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A logo of US company’s Meta is displayed during the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on May 22, 2024.

Julien De Rosa | Afp | Getty Images

A former Meta staffer who was placed on a “Do Not Hire” list after he stalked and harassed one of the company’s employees found himself rehired by the tech giant after it gutted its talent and recruitment department, a lawsuit filed Tuesday says. 

The suit, filed in New York Supreme Court on behalf of Meta employee James Napoli, accuses the company of violating New York City’s human rights law and negligence for hiring the person back. It also accuses the company of retaliation after it allegedly sidelined Napoli and took him off big projects when he raised concerns that the person had been rehired.

“I had spoken to my employer about this … on numerous occasions and I was told that he would not be able to enter our offices, that he would not be hired again, and then like, all of a sudden, this guy is reaching out to me [on Meta’s internal messaging system],” Napoli, a marketing leader who works out of Meta’s New York City office, told CNBC in an interview. “I trusted that my employer would be able to keep me safe, right? Because stalkers and harassers are also workplace hazards. … And this isn’t just a hazard for me, this is a dangerous individual that was let back into the workplace.” 

The lawsuit comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in March 2023 that Meta would be reducing the size of its recruiting team as part of a larger strategy to cut 21,000 jobs, remove layers of middle management and operate more efficiently.

Although Wall Street has responded favorably to Meta’s cost-cutting plans, layoffs in the company’s customer service and trust and safety teams have made it harder for the social networking giant to respond to concerns from small businesses and influencers, as well as state and local election officials who use Facebook and Instagram, CNBC has previously reported.

In the aftermath of Meta’s cost-cutting efforts and ensuing layoffs, attorneys for Napoli say in the lawsuit that the company is relying “more heavily on hiring employees through outside contractors” and employs “far fewer recruiters to screen applicants,” which has negatively impacted their ability to properly catch red flags.

“Meta’s employment practices are apparently so chaotic, reckless, and ineffectual that the company fails to keep track of the most fundamental data point in its workplace – the dangerous people who pose a severe risk to Meta’s own employees,” the lawsuit, filed by attorneys Carrie Goldberg and Peter Romer-Friedman, states. “Yet Meta tells the public and public officials that the company has the ability to safeguard the personal data of billions of children and adults on their platforms.”

Meta has previously dealt with similar allegations that it’s employed workers who have engaged in stalking and related activity. For example, in 2018, the company said it fired a security engineer who allegedly used internal data to stalk women online.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on the lawsuit filed Tuesday.

‘Do Not Hire’ list

The person accused of stalking Napoli, identified only by the initials “G.F.” in the complaint, was a member of Meta’s marketing team before he was laid off in November 2022 when the company cut 13% of its staff as part of a larger restructuring. 

Before the layoffs, G.F. and Napoli occasionally saw each other in meetings but were no more than “work acquaintances,” Napoli said. After G.F. lost his job, he reached out to Napoli for support and asked him to get a coffee. During that meeting, the accused stalker started making “disturbing” comments, the filing states. 

“[He] told me that he hears voices, God talks to him, and God had been talking to him about me since April of that year, and he sent me a list of documents that were his like journal entries over the months,” Napoli recalled.

Napoli “immediately” reported the incident to his manager and to HR, and says at first he was concerned for G.F.’s well-being. But over the next year, Napoli says, the situation escalated. 

G.F. began sending Napoli up to 30 messages a day, contacting his family members and referencing Napoli’s partner, friends and even his dog, Luigi, in messages. 

“I am being mind tortured with an A.I tech which I don’t know where it’s coming from and I am feeling like my love for you is being used for experiences I didn’t agree for, while I am being told by spirits that you and I are the two messengers,” G.F. wrote in one message to Napoli, according to the complaint. 

G.F. found out where Napoli lived and “personally delivered a large ream of disturbing writings and drawings” to the apartment, forcing Napoli and his partner to move, the lawsuit says. 

“It really felt like I was drowning for a long time because there was just nothing that I could do to escape. … It was really terrifying,” said Napoli. “I was worried about going out, I was worried about my dog, I was worried about my partner, because they were all mentioned by this person.” 

Napoli reported G.F. to the police and considered getting a restraining order, but under New York state law orders of protection are only available to people who have an intimate or familial relationship to their stalker, the lawsuit states. 

In September 2023, Napoli informed Meta that the stalking had increased “in both frequency and severity,” and the HR department assured him that G.F. was on the company’s “Do Not Hire” list and its “No Entry” list, which identifies people who shouldn’t be permitted into company buildings.

