#Blockout2024

The growing protests against Israel’s war on Gaza have now spawned a cyberspace movement that has erupted in the past few days, targeting celebrities who are seen as being insensitive towards, or even supportive of, the death and destruction in Gaza. 

 

The campaign that took off after the Met Gala in New York, USA on May 06 has earned the names: Blockout 2024, celebrity block list and digitine. The idea is to block famous celebrities on social media networks such as Instagram, X and TikTok.

 

The Blockout 2024 is an online movement where social media users are carrying out a digital boycott of famous celebrities ranging from Hollywood actors to social media influencers for their silence on Israel’s war on Gaza, or in some cases, their purported support for the war. Various TikTok, Instagram and X users have begun circulating lists of celebrities and their businesses to block. 

 

The point of the move is to reduce the earnings the celebrities make through ads on social media platforms. I read that social media users were upset when images of the lavishly dressed celebrities surfaced online at the annual fundraiser. They pointed out that some of these celebrities had never made online statements or addressed the continuing war on Gaza, where Israel’s relentless bombardment has killed more than 35,000 people, most of them women and children. 

 

On May 07, a video surfaced of TikTok influencer Haley Kalil, lip-syncing the words “let them eat cake”, outside the Met Gala. Kalil has 9.9 million followers on her TikTok account @haleyybaylee.

 

Those infamous words, often attributed to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution, have in popular imagination become synonymous with an elite so disconnected with the lives of citizens unable to find even bread that they suggest cake as an alternative. 

 

Kalil’s video stirred anger because of the backdrop of the starvation crisis in Gaza. Insufficient food has been on the rise over the seven months of war.

 

Only two days before the Met Gala, Cindy McCain, the head of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said in a news interview that northern Gaza is experiencing “full blown famine”.

 

Users online have now started calling the Blockout, the “digitine” or the digital guillotine, leaning into the French Revolution reference.

 

Besides Kalil, other celebrities on the blocklists include Israeli actor and former soldier Gal Gadot, American media personality and socialite Kim Kardashian, American actors Zendaya and Noah Schnapp, American singer Taylor Swift and British singer Harry Styles. 

 

While there have been online movements in the past to unfollow some of the celebrities that are now being blocked, experts have said blocking is more effective as a protest strategy than unfollowing.

 

The effect of unfollowing on a celebrity’s overall audience and engagement metrics is minimal, Eddy Borges-Rey, an associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar told Al Jazeera. His research work examines social media and algorithms. 

 

“Social media celebrities heavily rely on high visibility and engagement to attract and maintain advertising deals”, he said, adding that when someone unfollows a celebrity, they simply stop seeing the celebrity’s posts in their feed. 

 

The content can still indirectly show up through their search pages or algorithm-driven feeds such as the Instagram Explore page or the “For You” pages on TikTok and X. Since even non-followers view the celebrity’s content if they have not blocked the celebrity, this does not significantly hurt the celebrity’s reach. 

 

On the other hand, “if someone blocks the celebrity, they completely cut off all interaction with their content”, explained Borges-Rey. This decreases the celebrity’s audience size, leading social media algorithms to deprioritise their content. As more people block a celebrity, their posts become less visible across the platform, even to those users who have not blocked the celebrities.

 

“A reduction in visibility can lead advertisers to perceive the celebrity as less valuable, potentially cutting back on the amount they are willing to pay for ads on the celebrity’s profile, thereby directly affecting their ad revenue”, he added.

 

While the Blockout started only a few days ago and the number of people who have blocked a particular account does not show, celebrities have started to lose followers. 

 

On Saturday, NPR reported that Taylor Swift (right) lost roughly 300,000 followers on TikTok and about 50,000 followers on Instagram over the past week.

 

“They [celebrities] live off of our attention”, an X user @DrKarimWafa posted. “If they don’t have any, they cease to exert their influence”.

 

 

TikTok Creators File Their Own Suit Against Divest-or-ban Law

On May 08, I published "ByteDance File Lawsuit Against US Law Forcing TikTok’s Sale".

And now, eight US TikTok creators are suing to stop a law that would ban the app unless its Chinese parent company divests it, arguing that the measure would strip them of their livelihoods and creative outlets. 

