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As Jack Dorsey announced his company Twitter would drop all political ads, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg doubled-down on his policy of refusing to fact check politicians’ ads. “Attimesofsocialtensiontherehasoftenbeenanurgetopullbackonfreeexpression . . . Wewillbebestservedoverthelongterm byresistingthisurgeanddefendingfreeexpression.”
Still, Zuckerberg failed to delineate between freedom of expression, and freedom of paid amplification of that expression which inherently favors the rich.
During today’s Q3 2019 earnings call where Facebook beat expectations and grew monthly users 2% to 2.45 billion, Zuckerberg spent his time defending the social network’s lenient political ad policy.
One clear objective was to dispel the idea that Facebook was motivated by greed to keep these ads. Zuckerberg explained “Weestimatetheseadsfrompoliticianswillbelessthan0.5%ofourrevenue next year.” For reference, Facebook earned $66 billion in the 12 months ending Q3 2019, so Facebook might earn around $330 million to $400 million in political ads next year.
Zuckerberg also said that given Facebook removed 50 million hours per day of viral video watching from its platform to support well-being which hurt ad viewership and the company’s share price, Facebook clearly doesn’t act solely in pursuit of profit.
Facebook’s CEO also tried to bat down the theory that Facebook is allowing misinformation in political ads to cater to conservatives or avoid calls of bias from them. “Somepeoplesaythatthisisjustallacynicalpoliticalcalculationandthatwe’reactinginawaythatwedon’treallybelievebecausewe’rejusttryingtoappeaseconservatives” he said, responding that “frankly, if our goal was that we’re trying to make either side happy then we’re not doing a very good job because I’m pretty sure everyone is frustrated.”
Instead of baning political ads, Zuckerberg voiced support for increasing transparency about how ads look, how much is spent on them, and where they’re run. “Ibelievethatthebetterapproachistoworktoincreasetransparency. AdsonFacebookarealreadymoretransparentthananywhereelse.Wehaveapoliticaladsarchivesoanyonecanscrutinizeeveryadthat’srun.”
He mentioned that political ads are run by “Google, YouTube, and most internet platforms”, seeming to stumble for a second as he was likely prepared to cite Twitter too until it announced it would drop all political ads an hour earlier.
Dorsey had tweeted that “We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
Twitter’s CEO took some clear swipes at Zuckerberg, countering his common arguments for allowing misinformation in politician’s ads. “Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow.” Given President Trump had outspent all Democratic candidates on Facebook ads as of March of this year, it’s clear that deep-pocketed incumbents could benefit from Facebook’s policy.
Trump continues to massively outspend Democratic rivals on Facebook ads. Via NYT
Miming Facebook’s position, Dorsey tweeted “It‘s not credible for us to say: ‘We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well…they can say whatever they want!”
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Twitter is banning all political advertisements and the final policy will go into effect next month. (Photo Credit: Sara Kurfeß / Unsplash)
Twitter is banning all political ads next month: Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the social network, announced that Twitter will no longer post political ads starting Nov. 22.
On Wednesday, Dorsey shared the update in a series of tweets and said the final policy will be disclosed on Nov. 15, VICE reported. So far, over 80,000 Twitter users have responded to his thread, which was created today at approximately 4 p.m. EDT.
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵
“We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally,” Dorsey wrote. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.
He added “A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”
These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.
We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we’re stopping these too.
Dorsey went on to explain how internet political ads could be challenging to civic discourse, because of deep fakes, micro-targeting, and machine learning-based optimization of messaging. According to Dorsey, these challenges will affect all internet communication and they raise credibility concerns.
A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.
“This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle,” Dorsey concluded. “It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”
Despite ongoing public relations crises, Facebook kept growing in Q3 2019, demonstrating that media backlash does not necessarily equate to poor business performance.
Facebook reached 2.45 billion monthly users, up 1.65 percent from 2.41 billion in Q2 2019 when it grew 1.6 percent, and it now has 1.62 billion daily active users, up 2 percent from 1.587 billion last quarter when it grew 1.6 percent. Facebook scored $17.652 billion of revenue, up 29 percent year-over-year, with $2.12 in earnings per share.
