Connect with us

Published

2 months ago

on

Scott Olson | Getty Images

Social media firms have responded to allegations of “shadow banning” their users for Palestinian-related content amid the conflict in Gaza, saying that the implication that Big Tech “deliberately and systemically suppress a particular voice” is false.

They have been accused of blocking certain content or users from their online communities since the onset of the war between Israel and Hamas which started in October.

Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, for example, criticized major platforms for allegedly limiting Palestinian-related content about the war.

“It can be nearly impossible to prove that you have been shadow-banned or censored. Yet, it is hard for users to trust platforms that control their content from the shadows, based on vague standards,” Queen Rania told the Web Summit in Doha.

They have been criticized for relying too heavily on “automated tools for content removal to moderate or translate Palestine-related content,” according to a Human Rights Watch report on the subject.

Hussein Freijeh, the vice president of MENA for Snapchat, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at Web Summit Qatar last week that these firms have “a really important role to play in the region.”

“We have all the algorithms in place to moderate the content,” Freijeh added, saying the platform also uses a “human component to moderate that content to make sure that it’s safe for our community.”

As an information war plays out online between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli narratives, platforms like Snapchat, and Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook have become a key source for users seeking content and information about the conflict.

Foreign journalists are not allowed to report from the besieged Gaza Strip, blocking coverage from international media outlets. Journalists have begged Israel to rethink access, arguing that on-the-ground reporting is “imperative.”

Middle East depends on social media

The Middle East is one of the youngest regions in the world, and according to a UNESCO report from 2023, “young people in the Middle East and North Africa region now get their information from YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.”

Snap exec discusses how it's managing content amid the Israel-Gaza war

According to the OECD, more than half the population (55%) of the Middle East and North Africa is under 30, and nearly two-thirds rely on social media for news.

Dozens of Instagram users, who preferred to keep their identities private, have reported to CNBC that posts or stories, which include ground footage of the war in Gaza or social commentary by Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voices, received less engagement than other posts of theirs not related to the war.

Those same users reported that posts often take longer to be seen by followers, or are sometimes skipped in a sequence of stories. The users have also reported to CNBC that some posts were deleted by Instagram and were told that such posts failed to follow “community guidelines.”

One Instagram user told CNBC that the alleged “shadow banning” on their account and others in their network didn’t begin on Oct. 7, saying they saw a limitation of content in previous iterations of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, namely during the forced removal of families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in 2021. CNBC has not independently verified these claims.

Women's voices are not at the table enough in peace-making, says former Irish president

Meta also rolled out a “fact-checking” function on Instagram in December of last year, increasing speculation that the social media site was censoring certain content.

A Human Rights Watch report on Meta’s alleged censorship, published in December 2023, found that “the parent company of Facebook and Instagram has a well-documented record of overbroad crackdowns on content related to Palestine.”

The report added: “Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook in a wave of heightened censorship of social media.”

The report documented over 1,000 “takedowns” of content from Instagram and Facebook platforms from over 60 countries between October and November of 2023.

A Meta spokesperson told CNBC the HRW report “ignores the realities of enforcing our policies globally during a fast-moving, highly polarized and intense conflict, which has led to an increase in content being reported to us.”

“Our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while at the same time keeping our platforms safe. We readily acknowledge we make errors that can be frustrating for people, but the implication that we deliberately and systemically suppress a particular voice is false.”

Speaking more broadly, the Meta spokesperson told CNBC that “Instagram is not intentionally limiting people’s stories reach,” and that it does “not hide/deprioritize posts from a user’s followers based on whether a hashtag tagged to the post is blocked.”

In addition, Meta uses “technology and human review teams to detect and review content that may go against our Community Guidelines. In instances where we recognize that a decision has been inaccurate, we will restore the content.”

Meta also told CNBC that “given the higher volumes of content being reported to us, we know content that doesn’t violate our policies may be removed in error.”

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Technology

Apple’s falling iPhone sales don’t bother Wall Street so long as margins, buybacks are increasing

Published

6 hours ago

on

May 3, 2024

By

Apple's falling iPhone sales don't bother Wall Street so long as margins, buybacks are increasing

A 10% decline in iPhone sales sounds like a problem for Apple, considering the company counts on the devices for half its revenue.

