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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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AMD stock continues rally after OpenAI deal, now up 43% this week so far

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AMD stock continues rally after OpenAI deal, now up 43% this week so far

Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), during a Bloomberg Television interview in San Francisco, California, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AMD stock climbed 11% on Wednesday, continuing a massive run since OpenAI announced plans to buy billions of dollars of AI equipment from the chipmaker earlier this week.

On Monday, the ChatGPT maker entered into an agreement to potentially own 10% of AMD, based on its stock price and partnership milestones.

AMD now has a market cap of $380 billion after climbing 4% on Tuesday and 24% on Monday. Shares are up 43% so far this week, on pace for the best weekly gain since April 2016.

The partnership with OpenAI, which has historically been closely linked with Nvidia, has bolstered investor confidence that AMD will be a viable competitor to Nvidia in AI chips.

Read more CNBC tech news

AMD CEO Lisa Su told reporters on Monday that the deal was a “win-win” and that its AI chips were good enough to be used in “at-scale deployments,” or very large data centers like the kind OpenAI and cloud providers build.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday reacted to the deal on CNBC’s Squawk Box, saying it was “surprising.”

“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next-generation product,” Huang said. “I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess.”

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Google adds limits to ‘Work from Anywhere’ policy that began during Covid

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Google adds limits to 'Work from Anywhere' policy that began during Covid

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google is continuing to put restrictions on remote work, this time with a popular policy called “Work from Anywhere” that was established during the Covid pandemic.

The policy has allowed employees to work from a location outside of their main office for up to four weeks per calendar year. According to internal documents viewed by CNBC, working remotely for even a single day will now count for a full week.

“Whether you log 1 WFA day or 5 WFA days in a given standard work week, 1 WFA week will be deducted from your WFA weekly balance,” according to a document that was circulated over the summer, shortly before the change went into effect.

Google isn’t altering its current hybrid schedule, which was also put in place during the pandemic, allowing employees to work from home two days a week. WFA days are distinct from that policy, giving staffers the flexibility to work remotely, but not at home.

“WFA weeks cannot be used to work from home or nearby,” the document says.

Google didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Tech companies are increasingly forcing employees to spend more time in the office, with the peak of Covid now about five years in the past. Microsoft said last month that employees will be expected to work in an office three days a week starting next year, switching from a policy that allowed most of them to work from home 50% of the time or more with manager approval. Amazon went further, instructing corporate staffers to spend five days a week in the office.

Google began offering some U.S. full-time employees voluntary buyouts at the beginning of 2025, and has notified remote workers from several units their jobs would be considered for layoffs if they didn’t return to offices to work a hybrid schedule.

According to the latest changes, employees can’t work from a Google office in a separate state or country during their WFA time due to “legal and financial implications of cross border work.” If in a different location, employees may be required to work during the business hours that align with that time zone, the rules state.

The WFA update doesn’t apply to all Google staffers and may exclude data center workers, and those who are required to be in physical offices. Violations of the policy will result in disciplinary action or termination, the document says.

The issue came up at a recent all-hands meeting.

A top-rated question that was submitted on Google’s internal system described the update as “confusing.”

“Why does even one day of WFA count as a whole week, and can we reconsider the restriction on using WFA weeks to work from home?” the question said.

John Casey, Google’s vice president of performance and rewards, said at the meeting that WFA “was meant to meet Googlers where they were during the pandemic,” according to audio obtained by CNBC.

“The policy was always intended to be taken in increments of a week and not be used as a substitute for working from home in a regular hybrid work week,” Casey said.

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Jensen Huang says Trump’s H-1B changes would’ve prevented his family from immigrating

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Jensen Huang says Trump's H-1B changes would've prevented his family from immigrating

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on H-1B visas: My family wouldn't have been able to afford the $100,000 fee

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that his family’s immigration to the U.S. “would not have been possible” with the Trump administration’s current policy.

President Donald Trump announced in September that employers would have to pay a $100,000 fee for each H-1B visa, a temporary worker visa granted to foreign professionals with specialized skills.

Huang, who was born in Taiwan and later moved Thailand, immigrated to the U.S. at nine years old with his brother. His parents joined them around two years later.

“I don’t think that my family would have been able to afford the $100,000 and and so the opportunity for my, my family and for me to be here … would not have been possible,” Huang told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Trump’s sudden price hike was a shock to the tech sector, which relies heavily on foreign talent, especially from India and China.

Read more CNBC tech news

Amazon was the top employer for H-1B holders in fiscal year 2025, sponsoring over 10,000 applicants according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tech juggernauts Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google were also among the top H-1B employers, with over 4,000 approvals each.

“Immigration is the foundation of the American dream,” Huang said, “this ideal that anyone can come to America and through hard work and some talent, be able to build a better future for yourself.”

Huang added that his own parents came to the U.S. so that his family could “enjoy the opportunities” and “this incredible country.”

The CEO confirmed that Nvidia, which currently sponsors 1,400 visas, would continue covering H-1B fees for immigrant employees. Huang said that he hopes to see some “enhancements” to the policy so that there’s “still some opportunities for serendipity to happen.”

While his own family’s journey would have been blocked by Trump’s immigration policy, Huang said Trump’s changes will still allow the U.S. “to continue to attract the world’s best talent.”

And other tech executives have expressed support for the changes, with Netflix‘s Reed Hastings calling the fee “a great solution” in a post on X.

“It will mean H1-B is used just for very high value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed, and more certainty for those jobs,” Hastings wrote.

In September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC’s Jon Fortt that he also backed Trump’s changes.

“We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of outlining financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: Want to be part of almost everything Elon Musk is involved in

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