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In this photo illustration, the image of Elon Musk is displayed on a computer screen and the logo of twitter on a mobile phone in Ankara, Turkiye on October 06, 2022.

Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

When Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over at Twitter, showing up at headquarters on Oct. 27, 2022, online trolls and bigots raided the social network, polluting it with a deluge of racist epithets and other hate speech.

But a new study from the non-profit Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers finds that Twitter’s safety team responded better to that “raid” than the company did to a similar event in April 2022.

According to NCRI’s CEO Adam Sohn, a raid is when bad actors online engage in coordinated activity to try to disrupt social media platforms, usually to harm marginalized people or specific targets.

GamerGate is probably the most infamous raid, and took place around 2014 when 4Chan trolls who were a part of the video game community lobbed misogynistic attacks against women who were in the industry. They specifically targeted one woman and critic who had spoken out about sexist tropes in games. Their campaign was waged across myriad social platforms including Twitter and Reddit, and manifested in real world rape and death threats, and a bomb scare targeting the critic.

Conspiracy-driven communities online are also known to use raid tactics.

Some people engage in so-called “inauthentic” activity on social networks just to see if they can get away with it (“for the lulz”).

NCRI analyst Alex Goldenberg says that while Twitter’s action in response to the hate speech last week was effective, the company could have forecast and prevented it, too.

Hours before the deluge of hate speech, he said, “We assessed that this particular online troll campaign was being driven by coordinated, inauthentic activity that originated specifically on 4Chan. There, we detected a surge in mentions of the n-slur in tandem with mentions of Twitter.”

NCRI uses sophisticated machine learning software and systems to monitor huge amounts of social network content, and to track rising hatred and threats against marginalized groups online, including Black, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim people.

It makes research tools available and publishes reports, safety recommendations and warnings, sometimes delivering them directly to social networks, about where threats are rising, and may be likely to spill over into the physical world. According to Sohn, NCRI’s hope is to use this information to prevent real-world harm those online efforts.

NCRI was previously able to forecast an uptick of violence against Asian Americans as the Covid pandemic emerged, and identify an imminent threat from an anti-government group (the Boogaloo Boys) against law enforcement personnel. They also warned of the rise of communities encouraging self-harm, primarily cutting, on Twitter.

What NCRI found this time

The NCRI found that in the 12 hours after Musk arrived at Twitter headquarters, the use of an anti-Black epithet (the n-word) on the social network increased nearly 500% from the previous average. NCRI published this quick study the next morning as Musk’s deal officially closed.

For the new study, NCRI dug back into the historic data. The firm found that when Musk first disclosed that he had agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, back in April 2022, a similar raid had occurred.

Comparing the two events, NCRI found that Twitter did a better job stopping the raid this time.

“While nearly half of the accounts recently disseminating the n-slur have been suspended, less than 10% of accounts had been suspended in the previous raid, suggesting this is a historical problem predating the purchase with historically uneven enforcement.”

Despite Twitter’s forceful response to the hate speech, some damage had already been done.

Several advertisers have paused spending on Twitter for now until they can get a better indication of how Musk will deliver on his promise to keep it “warm and welcoming” and prevent it from becoming a “free-for-all hellscape.”

Among those who have quit Twitter for now are Shonda Rhimes, who is the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Bridgerton” and other hit TV shows, Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Sarah Bareilles, and actor and “This Is Us” producer Ken Olin.

Others are waiting to see where Musk and his teams take the product, but have threatened they may leave depending on the results.

Basketball icon LeBron James expressed his concern about the rise in racist tweets, and Musk replied to him on Twitter with a link to a thread from the social network’s current head of safety, Yoel Roth. The long-time Twitter exec said their teams had taken steps to quash accounts that were responsible for a huge portion of the attacks.

NCRI’s analysis confirms that the steps Roth and the safety team took were effective.

