Connect with us

Published

on

From the outset of this weekend’s Israel-Hamas conflict, graphic footage of abductions and military operations have spread like wildfire on social media platforms, including X, formerly known as Twitter. But disinformation on the platform has made it harder for users to assess what’s going on in the region.

Over the weekend, X flagged several posts as misleading or false, including a video purportedly showing Israeli airstrikes against Hamas in Gaza. Thousands of users saw the posts, and the most widely shared posts were flagged as misleading by the platform. Still, dozens of posts with the same video and caption were not flagged by X’s system, according to CNBC’s review.

The patchwork enforcement comes days after NBC News reported that X made cuts to its disinformation and election integrity team. Shortly before Hamas launched its surprise attack, X removed headlines from links on the platform, making external links difficult to tell apart from standard photos shared on X.

Before Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the company’s management had devoted significant resources to fighting manipulated or misleading information. After Musk took over, renaming the platform, he slashed head count in teams dedicated to fighting misinformation and criticized the company’s past work with the U.S. government on Covid-19 disinformation.

Under Musk, X has prioritized user-driven content tagging with Community Notes, the preexisting feature formerly known as Birdwatch. But a September study from the EU found that despite the feature, which adds crowdsourced context to posts, disinformation was more discoverable on X than on any other social media platform and received more engagement than on other platforms, on a relative basis.

Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute, studies hate and right-wing extremism on social media and in the real world. Goldenberg told CNBC that even before Musk’s tenure, Twitter had a challenging time handling non-English disinformation.

“I’ve often found that mis- and disinformation and incitement to violence in the English language are prioritized, but those in Arabic are often overlooked,” Goldenberg said. He added that NCRI has noted an uptick in “recycled videos and photos from older conflict being associated, intentionally sometimes, with this particular conflict.”

Users have noticed the impact of the changes to X’s content moderation, and some have fallen prey to sharing disinformation on the platform.

“It’s remarkable how Elon Musk has destroyed what was perhaps the best thing about Twitter: the ability to get relatively accurate and trustworthy data in real time when there’s a crisis,” Paul Bernal, an IT law professor at the University of East Anglia in England, wrote on X on Monday.

On Sunday, a British politician shared a video purportedly from a BBC correspondent. “Following some pretty appalling equivocation and whataboutary from the BBC yesterday and this morning, now this from a BBC journalist,” wrote Chris Clarkson, a member of parliament for Heywood & Middleton.

The video was not from a BBC correspondent; Clarkson wrote Monday that his “comments on the BBC stand” but conceded that the original post was not from a BBC journalist.

Although government verification now awards certain accounts a silver checkmark, verification for notable individuals and reporters was phased out in favor of paid Twitter Blue verification, making it “even more difficult to ascertain whether the messenger of a particular message or its content is authentic,” Goldenberg said.

Some Hamas-created propaganda videos have also been circulating on X. While the terrorist organization is banned from most social media platforms, including X, it continues to share videos on Telegram. Those videos — including some from the most recent assault on Israel — are often reshared onto X, Goldenberg told CNBC. And that can have real-world effects.

“As we’ve seen in the past, especially in May of 2021, for example, when tensions rise in the region, there’s a high possibility of a rise in hate crimes targeting the Jewish community outside of the region,” Goldenberg said.

Paid verification purportedly boosts a user’s posts and comments on X, and some posts tagged as misleading have come from those verified users. Musk himself has amplified such posts on several occasions — both pertaining to the conflict in Ukraine and more recently in Israel. On Sunday, Musk encouraged his 160 million followers to follow two accounts which Musk said had “good” content about the conflict.

One of those users had made anti-Semitic posts in the past, including one where the person told a Twitter user to “mind your own business, jew.” Musk later deleted his post promoting the account.

Correction: This article has been updated to correctly reflect Alex Goldenberg’s comment on English-language disinformation on X and Twitter. A previous version contained a transcription error.

Continue Reading

Technology

Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

Published

on

By

Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

WATCH: Tesla’s decade-long journey to robotaxis

Tesla's decade-long journey to robotaxis

Continue Reading

Technology

Intuit shares pop 9% on earnings beat, rosy guidance

Published

on

By

Intuit shares pop 9% on earnings beat, rosy guidance

Intuit CEO: This is the fastest organic growth in over a decade

Shares of Intuit popped about 9% on Friday, a day after the company reported quarterly results that beat analysts’ estimates and issued rosy guidance for the full year.