Facebook’s earnings beat expectations compared to Refinitiv’s consensus estimates of $17.37 billion in revenue and $1.91 earnings per share. Facebook’s quarter was mixed compared to Bloomberg’s consensus estimate of $2.28 EPS. Facebook earned $6 billion in profit after only racking up $2.6 billion last quarter due to its SEC settlement.
Facebook shares rose to 1.84% in after-hours trading to $191.71 after earnings were announced, following a day where it closed down 0.56% at $188.25.
Notably, Facebook gained 2 million users in each of its core US & Canada and Europe markets that drive its business, after quarters of shrinkage, no growth, or weak growth there in the past 2 years. Average revenue per user grew healthily across all markets, boding well for Facebook’s ability to monetize the developing world where the bulk of user growth currently comes from.
Facebook says 2.2 billion users access Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger every day, and 2.8 billion use one of this family of apps each month. That’s up from 2.1 billion and 2.7 billion last quarter. Facebook has managed to stay sticky even as it faces increased competition from a revived Snapchat, and more recently TikTok. However, those rivals might more heavily weigh on Instagram, for which Facebook doesn’t routinely disclose user stats.
Overall, it was another rough quarter for Facebook’s public perception as it dealt with outages and struggled to get buy-in from regulators for its Libra cryptocurrency project. Former co-founder Chris Hughes (who I’ll be leading a talk with at SXSW) campaigned for the social network to be broken up — a position echoed by Elisabeth Warren and other presidential candidates.
The company did spin up some new revenue sources, including taking a 30% cut of fan patronage subscriptions to content creators. It’s also trying to sell video subscriptions for publishers, and it upped the price of its Workplace collaboration suite. But gains were likely offset as the company continued to rapidly hire to address abusive content on its platform, which saw headcount grow 28% year-over-year to 43,000. There are still problems with how it treats content moderators, and Facebook has had to repeatedly remove coordinated misinformation campaigns from abroad. Appearing concerned about its waning brand, Facebook moved to add “from Facebook” to the names of Instagram and WhatsApp.
While it escaped with just a $5 billion fine as part of its FTC settlement that some consider a slap on the wrist, especially since it won’t have to significantly alter its business model. But the company will have to continue to invest and divert product resources to meet its new privacy, security, and transparency requirements. These could slow its response to a growing threat: Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s TikTok.
Halloween is an irresistible subject for TV producers – it lets them get their characters out of their comfort zone and provides much-needed visual excitement with crazy costumes. In the olden days, you used to have to wait until Halloween week to catch these shows, or shell out cash for DVD box sets, but with the advent of streaming we can play them whenever we want. Here’s our list of the absolute best Halloween episodes ever aired, and where you can stream them right now.
The Hauntening
Bob’s Burgers is one of the smartest animated shows in TV history, taking its basic premise and elevating it into increasingly interesting places year after year. The season 6 Halloween episode revolves around Louise, the prickliest and most self-assured Belcher, and her inability to be scared. When the family goes to yet another haunted house, Louise thinks it’s going to be the same old song, but things quickly go out of control and get legitimately freaky fast. We won’t spoil the final twist, but this is a great episode that leans hard on well-defined characters reacting to totally bizarre situations.
The ridiculous longevity of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia comes as a surprise to just about everybody. Somehow, the gang of idiots and creeps at Paddy’s Pub have anchored one of the longest-running comedies on the air today. The Season 6 episode “Who Got Dee Pregnant” doesn’t start on Halloween, but instead visits it with a series of flashbacks as the crew tries to figure out who the father of Dee’s baby is. There are so many great weird gags in this one as it plays both with the absurdity of solving a mystery while everybody is wearing a costume as well as the innate fallibility of memory. The payoff of the ostrich gag is absolutely perfect.
Sure, this season 2 Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode could have been titled more imaginatively, but it’s a great stand-alone episode that gave us insight into the show’s cast and introduced a new villain. When Giles’ old running buddy Ethan Rayne opens a costume shop in Sunnyvale, it’s all part of a ritual that transforms everybody wearing one into their disguise – so Buffy becomes a helpless 18th century bimbo, Xander a gun-toting soldier, and Willow an intangible ghost. Everything works out in the end but we got an interesting inversion of the series’ traditional power dynamics and a bunch of groundwork laid for the future. It’s a solid gimmick that works very well as the show found its footing.
