With an image of himself on a screen in the background, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill October 23, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Facebook on Friday was hit with multiple reports stemming from documents provided to news outlets by Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistleblower.
The reports cite internal company research and documents that show the company is aware of many of the harms its apps and services cause but either doesn’t rectify the issues or struggles to address them.
According to a report from NBC, Facebook ran an experiment that showed how a new profile for a conservative mother from North Carolina began, within two days, to receive recommendations to join groups related to the far-right conspiracy group QAnon.
By the summer of 2020, , the documents show, Facebook was hosting thousands of private QAnon groups and pages with millions of followers, NBC reported. Facebook has since banned QAnon groups.
Bloomberg reported on documents that showed employees at Facebook expressed shock and outrage after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“I’m struggling to match my value to my employment here,” one employee wrote, according to the Bloomberg story. “I came here hoping to affect change and improve society, but all I’ve seen is atrophy and abdication of responsibility.”
Internal Facebook analysis of the Jan. 6 insurrection found that the policies and procedures put in place by the company were not enough to prevent the growth of groups related to “Stop the Steal,” according to a CNN report. The company treated each piece of “Stop the Steal” content individually, rather than as part of a greater whole, the report notes.
The New York Times reported on Friday, based on documents from Haugen, that a Facebook data scientist wrote to his colleagues to say that 10% of all U.S. views of political content on the site were of posts alleging that the 2020 U.S. presidential was fraudulent.
The reports follow a series of stories from the Wall Street Journal titled “The Facebook Files,” from documents provided by Haugen. Most notably, the series found internal documents that showed Facebook was aware of the harm caused by its Instagram service to teenagers’ mental health.
Earlier this month, Haugen testified before a Senate panel about the reports. Facebook attempted to discredit Haugen at the time and continues to push back against the stories stemming from the documents she’s released.
“At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false,” Facebook wrote in a statement to CNBC. “Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie. The truth is we’ve invested $13 billion and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”
Amazon on Friday announced it would invest an additional $4 billion in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives.
The new funding brings the tech giant’s total investment to $8 billion, though Amazon will retain its position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic, the San Francisco-based company behind the Claude chatbot and AI model.
Amazon Web Services will also become Anthropic’s “primary cloud and training partner,” according to a blog post. From now on, Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its largest AI models.
Anthropic is the company behind Claude — one of the chatbots that, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, has exploded in popularity. Startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, alongside tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, are all part of a generative AI arms race to ensure they don’t fall behind in a market predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade. Some, like Microsoft and Amazon, are backing generative AI startups with hefty investments as well as working on in-house generative AI.
The partnership announced Friday will also allow AWS customers “early access” to an Anthropic feature: the ability for an AWS customer to do fine-tuning with their own data on Anthropic’s Claude. It’s a unique benefit for AWS customers, according to a company blog post.
In March, Amazon’s $2.75 billion investment in Anthropic was the company’s largest outside investment in its three-decade history. The companies announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in September 2023.
Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board.
News of Amazon’s additional investment comes one month after Anthropic announced a significant milestone for the company: AI agents that can use a computer to complete complex tasks like a human would.
Anthropic’s new Computer Use capability, part of its two newest AI models, allows its tech to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing.
The tool can “use computers in basically the same way that we do,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview last month, adding it can do tasks with “tens or even hundreds of steps.”
Amazon had early access to the tool, Anthropic told CNBC at the time, and early customers and beta testers included Asana, Canva and Notion. The company had been working on the tool since early this year, according to Kaplan.
In September, Anthropic rolled out Claude Enterprise, its biggest new product since its chatbot’s debut, designed for businesses looking to integrate Anthropic’s AI. In June, the company debuted its more powerful AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and in May, it rolled out its “Team” plan for smaller businesses.
Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup alongside a large cloud contract between the two companies.
LONDON — Apple and Google could face a competition investigation into their dominance of mobile web browsers and apps in the U.K.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority issued a report Friday with a provisional decision from an independent inquiry group tasked by the regulator with carrying out an in-depth review of the mobile browser markets.