But just four months later, the company hired G.F. back to a contractor position after he apparently slipped through the cracks in the hiring process, the lawsuit says. Napoli learned his accused stalker was back at Meta when G.F.’s name popped up on Workplace, the company’s internal messaging system. Napoli says he received a message from G.F. stating that he’d been rehired and would be seeing him at meetings and events. 

“To have all of that come back after I was guaranteed that I would be kept safe, it was really harrowing,” said Napoli. “I immediately went to [HR]… they let me know that they were equally stunned. They didn’t have an answer as to how it happened, and they let me know that they would investigate.” 

Terminated again

For the next month, Napoli says he “lived in terror of interacting with G.F. at work” until Meta notified him that G.F. had been terminated. However, after G.F. lost his job a second time, his “stalking and harassment of Mr. Napoli significantly amplified and became more creative, sexually violent, and obsessive,” the lawsuit states.

As Napoli grappled with the continued stalking, he also faced what the lawsuit says was retaliation at Meta for complaining to his managers and to HR about the decision to rehire G.F.

Napoli had been tapped to lead an artificial intelligence marketing push at Meta, but says that in response to his complaints, those projects were taken away and he found himself sidelined with reduced responsibilities. 

In his complaint, Napoli is asking for damages but didn’t specify an amount. He also asked the court to enter judgements that would prohibit G.F. from being rehired at Meta and prohibit the company from “engaging in any further discriminatory or retaliatory acts” against Napoli. 

“I want to be able to do my job, and I want to be able to do my job without feeling like the shoe is going to drop,” said Napoli. “I am very passionate about my work, and I take a lot of pride in my work, and that is really all I want to be able to do.” 

Napoli said he decided to tell his story because he wants Meta to make reforms that would prevent something like this from happening again. 

“It doesn’t seem to me as though there are the right processes in place to stop this from happening to … me or to someone else,” said Napoli. “Everybody deserves a safe workplace.” 

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How Elon Musk’s plan to slash government agencies and regulation may benefit his empire

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How Elon Musk’s plan to slash government agencies and regulation may benefit his empire

Elon Musk’s business empire is sprawling. It includes electric vehicle maker Tesla, social media company X, artificial intelligence startup xAI, computer interface company Neuralink, tunneling venture Boring Company and aerospace firm SpaceX. 

Some of his ventures already benefit tremendously from federal contracts. SpaceX has received more than $19 billion from contracts with the federal government, according to research from FedScout. Under a second Trump presidency, more lucrative contracts could come its way. SpaceX is on track to take in billions of dollars annually from prime contracts with the federal government for years to come, according to FedScout CEO Geoff Orazem.

Musk, who has frequently blamed the government for stifling innovation, could also push for less regulation of his businesses. Earlier this month, Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped by Trump to lead a government efficiency group called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

In a recent commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that DOGE will “pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.” They went on to say that many existing federal regulations were never passed by Congress and should therefore be nullified, which President-elect Trump could accomplish through executive action. Musk and Ramaswamy also championed the large-scale auditing of agencies, calling out the Pentagon for failing its seventh consecutive audit. 

“The number one way Elon Musk and his companies would benefit from a Trump administration is through deregulation and defanging, you know, giving fewer resources to federal agencies tasked with oversight of him and his businesses,” says CNBC technology reporter Lora Kolodny.

To learn how else Elon Musk and his companies may benefit from having the ear of the president-elect watch the video.

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Why X’s new terms of service are driving some users to leave Elon Musk’s platform

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Why X's new terms of service are driving some users to leave Elon Musk's platform

Elon Musk attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Nov. 14, 2024.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

X’s new terms of service, which took effect Nov. 15, are driving some users off Elon Musk’s microblogging platform. 

The new terms include expansive permissions requiring users to allow the company to use their data to train X’s artificial intelligence models while also making users liable for as much as $15,000 in damages if they use the platform too much. 

The terms are prompting some longtime users of the service, both celebrities and everyday people, to post that they are taking their content to other platforms. 

“With the recent and upcoming changes to the terms of service — and the return of volatile figures — I find myself at a crossroads, facing a direction I can no longer fully support,” actress Gabrielle Union posted on X the same day the new terms took effect, while announcing she would be leaving the platform.

“I’m going to start winding down my Twitter account,” a user with the handle @mplsFietser said in a post. “The changes to the terms of service are the final nail in the coffin for me.”