Halloween can bring out the worst in people, and when you’re a walking ball of neuroses like Larry David, that worst is pretty bad. The absolutely brilliant Curb Your Enthusiasm second season episode “Trick or Treat” sees Larry open the door to a pair of 13 year old girls on Halloween night not wearing costumes. Naturally, he refuses to give them candy despite their protests, and this naturally results in the “trick” portion of the holiday coming into play with the girls spray-painting “Bald Asshole” on his door. The episode’s other plots, about the invention of the Cobb salad and anti-semitism, are also great, but Larry’s Halloween apoplexy is irresistible.
South Park has aired a number of all-time great Halloween episodes, but we have to go all the way back to the first season to find our favorites. In “Pinkeye,” Kenny is killed once again, but instead of returning as good as new next week he is re-animated as a flesh-hungry zombie. After the epidemic of the undead is misdiagnosed as pinkeye, chaos breaks out and a gory chainsaw massacre of many of the town’s inhabitants results. It’s fun to go back and watch these early episodes to see how much of the show’s humor was fully formed right out of the gate, and this one still holds up.
80s kids have a soft spot for C.H.I.P.S, the goofy drama that starred Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox as a pair of California motorcycle cops who solved all sorts of crimes. The show’s sixth and final season saw it going off the rails in numerous amusing ways, and brought us one of the all-time great Halloween episodes with “Rock Devil Rock.” Starring Donny Most from Happy Days as an Alice Cooper-esque goth rocker named “Moloch” who is convinced he’s under a curse, Ponch and Hot Dog (Jon’s last-season replacement) must protect him on Halloween. Extra bonus points for a guest spot by Elvira!
Brooklyn Nine-Nine has quietly established itself as one of the most consistently funny shows on television, and their annual Halloween episodes give the show a chance to boost the surreal factor a little bit. Each year the precinct sees the Halloween Heist, where officers attempt to swipe an object to prove that they are the Ultimate Detective. Our favorite came in the third season, as Peralta and Holt go face-to-face for the first time to break the tie for “amazing detective/genius.” Any one of the Halloween Heists could have made this list, but the third one perfectly combines ridiculous plot contrivances, great character work, and an extremely satisfying ending.
At its best, Community was simply untouchable. Few sitcoms packed as much into each episode, with rapid-fire gags melding with high-concept plotlines to create something that just got better the more you watched. Season 2’s Halloween episode, “Epidemiology,” has a dynamite premise: after Dean Pelton serves tainted taco meat that he bought at an Army surplus store, it turns into a zombie apocalypse that can only be averted with air conditioning. This one is a riot from start to finish, with tons of great character material and subplots including Troy and Abed’s brilliant Aliens costumes.
Roseanne had a bunch of classic Halloween episodes, but our favorite is probably the first one. When Dan and Roseanne get competitive to see who can bring the scares hardest, things naturally escalate into some pretty hilarious moments. The Conners also set up a haunted house for neighborhood children, including the iconic “Tunnel of Terror.” This is probably the most grounded Halloween episode on this list, which is the reason that America fell in love with Roseanne in the first place. If you really want a shock, compare it with the utterly bizarre Season 9 episode that features Arianna Huffington as a witch.
Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story might have a hard time keeping momentum – and making sense – through each season, but the high points are always very worth watching. The first season, “Murder House,” boasted a two-part Halloween episode that not only delivered the hardcore scares but also served as a pivot for the overarching narrative. When the Harmon family are visited by the ghosts of the gay couple that owned their house, they mistake them for interior decorators. Halloween is the one night of the year when the spirits trapped there can leave into the real world, and they take great advantage of it.
You know we had to make room for the series that has done more Halloween episodes than any other. Since 1990, every single Simpsons season has contained a Treehouse of Horror episode, presenting short tales of the macabre starring your Springfield favorites and inspired by those good and gruesome EC Comics classics. Picking just one was a hell of a job, but eventually we settled on the installment that gave us Principal Skinner eating kids, Homer going nuts, and producer David Mirkin putting in more gore to piss off the censors. It manages to be both hilarious and legitimately disturbing at the same time.
Galaxy of Horrors, a fun project created by artists and scientists, was produced by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The goofy series features “horrifyingly inhospitable worlds,” planet HD 189733 b and planets Poltergeist, Draugr, and Phobetor orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12.
Among the horrifyingly inhospitable worlds highlighted is HD 189733 b, a planet with an atmosphere full of silicates — the key component in sand and glass — and 5,400 mph (6,700 kph) winds, creating RAINS OF TERROR! pic.twitter.com/V2dDfC8A4E
Imagine a planet with an atmosphere filled with silicates and winds blowing at over 5,400 mph…welcome to HD 189733 b. Silicates, which are the key components in glass and sand, aren’t tranquil here. Due to speedy winds, the silicates surrounding the air may cause a “perpetual storm of flying glass,” according to NASA. This “hellscape” is located 63 light-years from Earth and definitely not suitable for humans or robots.
Then, of course, we have ZOMBIE WORLDS…
Poltergeist, Drauger and Phobetor orbit an undead star about 2,000 light-years from Earth, a pulsar. Like other pulsars, PSRB 1257+12 produces dual beams of intense radiation that can sometimes be seen across the galaxy☢️ pic.twitter.com/vMqiUQVmdz
A trio of planets (Poltergeist, Draugr, and Phobetor), are the main attractions of poster two. The planets circle the pulsar PSR B1257+12, which is located roughly 2,000 light-years from our planet. However, PSR B1257+12 isn’t a quiet “star corpse.” It produces dual beams of intense radiation that can sometimes be spotted across the galaxy and stray radiation may attack the three planets. So sadly, this high-energy particle “hub” is uninhabitable as well.
While you’re there, pick up the free posters from some of the terrifying trouble spots in our galaxy.
“People are often most interested in finding exoplanets that could resemble Earth or potentially support life as we know it. But there are so many other amazing, mystifying planets out there that are completely unlike Earth and that show us the huge variety of ways planets can form and evolve,” said Thalia Rivera, an outreach specialist at JPL who led the development of the new poster series. “My favorite thing about exoplanets is how extreme they can get!”
You can read up on more bizarre worlds in the Eyes on Exoplanet web application here.
CEO Jack Dorsey just announced, via tweet, that Twitter will be banning all political advertising — with a few exceptions like voter registration.
“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” Dorsey said.
He also said the company will share the final policy by November 15, and that it will start enforcing the policy on November 22.
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…
Wizard Rock, a beautiful boulder known for its streaks of white quartz, has vanished from Prescott National Forest in Arizona. (Photo Credit: Karen Johnson / U.S. Forest Service / Prescott National Forest)
“Wizard Rock,” a famous one-ton black boulder in Prescott National Forest, Arizona, has mysteriously vanished, according to authorities.
The swirly boulder went missing from its roadside spot roughly 14 days ago and park officials believe it may have been stolen, Newsweek reported. Removing this rock is not an easy task though, heavy machinery was most likely needed to get the job done, The Arizona Republic noted.
“The easy way to do it would be a back hoe. But, if you had a trailer positioned properly and didn’t mind beating some things up you might be able to do it with a Bobcat,” Trails and Wilderness Manager Jason Williams told The Republic. “But you surely aren’t going to be able to do it any other way.”
Williams also explained how people may have not questioned the incident, since conservation and forest workers frequent the area.
“I think what happens is the general public, if they see somebody working with equipment in the forest, they see the equipment and assume it’s an authorized thing,” Williams added. “It looks professional and they think they must be doing something the forest service has said ‘go ahead’ or even paid for.”
Wizard Rock is known for its striking features: The boulder has white quartz running through it, giving it a swirl-like appearance. It was a popular landmark to drivers on State Route 89, who were passing by White Spar Road in Prescott.
“It’s unfortunate when we lose a treasure such as the Wizard Rock,” Sarah Clawson, a district ranger for the Bradshaw Ranger District, said in a statement. “Our hope is that it will be returned to us, and these recent recurring events will become an educational opportunity.”
(@jack) 
