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US

Meta to reinstate Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts

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Jan 25 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said Wednesday it will reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.

The restoration of his accounts could provide a boost to Trump, who announced in November he will make another run for the White House in 2024. He has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram, platforms that are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.

His Twitter account was restored in November by new owner Elon Musk, though Trump has yet to post there.

Free speech advocates say it is appropriate for the public to have access to messaging from political candidates, but critics of Meta have accused the company of lax moderating policies.

Meta said in a blog post Wednesday it has “put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in the blog post.

The decision, while widely expected, drew sharp rebukes from civil rights advocates. “Facebook has policies but they under-enforce them,” said Laura Murphy, an attorney who led a two-year long audit of Facebook concluding in 2020. “I worry about Facebook’s capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act.”

The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern Wednesday over Facebook’s ability to prevent any future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

Others said it was the right decision.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a former ACLU official, defended the reinstatement. He had previously endorsed the company’s decision to suspend Trump’s account.

“The public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office,” said Jaffer. “It’s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false, so that it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”

OTHER REACTIVATIONS?

The decision to ban Trump was a polarizing one for Meta, the world’s biggest social media company, which prior to the Trump suspension had never blocked the account of a sitting head of state for violating its content rules.

The company indefinitely revoked Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts after removing two of his posts during the Capitol Hill violence, including a video in which he reiterated his false claim of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

It then referred the case to its independent oversight board, which ruled that the suspension was justified but its indeterminate nature was not. In response, Meta said it would revisit the suspension two years after it began.

Meta’s blog post Wednesday suggested it may reactivate other suspended accounts, including those penalized for their involvement in civil unrest. The company said those reinstated accounts would be subject to more stringent review and penalties for violations.

Whether, and how, Trump will seize upon the opportunity to return to Facebook and Instagram is unclear.

Trump has not sent any new tweets since regaining his account on Twitter, saying he would prefer to stick with his own app Truth Social. But his campaign spokesman told Fox News Digital last week that being back on Facebook “will be an important tool for the 2024 campaign to reach voters.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump responded to his reinstatement on Meta apps, saying: “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” He did not indicate if or when he would begin posting on Meta platforms again.

Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat who previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the decision to reinstate him.

“Trump incited an insurrection,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.”

Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; additional reporting by Greg Bensinger, David Shepardson, Kanishka Singh, Eva Mathews and Yuvraj Malik; Editing by Kenneth Li and Rosalba O’Brien

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Spotify to trim 6% of workforce in latest tech layoffs

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Jan 23 (Reuters) – Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) said on Monday it plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.

The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) to shed thousands of jobs.

“Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts.

“I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” he added, echoing a sentiment voiced by other tech bosses in recent months.

Spotify’s operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year as the audio-streaming company aggressively poured money into its podcast business, which is more attractive for advertisers due to higher engagement levels.

Reuters Graphics

At the same time, businesses pulled back on ad spending on the platform, mirroring a trend seen at Meta and Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), as rapid interest rate hikes and the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war pressured the economy.

The company, whose shares rose 5.8% to $103.55, is now restructuring itself in a bid to cut costs and adjust to the deteriorating economic picture.

It said Dawn Ostroff, the head of content and advertising, was leaving after an over four-year stint at the company. Ostroff helped shape Spotify’s podcast business and guided it through backlash around Joe Rogan’s show for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

The company said it is appointing Alex Norström, head of the freemium business, and research and development boss Gustav Söderström as co-presidents.

Spotify had about 9,800 full-time employees as of Sept. 30.

($1 = 0.9196 euros)

Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Shailesh Kuber

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Twitter prohibits users from promoting accounts on Facebook, Mastodon

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Dec 18 (Reuters) – Twitter on Sunday said that it will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames.

The move would impact content from social media platforms like Meta Platforms’ (META.O) Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter support said in a tweet.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: “Why?”. In a reply to another user posting about the Nostr promotion ban, Dorsey said, “doesn’t make sense”.

Short video-platform TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd, was not included in the list.

Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions.

