Connect with us

Published

on

Hate speech continues to flourish on the messaging service formerly known as Twitter, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The CCDH said Wednesday that X fails to remove posts that contain hate speech despite being notified that the content violates the company’s current hateful conduct guidelines.

The CCDH’s report comes a little after one month after X sued the nonprofit over allegations that some of the group’s previous research was derived from unscrupulous methods, including the use of illegally scraped Twitter data.

CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed declined to comment about the specifics of the lawsuit, but said the CCDH did not use data-scraping tools to conduct its latest research and instead “simply went in and had a look.”

For this report, the CCDH collected 300 posts spread from 100 accounts that contained hateful content, such as posts urging people to “stop race mixing” and messages stating that Black people are intrinsically violent. About 140 of those 300 posts contained antisemitic content, including images of Nazi swastikas, messages supporting Holocaust denial and notes promoting conspiracy theories related to Jews.

The CCDH said it reported the posts to X via the company’s user-reporting tools on Aug. 30 and 31. When the researchers followed up a week later, they found that X had only taken down 41 posts, meaning that 259 posts containing hateful content were still active, including one that that referred to Adolf Hitler as “A hero who will help secure a future for white children!” Additionally, 90 of the 100 accounts that were responsible for sending the posts were still active.

Major companies like Apple and Disney ran online ads on X that appeared next to the hateful content, the CCDH report said. One ad from Walt Disney World ran below a post that insulted Black Americans while an Apple ad was displayed above a post insinuating Holocaust denial. Another ad from the corporate server company Supermicro was sandwiched between two pro-Nazi posts that contained images of a swastika.

“What this shows is that it takes out any excuses of this being about capacity to detect problematic content,” CCDH’s Ahmed told CNBC. “We’ve done the detection for you, and here’s how you responded, or here’s how we can see that you responded.”

Ahmed added, “Leaving up content like this is a choice, and that invites the question: Are you proud of the choices you’re making?”

While X’s process for users to report hateful content is “straightforward,” Ahmed said, “the problem is that people on the other end of the alarm bell either aren’t listening, they’ve got earplugs in and they’re ignoring everything, or they are being incredibly selective in what they choose to respond to.”

X did not respond to a request for comment, and instead pointed to a post saying that “based on the limited information we’ve seen, the CCDH is asserting two false claims – that X did not take action on violative posts and that violative posts reached a lot of people on our platform.”

“We either remove content that violates our policies or label and restrict the reach of certain posts,” the company said in the X post, adding that it would review the report when it is released and “take action as needed.”

While he didn’t comment on the specifics, Ahmed told CNBC that he believes X’s lawsuit was intended to place a financial burden on the CCDH, and that he estimates it will cost the nonprofit “half a million just to defend it.”

X attorneys have previously said that the CCDH’s prior research was an attempt to “to drive advertisers off Twitter by smearing the company and its owner.”

Last week, Elon Musk said that he was considering filing a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League, which he claimed was “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” Musk attributed a 60% decline in X’s U.S. advertising revenue to a pressure campaign from the ADL.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt soon responded by saying that Musk was merely issuing a “threat of a frivolous lawsuit” and said that the billionaire’s behavior was “flat out dangerous and deeply irresponsible,” referring to Musk engaging with “a highly toxic, antisemitic campaign” that helped foster the #BanTheADL campaign to trend on the messaging service.

Last Friday evening, X CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote a post on X saying that “X opposes antisemitism in all its forms” and that “Antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform.” Yaccarino’s post also pointed to a corporate blog post detailing the ways X is addressing antisemitic content on its platform, including improving automatic enforcement and providing training support for its “frontline moderators.”

Watch: If you don’t have the whole cloth of Musk you won’t get the innovation

Continue Reading

Technology

Deliveroo founder Will Shu to step down as CEO after DoorDash takeover

Published

on

By

Deliveroo founder Will Shu to step down as CEO after DoorDash takeover

Deliveroo CEO Will Shu.

Aurelien Morissard | IP3 | Getty Images

LONDON — Deliveroo CEO Will Shu is set to step down from the food delivery company he co-founded over a decade ago.

Shu, who established Deliveroo in 2013 with childhood friend Greg Orlowski, said Thursday that he will step down as CEO after its takeover by U.S. rival DoorDash is completed.