In the future, NCRI would like to see greater use of “automated anomaly detection,” technology commonly used in cybersecurity to monitor network performance, or to detect when somebody may be trying to hack into a company’s systems, says NRCI’s lead intelligence analyst Alex Goldenberg.

Anomaly detection applied in social media would have let Twitter take preventative action once the planned raid was initially detected.

Goldenberg and Sohn compare this technology to a smoke detector or carbon-monoxide detector for social problems brewing online.

While Musk has billed himself as a free speech absolutist, his track record defending other’s rights is mixed. More recently, he has acknowledged a need to balance free speech ideals with trust and safety on Twitter.

One thing he has not promised to do publicly is take better care with his own tweets.

Musk has a history of posting unfounded conspiracy theories, comments and jokes that have been widely interpreted as sexist, anti-LGBTQ, racist or antisemitic. Memorably, he has posted Hitler memes to his widely followed Twitter account.

Just after he took over Twitter, Musk shared an unfounded, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about a home invasion and assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of the speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Musk later deleted the tweet without an explanation.

He currently boasts 113.7 million listed followers on the platform, a number that’s rapidly growing.

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USDC stablecoin issuer Circle files for IPO as public markets open to crypto

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USDC stablecoin issuer Circle files for IPO as public markets open to crypto

Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder and CEO, Circle 

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The S1 lays the groundwork for Circle’s long-anticipated entry into the public markets.

While the filing does not yet disclose the number of shares or a price range, sources told Fortune that Circle plans to move forward with a public filing in late April and is targeting a market debut as early as June.

JPMorgan Chase and Citi are reportedly serving as lead underwriters, and the company is seeking a valuation between $4 billion and $5 billion, according to Fortune.

This marks Circle’s second attempt at going public. A prior SPAC merger with Concord Acquisition Corp collapsed in late 2022 amid regulatory challenges. Since then, Circle has made strategic moves to position itself closer to the heart of global finance — including the announcement last year that it would relocate its headquarters from Boston to One World Trade Center in New York City.

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

Circle is best known as the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation.

Circle is best known as the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation. It makes up about 26% of the total market cap for stablecoins, behind Tether‘s 67% dominance. Its market cap has grown 36% this year, however, compared with Tether’s 5% growth.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on the company’s most recent earnings call that it has a “stretch goal to make USDC the number 1 stablecoin.” 

The company’s push into public markets reflects a broader moment for the crypto industry, which is navigating renewed political favor under a more crypto-friendly U.S. administration. The stablecoin sector is ramping up as the industry grows increasingly confident that the crypto market will get its first piece of U.S. legislation passed and implemented this year, focusing on stablecoins.

Stablecoins’ growth could have investment implications for crypto exchanges like Robinhood and Coinbase as they integrate more of them into crypto trading and cross-border transfers. Coinbase also has an agreement with Circle to share 50% of the revenue of its USDC stablecoin.

The stablecoin market has grown about 11% so far this year and about 47% in the past year, and has become a “systemically important” part of the crypto market, according to Bernstein. Historically, digital assets in this sector have been used for trading and as collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi), and crypto investors watch them closely for evidence of demand, liquidity and activity in the market.

More recently, however, rhetoric around stablecoins’ ability to help preserve U.S. dollar dominance – by exporting dollar utility internationally and ensuring demand for U.S. government debt, which backs nearly all dollar-denominated stablecoins – has grown louder.

A successful IPO would make Circle one of the most prominent crypto-native firms to list on a U.S. exchange — an important signal for both investors and regulators as digital assets become more entwined with the traditional financial system.

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Hims & Hers shares rise as company adds new weight-loss medications to platform

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Hims & Hers shares rise as company adds new weight-loss medications to platform

The Hims app arranged on a smartphone in New York on Feb. 12, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hims & Hers Health shares closed up 5% on Tuesday after the company announced patients can access Eli Lilly‘s weight loss medication Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro, as well as the generic injection liraglutide, through its platform.

