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This illustration photo show the Facebook page of former President Donald Trump on a smartphone screen in Los Angeles, March 17, 2023.

Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty Images

On Friday, Donald Trump wrote a message on his Truth Social messaging platform that was reminiscent of the waning days of his presidency, when his public posts got him kicked off Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

In complaining about a potential indictment, Trump warned of “potential death & destruction” should he be charged with a crime. Trump was reacting to the latest developments in a hush money probe and to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office has been leading the investigation.

Following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack over two years ago, the major U.S. social networks banned Trump, citing his threatening rhetoric and the risks of further violence if he were to remain on their platforms.

They’ve since welcomed him back.

In November, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, said he was reinstating Trump’s account after running a straw poll asking his followers if he should readmit the ex-president, who is again campaigning for his old job.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk wrote. He’d foreshadowed the decision months earlier, saying at a conference in May that “permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts,” adding that, “it was not correct to ban Donald Trump.” 

Meta announced in late January that Trump would soon be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram. Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post that “the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.”

And most recently, Google’s YouTube said this month that Trump would be allowed to start posting videos again.

Now the question is — what are the rules from here?

Thus far, Trump has been relatively quiet on the major social media platforms. Rather, he’s stuck to daily musings on Truth Social, writing in a post this week that Democrats are “INTERFERING IN OUR ELECTIONS, THEIR NEW FORM OF CHEATING!!”

Trump may not renew exclusive contract with Truth Social

He hasn’t tweeted since Jan. 8, 2021. On Facebook, Trump has posted a few snippets from his rallies and some some fundraising blasts. On YouTube, he’s got one new video, from March 17, announcing to his 2.7 million subscribers, “I’M BACK!”

The companies that punished Trump for his prior antics have little reason to believe his behavior will change. His Truth Social posts are littered with examples to the contrary. Advocacy group Accountable Tech wrote in a recent report that it found over 350 Trump posts on Truth Social that would violate Facebook’s safety rules.

“He’s using Truth Social to incite people,” said Jessica González, co-CEO of media and tech advocacy organization Free Press. She said his posts there remind her “in some ways of what he was saying before January 6.”

Prior to Meta’s reinstatement of Trump’s Facebook account, Free Press sent a letter to the company urging it to “permanently instate Meta’s ban on former President Donald Trump.” The letter cited a draft report on the Jan. 6 attack by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee that said the “the risk of violence has not abated” since the insurrection.

Meta said in January, in letting Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram, that the risk to to public safety “has sufficiently receded.”

The company said at the time it had implemented “new guardrails” intended “to deter repeat offenses” by Trump, including limiting his reach and removing the reshare button on questionable posts.

“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Meta said.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment about Trump’s Truth Social posts and pointed to the company’s statement in January.

Twitter responded to a request for comment with Musk’s standard poop emoji retort.

Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City.

Dimitrios Kambouris | Getty Images

YouTube didn’t provide a comment for this story. Leslie Miller, vice president of public policy in Google’s video unit, said in a prior statement that the company “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.”

Miller said the “channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.”

The clearest restrictions on Trump come from Truth Social, but they have nothing to do with the substance of his posts. According to an agreement between the two parties, Trump must post on Truth Social six hours before publishing on a competing social network.

However, that exclusivity deal is scheduled to end in June.

“That’s when we’ll really see whether the platforms are going to be willing to abide by the guardrails they put in place,” González said, adding that the limitations put in place by Meta “are just weak.”

Angelo Carusone, CEO of the nonprofit Media Matters, said he’s concerned that Trump’s campaign will spread disinformation and incite violence on Truth Social and Rumble, another conservative social network. Facebook and Twitter can be used to guide his many millions of followers to those other apps, which have minimal guidelines on content.

The risks posed by Trump’s social media habits are greater now that Musk is in control of Twitter, Carusone said.

“Twitter was typically the first one out of the gate to make a policy change” regarding content and disinformation, Carusone said. Under Musk, Twitter “will no longer be a vanguard for addressing disinformation or extremism,” he said.

Musk has said that he’s only running Twitter as CEO temporarily and that he hopes to appoint a successor by the end of this year. As the 2024 elections near, it’s unclear if any other social network will assume a leadership role regarding policy matters.

González says it’s only a matter of time before Trump’s inflammatory posts create headaches for the major social networks.

“The more cornered he feels and the more his power and his freedom are under threat, the more we’re going to see him lash out,” González said. “He’s proven that he will have no restraint.”

Watch: Will a Trump indictment impact the debt ceiling debate?

Will a Trump indictment impact the debt ceiling debate?

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Activist Starboard amasses Autodesk stake, weighs suit over delayed probe disclosure

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Activist Starboard amasses Autodesk stake, weighs suit over delayed probe disclosure

Jeffrey Smith, CEO and chief investment officer at Starboard Value LP.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Starboard Value, the activist fund run by Jeff Smith, has taken a sizable stake in graphics-design firm Autodesk and has spoken with the company’s board in recent weeks over a number of serious concerns involving its disclosures around an internal investigation that led to the ouster of its chief financial officer.

Starboard’s stake is valued at roughly $500 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The activist, which has a long track record of investing in the technology sector, is particularly concerned about the timing of Autodesk’s disclosure of an internal investigation which revealed that executives misled investors around the company’s free cash flow metrics and operating margins, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information freely.

The results of that probe led to the ouster of Autodesk’s then-CFO, Deborah Clifford, who was moved to a different executive role within Autodesk. The probe found that executives manipulated reporting tied to company’s contract billing structure, as Autodesk shifted back to upfront payments from annualized payments, to improve those metrics.

Autodesk first disclosed in April that it had begun an internal investigation into disclosure issues around those metrics, almost a month after it had first begun the investigation and had informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was probing its financial reports. Autodesk shares slid 20% over the next few weeks. The company’s market cap now sits slightly below $50 billion.

The delayed disclosure came a little more than a week after the deadline to nominate directors closed. The tight window and timing of the disclosure has raised significant concerns inside Starboard, the people said, that Autodesk’s board deliberately chose not to inform shareholders ahead of its annual meeting. Such a delay would potentially limit a shareholder’s ability to nominate its own candidates in a contested fight.

Starboard is weighing legal action in Delaware Chancery court to compel the reopening of Autodesk’s nominating window and the delay of Autodesk’s annual meeting, the people said. Autodesk’s shareholder meeting is currently scheduled for July 16.

The activist also believes that the company can drive actual margin improvement and improve investor communications to help bolster Autodesk’s stock, the people said.

Starboard has built stakes in other major technology companies, including Marc Benioff’s Salesforce and Splunk, which was sold to Cisco in 2023 for $28 billion.

News of Starboard’s stake and plans was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

Autodesk has faced activist scrutiny before. In 2016, it settled with two activist investors at Sachem Head Capital Management and Eminence Capital to stave off a proxy contest.

Autodesk disclosed earlier this year that it is facing Justice Department and SEC probes. A representative for the company did not immediately return a request for comment.

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Malaysia is emerging as a data center powerhouse amid booming demand from AI

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Malaysia is emerging as a data center powerhouse amid booming demand from AI

A large hallway with supercomputers inside a server room data center. 

Luza Studios | E+ | Getty Images

Malaysia is emerging as a data center powerhouse in Southeast Asia and the continent more broadly as demand surges for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Over the past few years, the country has attracted billions of dollars in data center investments, including from tech giants like Google, Nvidia and Microsoft

Much of the investments have been in the small city of Johor Bahru, located on the border with Singapore, according to James Murphy, APAC managing director at data center intelligence company DC Byte.

“It looks like in the space of a couple of years, [Johor Bahru] alone will overtake Singapore to become the largest market in Southeast Asia from a base of essentially zero just two years ago,” he said. 

Johor Bahru was named as the fastest growing market within Southeast Asia in DC Byte’s 2024 Global Data Centre Index

Princeton Digital Group says its Johor data center campus will come into service in 6 weeks

The report said the city has 1.6 gigawatts of total data center supply, including projects under construction, committed to or in the early stages of planning. Data center capacity is typically measured by the amount of electricity it consumes.

If all planned capacity comes online across Asia, Malaysia will only be surpassed by the larger countries of Japan and India. Until then, Japan followed by Singapore currently lead the region in terms of live data center capacity. 

The index did not provide a detailed breakdown of data center capacity in China. 

