#SocialStocks: Meta and Big Tech Subpoenaed for Info on Content Moderation

Musk offers timeline for Twitter CEO succession, Meta prepares for more job cuts, 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.

TWITTER FILES: 

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has sent subpoenas to the chief executives of five major U.S. tech companies, demanding information on how they moderate content on their online platforms, The Wall Street Journal’s Natalie Andrews reported. The queries are part of House Republicans’ plan to scrutinize communications between the Biden administration and big technology and social-media companies to probe whether they amounted to the censorship of legitimate viewpoints on issues such as COVID-19 policy that ran counter to White House policy, the author noted. The letters were sent to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms (META), Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (GOOGL), Satya Nadella of Microsoft (MSFT), Tim Cook of Apple (AAPL), and Andy Jassy of Amazon.com (AMZN).

RAY TRACING: 

“Snapchatters (SNAP) love using augmented reality to try on products from beloved fashion brands, making the shopping experience personal, accessible, and fun. Today, we’re excited to announce Ray Tracing which is now available in Lens Studio to developers around the world. Ray Tracing is a technical capability that enhances the realism of augmented reality experiences by reflecting light on digital objects. Now, Lenses that feature AR diamond jewelry, clothing and so much more can reach ultra-realistic quality. Tiffany & Co is the first brand to leverage Ray Tracing on Snapchat with their new Tiffany Lock Lens. This Lens allows you to try-on Tiffany Lock bracelets using AR, and when you’re ready, purchase without leaving the app. The Lens is available globally to Snapchatters on iOS and Android,” said the company in an earlier blog posting.

SUCCESSION: 

Elon Musk, who bought Twitter (TWTR) in October, said the likely time to put in place a new person to take over the day-to-day management of the social-media platform could be toward the end of 2023, The Wall Street Journal’s David S. Cloud reported. “I’m guessing probably towards the end of the year,” Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla (TSLA), said as he spoke remotely at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and that the product road map is clearly laid out,” he said, adding “it should be in a stable position around the end of the year.”

TWEAKING THE ALGORITHM: 

Twitter engineers built a system to boost CEO Elon Musk’s tweets over everyone else’s after Musk complained that President Joe Biden’s Super Bowl tweet outperformed his, Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton reported, citing interviews with people familiar with the events involved and supported by documents obtained by the publication.

VALUABLE FEATURES: 

In a comment on its support page, Instagram noted: ” Beginning on March 16, you will no longer be able to tag products in live broadcasts on Instagram. This change will help us focus on products and features that provide the most value to our users. You will still be able to set up and run your shop on Instagram as we continue to invest in shopping experiences for people and businesses across feed, stories, Reels, ads and more.”

COST CUTTING: 

Last month, after reducing its workforce by roughly 75%, Twitter cut its contract for Salesforce’s (CRM) customer-management software by about the same percentage, to $5M a year from $20M, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told The Information’s Kevin McLaughlin and Erin Woo. This move “highlights the pain for enterprise software providers” as key customers at other tech companies cut their workforces, the report said.

DEPARTURES: 

Meta chief business officer Marne Levine announced that she will be leaving Meta after 13 years at the company where she held multiple leadership roles, Meta reported. “She will stay on until the summer to ensure a seamless transition. Moving forward, Nicola Mendelsohn and Justin Osofsky are taking on expanded roles as our most senior sales and partnership leaders, representing the company with our advertisers and partners and reporting to COO Javier Olivan. This new structure continues to bring our business and product teams closer together and helps them operate even more effectively to serve our clients,” the company stated in a post to its corporate newsroom.

In a regulatory filing, Meta Platforms disclosed that Levine sold 23.3K shares of common stock on February 7 in a total transaction size of $4.45M.

TECH LAYOFFS: 

Meta has delayed finalizing multiple teams’ budgets while it prepares a fresh round of job cuts as Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to contain costs in his “year of efficiency” causes disruption at the social media company, Financial Times’ Hannah Murphy and Cristina Criddle reported. Two Meta employees familiar with the situation told the Financial Times that there had been a lack of clarity about budgets or future headcount in recent weeks. As a result, staff have complained that “zero work” is getting done as managers have been unable to plan their coming workloads, the employees said.

AT LONG LAST: 

Meta has closed on the acquisition of Within, which makes the subscription fitness app Supernatural. The FTC filed a complaint to stop the deal last year on grounds of Meta building a “virtual reality empire,” but Meta won approval last week for the acquisition. Within said via Twitter: “Today marks a new chapter for Within and @GetSupernatural, as we officially join @Meta. We’re thrilled to help people transform their lives as we bring more joy, awe and wonder to the world. We look forward to what’s ahead.”

MORE CHARACTERS: 

Twitter Blue said, in part in a tweet: “Need more than 280 characters to express yourself? we know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that. so we’re introducing longer Tweets! you’re gonna want to check this out. tap this starting today, if you’re subscribed to Twitter Blue in the US you can create longer Tweets. most standard functions of Tweeting still apply, whether you want to post a picture, use a hashtag, or create a poll. but now you can type all the way up to 4,000 characters. for now, longer Tweets on web can’t be saved as drafts or scheduled to send later.”

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Originally Posted February 15, 2023 – #SocialStocks: Meta and Big Tech subpoenaed for info on content moderation