The policy change follows other chaotic actions at Twitter since Elon Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), bought the social network. He fired top management and laid off about half of its workforce, while seesawing on how much to charge for Twitter’s subscription service Twitter Blue.

Musk also suspended the accounts of several journalists over a controversy on publishing public data about the billionaire’s plane.

Musk reinstated the accounts after criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organizations from several parts of the globe on Friday, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardizing press freedom.

Reporting by Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Apple and Amazon resume advertising on Twitter, reports say

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Dec 3 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) are planning to resume advertising on Twitter, according to media reports on Saturday.

The developments follow an email sent by Twitter on Thursday to advertising agencies offering advertisers incentives to increase their spending on the platform, an effort to jump-start its business after Elon Musk’s takeover prompted many companies to pull back.

Twitter billed the offer as the “biggest advertiser incentive ever on Twitter,” according to the email reviewed by Reuters. U.S. advertisers who book $500,000 in incremental spending will qualify to have their spending matched with a “100% value add,” up to a $1 million cap, the email said.

On Saturday, a Platformer News reporter tweeted that Amazon is planning to resume advertising on Twitter at about $100 million a year, pending some security tweaks to the company’s ads platform.

The Amazon logo is seen outside its JFK8 distribution center in Staten Island, New York, U.S. November 25, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

However, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Amazon had never stopped advertising on Twitter.

Separately, during a Twitter Spaces conversation, Musk announced that Apple is the largest advertiser on Twitter and has “fully resumed” advertising on the platform, according to a Bloomberg report.

Musk’s first month as Twitter’s owner has included a slashing of staff including employees who work on content moderation and incidents of spammers impersonating major public companies, which has spooked the advertising industry.

Many companies from General Mills Inc (GIS.N) to luxury automaker Audi of America stopped or paused advertising on Twitter since the acquisition, and Musk said in November that the company had seen a “massive” drop in revenue.

Apple and Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment on the matter.

Reporting by Juby Babu and Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Rhea Binoy; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Daniel Wallis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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US

U.S. Soccer briefly removed emblem from Iran flag to show support for protesters

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AL RAYYAN, Qatar, Nov 27 (Reuters) – The United States Soccer Federation temporarily displayed Iran’s national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic as a show of solidarity with protesters in Iran ahead of the two teams’ World Cup clash on Tuesday.

A now-deleted graphic of the Group B standings posted on Saturday across U.S. Soccer’s official Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts displayed the Iranian flag only bearing its green, white and red colours.

Iran has been gripped by protests since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s death in September while in police custody after she was arrested for flouting the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

The intent of the posts was to show “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights”, U.S. Soccer media officer Michael Kammarman told a news conference on Sunday. Players were not consulted on the decision to alter the flag.

“We didn’t know anything about the posts but we are supporters of women’s rights, we always have been,” U.S. defender Walker Zimmerman said.

“We’re focused a lot on Tuesday and the sporting side as well… but at the same time we’re firm believers in women’s rights and support them.

“And we know that it’s a lot of difficulties and a lot of heartbreak and in a very disturbing time.”

The banner on U.S. Soccer’s Twitter page was also changed on Saturday to feature the flag without the emblem. It was changed back 24 hours later to the banner they had been using during the tournament.

Soccer Football – FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 – United States Training – Al Gharafa SC Stadium, Al Rayyan, Qatar – November 27, 2022 General view of U.S. team members during training REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency said the Iranian Football Federation will file a complaint against U.S. Soccer to the FIFA Ethics Committee for “disrespecting the national flag” of the Islamic Republic.

Iranian leaders have accused the United States and other foreign adversaries of fomenting the protests in which Iranians from all walks of life have mounted one of the boldest challenges to the theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Washington has imposed sanctions on Iranian officials over the crackdown on protesters. Activist news agency HRANA said 450 protesters had been killed as of Nov. 26, including 63 minors, and over 18,000 have been arrested.

Iran’s players declined to sing the national anthem in their first game against England in an apparent show of solidarity with protesters. They sang quietly on Friday before their 2-0 win over Wales, where boos and jeers were heard from Iran supporters.