 

The suit is similar to the company’s own challenge to the law in that it leans on First Amendment arguments, calls lawmakers’ concerns around the app speculative, and recalls that courts have blocked other methods of banning TikTok, including former President Donald Trump’s executive order and a Montana state law. 

 

But while the company’s suit details the alleged impracticality of separating TikTok from its owner ByteDance, the creators’ suit focuses squarely on how their own speech could be impacted if TikTok went away. 

 

While the court are likely to take seriously the First Amendment challenges to the law, TikTok and its creators will also need to convince them that those issues should overshadow the national security concerns lawmakers expressed in passing the bill, and any deference it might be inclined to show for a law that passed overwhelmingly through Congress.

 

The creators – including rancher Brian Firebaugh, book reviewer Talia Cadet, and college football coach Timothy Martin – claim that TikTok is distinct from other social media platforms as a vehicle for expression, meaning that there’s no equivalent platform for creators to move to. 

 

They point to its recommendation algorithm and features like its green screen or duet capability as elements that make it stand out. 

 

“These characteristics – intrinsic to the medium and derived from the system TikTok uses to curate content for each user – give TikTok a distinct culture and identity”, the lawsuit says. “Creating videos on TikTok (‘TikToks’) is thus its own form of expression, and content expressed through TikTok may convey a different meaning than content expressed elsewhere”. 

 

The complaint points out that even though all the creators participating in the lawsuit have used other platforms like Facebook and Instagram, their following on those sites is significantly lower. And, they say, they fear that an ownership change could drastically alter the experience, just like Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) did for that platform. 

 

“Petitioners thus have an interest not only in creating and accessing expression through TikTok, but an interest in creating and accessing expression as curated using TikTok’s current editorial practices”, the complaint says. 

 

The case is filed on Tuesday in the federal Court of Appeals in DC, which have exclusive jurisdiction over challenges to the forced divestment law. The creators are asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional and stop it from being enforced.

 

Celtic emphatically sealed a 12th Scottish Premiership title in 13 seasons by dismantling Kilmarnock 5-0 in arguably their finest display of the season. 

 

The Glasgow side traveled to Rugby Park, where they had lost on their previous two visits, knowing a point in their penultimate league fixture would extend their top-flight dominance. And yesterday, they showed why they deserved to be crowned champions. 

 

Two goals inside the opening 12 minutes eliminated any fears of a third straight defeat in Ayrshire. The outstanding Matt O'Riley – Celtic's player of the season – had a killer back-post ball buried by Adam Idah (5), before Alistair Johnston's driven cross was tapped in by Daizen Maeda (12). By the 35th minute, it was three for the rampant visitors as Maeda turned provider for the resurgent James Forrest to convert from close range. O'Riley rocketed in a stunning fourth from the edge of the box in the 51st minute before coolly slotting away Celtic's fifth and his 18th goal of the season in the 71st minute.

 

 

Amazon Don't Want Workers Working From Home Too Much

Amazon workers in the United States are being tracked and penalized for not spending at least three days a week in the company’s offices, an email sent to employees this week revealed, as tech companies push back against work-from-home practices that flourished during the Covid pandemic. 

 

Amazon's stricter approach to office attendance reflects a trend among employers worldwide, including Google, Publicis, and Citigroup, who are implementing policies and potential consequences for non-compliance with in-office work requirements.

 

In March, Apple began threatening punitive action against employees who did not return to the office part-time, and shortly after taking over as CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk began to require employees to return full-time. And I'm sure you've read my post about Zoom (re: "Zoom's Return-To-Office Policy", published August 08, 2023). 

 

The push to return to work also comes as another Covid-19 surge spreads across the US, underscoring risks that motivated the shift to working from home initially. Hospitalizations due to Covid-19 are up 12.5% in the past week and deaths up 10%, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WWF Use Twitter Bird Logo To Advocate Wildlife Conservation

Last week, Twitter replaced their iconic bird logo with the letter 'X', marking the latest major shift since Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform. 

 

Twitter, founded in 2006 and whose name is a play on the sound of birds chattering, have used avian branding since their early days. Needless to say, Elon Musk's Twitter logo rebranding has become the talk of the town, and the subject of viral jokes and memes. 

 

Now, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), have used the rebranding of Twitter to talk about wildlife conservation. The German chapter of the WWF created an impactful graphic that shows the evolution of the blue bird logos over the years. 

