Twitter stock fell Thursday as President Trump reportedly plans to sign an executive order to roll back protections that social media companies have for the content on their sites.
Trump fans have taken to the water in recent days to show their support for the president, with hundreds enjoying a “MAGA” boat parade in Charleston, South Carolina on Sunday.
Is Twitter stock a buy now? Check out the stock's fundamental and technical metrics to figure out if the stock should be on your watchlist.
President Donald Trump renewed his attack on 'Big Tech' late Wednesday as officials said he's ready to sign an executive order to curb its influence on the upcoming U.S. elections.
President Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday, cracking down on social media platforms Facebook and Twitter. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to discuss.
President Donald Trump is expected on Thursday to issue an executive order intended to strip legal protections provided to social media companies like Twitter and Facebook under current federal law
Bill Ackman had a hunch back in February that the coronavirus pandemic would have a greater impact on the stock market than investors were pricing in, so he essentially made a wager that the bubble would burst and started setting up a $27 million hedge. It tu…
During a news conference West Virginia’s plan to reopen its economy, Gov. Jim Justice seemed to say that businesses will be able to get back to work “only if they f*****g follow the guidelines” to keep the state safe.
The German automaker initially said critics ‘misunderstood’ the Instagram clip, which has been pulled
Barack Obama clearly blasted Donald Trump, without naming him directly, for his handling of the coronavirus.
President Trump is expected to sign an executive order, targeting Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Rick Newman break down the details.
The major stock indexes were sharply mixed early Thursday. Facebook and Twitter fell after President Trump's executive order threat.
US president Donald Trump treats Twitter like his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the radio: the former reality star’s social media feed allows him to speak directly to his supporters, bypassing traditional media. Now the San Francisco-based service has begun to fact-check Mr Trump’s tweets, applying measures introduced to clamp down on misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday the company put a notice on a presidential tweet that said mail-in votes were “fraudulent”.
An executive order could mean a lot for social media companies, which are already under the scrutiny of regulators for the way they handle personal data and their privacy policies.
Elon Musk just delivered another cryptic message to his 34.3 million Twitter followers — the latest in a long line of his social-media headscratchers.
The United States appeals court in Washington, D.C. has dismissed a 2018 lawsuit that accused top tech and social media companies of undermining users' First Amendment rights, TechCrunch reported Wednesday.What Happened The lawsuit had alleged that the companies, including Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) have a bias against conservative political views on their platforms.Far-right political activist Laura Loomer, who was banned by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and several other companies, is one of the plaintiffs in the case.Dismissing the case, District Judge Trevor McFadden, repeated the same legal stance that has been common in such cases.McFadden said the plaintiffs failed to prove that the technology companies are "state actors.""The Plaintiffs have failed to allege state action. They suggest that the Platforms are 'quasi-state actors because they regulate their public platforms, thereby regulating free speech within their public forums," the judge noted."But an entity can only be a 'state actor' if 'there is a sufficiently close nexus between the State and the challenged action of the regulated entity so that the action of the latter may fairly be treated as that of the State itself.'"Why It Matters The dismissal of the lawsuit comes at a time when President Donald Trump has threatened new regulations on social media companies, following his spat with Twitter over labeling one of his tweets as misinformation.The president is said to be signing an executive order on Thursday that could end the immunity of digital giants from lawsuits arising out of third-party content posted on their platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.Price Action Twitter shares closed 2.8% lower at $33.07 on Wednesday. Apple closed 0.4% higher at $318.11, while Facebook closed 1.3% lower at $229.14.Alphabet Class A shares closed slightly lower at $1,420.28, and Class C shares inched higher at $1,417.84.See more from Benzinga * Trump To Sign Executive Order On Social Media Today, Day After Twitter Spat * Facebook Rebrands Cryptocurrency Wallet Subsidiary Calibra * YouTube Makes Its Dedicated Children App Available On Apple TV(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
The latest dispute comes after Twitter added fact-check links to the president's tweets for the first time.