“We can’t speak for them and their message. We know that they’re all emotional,” Zimmerman said. “They’re all going through things right now, they’re human. Again, we empathise with that human emotion and completely feel for them.”

The United States and Iran will face off in a decisive Group B clash with their place at the World Cup on the line, in a match which was already freighted by decades of enmity between the nations.

With England sitting top of Group B with four points and facing bottom side Wales in their final group game on Tuesday, the Iran-U.S. contest will determine which team goes through to the last 16.

Their eagerly awaited meeting is a rematch of the 1998 World Cup group stage contest – which Iran won 2-1 – when relations between the two nations had also been hostile.

Reporting by Hritika Sharma; Editing by Angus MacSwan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Google to pay nearly $400 million to settle U.S. location-tracking probe

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WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) will pay $391.5 million to settle allegations by 40 states that the search and advertising giant illegally tracked users’ locations, the Michigan attorney general’s office said Monday.

The investigation and settlement, which was led by Oregon and Nebraska, is a sign of mounting legal headaches for the tech giant from state attorneys general who have aggressively targeted the firm’s user tracking practices in recent months.

In addition to the payment, Google must be more transparent with consumers about when location tracking is occurring and give users detailed information about location-tracking data on a special web page, the Iowa attorney general’s office said.

“When consumers make the decision to not share location data on their devices, they should be able to trust that a company will no longer track their every move,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement. “This settlement makes it clear that companies must be transparent in how they track customers and abide by state and federal privacy laws.”

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said: “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”

Google said in a blog post on Monday that it would be “making updates in the coming months to provide even greater controls and transparency over location data.”

Those changes include making it easier to delete location data. New users will have auto-delete controls that allow them to order Google to delete certain information when it hits a certain age.

The state attorneys opened a probe in 2018 following a report that Google recorded location data even when users instruct it not to. The probe found that Google had misled consumers about location-tracking practices since at least 2014, in violation of state consumer protection laws.

Arizona filed a similar case against Google and settled it for $85 million in October 2022.

Texas, Indiana, Washington State and the District of Columbia sued Google in January over what they called deceptive location-tracking practices that invade users’ privacy.

Google had revenue of $111 billion from advertising in the first half of this year, more than any other seller of online ads. A consumer’s location is key to helping an advertiser cut through the digital clutter to make the ad more relevant and grab the consumer’s attention.

Writing by Diane Bartz and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Anna Driver and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Diane Bartz

Thomson Reuters

Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.

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Business

Musk warns of Twitter bankruptcy as more senior executives quit

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Nov 10 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc’s new owner Elon Musk on Thursday raised the possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt, capping a chaotic day that included a warning from a U.S. privacy regulator and the exit of the company’s trust and safety leader.

The billionaire on his first mass call with employees said that he could not rule out bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported, two weeks after buying it for $44 billion – a deal that credit experts say has left Twitter’s finances in a precarious position.

Earlier in the day, in his first company-wide email, Musk warned that Twitter would not be able to “survive the upcoming economic downturn” if it fails to boost subscription revenue to offset falling advertising income, three people who have seen the message told Reuters.

Yoel Roth, who has overseen Twitter’s response to combat hate speech, misinformation and spam on the service, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

In his Twitter profile on Thursday, Roth described himself as “Former Head of Trust & Safety” at the company.

Roth did not respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg and tech site Platformer reported his exit first.

Earlier on Thursday, Twitter’s Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner tweeted that she had quit.

Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty also resigned, according to an internal message posted to Twitter’s Slack messaging system on Thursday by an attorney on its privacy team and seen by Reuters.

Robin Wheeler, the company’s top ad sales executive, told employees in a memo that she was staying at the company, a person who had seen the message said, diverging from earlier media reports that she too would be leaving.

“I’m still here,” Wheeler tweeted late on Thursday.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it was watching Twitter with “deep concern” after the three privacy and compliance officers quit. These resignations potentially put Twitter at risk of violating regulatory orders.

Musk attorney Alex Spiro told some employees in an email late on Thursday that Twitter would remain in compliance.

“We spoke to the FTC today about our continuing obligations and have a constructive ongoing dialogue,” Spiro wrote.