But investors didn’t seem to mind Thursday, when Apple revealed the year-over-year drop in its fiscal second-quarter earnings report. The stock rose more than 6% after the market close, a rally that would be the steepest since November 2022 should it continue into regular trading Friday.

Instead of glaring too much at iPhone revenue, Wall Street chose to focus on the positive. Apple’s gross margin expanded to 46.6%, continuing an upward trajectory that reflects the company’s growing services business, which brings with it stout profits.

Apple also signaled overall revenue growth in the current quarter will be in the low single digits, after a 4% decline in the second period. Analysts were looking for third-quarter growth of 1.3%, according to LSEG.

Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster described the guidance as a “relief” given the recent trajectory of the business.

“I was expecting this was going to be flat, some investors were saying it was going to be down a few percent in June,” Munster told CNBC’s “Fast Money” after the report. “I think that was a big part of this move higher.”

But perhaps the biggest catalyst for the pop was Apple’s announcement that it had approved $110 billion of share buybacks, the most ever for a public company. For the past three years, Apple has authorized $90 billion in annual repurchases.

The after-hours jump shows how much investors are valuing Apple’s massive cash flow and the company’s willingness to return more of it to shareholders. It’s a shift in the way Apple has been viewed by Wall Street over the years, away from a hits-driven gadgets business and toward a financial powerhouse.

“Our free cash flow generation has been very strong over the years, particularly the last few years,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri said on an earnings call.

Apple revealed earlier this year that it has 2.2 billion active devices, illustrating the mammoth reach of its customer base as the company rolls out new subscription services. Despite the 4% drop in revenue, Apple still recorded nearly $24 billion in profit, a slip of just over 2% from a year earlier.

Apple said iPhone sales suffered from a difficult comparison to last year, when sales were elevated after previous shortages. Still, investors are looking for future iPhone growth, and many analysts say a potential iPhone with artificial intelligence features could do the trick and help the company snag customers from Android. Annual iPhone revenue peaked in Apple’s fiscal 2022.

While Apple provided some guidance for total revenue, it avoided offering any sort of forecast for iPhone sales.

That’s a change, even for a company that’s been giving less forward guidance since the pandemic. Maestri typically provides trends on iPhone sales, and had for the past four quarters.

There’s no guarantee investors will be able to continue counting on increased buybacks from a company that’s been more aggressive in that department than any other. Apple says it’s trying to draw down its huge cash pile, which stood at $162 billion at the end of the quarter. When its debt is roughly equal to its cash balance — meaning the company is net cash neutral — Apple will evaluate what to do next, executives said Thursday.

As of the end of 2023, Apple had spent $658 billion on buybacks over the past 10 years, far ahead of second-place Microsoft, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

“For the last couple of years we were doing $90 billion and now we’re doing $110 billion,” Maestri said on the call.

In terms of what happens when Apple gets to net cash neutral, Maestri said, “let’s get there first. It’s going to take a while still.”

“And then when we are there,” he said, “we’re going to reassess and see what is the optimum capital structure for the company at that point in time.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Don’t rate Tesla’s Full Self Driving too highly, tech investor says: ‘By no means autonomous driving’

Published

6 hours ago

on

May 3, 2024

By

Don't rate Tesla's Full Self Driving too highly, tech investor says: 'By no means autonomous driving'

People are shopping at a Tesla store in Shanghai, China, on Feb. 17, 2024.

Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

News of electric car giant Tesla’s progress toward rolling out its advanced driver-assistance feature in China isn’t as groundbreaking as investors are treating it, according to a top tech investor.

Mark Hawtin, GAM Investment Management’s investment director focused on investing in disruptive growth and technology stocks, told CNBC’ “Squawk Box Europe” Thursday that such expectations were misleading — not least because Tesla’s Full Self Driving service doesn’t offer full autonomous driving.

“We should say what they’re doing — everyone’s talking about this full self-driving capability,” Hawtin told CNBC. “What they’re going to be able to do in China is what they already do in the U.S. or U.K., which is sort of this assisted-driver capability.”