 

The post drives home the point that some animals are heading for extinction if we don't protect them. 

 

Notably, McCann Germany, an advertising agency, collaborated with WWF to create the graphic and shared it on LinkedIn. When translated into English, the caption of the graphic reads, ''The whole world mourns the loss of the Twitter bird. Around 1 million real animal species are threatened with extinction. Today we are in the midst of the greatest extinction of species since the end of the dinosaur era. A quarter of mammal species, one in eight bird species, more than 30 percent of sharks and rays, and 40 percent of amphibian species are threatened. Help us save the animals. An initiative of WWF Germany & us!'' 

 

The said graphic carries this message: “Protect our animal species before it's too late”.

Movie Studio Marketers Rely on TikTok and Twitter

Digital and social media marketing chiefs of major movie studios in the US said yesterday they’re really hoping the threat of a US government ban on TikTok never materializes, so crucial has the platform become to launching films.

 

(President Joe Biden is threatening a ban of the service for data security reason since it’s owned by giant Chinese Internet company, ByteDance). 

 

And they’d also like Elon Musk-owned Twitter to get its act together, since that’s also a key platform for Hollywood. 

 

“I don’t personally think that TikTok is going to go away, at least not anytime soon in the US”, remarked Alex Sanger (left), EVP, Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures. 

 

“We’ve been using TikTok since it was called Musical.ly”, he explained. It was important then – and “during the pandemic it became even more important, and it just continues to be so. We find it to be a viable platform for basically every one of our films. M3GAN was certainly one of those. And we didn’t really have to do much. That dance in the trailer basically went crazy”, he said of the creepy moves by the life-sized doll on the Empire State Building that seized the platform. [Check out my post “Dance Off: Wednesday vs M3GAN” published January 13, 2023].

 

Sanger too expressed worry over Twitter, saying it has gotten a little complicated. “It’s concerning. That said, it is a real time conversation platform. It’s where we are the closest to the audience. It is truly a town square”. 

 

I guess this explains why TikTok and Twitter are so much loved by lots of people.

 

The growing prominence of the BRICS countries is only set to continue expanding, as 19 nations have submitted membership requests ahead of their annual summit on August 22-24, 2023 in South Africa, as a host of nations seek admission. 

 

China initiated the conversation about expansion when it was BRICS chair last year. And earlier this year, the BRICS collective made it known that they were open to other countries joining them. 

 

Additionally, as the bloc of countries has surpassed the G7 nations in GDP, I have no doubt that bringing in new members will further cement the shift in the global power balance. Specifically, amidst their continued efforts to replace the US dollar in international trade.

The “💩” Auto Response

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twitter's communications team has been effectively silent since November, when it was reportedly decimated in the layoffs that CEO Elon Musk implemented after buying the company. 

 

That means it hasn't responded to journalists' questions about any of the developments that have happened since – from the layoffs and mass resignations themselves to major changes to the user experience to a series of controversies involving Musk and his announcement that he will eventually step down. 

 

Now the press email address is active again, at least to some extent. 

 

Going forward it will automatically reply to journalists' inquiries with a single poop emoji, Musk announced – via tweet, of course – on Sunday. 

 

And when reached for comment, Twitter said in a statement, “💩”. 

 

Scores of Twitter users have already confirmed that they had successfully tested the feature for themselves, and many were quick to criticize him and the new policy. 

 

"Huh, same as general user experience then", wrote Charles Rickett, a video editor with UK tabloid Metro, in a comment that's gotten more than 1,600 likes. 

 

Amazon deepen tech sector gloom by announcing a second round of layoffs. 

 

They have indicated that 9,000 jobs are to be made redundant in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday. 

 

The latest round is expected to impact Amazon’s cloud computing, advertising, human resources and Twitch livestreaming businesses.

More Tech Job Cuts

More tech job cuts. 

 

The IT group Salesforce, which specialise in management solutions and in cloud technology, announced on January 04 that they are laying off about 10 percent of their employees, or just less than 8,000 people. 

 

A day later, I read that Amazon had declared they will trim more than 18,000 jobs from their workforce, citing “the uncertain economy” and the fact that they had unwisely “hired rapidly” during the Covid pandemic. The company had already announced 10,000 layoffs in November. 

 

Not to mention that Twitter which was bought in October by billionaire Elon Musk, had dismissed about half of the social media platform’s 7,500 employees. 

 

Incarcerated former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak submitted a petition to the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) seeking a release from prison or retrial of his SRC International case. 

 

Najib’s lawyer, Shafee Abdullah had maintained that the former Pekan MP’s appeal in the Federal Court had “serious defects” and went against the “rules of international justice”. 

 

Najib began his 12-year jail sentence in August after the apex court affirmed his conviction and sentence in the SRC case.

The Twitter Files

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 02, 2022, journalist Matt Taibbi had disclosed the "Twitter Files", a thread revealing emails, interspersed with his own reporting. 

 

Some of these documents had described Twitter's internal deliberations regarding the decision to censor the reporting of the New York Post regarding the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop*, while others contained information on how Twitter treated tweets that were flagged for removal at the request of the 2020 Joe Biden campaign team and the Donald Trump White House.

 

[*Background story: Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the NYP published a story presenting emails from the laptop and stating that they showed corruption by Biden].

 

According to the Hill, the documents indicate that there were back channels between Twitter and Biden's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to ban critics or remove negative stories. 

 

And Twitter's Deputy General Counsel and former FBI general counsel James Baker (left) was "at the center of the Twitter suppression scandal". It has been pointed out that he was already knee deep in the Russian collusion hoax, having been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department. 

 

Thereafter, Elon Musk fired Baker on Tuesday for his "possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue". 

 

Some users noted this was part of a larger trend of Musk removing the old guard from Twitter leadership. 

PJ Media columnist Ryan Ledendecker wrote, "Now that’s leadership, baby. Boom". 

 

Commentator Ian Miles Cheong tweeted, "Cleaning house. There should be no space for those who would seek to undermine Twitter's role in the dissemination of truth over establishment narratives". 

 

I’m sure more of the dirty secrets will see the light of day. And it looks like there's no escape for Joe Biden. He seems to have been implicated.

Donald Trump's Twitter Account Is Back

Former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been reinstated on the platform. 

 

The account, which Twitter banned following the January 06, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was restored after Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk posted a poll on Twitter on Friday asking the platform’s users if Trump should be reinstated. 

 

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated”, Musk tweeted Saturday. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God”. 

 

On Saturday, while the poll was still underway, Trump posted a link to it on Truth Social, the Twitter alternative he founded, urging his 4.6 million followers there to vote for him. 

 

But he also wrote: “Don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!” 

 

More than 15 million votes were cast in Musk’s poll – Twitter has 237 million daily users – the final poll results on Saturday night showed 51.8% in favor and 48.2% opposed. 

 

As of 11:30 AM EST (1630 GMT) Sunday, the revived account of the “45th President of the United States of America,” with its blue “verified” checkmark, had not posted any new messages. 

 

The last message dates from January 08, 2021, when the billionaire said he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony. 

 

On the same day, Twitter banned the account, which was being followed by some 88.8 million people, citing the risk of further incitement to violence. 

 

Trump’s followers numbered 86.6 million as yesterday – though it was unclear how many of those were real and how many were bots – while the number of accounts followed by him went from zero to 49. 

 

Trump reveled in using Twitter as a mouthpiece during his presidency, posting policy announcements, attacking political rivals and communicating with supporters.

 

In Sarawak, Malaysia, twelve polling stations have been opened today for the Baram parliamentary seat voting after polling was suspended on Saturday due to bad weather. 

 

Election Commission secretary Ikmalrudin Ishak said the time for the casting of vote is from 7:30 AM to 12:30 PM or 2 PM depending on the respective centres.

Mass Layoffs at Meta and Elsewhere

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Rumored for weeks and coinciding with Twitter's own downsizing, Meta today announced they will let go of 13 percent of their workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, in one of the biggest layoffs this year as the Facebook parent battles soaring costs and a weak advertising market. 

 

The mass layoffs, first in Meta’s 18-year history, follow massive job cuts at other tech companies – not just Elon Musk-owned Twitter – but also at Microsoft, Chime, Intel, Lyft, Seagate, Snap Inc, Stripe and many others. In fact, as of late October, more than 52,000 workers in the US tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022, according to a Crunchbase News tally. 

 

The pandemic-led boom that boosted tech companies and their valuations has turned into a bust this year. 

 

An Ebola update. Schools across Uganda will close two weeks before the scheduled end of term after 23 Ebola cases were confirmed among pupils, including eight children who died. 

 

Education Minister Janet Kataha Museveni (right) said on Tuesday that the cabinet had taken the decision to close preschools, primary schools and secondary schools on November 25 because densely packed classrooms were making students highly vulnerable to infection. [Note: Students in Uganda are currently in their third and final term of the calendar year]. 

 

On Saturday, the government extended a three-week lockdown on the neighboring districts of Mubende and Kassanda, which have been the center of the Ebola outbreak. The measures include a dusk-to-dawn curfew, a ban on personal travel, and the closure of markets, bars and churches. 

 

Since the outbreak was declared in Mubende on September 20, the disease has spread across the country, including to the capital, Kampala – but the president has said nationwide restrictions are not needed. 

 

According to government figures from Sunday, 135 people have been infected with Ebola and 53 have died.

The Bird is Freed

It’s for real this time. After months of legal drama, bad memes and will-they-or-won’t-they-chaos to put your favorite rom-com to shame, Elon Musk (right) has closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. 

 

Musk sealed the deal Thursday, taking Twitter private and ousting a handful of top executives. 

 

The likes of chief executive Parag Agrawal, as well as the company’s chief financial officer Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde, according to reports from The New York Times, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. 

 

[FYI, leadership bloodletting is not new in Twitter. Within a few weeks of Agrawal taking over for Jack Dorsey, two executives “stepped down”: Twitter’s Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis and Head of Engineering Michael Montano. Thereafter, Twitter lost two more leaders, Chief Information Security Officer Rinki Sethi, and Head of Security Peiter Zatko (aka Mudge). In May, Twitter GM of Consumer Kayvon Beykpour announced he would be leaving the company after Agrawal asked him to step down. And at the same time, Bruce Falck, Twitter’s revenue product lead, also left the company]. 

 

Truly, the Twitter purchase had been long delayed. 

 

But now, the bird is freed! 

 

And it signals the beginning of a new chapter that raises a million questions about what the platform is actually worth, what it’s for and what, exactly, Musk plans to do with it. 

 

Only time will tell.

Coded Language That Is Algospeak

Social media companies and Internet companies are considered platforms, not publishers. That explains why they have a free rein in terms of allowing whatever they want on their platforms, or whatever they don’t want on their platforms. 

Nonetheless, each social media platform has created a set of community guidelines to ensure a standard of behavior expected on the platform in order to create a safe space for their users. 

Additionally, content moderation – actually, a euphemism for social media censorship – kicks in. 

In simple terms, content moderation helps to ensure that the content published on the site is not illegal, inappropriate, harassing, or harmful to others. 

It's commonly used in websites that rely heavily on content generated by users such as forums, social media platforms, dating sites, and online marketplaces. 

Of course, social media was never a total free-for-all; platforms have long policed the illegal and obscene. 

But in 2020, we began to see politically-driven action against certain types of content which has been intentionally labelled “misinformation”. This is nothing more than a pretext to prevent non-conforming content from competing with the narrative promoted by a certain government, who in turn, work with powerful allies who have control over mainstream media (and which includes compliant social media companies). 

All in all, we're witnessing the expansion of categories of prohibited material as well as more aggressive actions to enforce the policies already on the books. 

The above aside, content violations are unsurprisingly on the rise:

We all know that Twitter banned Donald Trump. And, we know that Facebook flags things it deems Covid-19 misinformation. TechCrunch reported that nearly four times the amount of subreddits on Reddit were removed in 2020 compared to 2019, in a bid to make the Internet a safer place.

In order to avoid seeing comments or videos deleted from social platforms, users have been clever enough to invent a new very intentional linguistic creativity and language change; their very own coded language to allow their own content to slip through the net. 

This is Algospeak – and this phenomenon is everywhere on social networks. 

The method is simple: just replace a word, which can be detected by a platform's moderation system, by another completely different word, an emoji, or with a deliberately misspelt version of the word. 

When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade legislation in June of this year, this has led to the restriction of abortion rights in some US states. For fear of having their social media accounts banned, some users simply talked about “camping” as a coded way of offering assistance to pregnant women seeking abortions out of state. 

On TikTok, we say "le dollar bean" – it’s the way TikTok’s text-to-speech feature pronounces “Le$bian”, a censored way of writing “lesbian” that users believe will evade content moderation. Suicide is referred to as "unaliving", sex as "seggs" and nipples as “nip nops”. 

And sex workers, who have long been gagged by moderation systems, refer to themselves as “accountants” and use the corn emoji as a substitute for the word “porn”. 

The trick is also sometimes used for fun. In 2021, TikTokers decided to replace the laughter emoji with the chair emoji, creating an in-joke among young internet users. 

But Algospeak can also be used to share “banned” content on social networks. Anti-vaxxers use the carrot emoji to denote the word "vaccine" when sharing allegedly “unverified” claims about side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine. 

Last year, anti-vaccine groups on Facebook began changing their names to “dance party” or “dinner party” and anti-vaccine influencers on Instagram used similar code words, referring to vaccinated people as “swimmers”. 

And in that year too, transphobic users used the black and orange square emoji to draw the acronym "SS", the abbreviation for "Super Straight," openly displaying their transphobia on TikTok. 

But as Algospeak becomes more popular and replacement words morph into common slang, users are finding that they’re having to get ever more creative to evade the filters. “It turns into a game of whack-a-mole,” said Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist and author of “Because Internet”, a book about how the Internet has shaped language. 

As the platforms start noticing people saying “seggs” instead of “sex”, for instance, some users report that they believe even the substitution words are being flagged. 

This means Algospeak can be expected to continually evolve. After all, it’s born out of this endless effort to resist censorship. 

Short of blocking social media sites, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to completely sanitize the Internet.

Elon Musk Changes Mind on Twitter Again

The Tesla founder and CEO changes his mind again! 

With his default trial scheduled less than two weeks away, Elon Musk (right) reportedly submitted a letter to Twitter on Monday stating he intends to go through with his initial offer to purchase Twitter for the previously agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. 

Liverpool got an easy ride in the Champions League Group A match against Rangers yesterday. They managed to earn a 2-0 victory that keeps them on course for a place in the knockout stage. 

Trent Alexander-Arnold put Liverpool ahead after only seven minutes when he clipped a perfect 25-yard free-kick into the top corner. And Luis Diaz was fouled – and Mohamed Salah scored from the penalty spot in the fifty-third minute. 

Interestingly, the Reds’ line up included four attacking players, with Diaz, Salah, Darwin Nunez and Diogo Jota all starting. Offensively they created multiple chances but they could only fire blanks. 

The fact that they stayed in a 4-2-3-1 even when substitutes were made could suggest that they will again line up that way in the next game. We shall see. 

The real litmus test for Liverpool will now come in the form of Premier League leaders Arsenal on Sunday, before a trip to Ibrox next week and then the visit of Manchester City. If the Reds can pick up positive results in all three of those games, it will suggest they have well and truly turned a corner. I hope so! I really hope so!

Twitter Queried by US Regulator

Twitter faced scrutiny from the US Securities and Exchange Commission over how the microblogging and social networking service calculates the number of spam accounts, a topic at the heart of the firm’s legal battle with Elon Musk. 

The US regulator's letter sent mid-June, but made public only Wednesday, asked Twitter to disclose their methodology as well as the “underlying judgments and assumptions” involved. 

That letter surfaced just a day after news broke that Peiter "Mudge" Zatko (right), an “ethical hacker” who once worked with Google, Stripe, and the US Defense Department, and Twitter’s ex-head of cybersecurity-turned-whistleblower had told US authorities the company misled users and regulators about “extreme, egregious” security gaps. 

His complaint warned of obsolete servers, software vulnerable to computer attacks and executives seeking to hide the number of hacking attempts, both from US authorities and from the company’s board of directors. In particular, Zatko accused Twitter and their CEO Parag Agrawal of issuing untrue statements on account numbers because “if accurate measurements ever became public, it would harm the image and valuation of the company”. 

Twitter’s official statement… is that Zatko’s report is a “false narrative” designed to damage the company. 

But if Zatko’s claims are found to be credible, it could not only help Musk – who claims he abandoned his $44B Twitter purchase after they failed to provide info about fake accounts – but also mean big FTC fines. Both parties are scheduled to meet in court on October 17.

Google Warning Of Blood On The Streets

Earlier this month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (left) said he is not satisfied with the work output of many employees. And productivity is below where it ought to be. 