Click here to read the full article. President Donald Trump, triggered after Twitter applied fact-checking labels to two of his inaccurate tweets, will order U.S. regulators to reexamine a law that shields social-media companies from liability for content posted on their services, according to media reports.Trump, in an executive order expected to be signed Thursday, also wants to establish something called the "White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool," which would let U.S. citizens submit complaints if they feel they have been unfairly treated by social networks that would be referred to the Justice Department and the FTC for investigation, Reuters reported, citing a draft of the order.The White House's proposal would seek to curb protections afforded to internet companies under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. According to the law, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” That lets companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate content on their services as they see fit, while protecting them from lawsuits over content shared on them.Trump's order seeks to empower federal regulators to reinterpret Section 230, to examine whether content moderation policies of companies like Facebook and Twitter engage in "selective censoring" that would be grounds to remove their legal protections, per the New York Times.Legal experts have said any proposed changes to Section 230 would likely get struck down by courts. Indeed, on Wednesday, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple in a lawsuit filed by right-wing activists alleging the tech giants suppressed "politically conservative voices." The court thew out the suit, ruling that the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment applies only to government entities and not private companies.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with Fox News set to air Thursday, said he would need to know details of Trump's executive order to comment specifically. "But in general, I think a government choosing to censor a platform because they're worried about censorship doesn't exactly strike me as the the right reflex there," he said.Zuckerberg, in an interview that aired on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Thursday, claimed Facebook provides more protections for political speech than other internet companies. "There are clear lines that map to specific harms and damages," Zuckerberg said. "But overall, including compared to some of the other companies, we try to be more on the side of giving people a voice and free expression."According to Zuckerberg, Facebook's fact-checking policy is designed to catch "the worst of the worst stuff," rather than trying to debunk claims by politicians. “I don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg said in the CNBC interview. “Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say.”Although Facebook does use independent fact-checkers who review content on its social networks, the point of the fact-checkers is to “really catch the worst of the worst stuff,” Zuckerberg said.Trump's move to try to expose internet companies to greater legal culpability for how they treat content on their platforms comes after Twitter on Tuesday added fact-checking warning labels — for the first time — to a pair of the president's tweets that contained falsehoods about mail-in ballots.Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a tweet thread May 27, defended the company's application of fact-checking labels to Trump's tweets, saying that the president's posts "may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot.""We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally," Dorsey wrote.Dorsey asserted that Twitter's policies do not "make us an 'arbiter of truth.'” The CEO said, "Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions."Advocacy groups, responding to news reports of Trump's planned executive order, blasted it as an unconstitutional attempt to muffle the administration's critics.“This order is an effort to intimidate technology companies from using tools that are indispensable to protecting the integrity of public discourse online," Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement. Parts of Trump's proposed order "raise additional constitutional concerns, since they seem to contemplate that the government will investigate and punish internet service providers for decisions that are protected by the First Amendment."The irony is that Donald Trump has been "a big beneficiary of Section 230" protections, ACLU senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane commented. "If platforms were not immune under the law, then they would not risk the legal liability that could come with hosting Donald Trump's lies, defamation, and threats," she said in a statement.In 2019, Trump floated the notion of targeting social-media companies with an order intended to restrict the ability of platforms to remove content -- but the FCC and FTC reportedly pushed back on the idea over concerns that it was unconstitutional.After Twitter labeled Trump's tweets as misleading, the president's supporters and a top White House aide launched targeted attacks on an individual Twitter employee who has posted anti-conservative tweets in the past. Dorsey, in his comments Wednesday, said "there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this."Separately, Twitter has taken no action against Trump's account after the president posted multiple tweets promoting a long-debunked conspiracy theory that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough may have killed a former congressional aide in 2001. The company apologized for the “pain” Trump’s comments have caused to the family of the dead woman, Lori Klausutis, after her widowed husband appealed to Dorsey to remove Trump's noxious posts.Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden also has criticized Section 230 -- in fact, going further than Trump, by calling for it to be overturned. In a January interview with the New York Times, he said the law "immediately should be revoked” because Facebook “is propagating falsehoods they know to be false, and we should be setting standards not unlike the Europeans are doing relative to privacy."
Try this trade on for size amidst the brewing battle between President Trump and social media companies.
The black light video, from Japanese state broadcaster NKH, shows how important it is to wash your hands.