On Monday, shares of Tesla rose sharply, notching their best day since March 2021, after it passed a significant milestone toward the launch of FSD in China. Local Chinese authorities removed restrictions on its cars after passing the country’s data security requirements, Tesla said Sunday.

This raised expectations that Tesla’s FSD would soon be available in China. Tesla shares are up 6.7% in the last five trading days, largely on the back of buzz surrounding its roadmap to bringing FSD to China — plus, comments from CEO Elon Musk about plans to start production of more affordable models in early 2025.

But Hawtin said that the company’s so-called Full Self Driving service lacks the qualities that would make it an example of truly self-driving technology.

“It’s by no means autonomous driving yet,” he told CNBC. He thinks that a version of Tesla FSD capable of “true autonomy” is still five to 10 years away.

Hawtin said that Tesla’s reported deal with China’s Baidu is a bigger short-term win for Baidu than Tesla, adding that competition is intense in China with names like BYD, Huawei, Xpeng, Li Auto, and Xiaomi all supplying technology capable of Level 2 autonomy.

Tesla reportedly scored a deal with Baidu that would allow Musk’s firm to tap into Baidu’s mapping service license, a key requirement for offering FSD on Chinese public roads, per Reuters.

Tesla was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Full Self Driving, or FSD, is an upgrade to Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistant. Tesla doesn’t yet make or sell cars capable of full autonomous driving. It sells “Level 2” driver-assistance systems, marketed under the brand name FSD.

“Level 3” assisted driving, otherwise known as “conditional automation,” entails systems that handle all aspects of driving, but a driver still must be present, according to the SAE standards-setting organization.

Tesla has offered its FSD technology in China for years, but with a restricted feature set that limits it to operations like automated lane changing.

GAM does not own shares of Tesla, and Hawtin said he doesn’t personally own shares either.

– CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report

Continue Reading

Technology

Apple on pace for best day since 2022 after earnings beat, $110 billion stock buyback

Published

6 hours ago

on

May 3, 2024

By

Apple on pace for best day since 2022 after earnings beat, 0 billion stock buyback

Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook attends the China Development Forum in Beijing on March 24, 2024. 

Pedro Pardo | AFP  | Getty Images

Apple shares popped more than 6% on Friday morning after the company reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and the largest-ever stock buyback program. If the gains hold until the market closes, it will be the best day for Apple shares since Nov. 30, 2022.

The iPhone maker announced on Thursday it would repurchase $110 billion of its shares, the biggest buyback in U.S. history, surpassing Apple’s prior repurchases. The company posted earnings of $1.53 per share on revenue of $90.75 billion, exceeding analysts’ estimates of earnings of $1.50 per share on revenue of $90.01 billion, according to LSEG.

But overall sales decreased 4% and iPhone sales dropped 10% year over year during the quarter, indicating flagging demand for the smartphone’s latest generation. Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that quarterly sales suffered from a difficult comparison to the year-earlier period.

Analysts at Bank of America reiterated their buy rating of Apple stock — calling it a top pick — and raised their price target to $230 from $225 in a Friday investor note, writing that they expect the company to roll out generative artificial intelligence features for the iPhone this year.

“Apple is growing iPhones in Mainland China, estimate revisions are turning positive and GenAI features will drive a strong upgrade cycle,” they wrote.

JPMorgan analysts, maintaining an overweight rating, lifted their price target for Apple to $225 from $210 on Thursday, pointing to “resilient” year-over-year iPhone revenues and “expectations of an upgrade cycle-led tailwind in iPads” ahead of Apple’s product launch event next week.

“All in all, while modest revenue growth year-over-year might not be the ideal outcome,” they wrote, “it now provides visibility into higher revenue opportunities in the coming years with tailwinds from product cycles across hardware devices as well as an AI-led smartphone cycle further boosting growth.”

Morgan Stanley analysts retained their overweight rating of Apple and hiked their price target to $216 from $210 on Friday, citing the company’s quarterly performance, year-over-year growth in iPhone shipments to China in March, stock buyback and hints at AI updates to come.

“It’s hard not to get more bullish here,” they wrote.

CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending