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Tesla Chief Executive Office Elon Musk speaks at his company’s factory in Fremont, California.

Noah Berger | Reuters

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, accused “the media” and “elite colleges and high schools” of being “racist” against white and Asian people, espousing his views without providing evidence on Sunday.

Musk posted his comments on Twitter, where he has nearly 130 million followers, in response to news that media organizations around the country decided to cut the comic strip “Dilbert” from syndication after its creator, Scott Adams, delivered a racist tirade in a video on his YouTube channel last week.

In the video, Adams discussed a poll conducted by right-leaning Rasmussen Reports that said 26% of Black respondents disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” The phrase referenced in their poll has been labeled a “hate slogan” by the Anti-Defamation League. In his video, Adams called Black people who rejected that phrase as a “hate group.”

Adams also said that he personally chose to live in a community where few or no Black people lived, and then advised his white viewers to “get the hell away from Black people,” saying he didn’t “want to have anything to do with them.”

Adams’ video was published during Black History Month in the U.S., which was established in 1976 by President Gerald Ford as a period during which to honor the struggles and contributions of Black Americans.

Among the news outlets that dropped “Dilbert” were the Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Washington Post and USA Today.

Musk’s track record

Brian Levin, a civil rights attorney and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University said, in response to Musk’s tweets:

“Systemic racism requires not only widespread bigotry to be held within a group but also a structural component that allows discrimination and oppression to be imposed on a minority because of an advantage of access and power. A white billionaire from South Africa who recently lost a high profile racial discrimination case may not be in the best position to offer counsel.”

As CNBC previously reported, a San Francisco federal court ruled that Tesla must pay a former worker, Owen Diaz, for damages after he endured a hostile work environment and racist abuse at the company’s factory where he previously worked as an elevator operator.

Additionally, the EEOC, a federal agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, has issued a cause finding against Tesla, according to a financial filing from the company last year.

Prior to the EEOC finding, the California Civil Rights Department, formerly known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, sued Tesla after a three-year investigation, alleging widespread racist discrimination at Tesla factories and facilities across the state.

The CRD alleged that Tesla has kept Black workers in lower-level roles at the company even when they have the skills and experience to be promoted to more senior roles; assigned Black workers more demanding, dangerous and dirty work in their facilities; and retaliated against Black workers who complained formally about what they endured, including racist slurs used by managers.

Tesla called the CRD’s lawsuit “misguided,” and later countersued the agency.

The data on racism

Musk made his claims about “the media” and some higher educational institutions and high schools in the U.S. without presenting any evidence.

Specifically, he wrote, “The media is racist.” He then added, “For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.” 

According to Pew Research, newsroom employees are much more likely to be white (and male) than U.S. workers overall. In film and TV, according to McKinsey research, “Black talent is underrepresented across the industry, particularly off-screen.” Less than 6% of the writers, directors and producers of U.S.-produced films are Black, McKinsey found.

According to the most recently available U.S. Census Bureau data, about 29% of non-Hispanic white people in the U.S. have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher levels of education, about 18.4% of Black people in the U.S. have attained that level of education, and about 51.3% of Asian people have done so.

Despite Asian American educational attainment, Asians are underrepresented in leadership roles in U.S. academic libraries and higher education, according to research by Mihoko Hosoi, published in the Journal of Library Administration in 2022.

Musk also replied to one Twitter account that said unarmed white people affected by police violence only get a fraction of the media attention paid to Black people injured or killed by police. Musk claimed that the media coverage is “Very disproportionate to promote a false narrative.”

According to research by Brookings Institute, “Black people are 3.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by police when Blacks are not attacking or do not have a weapon,” and “Black teenagers are 21 times more likely than white teenagers to be killed by police.”

Hate speech on Twitter

Imran Ahmed, the CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in response to Musk’s tweets, “Elon Musk seeks to portray himself as some weird, bizarro champion of anti-racism whereas in reality when he took over Twitter, he made a series of disturbing decisions to change its rules to welcome racist hate back onto the platform and, as our research has shown, to profit from the controversy and attention hate generates.”

Ahmed also called on remaining advertisers to reevaluate whether they want to spend their budgets on Twitter, given Musk’s beliefs and changes he has made to the Twitter platform.

Since leading a $44 billion leveraged buyout of Twitter late last year and appointing himself “Chief Twit,” or CEO, Musk has stirred controversy and lost money at the social media business.

Under Musk’s watch, Twitter has restored the accounts of some previously banned and divisive figures, including neo-Nazi website founder Andrew Anglin. His moves led to an unprecedented rise in hate speech on the platform, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found, and drew an immediate outcry from civil rights leaders.

Hundreds of Twitter’s top advertisers have since halted or pulled back on ad spending there. One firm estimated that Twitter’s ad revenue declined as much as 70% in December from the previous year, Reuters reported. Musk acknowledged in a November tweet that the company suffered a “massive drop in revenue” after advertisers paused spending on the social media platform.