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump has been raging against Twitter Inc. since the social media platform that helped vault him to the presidency slapped fact-check links on a pair of his tweets.Now, he’s poised to take action Thursday that could bring a flurry of lawsuits down on Twitter, Facebook Inc. and other technology giants by having the government narrow liability protections that they enjoy for third parties’ posts, according to a draft of an executive order obtained by Bloomberg.“This will be a Big Day for social media and FAIRNESS!” Trump said in a tweet Thursday morning.Twitter shares fell 2.6% and Facebook was down less than 1% in New York.The companies’ protections against lawsuits apply when they act “in good faith” in taking down or limiting the visibility of inappropriate tweets, videos and other social media posts, but the law doesn’t define bad faith. The draft order would push the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules clarifying the issue, potentially allowing users to sue over takedowns if they were inconsistent with companies’ terms of service, did not provide enough notice or meet other suggested criteria.Read more: A QuickTake on Section 230, the law that protects free speech onlineThe White House declined to comment early Thursday morning.The draft order would also convene, through the Justice Department, a working group of state attorneys general to look into deceptive practices and review executive ad spending on the platforms.The move could set off a legal battle between Washington and Silicon Valley.“Big Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to CENSOR in advance of the 2020 Election,” the president said Wednesday night -- on Twitter. “If that happens, we no longer have our freedom. I will never let it happen! They tried hard in 2016, and lost. Now they are going absolutely CRAZY. Stay Tuned!!!”Word of the executive order came a day after Twitter added links to a fact-checking page on Trump tweets asserting that mail-in-voting leads to rampant fraud.As Trump himself has observed, Twitter gives him the power to dodge the media and speak directly to the American public. It also allows the president and his vast community of followers to instantly spread a steady stream of pro-Trump messages and attacks on his rivals, including exaggerations and outright falsehoods that not even Twitter’s fact-checking links can dent.He has no legal authority to shut down the service, as he threatened to do Wednesday morning, but doing so would mean silencing his loudest megaphone -- as well as what his campaign calls “keyboard warriors” who both amplify his voice and provide him memes and other free content to broadcast to his 80 million followers.Twitter also serves as a valuable punching bag, which he uses to generate outrage and sympathy among his supporters.The social media platform has become even more important for Trump as the coronavirus pandemic prevents him from holding his trademark rallies, and he seeks a free outlet to attack his likely Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.“He’s going to need to continue to use this platform,” said Amy Becker, a professor at Loyola University Maryland, who focuses on political communication. “It’s going to be his random tweets, it’s going to be him attacking whoever criticizes him, there’s going to be a lot of attacks on Biden, the Democrats.”Liability ProtectionsThe order Trump plans to sign Thursday is his latest attempt to exert control over the formidable technology industry. In 2018, he considered issuing an order instructing federal antitrust agencies to open probes into the practices of tech giants like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook. The possible measure was criticized as politicizing antitrust enforcement and it was never signed.Trump’s attacks on Twitter and other social media companies are often hyperbolic and rarely lead to immediate concrete action. The government could never silence a company like Twitter without violating First Amendment rights to free speech. However, his threats are a reminder of other significant levers that the president and the rest of the federal government have at their disposal.Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, wrote Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey on Wednesday to demand an explanation for the fact-checking links added to Trump’s tweets. He accused the company of choosing to “editorialize.”Hawley repeated a threat that’s been raised by other lawmakers over the years: Revoking the protections that shield Twitter and other platforms from legal liability for content its users post.