All posts tagged: Mark Zuckerberg

Jesse Eisenberg Unfriended Mark Zuckerberg a Long Time Ago

Jesse Eisenberg Unfriended Mark Zuckerberg a Long Time Ago

Published by Sam

Fourteen years after earning an Oscar nomination for playing Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has very proudly shed his former character’s hoodie and fuck-you flip-flops. But that hasn’t stopped the world from asking the actor about his most famous role. Eisenberg has been frequently questioned about Zuckerberg while Oscar campaigning for his film A Real Pain, which earned him a best-original-screenplay nomination. During a recent appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today, Eisenberg said that he hasn’t been following the Facebook and Meta chief’s “life trajectory, partly because I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that.” Distance from Zuckerberg has not made Eisenberg’s heart grow fonder, either. “It’s not like I played a great golfer or something and now people think I’m a great golfer,” he continued. “It’s like this guy that’s doing things that are problematic—taking away fact-checking and safety concerns, making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.” In recent months, the same man whom screenwriter Aaron Sorkin depicted as an innovative …

Meta Settles a Million Trump Lawsuit Because It Had More to Lose by Winning

Meta Settles a $25 Million Trump Lawsuit Because It Had More to Lose by Winning

Published by Sam

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump, who accused the platform of unlawfully suspending his accounts after the Capitol insurrection. The Wall Street Journal reported that most of the money will fund Trump’s presidential library, with the rest covering legal fees and other plaintiffs. Meta won’t admit wrongdoing, and experts widely agree Trump was unlikely to win: the judge in this case, like the one in a similar failed suit against Twitter, appeared openly skeptical of his arguments. But Meta arguably had more to lose by winning this one. Tech and media companies, eager to avoid conflict with the new administration, have recently settled a string of Trump lawsuits they probably would have won in court. According to the Journal, this settlement, in particular, grew out of Zuckerberg’s efforts to cozy up to Trump last November. The paper’s sources said the then-president-elect signaled during a Mar-a-Lago dinner that the Meta boss would need to resolve the suit before he could ever be allowed “into …

Latin American Fact-Checkers Brace for Meta’s Next Moves

Latin American Fact-Checkers Brace for Meta’s Next Moves

Published by skeptic

This 180-degree change is a response to Donald Trump’s imminent second presidential term and to the methods of the competition, such as X’s Community Notes. Meta decided not to invest any more money in its program. Now, it hopes that Facebook and Instagram users themselves will be the ones to decide what content is disinformation or not. In the statement where Zuckerberg announced that he will dismantle the program, he said that fact-checkers succumbed to political bias, destroying more trust than they’d created in the US. However, for Laura Zommer, former director of Chequeado (one of the most important Spanish-speaking verifier organizations) and LatamChequea, and now leader of Factchequeado (a verification media aimed at the Latino community in the US), Zuckerberg’s statements are not a surprise, and he does not have scientific evidence for his claims. “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context,” Zommer says. “We never advocate for removing content. We want citizens to have better information to make their own decisions.” Zommer, who is skeptical of how the dissolution of this program might benefit …

No Fact-Checking and More Hate Speech: Meta Goes MAGA

No Fact-Checking and More Hate Speech: Meta Goes MAGA

Published by skeptic

Since Donald Trump won back the presidency on November 5, a parade of Silicon Valley luminaries have been engaging in an unseemly grovel-fest, making pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, shoveling million-dollar contributions to his inaugural fund, and meddling in the editorial departments of the publications they own in an apparent attempt to gain the new leader’s favor. Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “hold my beer.” In a five-minute Instagram video, rocking his new curly hairdo and a $900,000 Gruebal Forsey watch, Zuckerberg announced a series of drastic policy changes that could open the floodgates of misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. His rationale parroted talking points that right-wing legislators, pundits, and Trump himself have been hammering for years. And Zuckerberg wasn’t coy about the timing, explicitly saying the new political regime was a factor in his thinking: “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” he said in the video. In Zuckerberg’s telling, the main impetus for the change is the desire to boost …