Shifting demand 

Blackstone's Nadeem Meghji: Data centers are the most exciting asset class across our entire firm

Booming demand for AI services also requires specialized data centers to house the large amounts of data and computational power required to train and deploy AI models.

While many of these AI data centers will be built in established markets such as Japan, Murphy said emerging markets will also attract investments due to favorable characteristics. 

AI data centers require a lot of space, energy and water for cooling. Therefore, emerging markets such as Malaysia — where energy and land are cheap — provide advantages over smaller city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore, where such resources are limited.

Spillover from Singapore

Singtel discusses its data center expansion plans

Thus, a lot of investment and planned capacity has been redirected from Singapore to the bordering Johor Bahru over the years.

Singapore recently changed its tune and laid out a roadmap to grow its data center capacity by 300 MW on the condition more projects meet green-friendly efficiency and renewable energy standards. Such efforts have attracted investments from companies like Microsoft and Google. 

Still, Singapore is too small for wide-scale green power generation, thus there remain a lot of limitations on the market, said DC Byte’s Murphy. 

Resource strains

Data center liquid cooling is accelerating and it's accelerating now, says Vertiv CEO

Local officials are increasingly concerned about the extent of this power usage, as quoted in a recent report from The Straits Times.

Johor Bahru city council mayor Mohd Noorazam Osman reportedly said data center investments should not compromise local resource needs, given the city’s challenges with its water and power supply.

Meanwhile, a Johor Investment, Trade, and Consumer Affairs Committee official told ST that the state government would implement more guidelines on green energy use for data centers in June.

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Advisors ‘wary’ of bitcoin ETFs are on a slow adoption journey, says BlackRock exec

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Advisors ‘wary’ of bitcoin ETFs are on a slow adoption journey, says BlackRock exec

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The long-awaited bitcoin exchange traded funds launched in January, and financial advisors are on their way – though gradually – toward adopting them, according to BlackRock’s Samara Cohen.

For now, about 80% of bitcoin ETF purchases have likely been coming from “self-directed investors who have made their own allocation, often through an online brokerage account,” she said, speaking at the Coinbase State of Crypto Summit in New York City on Thursday. The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) was among the funds to debut earlier this year.

Cohen, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of ETF and index investments, noted that hedge funds and brokerages have also been buyers, based on last quarter’s 13-F filings, but registered investment advisors have been a little more “wary.”

CNBC recently polled its Advisor Council about why they and their colleagues are so cautious about the new products, which represent a regulated and familiar investment product for a new asset class that has garnered significant interest in recent years. Responses ranged from bitcoin’s notorious price volatility to the flagship cryptocurrency being too nascent to have established a significant track record. Regulatory compliance and the crypto’s reputation for fraud and scandal were also on advisors’ minds.

“I would call them wary … that’s their job,” Cohen said of the skeptical financial advisors.

“An investment advisor is a fiduciary to their clients,” she added. “This is an asset class that has had 90% price volatility at times in history, and their job is really to construct portfolios and do the risk analysis and due diligence. They’re doing that right now.”

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The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in 2024

“This is a moment, in terms of really putting forward important data, risk analytics [and determining] the role bitcoin can play in a portfolio, what sort of allocation is appropriate given an investor’s risk tolerance, their liquidity needs,” she added. “That’s what an advisor is supposed to do, so I think this journey that we’re on is exactly the right one and they’re doing their jobs.”

Cohen said she sees bitcoin ETFs as a bridge between crypto and traditional finance – particularly for investors who may be interested in making an allocation to bitcoin without having to manage their risk across two different ecosystems. Before the ETFs, the existing onramps into crypto were insufficient for what some investors wanted to do, she said.

Coinbase chief financial officer Alesia Haas said bitcoin is “on a slow journey of adoption” – a theme echoed across the conference sessions.

Blue Macellari, head of digital assets strategy for T. Rowe Price, pointed to the 1% allocation that some investors deem to be a safe, comfortable amount. She said she sees portfolio allocations into bitcoin as binary events, where they should be greater than 1% or zero, but she also acknowledged the cautious approach toward adoption.

“There’s a psychological component where people need to test the waters and get comfortable,” Macellari said. “It’s a paradigm shift … it takes time for people to ease their way into it.”

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