“Politicians can use the powers of government to make life very difficult for private companies and there’s a long track record of politicians from both parties doing this in the last couple years to social media companies,” said Jesse Blumenthal, a conservative who leads tech policy at Stand Together, part of the political network affiliated with libertarian billionaire Charles Koch.In recent days, Trump had tweeted attacks on cable news host and former Republican Representative Joe Scarborough by pushing a baseless conspiracy theory that he was involved in the death 19 years ago of a woman who worked at his district office in Florida. Her widower sent a letter to Twitter asking the publicly traded company to delete Trump’s tweets, but it chose to leave them online.Scarborough is a frequent critic of the president.80 Million Followers, 52,000 TweetsThe feud with Twitter comes as Trump has been under siege for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic that’s infected more than 1.6 million Americans and killed some 100,000. He trails Biden in general election polls by an average of 5.3 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.There has never been a politician as prolific on social media, which he often uses to call opponents names, spread conspiracy theories, dismiss employees and announce policy changes. He has sent more than 52,000 tweets and has more than 80 million followers.Trump has both acknowledged the power he wields when he tweets and the platform’s impact on his 2016 election. At a July 2019 social media event at the White House he boasted about using Twitter to announce that the U.S. would recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, one of the world’s most contentious foreign policy issues.“Boom,” Trump said of the March 19 tweet. “I press it and, within two seconds, we have breaking news.”At that same event he acknowledged that without the platform he might not have been elected.‘Keyboard Warriors’Trump has a symbiotic relationship with his supporters on Twitter. They often create memes that go viral with his retweets. Earlier this month, he retweeted a meme of himself as the president giving a speech in the 1996 movie “Independence Day,” about an alien invasion. That meme has been viewed 18 million times on Twitter.He’s repeatedly promoted a twitter handle that goes by the name of @sexcounseling that reinforces his messages. Earlier this month he egged on his supporters online with the hashtag obamagate, alleging that President Barack Obama’s administration improperly tried to undermine his election campaign in 2016. His supporters tweeted a series of memes with Obama and Biden.“Thank you to all of my great Keyboard Warriors. You are better, and far more brilliant, than anyone on Madison Avenue (Ad Agencies). There is nobody like you!,” Trump said in a May 14 tweet.Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, defended the president’s use of Twitter.“Most Americans have a pretty clear understanding of the way that President Trump uses Twitter,” Murtaugh said Wednesday on Fox News. “Twitter is a way for the president to connect with his voters. We hear all the time from the president’s supporters that they like the way that the president expresses himself on Twitter because they say to this day they say listen here’s a guy who finally says the things out loud that I’m thinking to myself.”Going back to the 2016 campaign, Trump and his campaign have cultivated a relationship with his supporters online. That part of his base remains engaged, echoing and spreading his messages, said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist.“The most effective endorsement for a candidate is from someone that you already trust, that you already have a relationship with,” Wilson said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary held the first news briefing in more than a year on Friday, fielding questions on China, sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden and more topics.
Twitter shares moved lower after Trump promised to sign an executive order that could increase liability for social media platforms.
Many tweets note that the retailer’s problems were terminal long before the coronavirus hit
Don’t throw away your junk mail — or you might throw away your stimulus payment. The U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service began sending out Economic Impact Payments as prepaid debit cards last week. Problem is, these Visa (AT:VISA) cards are being issued by MetaBank (the Treasury’s financial agent) and delivered in plain envelopes from Money Network Cardholder Services — neither of which are familiar names for many folks.
A draft of an executive order President Donald Trump is expected to sign on Thursday would seek to limit the broad legal protection that federal law currently provides social-media and other online platforms, according to people familiar with the draft.
After revenue from fares fell by 90%, the U.K. government agreed a support package to help Transport for London get buses and trains running again.
Trump takes aim at Twitter, China approves Hong Kong security law, another blow to hopes that a malaria drug would treat Covid-19, and other news to start your day.
In the latest bit of social-media red meat, the VP visited the Mayo Clinic and was the only one not wearing a mask.