Meta Follows Elon Musk’s Lead, Moves Staffers to Billionaire-Friendly Texas

Meta Follows Elon Musk’s Lead, Moves Staffers to Billionaire-Friendly Texas

Published by skeptic

“Executives are doing everything they can to create an environment conducive for actions they want to take, absent review or accountability from actors like our courts or legislators or others,” she says. Since taking over X, formerly Twitter, Musk has become one of Trump’s most important allies, backing his campaign financially and lending the full weight of his own platform to promoting Trump’s talking points during the campaign. He has since sat in on meetings with foreign leaders with the president-elect, and weighed in on staffing choices for the new administration. Other tech leaders have taken note, cozying up to Trump and donating to his inauguration fund. But even before the election, other tech companies were following X’s lead in rolling back policies and protections that had previously been in place. For his part, David Greene, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that Meta and other social platforms would likely have to comply with state laws regardless of location. And relocating staff to Texas doesn’t mean all its supposed moderation problems will …

A Running List of the Tech CEOs Donald Trump Claims Are Calling Him to Suck Up

A Running List of the Tech CEOs Donald Trump Claims Are Calling Him to Suck Up

Published by skeptic

Trump’s relationship with Apple CEO Tim Cook is one of the most congenial the former president has shared with a Silicon Valley leader. Cook maintained a relationship with Trump during his time in office, often meeting with the president and serving on advisory panels influencing policy decisions that affect Apple’s business, such as tariffs and immigration. Cook has not publicly confirmed that this most recent call took place. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Shortly after the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer, the former president claimed that Zuckerberg called him. In an interview with New York magazine, Trump claimed that Zuckerberg said, “‘I will never vote for people running against you after watching what you did.’” A Meta spokesperson contested what Trump told the magazine, saying, “As Mark has said publicly, he’s not endorsing anybody in this race and has not communicated to anybody how he intends to vote.” (Zuckerberg did not endorse any candidate in the 2016 and 2020 elections …

AI business is booming for Microsoft and Google, but some rivals falter

AI business is booming for Microsoft and Google, but some rivals falter

Published by skeptic

Investments in artificial intelligence (AI) are continuing to fuel the tech sector boom after strong earnings for Google, Microsoft, and Snap but Meta suffered a plunging share price despite a positive first quarter. As reported by Fast Company, AI is proving to be the catalyst for growth as investors prosper from the advantages gained by the new technology. Snap’s earnings report sent its share price soaring, up more than 30%, with an upbeat outlook advised. The company expects its daily active users to rise to 431 million, an increase of 9 million, to surpass the expectations of analysts. AI business is booming for Microsoft and Google Google-parent company Alphabet enjoyed a 13% spike in its holdings along with an announcement of a dividend for shareholders (20 cents per share) and a bumper $70 billion buyback of stocks. Microsoft also enjoyed modest increases in its shares, despite spending billions on AI infrastructure. In its Azure cloud computing division, Microsoft reported $26.7 billion in revenue overall, a jump of 20%. Company chief executive Satya Nadella outlined how …

Threads reaches landmark 150 million active monthly users

Threads reaches landmark 150 million active monthly users

Published by skeptic

Threads has announced it has reached the milestone of 150 million active monthly users. The social platform from Facebook and Instagram owner, Meta, was introduced as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X and since its launch in July, it has maintained steady growth. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided the update during his company’s Q1 earnings call this week, as Threads begins to test a feature to let users auto-archive posts after a set time. A selected number of people are taking part in the trial allowing users to manually select an individual post to archive or automatically store all posted content. Despite its status as a rival to X,  Threads may struggle to take on its rival due to its reduction in news content, which has gradually been dialed back. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri stated late last year, said Threads would  “not amplify news on the platform” reducing its appeal to social media users who want to quit X. Unless Meta decides to muscle in on news and real-time information, the lifeblood of X, …

Meta to pay Threads creators for engaging content based on performance

Meta to pay Threads creators for engaging content based on performance

Published by skeptic

Meta has decided to experiment with a bonus payment initiative for creators who provide engaging content on Threads, its rival app to Elon Musk’s X. An invite-only program will contact eligible users with a pop-up notification with Instagram’s help centre detailing further information on how this venture will work. Creators may be able to earn a cash reward  “based on the performance of your Threads posts and based on the number of posts you create. For example, you may need to create a certain amount of posts to earn a bonus amount per post.” The site also outlined how Threads posts with “less than 2,500 eligible views” will not qualify for payouts. At present, there is no indication of how long the program will operate but it is another signal that Meta is backing Threads as it strives to compete with X. Amid uncertainty about Elon Musk’s social media app last year and premature reports of its demise, Threads burst onto the online scene when it launched in July. Since then, its growth hasn’t quite …