It’s unclear just how many users have left X due specifically to the company’s new terms of service, but since the start of November, many social media users have flocked to Bluesky, a microblogging startup whose origins stem from Twitter, the former name for X. Some users with new Bluesky accounts have posted that they moved to the service due to Musk and his support for President-elect Donald Trump.

Bluesky’s U.S. mobile app downloads have skyrocketed 651% since the start of November, according to estimates from Sensor Tower. In the same period, X and Meta’s Threads are up 20% and 42%, respectively. 

X and Threads have much larger monthly user bases. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates X had 318 million monthly users as of October. That same month, Meta said Threads had nearly 275 million monthly users. Bluesky told CNBC on Thursday it had reached 21 million total users this week.

Here are some of the noteworthy changes in X’s new service terms and how they compare with those of rivals Bluesky and Threads.

Artificial intelligence training

X has come under heightened scrutiny because of its new terms, which say that any content on the service can be used royalty-free to train the company’s artificial intelligence large language models, including its Grok chatbot.

“You agree that this license includes the right for us to (i) provide, promote, and improve the Services, including, for example, for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type,” X’s terms say.

Additionally, any “user interactions, inputs and results” shared with Grok can be used for what it calls “training and fine-tuning purposes,” according to the Grok section of the X app and website. This specific function, though, can be turned off manually. 

X’s terms do not specify whether users’ private messages can be used to train its AI models, and the company did not respond to a request for comment.

“You should only provide Content that you are comfortable sharing with others,” read a portion of X’s terms of service agreement.

Though X’s new terms may be expansive, Meta’s policies aren’t that different. 

The maker of Threads uses “information shared on Meta’s Products and services” to get its training data, according to the company’s Privacy Center. This includes “posts or photos and their captions.” There is also no direct way for users outside of the European Union to opt out of Meta’s AI training. Meta keeps training data “for as long as we need it on a case-by-case basis to ensure an AI model is operating appropriately, safely and efficiently,” according to its Privacy Center. 

Under Meta’s policy, private messages with friends or family aren’t used to train AI unless one of the users in a chat chooses to share it with the models, which can include Meta AI and AI Studio.

Bluesky, which has seen a user growth surge since Election Day, doesn’t do any generative AI training. 

“We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so,” Bluesky said in a post on its platform Friday, confirming the same to CNBC as well.

Liquidated damages

Bluesky CEO: Our platform is 'radically different' from anything else in social media

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The Pentagon’s battle inside the U.S. for control of a new Cyber Force

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The Pentagon's battle inside the U.S. for control of a new Cyber Force

A recent Chinese cyber-espionage attack inside the nation’s major telecom networks that may have reached as high as the communications of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance was designated this week by one U.S. senator as “far and away the most serious telecom hack in our history.”

The U.S. has yet to figure out the full scope of what China accomplished, and whether or not its spies are still inside U.S. communication networks.

“The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told the New York Times on Thursday.

The revelations highlight the rising cyberthreats tied to geopolitics and nation-state actor rivals of the U.S., but inside the federal government, there’s disagreement on how to fight back, with some advocates calling for the creation of an independent federal U.S. Cyber Force. In September, the Department of Defense formally appealed to Congress, urging lawmakers to reject that approach.

Among one of the most prominent voices advocating for the new branch is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank, but the issue extends far beyond any single group. In June, defense committees in both the House and Senate approved measures calling for independent evaluations of the feasibility to create a separate cyber branch, as part of the annual defense policy deliberations.

Drawing on insights from more than 75 active-duty and retired military officers experienced in cyber operations, the FDD’s 40-page report highlights what it says are chronic structural issues within the U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), including fragmented recruitment and training practices across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

“America’s cyber force generation system is clearly broken,” the FDD wrote, citing comments made in 2023 by then-leader of U.S. Cyber Command, Army General Paul Nakasone, who took over the role in 2018 and described current U.S. military cyber organization as unsustainable: “All options are on the table, except the status quo,” Nakasone had said.

Concern with Congress and a changing White House

The FDD analysis points to “deep concerns” that have existed within Congress for a decade — among members of both parties — about the military being able to staff up to successfully defend cyberspace. Talent shortages, inconsistent training, and misaligned missions, are undermining CYBERCOM’s capacity to respond effectively to complex cyber threats, it says. Creating a dedicated branch, proponents argue, would better position the U.S. in cyberspace. The Pentagon, however, warns that such a move could disrupt coordination, increase fragmentation, and ultimately weaken U.S. cyber readiness.