Zepbound, Mounjaro and liraglutide are part of the class of weight loss medications called GLP-1s, which have exploded in popularity in recent years. Hims & Hers launched a weight loss program in late 2023, but its GLP-1 offerings have evolved as the company has contended with a volatile supply and regulatory environment.

Lilly’s weekly injections Zepbound and Mounjaro will cost patients $1,899 a month, according to the Hims & Hers website. The generic liraglutide will cost $299 a month, but it requires a daily injection and can be less effective than other GLP-1 medications.

“As we look ahead, we plan to continue to expand our weight loss offering to deliver an even more holistic, personalized experience,” Dr. Craig Primack, senior vice president of weight loss at Hims & Hers, wrote in a blog post.

A Lilly spokesperson said in a statement that the company has “no affiliation” with Hims & Hers and noted that Zepbound is available at lower costs for people who are insured for the product or for those who buy directly from the company. 

In May, Hims & Hers started prescribing compounded semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s GLP-1 weight loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The offering was immensely popular and helped generate more than $225 million in revenue for the company in 2024.

But compounded drugs can traditionally only be mass produced when the branded medications treatments are in shortage. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that the shortage of semaglutide injections products had been resolved.

That meant Hims & Hers had to largely stop offering the compounded medications, though some consumers may still be able to access personalized doses if it’s clinically applicable. 

During the company’s quarterly call with investors in February, Hims & Hers said its weight loss offerings will primarily consist of its oral medications and liraglutide. The company said it expects its weight loss offerings to generate at least $725 million in annual revenue, excluding contributions from compounded semaglutide.

But the company is still lobbying for compounded medications. A pop up on Hims & Hers’ website, which was viewed by CNBC, encourages users to “use your voice” and urge Congress and the FDA to preserve access to compounded treatments.

With Tuesday’s rally, Hims and Hers shares are up about 27% in 2025 after soaring 172% last year.

WATCH: Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business

Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business

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Meta’s head of AI research announces departure

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Meta's head of AI research announces departure

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a smartphone as he makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta’s head of artificial intelligence research announced Tuesday that she will be leaving the company. 

Joelle Pineau, the company’s vice president of AI research, announced her departure in a LinkedIn post, saying her last day at the social media company will be May 30. 

Her departure comes at a challenging time for Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority, investing billions of dollars in an effort to become the market leader ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google.

Zuckerberg has said that it is his goal for Meta to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and artificial general intelligence, which is a term used to describe computers that can think and take actions comparable to humans.

“As the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” Pineau wrote. “I will be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that you have all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world, and to responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people.”

Vice President of AI Research and Head of FAIR at Meta Joelle Pineau attends a technology demonstration at the META research laboratory in Paris on February 7, 2025.

Stephane De Sakutin | AFP | Getty Images

Pineau was one of Meta’s top AI researchers and led the company’s fundamental AI research unit, or FAIR, since 2023. There, she oversaw the company’s cutting-edge computer science-related studies, some of which are eventually incorporated into the company’s core apps. 

She joined the company in 2017 to lead Meta’s Montreal AI research lab. Pineau is also a computer science professor at McGill University, where she is a co-director of its reasoning and learning lab.

Some of the projects Pineau helped oversee include Meta’s open-source Llama family of AI models and other technologies like the PyTorch software for AI developers.

Pineau’s departure announcement comes a few weeks ahead of Meta’s LlamaCon AI conference on April 29. There, the company is expected to detail its latest version of Llama. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, to whom Pineau reported to, said in March that Llama 4 will help power AI agents, the latest craze in generative AI. The company is also expected to announce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot, CNBC reported in February

“We thank Joelle for her leadership of FAIR,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “She’s been an important voice for Open Source and helped push breakthroughs to advance our products and the science behind them.” 

Pineau did not reveal her next role but said she “will be taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure.”

WATCH: Meta awaits antitrust fine from EU

Meta awaits antitrust fine from EU

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