Musk and representatives at Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning says censorship is still ‘a dominant threat’

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WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning says censorship is still 'a dominant threat'

Chelsea Manning: Censorship still a dominant threat

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.

Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.

Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.

“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.

“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.

“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”

Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.

“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.

‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’

Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.

She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”

She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”

Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.

“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.

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SoftBank-backed fintech Zopa aims to double profit this year as it eyes 2025 current account launch

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SoftBank-backed fintech Zopa aims to double profit this year as it eyes 2025 current account launch

Jaidev Janardana, CEO of U.K. digital bank Zopa.

Zopa

LISBON, Portugal — British online lender Zopa is on track to double profits and increase annual revenue by more than a third this year amid bumper demand for its banking services, the company’s CEO told CNBC.

Zopa posted revenues of £222 million ($281.7 million) in 2023 and is expecting to cross the £300 million revenue milestone this year — that would mark a 35% annual jump.

The 2024 estimates are based on unaudited internal figures.

The firm also says it is on track to increase pre-tax profits twofold in 2024, after hitting £15.8 million last year.

Zopa, a regulated bank that is backed by Japanese giant SoftBank, has plans to venture into the world of current accounts next year as it looks to focus more on new products.

The company currently offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts that it offers through a mobile app — similar to other digital banks such as Monzo and Revolut which don’t operate physical branches.

“The business is doing really well. In 2024, we’ve hit or exceeded the plans across all metrics,” CEO Jaidev Janardana told CNBC in an interview Wednesday.

He said the strong performance is coming off the back of gradually improving sentiment in the U.K. economy, where Zopa operates exclusively.

Commenting on Britain’s macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, “While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year.”

The market is “still tight,” he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa’s — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become “more important” during such times.

“The proposition has become more relevant, and while it’s tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to,” he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.

A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.

What leaders are saying about AI at one of Europe's biggest tech shows

“We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space,” Janardana said. “We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year.”

Janardana said consumers can expect a “slick” experience from Zopa’s current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.

IPO ‘not top of mind’

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It’s ‘liquidity, stupid’: VCs say tech investing is tough amid IPO lull and ‘nuts’ AI hype

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It's 'liquidity, stupid': VCs say tech investing is tough amid IPO lull and 'nuts' AI hype

Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital, and Larry Aschebrook, founder and managing partner of G Squared, speak during a CNBC-moderated panel at Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Rita Franca | Nurphoto | Getty Images

LISBON, Portugal — It’s a tough time for the venture capital industry right now as a dearth of blockbuster initial public offerings and M&A activity has sucked liquidity from the market, while buzzy artificial intelligence startups dominate attention.

At the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, two venture investors — whose portfolios include the likes of multibillion-dollar AI startups Databricks Anthropic and Groq — said things have become much more difficult as they’re unable to cash out of some of their long-term bets.

“In the U.S., when you talk about the presidential election, it’s the economy stupid. And in the VC world, it’s really all about liquidity stupid,” Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital, an early-stage VC firm based in Silicon Valley, said in a CNBC-moderated panel earlier this week.

Liquidity is the holy grail for VCs, startup founders and early employees as it gives them a chance to realize gains — or, if things turn south, losses — on their investments.

When a VC makes an equity investment and the value of their stake increases, it’s only a gain on paper. But when a startup IPOs or sells to another company, their equity stake gets converted into hard cash — enabling them to make new investments.

Yeung said the lack of IPOs over the last couple of years had created a “really tough” environment for venture capital.

At the same, however, there’s been a rush from investors to get into buzzy AI firms.

“What’s really crazy is in the last few years, OpenAI’s domination has really been determined by Big Techs, the Microsofts of the world,” said Yeung, referring to ChatGPT-creator OpenAI’s seismic $157 billion valuation. OpenAI is backed by Microsoft, which has made a multibillion-dollar investment in the firm.

‘The IPO market is not happening’

Larry Aschebrook, founder and managing partner at late-stage VC firm G Squared, agreed that the hunt for liquidity is getting harder — even though the likes of OpenAI are seeing blockbuster funding rounds, which he called “a bit nuts.”

“You have funds and founders and employees searching for liquidity because the IPO market is not happening. And then you have funding rounds taking place of generational types of businesses,” Aschebrook said on the panel.

As important as these deals are, Aschebrook suggested they aren’t helping investors because even more money is getting tied up in illiquid, privately owned shares. G Squared itself an early backer of Anthropic, a foundational AI model startup competing with Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

Using a cooking analogy, Aschebrook suggested that venture capitalists are being starved of lucrative share sales which would lead to them realizing returns. “If you want to cook some dinner, you better sell some stock, ” he added.

Looking for opportunities beyond OpenAI

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