He stated that only Twitter, not individual employees, could be held liable against the orders.

“I understand that there have been employees at Twitter who do not even work on the FTC matter commenting that they could (go) to jail if we were not in compliance – that is simply not how this works,” he wrote.

Twitter app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken, July 13, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration//File Photo

In his first meeting with many employees at Twitter on Thursday afternoon, Musk warned that the company may lose billions of dollars next year, the Information reported.

Musk added in the email to workers that remote work would no longer be allowed and that they would be expected in the office for at least 40 hours per week.

Twitter, Musk and Spiro did not respond to requests for comment on a potential bankruptcy, the FTC warning, or the departures.

Musk ruthlessly moved to clean house after taking over on Oct. 27 and has said the company was losing more than $4 million a day, largely because advertisers started fleeing once he took over.

Twitter has $13 billion in debt after the deal and faces interest payments totaling close to $1.2 billion in the next 12 months. The payments exceed Twitter’s most recently disclosed cash flow, which amounted to $1.1 billion as of the end of June.

Musk has begun charging $8 a month for the Twitter Blue service that will include a blue check verification.

WARNING

“We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern,” Douglas Farrar, the FTC’s director of public affairs, told Reuters.

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them,” Farrar said.

In May, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to settle allegations by the FTC it misused private information, like phone numbers, to target advertising to users after telling them the information was collected only for security reasons.

Twitter’s privacy attorney on Thursday mentioned in the internal memo that Spiro had said that Musk was willing to take a “huge amount of risk” with the company. “Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC,” the attorney quoted Spiro as saying.

Twitter’s buyout has sparked concerns that Musk, who has often waded into political debates, could face pressure from countries trying to control online speech.

It prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to say on Wednesday that Musk’s “cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.”

ADVERTISERS NOT REASSURED

Musk told advertisers on Wednesday, speaking on Twitter’s Spaces feature, that he aimed to turn the platform into a force for truth and stop fake accounts.

His assurances may not be enough.

Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG.N) said on Thursday it had pulled back its paid and owned content on Twitter “while we gain a better understanding on the direction of the platform under its new leadership.”

It joined other brands including General Motors (GM.N) that have paused advertising on Twitter since Musk took over, concerned that he will loosen content moderation rules.

Reporting by Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California and Paresh Dave in Oakland, California; Additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, Diane Bartz in Washington, Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru and Fanny Potkin and Hyunjoo Jin; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Bill Berkrot, Deepa Babington and Sam Holmes

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Paresh Dave

Thomson Reuters

San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.

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Business

Twitter lays off staff as Musk blames activists for ‘massive’ ad revenue drop

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  • Musk looking to axe around half of Twitter’s workforce
  • Employees file class action against Twitter
  • Staff lose access to systems
  • Volkswagen pulls ads

Nov 4 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc started a major round of layoffs on Friday, alerting employees of their job status by email after barring the entrances to offices and cutting off workers’ access to internal systems overnight.

The move follows a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who tweeted on Friday that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending.

Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation. The groups said on Friday they are escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” Twitter said in an email to staff on Thursday evening announcing the cuts that came on Friday, which was seen by Reuters.

The company was silent about the depth of the cuts, although internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week indicated Musk was looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce.

Staff who worked in engineering, communications, product, content curation and machine learning ethics were among those impacted by the layoffs, according to tweets from Twitter staff.

Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who was Twitter’s acting head of human rights, tweeted on Friday that the entire human rights team at the company had been cut.

Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a “hellscape.” However, his reassurances have failed to calm major advertisers, which have expressed apprehension about his takeover for months.

Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) recommended its brands pause paid advertising on Twitter until further notice in the wake of Musk’s takeover, it said on Friday. Its comments echoed similar remarks from other companies, including General Motors Co (GM.N) and General Mills Inc (GIS.N).

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, which is part of the civil rights coalition, said he knew of two more major advertisers that were preparing to announce that they would pause ads on the platform.

Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done “everything we could” to appease the groups. “Extremely messed up! They’re (civil right groups) trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Speaking at an investors conference in New York on Friday, Musk called the activist pressure “an attack on the First Amendment.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ACCESS TO SYSTEMS CUT

Dozens of staffers tweeted they lost access to work email and Slack channels before receiving an official notice, which they took as a sign they had been laid off.

[1/9] Owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. Elon Musk arrives at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 4, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

They tweeted blue hearts and salute emojis expressing support for one another, using the hashtags #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked, a past-tense version of a slogan employees had used for years to celebrate the company’s work culture.

Twitter’s curation team, which is responsible for “highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that unfold on Twitter,” had been axed, employees said on the platform. The company’s communications team in India has also been laid off, according to a Twitter executive in Asia.

A team that focused on research into how Twitter employed algorithms, an issue that was a priority for Musk, was also eliminated, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at Twitter.

Senior executives including Vice President of Engineering Arnaud Weber also said their goodbyes on Twitter on Friday: “Twitter still has a lot of unlocked potential but I’m proud of what we accomplished,” he tweeted.

Employees of Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service that Musk is bolstering, were also let go. An employee with the handle “SillyRobin” who had indicated they were laid off, quote-tweeted Musk’s previous tweet saying Twitter Blue would include “paywall bypass” for certain publishers.

“Just to be clear, he fired the team working on this,” the employee said.

Twitter’s head of Safety & Integrity, Yoel Roth, appeared to have kept his job, as did Vice President of Product Keith Coleman, who launched a tool called Birdwatch for users to write notes on tweets they identify as misleading.

Last week, Musk endorsed Roth, citing his “high integrity” after Roth was called out over tweets critical of former U.S. President Donald Trump years earlier. Musk has also tweeted that he likes Birdwatch.

Roth and Coleman did not respond to requests for comment.

DOORS LOCKED

Twitter said in its email to staffers that offices would be temporarily closed and badge access suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”

Offices in London and Dublin appeared deserted on Friday, with no employees in sight. At the London office, any evidence Twitter had once occupied the building was erased.

A receptionist at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters said a few people had trickled in and were working in the floors above despite the notice to stay away.

A class action was filed on Thursday against Twitter by its employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.

The lawsuit also asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an order to restrict Twitter from soliciting employees being laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.

Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas, Katie Paul in Palo Alto, Calif., and Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif.
Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin, Rusharti Mukherjee, Aditya Kalra, Martin Coulter, Hyunjoo Jin, Supantha Mukherjee and Arriana McLymore
Writing by Matt Scuffham
Editing by Kenneth Li, Jason Neely and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Paresh Dave

Thomson Reuters

San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.

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Business

Musk says Twitter will charge $8/month for blue check mark

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Nov 1 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc will charge $8 a month for its Blue service, which includes its sought-after “verified” badge, new boss Elon Musk said on Tuesday as he seeks to boost subscriptions and make the social media network less reliant on ads.

“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” Musk said in a tweet, adding that the price will be adjusted by “country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”

A blue check mark next to a person’s user name on the social media platform means Twitter has confirmed that the account belongs to the person or company claiming it. Twitter is currently free for most users.

Billionaire Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last week.

Since the takeover, he has moved quickly to put his stamp on the company, firing its previous chief and other top officials.

Twitter’s advertising chief, Sarah Personette, tweeted on Tuesday that she had resigned her post last week, adding further uncertainty for advertisers.

Musk on Tuesday said subscribers with blue check marks would get priority in replies, mentions and search and would be able to post longer videos and audios. They would see half as many ads.

He also offered subscribers a pay wall bypass from “publishers willing to work with us.”

Musk’s comments follow media reports that he was looking at the process of profile verification and how the blue check marks were given. Twitter used to give these to noteworthy profiles based on its own criteria.

More than 80% of Twitter users who took part in a recent poll said they would not pay for the checkmark. Some 10% said they were willing to pay $5 a month.

Twitter already has a subscription service called Twitter Blue, which was launched in June last year and offers access to features such as an option to edit tweets.

