Patty Mills and rising star Josh Giddey, who are driving interest in their home country.

"We're very pleased with the growth in viewership and consumption we're experiencing this season in a number of international markets, including Australia, Brazil and the Philippines, all of which have extremely passionate NBA fan bases," Matt Brabants, head of international content partnerships at the NBA, told Reuters.

"The NBA's popularity continues to grow around the world, and as we head into NBA All-Star 2022 and the playoff race heats up, we anticipate this trend will continue in markets around the world."

The NBA All-Star game in February 20 in Cleveland and the playoffs tip off on April 16.

-reuters-

Facebook announces changing parent company name to ‘Meta’

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to keep names under rebranding

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced the parent company's name is being changed to "Meta" to represent a future beyond just its troubled social network.

The new handle comes as the social media giant tries to fend off one its worst crises yet and pivot to its ambitions for the "metaverse" virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will keep their names under the rebranding.

"We've learned a lot from struggling with social issues and living under closed platforms, and now it is time to take everything that we've learned and help build the next chapter," Zuckerberg said during an annual developers conference.

"I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same, still about bringing people together, our apps and their brands, they're not changing," he added.

Facebook critics pounced last week on a report that leaked the rebranding plans, arguing the company was aiming to distract from recent scandals and controversy.

An activist group calling itself The Real Facebook Oversight Board has warned that major industries like oil and tobacco had rebranded to "deflect attention" from their problems.

"Facebook thinks that a rebrand can help them change the subject," the group said last week, adding the "real issue" was the need for oversight and regulation.

Facebook has just announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the "metaverse," with Zuckerberg emerging as a leading promoter of the concept.

- Crisis mode -

The social media giant has been battling a fresh crisis since former employee Frances Haugen leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of their sites' potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation.

Facebook has been hit by major crises previously, but the current view behind the curtain of the insular company has fueled a frenzy of scathing reports and scrutiny from US regulators.

"Good faith criticism helps us get better, but my view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company," Zuckerberg said in an earnings call on Monday.

The Washington Post last month suggested that Facebook's interest in the metaverse is "part of a broader push to rehabilitate the company's reputation with policymakers and reposition Facebook to shape the regulation of next-wave Internet technologies."

Google rebranded itself as Alphabet in a corporate reconfiguration in 2015, but the online search and ad powerhouse remains its defining unit despite other operations such as Waymo self-driving cars and Verily life sciences.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook plans to change its name - The Verge

Social media giant Facebook Inc is planning to rebrand itself with a new name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, the Verge reported on Tuesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about the name change at the company's annual Connect conference on Oct. 28, but it could be unveiled sooner, the Verge reported.

A metaverse refers to shared virtual world environments, which people can access via the internet. The term can refer to digital spaces, which are made more lifelike by the use of virtual reality or augmented reality.

The rebranding would likely position Facebook's social media app as one of many products under a parent company, which will oversee groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and more, the report added.

Facebook said it does not comment on rumor or speculation. (Reporting by Shivam Patel in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Anil D'Silva)

-reuters-

Facebook to change rules on attacking public figures on its platforms

Facebook Inc will now count activists and journalists as "involuntary" public figures and so increase protections against harassment and bullying targeted at these groups, its global safety chief said in an interview this week.

The social media company, which allows more critical commentary of public figures than of private individuals, is changing its approach on the harassment of journalists and "human rights defenders," who it says are in the public eye due to their work rather than their public personas.

Facebook is under wide-ranging scrutiny from global lawmakers and regulators over its content moderation practices and harms linked to its platforms, with internal documents leaked by a whistleblower forming the basis for a US Senate hearing last week.

How Facebook, which has about 2.8 billion monthly active users, treats public figures and content posted by or about those figures has been an area of intense debate. In recent weeks, the company's "cross check" system, which the Wall Street Journal reported has the effect of exempting some high-profile users from usual Facebook rules, has been in the spotlight.

Facebook also differentiates between public figures and private individuals in the protections it affords around online discussion: for instance, users are generally allowed to call for the death of a celebrity in discussions on the platform, as long as they do not tag or directly mention the celebrity. They cannot call for the death of a private individual, or now a journalist, under Facebook's policies.

The company declined to share a list of other involuntary public figures but said they are assessed on a case-by-case basis. Earlier this year, Facebook said it would remove content celebrating, praising or mocking George Floyd's death, because he was deemed an involuntary public figure.

Facebook's Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis said the company was also expanding the types of attacks that it would not allow on public figures on its sites, as part of an effort to reduce attacks disproportionately faced by women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

Facebook will no longer allow severe and unwanted sexualizing content, derogatory sexualized photoshopped images or drawings or direct negative attacks on a person's appearance, for example, in comments on a public figure's profile.

-reuters-

Facebook will try to 'nudge' teens away from harmful content

WASHINGTON - A Facebook Inc executive said Sunday that the company would introduce new measures on its apps to prompt teens away from harmful content, as US lawmakers scrutinize how Facebook and subsidiaries like Instagram affect young people's mental health.

Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, also expressed openness to the idea of letting regulators have access to Facebook algorithms that are used to amplify content. But Clegg said he could not answer the question whether its algorithms amplified the voices of people who had attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

The algorithms "should be held to account, if necessary, by regulation so that people can match what our systems say they’re supposed to do from what actually happens," Clegg told CNN's "State of the Union."

He spoke days after former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen testified on Capitol Hill about how the company entices users to keep scrolling, harming teens' well-being.

"We're going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that the teenager is looking at the same content over and over again and it's content which may not be conducive to their well-being, we will nudge them to look at other content," Clegg told CNN.

In addition, "we're introducing something called, 'take a break,' where we will be prompting teens to just simply just take a break from using Instagram," Clegg said.

US senators last week grilled Facebook on its plans to better protect young users on its apps, drawing on leaked internal research that showed the social media giant was aware of how its Instagram app damaged the mental health of youth.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, has argued for more regulation against technology companies like Facebook.

"I'm just tired of hearing 'trust us', and it's time to protect those moms and dads that have been struggling with their kids getting addicted to the platform and been exposed to all kinds of bad stuff," Klobuchar told CNN on Sunday after Clegg's interview.

She said the United States needs a new privacy policy so that people can "opt in" if they favor allowing their online data to be shared. The United States also should update children's privacy laws and its competition policy, and require tech companies to make their algorithms more transparent, Klobuchar said.

Clegg noted that Facebook had recently put on hold its plans for developing Instagram Kids, aimed at pre-teens, and was introducing new optional controls for adults to supervise teens.

-reuters-