DoorDash announced its deal to buy the British online takeout platform in May. The acquisition values Deliveroo at £2.9 billion ($4 billion).

“I have decided that now is the right time for me to step down,” Shu said in a statement Thursday. “Taking Deliveroo from being an idea to what it is today has been amazing.”

“Today the Company’s growth and profitability are accelerating and we are delivering on our mission to transform the way people shop and eat, but after 13 years I want to contemplate my next challenge,” Shu added.

Deliveroo said that its acquisition by DoorDash “continues to progress as anticipated” and is expected to close on Oct. 2 following a scheduled Sept. 30 court hearing to sanction the deal.

Once it closes, the takeover will represent an end to Deliveroo’s tumultuous time in the public markets.

Deliveroo saw its shares plunge 30% in 2021 on the day of its initial public offering, dealing a significant blow to London’s ambitions to compete with New York for more high-profile tech listings.

WATCH: VC Saul Klein on how to boost UK tech sector

VC founder Saul Klein on how to boost UK tech sector

Continue Reading

Technology

Cold shoulder: Why Beijing is freezing Nvidia’s access to the Chinese market

Published

on

By

Cold shoulder: Why Beijing is freezing Nvidia's access to the Chinese market

The Nvidia logo appears on a smartphone reflecting the flags of China and the U.S.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Beijing has reportedly halted purchases of yet another AI chip from Nvidia, freezing it out of the market completely — a move industry experts say reflects the country’s growing confidence in domestic chip makers and an attempt at gaining trade leverage.

It was only a few months ago when Jensen Huang announced, from China, that the U.S. would allow it to resume sales of its made-for-China H20 graphics processing units, reversing a previous halt on their exports. 

At the time, Huang had also revealed the company’s new RTX Pro GPU for the Chinese market, which had been tailored for AI smart factories and logistics. 

But Nvidia’s fortunes flipped in August, when it was reported that regulators in China had begun mandating tech firms to halt purchases of Nvidia’s H20s pending a national security review. 

Now that the mandate has been expanded to Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D chip, rendering the company unable to sell any products to Chinese customers, according to a report by the Financial Times on Wednesday. 

That comes after Chinese regulators on Monday said that Nvidia had violated the country’s anti-monopoly law, as per a preliminary probe, adding they would continue their investigation.

While the exact motives of China’s actions against Nvidia remain unclear, tech and geopolitical analysts say the developments show China has become more confident in its own ability to make AI chips and is wielding that as a leverage against the U.S. 

Another Nvidia chip crumbles 

The reported reasons for Chinese regulators’ intervention in the H20 had been the need for a national security review over concerns that Nvidia chips could be outfitted with certain tracking systems — an idea proposed by American lawmakers.

Experts had characterized the move as part of Beijing’s efforts aimed at encouraging Chinese AI companies to explore domestic alternatives, though they forecast that exports would eventually be cleared due to high demand from Chinese AI players. 

Meanwhile, some Chinese AI companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D, and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia’s server suppliers up until they were asked to cease such activities, according to FT’s reporting. 

China banning purchases of Nvidia chips would likely hurt smaller companies: Analyst

The country’s regulators, however, blocked access to those Nvidia chips after summoning domestic AI chip makers and concluding they had reached performance comparable to the U.S. company’s made-for-China products, according to the FT. 

However, performance isn’t the only challenge facing China’s AI chips. Analysts contend that capacity is also a major barrier, with the domestic industry still unable to produce enough chips at scale. 

Reporting from the FT suggests Beijing has also become more confident in this area, with local chipmakers seeking to triple the country’s total output of AI processors next year.

“All these recent actions show that China has much more confidence in their domestic sector than they used to,” said Qingyuan Lin, a senior analyst covering China semiconductors at Bernstein.

China’s chip progress

There are signs that China’s AI ecosystem has been progressing. 

Chinese tech giant Huawei announced Thursday new AI compute infrastructure using its in-house Ascend chips, claiming they would be the “world’s most powerful.”

Research firm SemiAnalysis found in April that Huawei’s latest-generation CloudMatrix system was able to outperform Nvidia’s competing AI compute system on some metrics — despite each Ascend chip delivering only about one-third the performance of an Nvidia processor. Huawei built its advantage by having five times as many chips linked together.

Meanwhile, Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek had hinted last month that its latest AI model would be compatible with the country’s “next generation” homegrown AI chips. China’s Alibaba and Baidu have reportedly started using internally designed chips to help train their AI models, partly replacing those made by Nvidia. 