(Bloomberg) -- YouTube’s battle against Covid-19 misinformation is causing collateral damage as the world’s largest online video service struggles to pick up on nuances of an increasingly complex and political topic.Since January, California pulmonologist Roger Seheult has posted regular medical lectures about the novel coronavirus on his YouTube channel, MedCram. His audience jumped to more than 700,000 subscribers. But as the virus spread in the spring, YouTube deleted five of the MedCram clips, including two about the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine and one about Remdesivir, an experimental Covid-19 treatment developed by Gilead Sciences Inc.Seheult appealed the decisions. Viewer complaints flooded in; one fan started a petition demanding YouTube stop “censoring” the footage. For Seheult, YouTube’s new rules were applied without explanation. “It’s like you’re in a hockey game,” he said. “And you keep getting called for penalties, but you don’t know what the penalties are.”According to YouTube, the referee made a mistake.“With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” a YouTube spokesman said on Wednesday after Bloomberg News reached out for comment. “When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.” The five MedCram videos are back on the site now.The incident is another flash point in the debate over the role of internet gatekeepers like YouTube and its parent, Alphabet Inc.’s Google. On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump railed against social-media companies after Twitter Inc. fact-checked some of his tweets.YouTube’s error came as the company has attempted to keep pace with a torrent of virus videos, while facing increasing political pressure and disruption to its contract workforce doing content moderation.“YouTube has a really tough job,” said Kyle Allred, MedCram’s co-founder and producer. “But the reality is: YouTube’s the second biggest search engine in the world. If our videos aren’t on YouTube, we don’t have the benefit of reaching as many people.”During the pandemic, YouTube has aggressively moderated virus videos after years of a more laissez-faire approach. The company has pulled thousands of clips for promoting misleading information or advice that conflicts with public health agencies. To filter footage, YouTube relies on viewers flagging videos, automated software and legions of human moderators.At the best of times, the system is sometimes heavy-handed or too lenient. In March, the company said it had to limit its use of human moderators, due to remote work limitations, and would lean more on machines to make decisions.YouTube’s challenge has grown even harder as medical videos pour onto the site and the debate about the pandemic response evolves from a mostly scientific discussion into a political fight.Trump has said he took hydroxychloroquine for about two weeks and the president has promoted it as a possible coronavirus therapy, despite an outcry from medical professionals about its unproven efficacy and potential side effects.At times, YouTube has filtered out sham science, such as videos promoting fake cures for Covid-19. More controversially, it has acted against doctors departing from public health advice. In April, YouTube removed videos by two doctors in Bakersfield, California, who used their YouTube channel to call for an end to social-distancing policies.Seheult, the pulmonologist, said his videos are nothing like that. Instead, MedCram clips dissect medical studies and early research, called preprints, related to the virus. Seheult narrates the findings and statistics -- low-key footage that, thanks to the pandemic, now draws a large audience.It seems Seheult was struck by YouTube’s algorithms scanning footage about Covid-19 cures. All five removed videos focused on potential treatments. YouTube says it relies on medical advisers and public agencies for guidance on how to handle videos about health issues. Yet the scientific consensus on some Covid-19 treatments is still taking shape. A study in The Lancet medical journal, released last week, linked hydroxychloroquine with increased risk of death and heart ailments.The YouTube spokesperson declined to cite the reason why the MedCram videos were initially removed, beyond noting that it was a mistake.The team behind MedCram is happy to have their work back on the world’s biggest video site. But they still feel frustrated with the minimal communication from YouTube. “We’re grateful to have our website MedCram.com where we don’t have to worry about censorship,” said Allred.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
If U.S. President Donald Trump goes ahead with his threat to close Twitter, the micro-blogging site can always relocate to Germany. After Trump threatened to shut down Twitter for advising its users to fact-check his tweets, a senior German official suggested in a light-hearted tweet that the California-based company would be better off in Europe. "This is an invitation to move to Germany!" Thomas Jarzombek, Berlin's point person for the startup economy, tweeted on Thursday.
Mark Zuckerberg called out his social-media rival on Wednesday, saying Twitter Inc. should not be fact-checking President Donald Trump — or anybody.
The biggest tech companies in the world are shining during an otherwise harrowing earnings season, as cloud businesses get a boost from the spike in working from home and revenue stays resilient.
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U.S. stock benchmarks tried to extend gains on Thursday, as optimism about business reopenings from COVID-19 closures appeared to overshadow a wave of weak economic reports and rising tensions between the U.S. and China. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 90 points, or 0.4%, at 25,634, the S&P 500 index rose 0.2%, at 3,041, while the Nasdaq Composite Index edged back 0.2% at 9,398. On Thursday, the Labor Department said 2.12 million unemployed Americans applied for state unemployment benefits in the week ended May 23. That is down from 2.4 million in the prior week. Meanwhile, data showed that the U.S. economy contracted at an annual 5% pace in the first quarter instead of 4.8%, revised government data show. A downward revision to inventory investment mostly accounted for the reduction, said the Commerce Department; while orders for durable goods tumbled 17.2% in April. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a drop of 18.2%. China on Thursday hardened its stance, forging ahead with a resolution to impose national-security laws on Hong Kong in a bid to suppress protests there. In corporate news, President Donald Trump was set to sign an executive order that would seek to limit the broad legal protection currently provided to social media and other platforms under federal law. Twitter shares and those for Facebook Inc. shares were in focus.
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Twitter, Square, Shopify and Facebook are allowing employees to permanently work from home.