Intuit, which is best known for its TurboTax and QuickBooks software, said revenue in the fiscal third quarter increased 15% to $7.8 billion. Net income rose 18% to $2.82 billion, or $10.02 per share, from $2.39 billion, or $8.42 per share, a year earlier.

“This is the fastest organic growth that we have had in over a decade,” Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Thursday. “It’s really incredible growth across the platform.”

For its full fiscal year, Intuit said it expects to report revenue of $18.72 billion to $18.76 billion, up from the range of $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion it shared last quarter. Analysts were expecting $18.35 billion, according to LSEG.

“We’re redefining what’s possible with [artificial intelligence] by becoming a one-stop shop of AI-agents and AI-enabled human experts to fuel the success of consumers and small and mid-market businesses,” Goodarzi said in a release Thursday.

Read more CNBC tech news

Goldman Sachs analysts reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $860 from $750 on Thursday. The analysts said Intuit’s execution across its core growth pillars is “reinforcing confidence” in its growth profile over the long term.

The company’s AI roadmap, which includes the introduction of AI agents, will add additional upside, the analysts added.

“In our view, Intuit stands out as a rare asset straddling both consumer and business ecosystems, all while supplemented by AI-prioritization,” the Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank also reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $815 from $750.

They said the company’s results were “reassuring” after a rocky two years and that they feel more confident about its ability to grow the consumer business.

“Longer term, we continue to believe Intuit presents a unique investment opportunity and we see its platform approach powering accelerated innovation with leverage, thus enabling sustained mid-teens or better EPS growth,” the analysts wrote in a Friday note.

WATCH: Intuit CEO: This is the fastest organic growth in over a decade

Continue Reading

Technology

Why Trump’s iPhone tariff threat might not be enough to bring production to the U.S.

Published

on

By

Why Trump's iPhone tariff threat might not be enough to bring production to the U.S.

FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook escorts U.S. President Donald Trump as he tours Apple’s Mac Pro manufacturing plant with in Austin, Texas, U.S., November 20, 2019.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

The once-solid relationship between President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook is breaking down over the idea of a U.S.-made iPhone.

Last week, Trump said he “had a little problem with Tim Cook,” and on Friday, he threatened to slap a 25% tariff on iPhones in a social media post.

Trump is upset with Apple’s plan to source the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. from its factory partners in India, instead of China. Cook officially confirmed this plan earlier this month during earnings.

Trump wants Apple to build iPhones for the U.S. market in the U.S. and has continued to pressure the company and Cook.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United  States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday.

Analysts said it would probably make more sense for Apple to eat the cost rather than move production stateside.

“In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to US,” wrote Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.

UBS analyst David Vogt said that the potential 25% tariffs were a “jarring headline,” but that they would only be a “modest headwind” to Apple’s earnings, dropping annual earnings by 51 cents per share, versus a prior expectation of 34 cents per share under the current tariff landscape.

Experts have long held that a U.S.-made iPhone is impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.

Analysts have said that made in U.S.A. iPhones would be much more expensive, CNBC previously reported, with some estimates ranging between $1,500 to $3,500 to buy one at retail. Labor costs would certainly rise.

But it would also be logistically complicated.

Read more CNBC tech news

Supply chains and factories take years to build out, including installing equipment and staffing up. Parts that Apple imported to the United States for assembly might be subject to tariffs as well.

Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 but it was only in recent years that the region was capable of building Apple’s latest devices.

“We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a note on Friday.

Other analysts were wary about predicting how Trump’s threat ultimately plays out. Apple might be able to strike a deal with the administration — despite the eroding relationship — or challenge the tariffs in court.

For now, most of Apple’s most important products are exempt from tariffs after Trump gave phones and computers a tariff waiver — even from China — in April, but Apple doesn’t know how the Trump administration’s tariffs will ultimately play out beyond June.

“We’re skeptical,” that the 25% tariff will materialize, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers.

He wrote that Apple could try to preserve its roughly 41% gross margin on iPhones by raising prices in the U.S. by between $100 or $300 per phone.

It’s unclear how Trump intends to target Apple’s India-made iPhones. Rakers wrote that the administration could put specific tariffs on phone imports from India.

Apple’s operations in India continue to expand.

Foxconn, which assembles iPhones for Apple, is building a new $1.5 billion factory in India that could do some iPhone production, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

Apple declined to comment on Trump’s post.

Continue Reading

Trending