Amid speculation that Twitter may soon start charging verified users a monthly fee of $20 for blue ticks, bestselling author Stephen King tweeted: “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

Separately, S&P Global Ratings downgraded Twitter to B- on “significant” debt increase following the acquisition.

Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in San Francisco
Editing by Anil D’Silva and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Exclusive: Twitter is losing its most active users, internal documents show

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Oct 25 (Reuters) – “Is Twitter dying?” billionaire Elon Musk mused in April, five days before offering to buy the social media platform.

The reality, according to internal Twitter (TWTR.N) research seen by Reuters, goes far beyond the handful of examples of celebrities ghosting their own accounts. Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users – who are vital to the business – engaged, underscoring a challenge faced by the Tesla (TSLA.O) chief executive as he approaches a deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.

These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled “Where did the Tweeters Go?”

A “heavy tweeter” is defined as someone who logs in to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets about three to four times a week, the document said.

The research also found a shift in interests over the past two years among Twitter’s most active English-speaking users that could make the platform less attractive to advertisers.

Cryptocurrency and “not safe for work” (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest-growing topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users, the report found.

At the same time, interest in news, sports and entertainment is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics, which have helped Twitter burnish an image as the world’s “digital town square,” as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers.

Twitter declined to specify how many of its tweets are in English or how much money it makes from English speakers. But the demographic is important to Twitter’s business, some analysts say.

The platform earned more ad revenue from the United States alone than all other markets combined in its fourth quarter, according to its investor letter, and most ads in the United States are likely targeting English-speaking users, said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence.

Twitter’s study examined the number of heavy tweeters in English who displayed an interest in a topic, based on the accounts they followed, and how that number of users changed over the past two years.

Twitter was motivated to investigate “disturbing” trends among users that may have been masked by overall growth in daily active users and better understand the decline in the company’s most active users, the documents said. The study made no specific conclusions about why heavy users of the platform are declining.

Asked to comment on the internal documents’ findings, a Twitter spokesperson said on Monday: “We regularly conduct research on a wide variety of trends, which evolve based on what’s happening in the world. Our overall audience has continued to grow, reaching 238 million mDAU in Q2 2022,” the spokesperson said, using an acronym for monetizable daily active users.

‘NOT SAFE FOR WORK’ CONTENT

The number of heavy users interested in NSFW and cryptocurrency content grew, the research found.

Twitter is one of the few major social media platforms that permits nudity on its service, and the company has estimated that adult content constitutes 13% of Twitter, according to a separate internal slide presentation seen by Reuters. The presentation did not elaborate on how the figure was calculated.

Advertisers generally steer clear of controversy or nudity for fear of damaging their brands. Major advertisers including Dyson, PBS Kids and Forbes suspended advertising due to accounts that were soliciting child pornography on Twitter, Reuters reported in September.

In response to the September story, Twitter said it “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and was investing more resources into its work against such material.

Twitter’s most active English-speaking users were also increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies, reaching an all-time high in late 2021, the internal documents showed. But interest in the topic has declined since the crypto price crash in June, and the study noted cryptocurrencies may not be an area of growth in the future.

Current and former Twitter employees who spoke with Reuters said they feared Musk’s calls for less content moderation and his reported plans to gut the staff, which they said will exacerbate the deterioration of the quality of content.

‘DEVASTATING’ LOSSES

Topics that have traditionally made Twitter a popular platform for its millions of users are now in decline among the most active English-speaking users, the documents show.

Interest in world news, as well as liberal politics, showed spikes during major events such as the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But the categories have since lost the highest number of heavy Twitter users and have shown no signs of recovery, the report said.

Twitter is also losing a “devastating” percentage of heavy users who are interested in fashion or celebrities such as the Kardashian family. These users are likely decamping to rival platforms like Meta Platform’s (META.O) Instagram and ByteDance’s TikTok, a Twitter researcher wrote.

The study also expressed surprise about the decline in interest for e-sports and online streaming personalities, which were previously growing quickly across Twitter. “The big communities are now in decline,” the report said.

“It seems as though there is a significant discrepancy between what I might imagine are our company values and our growth patterns,” one Twitter researcher wrote.

Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas
Editing by Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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