Certainly, things haven't been going well at Google for quite some time. The company earnings in the second quarter of 2022 were weaker than expected, as was the case with the first quarter. 

And Google are warning of layoffs. 

In a screenshot viewed by news website Insider, Google Cloud sales leadership threatened employees, saying there will be an "overall examination of sales productivity and productivity in general" and that if next quarter results "don't look up, there will be blood on the streets". 

Employees are on edge after the company quietly extended their hiring freeze this month without making an announcement. 

The economic meltdown seems to have reached many other Big Tech firms as well.

On June 23, 2022, Netflix laid off 300 people – which represents 3% of their workforce – because of slowing growth and the economic downturn. This is the video streaming company’s second layoff spree in two months, after they let go of 150 staffers in May. In April, they also laid off a posse of staffers from their editorial arm Tudum, which launched just last December. 

Microsoft laid off nearly 2000 employees – since July actually – possibly as a cost-cutting measure. 

Other tech companies that have slowed hiring include Nvidia, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Intel and Salesforce, among others. 

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook's parent company Meta, has made it clear that the company will part ways with employees who do not perform as expected. 

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal too informed employees of a hiring freeze in a message earlier this year, citing a recent lag on growth and revenue targets. 

And Cloud major Oracle are already considering laying off thousands of workers to save up to $1 billion in cost-cutting measures.

Gentleminions On the Loose

Some movie theatres have banned young people from wearing formal suits during screenings of the animated film “Minions: The Rise of Gru”. 

The reason behind this decision is a bizarre trend on TikTok.

This social media trend managed to convince mostly youngsters to dress in sleek suits and pose in formation with steeple hands, sometimes with a banana in their breast pockets. 

According to the BBC, videos have gone viral online that feature these young persons who refer to themselves as ‘Gentleminions’ having descended on cinemas in big groups and cheering loudly during the screening and racking up millions of views in some cases. They seemed to be enthusiastically embracing the trend and genuinely enjoying the movie. And movie studio Universal Pictures even endorsed the trend on Twitter. 

It’s unclear why this trend has taken off. In fact, it is entirely disconnected from the content of the film because minions wear blue overalls and goggles, not suits and ties! 

I suppose you can call this an act of performative moviegoing. TikTok users maintain it’s just for fun. And it is pertinent to point out that many groups have not caused issues. 

Unfortunately, some “gentleminions” are not acting so gentlemanly and they reportedly created a ruckus and which caused several UK venues to cancel screenings and others to give huge numbers of refunds. 

Some viewers and theatres had complained about the TikTok trend and were concerned about the well-being and viewing experience of younger viewers at screenings. 

As per the BBC, Guernsey's only cinema had to nix further screenings of the movie, blaming "stunningly bad behaviour", including vandalism, throwing objects and abusing staff. 

The Regal Cinema in Wadebridge, Cornwall, posted a notice saying it would no longer admit "unaccompanied children wearing suits" to screenings of the movie. 

I guess it is just boisterous fun turning into unruly behavior – and as far as I'm aware, this is only happening in the UK?!

Elon Musk Jilts Twitter

Elon Musk had struck a deal on April 25, 2022 to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, the influential social network frequented by world leaders, celebrities and cultural trendsetters will become a privately held company. 

But on Friday, he sent a letter to Twitter saying he was pulling out of the controversial deal. He had accused the company of "misleading" statements about the number of fake accounts. 

This jilt is, of course, hard for Twitter to take and a court battle looms. 

The consensus is that Twitter are well-positioned to win because according to Ann Lipton, a professor of law at Tulane University who specialises in corporate litigation, such merger agreements are "designed to prevent buyers from getting cold feet and deciding they want to walk away". 

Musk’s lawyers also point to recent Twitter employee layoffs and hiring freezes, which they say are contrary to the company's obligation to continue operating normally. 

Those arguments may be valid, but they do not merit pulling out of the deal, says Lipton, dismissing them as "nitpicky". 

"It's not enough, unless he can show that the representations (about fake accounts) are not just false, but also that they dramatically call the fundamentals of the deal into question", she explains. "Looks very much like Musk is legally wrong". 

The entire saga has left observers baffled by what Wedbush analyst Dan Ives described as "one of the craziest business stories ever". 

As he told AFP: "I think it starts off as a circus show and it's ending as a circus show"!