As the Pentagon doubles down on its resistance to establishment of a separate U.S. Cyber Force, the incoming Trump administration could play a significant role in shaping whether America leans toward a centralized cyber strategy or reinforces the current integrated framework that emphasizes cross-branch coordination.

Known for his assertive national security measures, Trump’s 2018 National Cyber Strategy emphasized embedding cyber capabilities across all elements of national power and focusing on cross-departmental coordination and public-private partnerships rather than creating a standalone cyber entity. At that time, the Trump’s administration emphasized centralizing civilian cybersecurity efforts under the Department of Homeland Security while tasking the Department of Defense with addressing more complex, defense-specific cyber threats. Trump’s pick for Secretary of Homeland Security, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, has talked up her, and her state’s, focus on cybersecurity.

Former Trump officials believe that a second Trump administration will take an aggressive stance on national security, fill gaps at the Energy Department, and reduce regulatory burdens on the private sector. They anticipate a stronger focus on offensive cyber operations, tailored threat vulnerability protection, and greater coordination between state and local governments. Changes will be coming at the top of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was created during Trump’s first term and where current director Jen Easterly has announced she will leave once Trump is inaugurated.

Cyber Command 2.0 and the U.S. military

John Cohen, executive director of the Program for Countering Hybrid Threats at the Center for Internet Security, is among those who share the Pentagon’s concerns. “We can no longer afford to operate in stovepipes,” Cohen said, warning that a separate cyber branch could worsen existing silos and further isolate cyber operations from other critical military efforts.

Cohen emphasized that adversaries like China and Russia employ cyber tactics as part of broader, integrated strategies that include economic, physical, and psychological components. To counter such threats, he argued, the U.S. needs a cohesive approach across its military branches. “Confronting that requires our military to adapt to the changing battlespace in a consistent way,” he said.

In 2018, CYBERCOM certified its Cyber Mission Force teams as fully staffed, but concerns have been expressed by the FDD and others that personnel were shifted between teams to meet staffing goals — a move they say masked deeper structural problems. Nakasone has called for a CYBERCOM 2.0, saying in comments early this year “How do we think about training differently? How do we think about personnel differently?” and adding that a major issue has been the approach to military staffing within the command.

Austin Berglas, a former head of the FBI’s cyber program in New York who worked on consolidation efforts inside the Bureau, believes a separate cyber force could enhance U.S. capabilities by centralizing resources and priorities. “When I first took over the [FBI] cyber program … the assets were scattered,” said Berglas, who is now the global head of professional services at supply chain cyber defense company BlueVoyant. Centralization brought focus and efficiency to the FBI’s cyber efforts, he said, and it’s a model he believes would benefit the military’s cyber efforts as well. “Cyber is a different beast,” Berglas said, emphasizing the need for specialized training, advancement, and resource allocation that isn’t diluted by competing military priorities.

Berglas also pointed to the ongoing “cyber arms race” with adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. He warned that without a dedicated force, the U.S. risks falling behind as these nations expand their offensive cyber capabilities and exploit vulnerabilities across critical infrastructure.

Nakasone said in his comments earlier this year that a lot has changed since 2013 when U.S. Cyber Command began building out its Cyber Mission Force to combat issues like counterterrorism and financial cybercrime coming from Iran. “Completely different world in which we live in today,” he said, citing the threats from China and Russia.

Brandon Wales, a former executive director of the CISA, said there is the need to bolster U.S. cyber capabilities, but he cautions against major structural changes during a period of heightened global threats.

“A reorganization of this scale is obviously going to be disruptive and will take time,” said Wales, who is now vice president of cybersecurity strategy at SentinelOne.

He cited China’s preparations for a potential conflict over Taiwan as a reason the U.S. military needs to maintain readiness. Rather than creating a new branch, Wales supports initiatives like Cyber Command 2.0 and its aim to enhance coordination and capabilities within the existing structure. “Large reorganizations should always be the last resort because of how disruptive they are,” he said.

Wales says it’s important to ensure any structural changes do not undermine integration across military branches and recognize that coordination across existing branches is critical to addressing the complex, multidomain threats posed by U.S. adversaries. “You should not always assume that centralization solves all of your problems,” he said. “We need to enhance our capabilities, both defensively and offensively. This isn’t about one solution; it’s about ensuring we can quickly see, stop, disrupt, and prevent threats from hitting our critical infrastructure and systems,” he added.

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