In the report, the group recommended that the CMA investigates Apple and Google’s activities in mobile ecosystems under the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), a new U.K. law coming into force next year which seeks to prevent anti-competitive behavior in digital markets.
The DMCC is akin to the Digital Markets Act in the European Union. It gives the CMA the ability to designate firms as having “Strategic Market Status” (SMS) — which means they have a significant amount of market power in a certain digital business.
Under the rules, the CMA can impose major behavioral changes on firms that have SMS status, including ending “self-preferencing” of their own services, requiring interoperability — essentially allowing one piece of software to work with another smoothly — and banning anti-competitive behavior.
The CMA is required to undertake a formal investigation to give a firm SMS status.
For Apple specifically, the CMA inquiry group said it was concerned the tech giant’s App Store rules “restrict other competitors from being able to deliver new, innovative features that could benefit consumers” — for example, faster webpage loading on iPhone apps.
It added many smaller U.K. developers said they would like to use “progressive” web apps — which allow firms to offer apps outside of an app store — but that this technology “is not able to fully take off on iOS devices.”
The group also said it found a revenue-sharing agreement between Google and Apple to make Google the default search engine on iPhone “significantly reduces their financial incentives to compete in mobile browsers on iOS.”
“Markets work best when rival businesses are able to develop and bring innovative options to consumers,” Margot Daly, chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group, said in a statement, adding that “competition between different mobile browsers is not working well and this is holding back innovation in the U.K.”
Apple said in a statement that it disagreed with the findings of the report and that it was concerned market interventions imposed under the DMCC “would undermine user privacy and hinder our ability to make the kind of technology that sets Apple apart.”
“Apple believes in thriving and dynamic markets where innovation can flourish. We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction where we operate, and our focus is always the trust of our users” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC via email.
Google was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The CMA group had also looked into restrictions on the distribution of gaming services on Apple’s mobile app distribution platform. However, it’s now decided to drop this element of the investigation following a decision by the U.S. tech giant to allow cloud gaming services on App Store.
The regulator said interested parties have until Dec. 13 to share comments on its provisional findings. It expects to make a final decision in March 2025.
An iPhone 16 signage is seen on the window at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store on new products launch day on September 20, 2024 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The Indonesian government expects Apple to increase its proposed $100 million investment into the country, according to state media, as the iPhone maker seeks clearance from Jakarta to sell its latest phones.
The American tech giant’s latest smartphone model doesn’t meet Indonesia’s 40% domestic content requirements for smartphones and tablets and hasn’t been granted clearance to be sold in the country.
The purpose of the ban is to protect local industry and jobs, with officials asking Apple to increase its investments and commitments to the economy in order to gain greater access.
According to a report from Indonesian state media, the country’s Ministry of Industry met with representatives from Apple on Thursday regarding its proposal to invest $100 million over two years.
The funds would go toward a research and development center program and professional development academy in the country, as per the report.
The company also plans to produce accessory product components, specifically mesh for Apple’s AirPods Max, starting in July 2025, it added.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
While the new offer is 10 times larger than a proposal that was reported earlier, the government is still striving to sweeten the deal to get a “fair” commitment.
“From the government’s perspective, of course, we want this investment to be larger,” industry ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif told state media on Thursday.
He said that a larger investment would help the development of Indonesia’s manufacturing sector, adding that its domestic industry was capable of supporting production of Apple devices such as chargers and accessories.
While Indonesia represents a small market for Apple, it also offers growth opportunities as it has the world’s fourth-largest population, according to Le Xuan Chiew, a Canalys analyst focusing on Apple strategy research.
“Its young, tech-savvy population with growing digital literacy aligns with Apple’s strategy to expand [global sales],” he said, noting that it also offers potential for manufacturing and assembly that supports Apple’s efforts to diversify its supply chain.
Success in this market requires a long-term approach, and Apple’s investment offer demonstrates a commitment to complying with local regulations and paving the way for future growth, he added.
