X to allow political advertising, TikTok shutters e-commerce sites for in-house marketplace and other notable stories from this week
Welcome to “#SocialStocks,” The Fly’s weekly recap of Wall Street’s reactions to social media stock news.
PUTTING AN END TO SPAMOUFLAGE:
In a blog post, Meta Platforms (META) said it recently took down thousands of accounts and Pages in China that were part of the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world. It targeted more than 50 apps, including Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest (PINS), Medium, Blogspot, LiveJournal, VKontakte, Vimeo (VMEO), and dozens of smaller platforms and forums. For the first time, we were able to tie this activity together to confirm it was part of one operation known in the security community as Spamouflage and link it to individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement. In Russia, the company said it blocked thousands of malicious website domains as well as attempts to run fake accounts and Pages on Meta’s platforms connected to the Russian operation known as Doppelganger that we first disrupted a year ago. This operation was focused on mimicking websites of mainstream news outlets and government entities to post fake articles aimed at weakening support for Ukraine. It has now expanded beyond initially targeting France, Germany and Ukraine to also include the US and Israel. This is the largest and the most aggressively-persistent Russian-origin operation we’ve taken down since 2017.
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS:
Meta’s move to ban news links in Canada this month has had virtually zero impact on Canadians’ usage of Facebook, Reuters’ Katie Paul and Steve Scherer reported, citing data from independent tracking firms. The news comes as the company faces harsh criticism from the Canadian government over the decision, the author notes.
CHECKING YES FOR POLITICAL ADVERTISING:
X, formerly known as Twitter, stated in a post to its corporate blog: “We have rules in place to help protect the safety and authenticity of conversations on X. During elections, our Civic Integrity Policy provides an extra layer of protection that is applied for a limited period of time before and during an election. We’re updating this policy to make sure we strike the right balance between tackling the most harmful types of content-those that could intimidate or deceive people into surrendering their right to participate in a civic process-and not censoring political debate… Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising. Starting in the U.S., we’ll continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts. This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse. We’ll also provide a global advertising transparency center so that everyone can review political posts being promoted on X, in addition to robust screening processes to ensure only eligible groups and campaigns are able to advertise.”
AI LATEST:
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will host Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai at an artificial intelligence forum on September 13, Axios reported, citing Schumer’s office. The bipartisan meeting will also be attended by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella and Schumer has previously said he would host the forum to “lay down a new foundation for AI policy.”
In a blog post Open Ai. disclosed, in part: “We’re launching ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customization options, and much more. We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive. Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data. We’ve seen unprecedented demand for ChatGPT inside organizations Since ChatGPT’s launch just nine months ago, we’ve seen teams adopt it in over 80% of Fortune 500 companies.A The 80% statistic refers to the percentage of Fortune 500 companies with registered ChatGPT accounts, as determined by accounts associated with corporate email domains. We’ve heard from business leaders that they’d like a simple and safe way of deploying it in their organization. Early users of ChatGPT Enterprise-industry leaders like Block, Canva, Carlyle, The Estee Lauder Companies, PwC, and Zapier-are redefining how they operate and are using ChatGPT to craft clearer communications, accelerate coding tasks, rapidly explore answers to complex business questions, assist with creative work, and much more.” OpenAI was formed by a group of investors, including Microsoft, Khosla Ventures, Reid Hoffman, and others.
Meta on Thursday announced the debut of Code Llama, which can generate code and debug human-written work, under the same community license as Llama 2, free for research and commercial use. The company said “We believe an open approach to AI is best for developing new AI tools that are innovative, safe and responsible, so we’re releasing Code Llama for both research and commercial use under the same community license as Llama 2.”
SELF PROMOTION:
TikTok plans to ban links to e-commerce sites like Amazon (AMZN) in an effort to force users to buy via TikTok Shop, The Information’s Erin Woo and Jing Yang reported. According to a source, TikTok Shop will lose more than $500M in the U.S. in 2023.
UNLAWFUL DISMISSAL SETTLEMENT:
The 184 content moderators suing Meta and Sama, its former content review partner, for alleged unlawful dismissal have agreed to settle the case outside of court, Annie Njanja of TechCrunch wrote. This comes five months after the content moderators filed the suit. “The parties shall pursue an out of court settlement of this petition through mediation. The proceedings of the mediation shall be confidential except the final agreement reached which shall be filed in court and adopted as an order of the court,” said a consent order, according to TechCrunch.
ANALYST COMMENTARY:
CICC initiated coverage of Meta Platforms with an Outperform rating.
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Originally Posted August 30, 2023 – #SocialStocks: Big Tech heads to meet with Chuck Schumer to shape AI policy
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