Still, analysts are skeptical about China’s ability to cut its dependence on Nvidia chips. 

“In terms of China’s domestic chip preparedness, I believe it is misleading to suggest the country can advance AI at a current level solely with domestic alternatives and without NVIDIA’s systematic offerings,” Ray Wang, research director for semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at Futurum Group, told CNBC. 

Seeking leverage? 

The TikTok deal could be a blueprint for thawing tense U.S.-China relations, says Plexo's Lo Toney

Under the Joe Biden administration, export controls on advanced chips had been increasingly tightened with the aim of blocking China’s access to the best American technology. That trend after accelerating initially under the Trump administration is now reversing.

According to Reva Goujon, director at Rhodium Group, by rejecting the H20 and RTX Pro, Beijing could be looking to create an opportunity to negotiate access to more advanced GPUs.

She added that it’s likely not a coincidence that it comes amid other leverage-building by China this week, referring to its recent anti-dumping investigation into imports of certain analog chips from the U.S.

“As Beijing tests Trump’s transactionalism, it has to build up leverage of its own,” she said.

Continue Reading

Technology

Mark Zuckerberg unveils $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses

Published

on

By

Mark Zuckerberg unveils 9 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses

At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses.

Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday unveiled the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, the social media company’s first consumer-ready smart glasses with a built-in display.

The glasses, which costs $799, contain a small digital display that can be controlled via hand gestures through a wristband powered by neural technology, confirming a CNBC report in August. A promotional video of the new smart glasses appeared on Meta’s YouTube page on Monday but was later removed.

Tune in Thursday at 11:00 a.m. ET: Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox joins CNBC TV to discuss with Julia Boorstin the highlights of Meta’s annual Connect event, live from the company’s HQ in Menlo Park CA.

The new smart glasses are a bridge between the company’s audio-only Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and the experimental Orion augmented reality glasses that the company revealed at last year’s Connect event. Orion can overlay 3D visuals over a person’s real-world field of view with the help of a wireless computing puck, but the glasses are expensive to make and not yet available to consumers.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses come with the Meta Neural Band, an EMG wristband that allows users to control the device using hand gestures.

“These are glasses with the classic style that you’d expect from Ray-Ban, but they’re the first AI glasses with a high resolution display and a fully weighted Meta neural band,” Zuckerberg said.

With the new glasses, people can do tasks like watch videos through the display or see and respond to text messages, Zuckerberg said. The display doesn’t block a person’s view, and it disappears when not being used, he said.

The glasses go on sale in the U.S. on Sept. 30.

During a demo, Zuckerberg repeatedly attempted to call Meta tech chief Andrew Bosworth unsuccessfully.

“This is uh — you know, it happens,” Zuckerberg said.

Meta has been developing its smart glasses with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica since 2019, and last year renewed a long-term partnership agreement to continue making the products.

The company on Wednesday also debuted the Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses, intended for athletes who participate in high-intensity sports like snowboarding and mountain biking. The Oakley-branded glasses will cost $499 when they launch on Oct. 21, making it $100 more expensive than the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses that went on sale in June.

The Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses have a sportier look than the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses thanks to a wraparound design that extends its colorful lenses around a person’s temples. Unlike the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses, the new model contains a button on the underside of its frames so that athletes who wear helmets can more easily capture photos and videos.

The new sports-centric smart glasses have up to nine hours of battery life, can capture 3K video and contain speakers that are louder than their predecessors. The glasses can connect with Garmin-branded fitness watches to track certain stats like their heart rates using the Meta AI assistant. Preorders start today.

Meta also debuted the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), the latest version of the company’s original smart glasses. The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) costs $379, up from $299 for the version released in 2023. The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) has double the battery life of the previous model, lasting 8 hours on a single charge, and a more powerful camera that can capture 3K Ultra HD video. The new glasses go on sale today.

Zuckerberg also announced Horizon TV, pitching it as a way to watch television shows, sporting events and movies using the company’s Quest VR headsets. Some of Meta’s partners who will be contributing content to the app include Disney and Universal Pictures, Zuckerberg said.

WATCH: Tech management in the AI era. Here’s what to know.

AI disruption of entry-level roles now climbing the corporate ladder

Continue Reading

Trending