Facebook, Instagram dump fact-checkers citing election as ‘cultural tipping point’
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(NEW YORK) — Facebook plans to replace its fact-checkers with “community notes,” a move that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would allow the social network to return “to our roots around free expression.”
“We’re replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes,” Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. “Looking forward to this next chapter.”
The changes, which will also be in place for Instagram and Threads, will lift restrictions “on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse” and will focus the company’s “enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations,” Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer, said in a blog post.
Meta executives sought in their statements to tie the update to what they described as a sea change in public discourse accompanying the rise of President-elect Donald Trump’s brand of politics.
Fact-checkers who were put in place in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election have proven to be “too politically biased” and have destroyed “more trust than they’ve created,” particularly in the United States, Zuckerberg said.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said.
The decision also follows Zuckerberg recent meeting with Trump at the president-elect’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. And Meta is donating to Trump’s presidential inaugural committee, marking a first for the company.
The shift in policy mirrors a series of updates that Elon Musk — a Trump ally — made after purchasing rival social network Twitter, which he’s since rebranded as X.
Kaplan on Tuesday praised the approach Musk has taken, saying X under its new owner has empowered its “community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context.”
“We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing — and one that’s less prone to bias,” Kaplan said.
As the company’s fact-checking capabilities have grown, they have expanded “to the point where we are making too many mistakes,” which in turn has frustrated many of the social networks’ users, Kaplan said.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” he said.
ABC News’ Michael Kreisel, Zunaira Zaki and Chris Donovan contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — For the last 130 years, four generations of Ernest Lepore’s family have baked the pastries – cream puffs, cannoli, sfogliatelle – that have come to define Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood, withstanding wars, economic downturns and drastic changes to the neighborhood that his family calls home.
But with the soaring cost of eggs – a staple ingredient in nearly half their products – it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Ferrara Bakery to avoid raising their prices.
“We can’t keep passing on costs to our guests,” Ferrara’s president, Ernest Lepore, told ABC News. “As you move closer to Easter, eggs are just growing exponentially in price. I can’t do anything about it.”
Egg prices have skyrocketed over the last year, reaching historic highs, and wholesale shoppers like small businesses were paying over $8 for a dozen eggs last week. According to the latest USDA report, released Friday, the national average wholesale price has dropped slightly to $6.85 per dozen.
However, many grocery stores sell their eggs at a loss to get customers in the door, bringing the average retail price of a dozen eggs to just under $5. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of a dozen eggs at the grocery store reached a record high of $4.95 in January 2025. More, the USDA predicted that prices might increase 40 percent this year, and experts are warning that those prices might stay high even if the supply of eggs in the U.S. rebounds.
But small businesses, unlike grocery shoppers, are tied to the market wholesale price, making these surging costs particularly devastating.
Theodore Karounos, owner of Square Diner in New York’s downtown neighborhood of Tribeca, said that translates into tens of thousands of dollars in additional yearly costs for him.
“If things hold up at this price, and we stay as busy as we were last year, I’ll pay $70,000 more for eggs than I did last year,” he told ABC News. “I can’t just absorb that hit for the next nine months.”
The exorbitant costs are a result of a nationwide shock to supply, brought about by a ravaging outbreak of the avian flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 166 million commercial poultry birds have been affected since 2022, when the outbreak began. But the last few months have been especially devastating.
“In just four months, we’ve lost 52 million layers and pullets within our nation’s egg supply, which is vastly different than any other outbreak that we’ve seen in the past.” Karyn Rispoli, managing editor of Expana, a firm that surveys and tracks the price of eggs, told ABC News. “The biggest difference of late is just that it has been more lethal and really devastated our nation’s egg supply.”
The avian flu has wreaked havoc on poultry flocks across the country. As a result, Rispoli says that the nation’s supply of egg-laying hens is at nearly a ten-year low. Once one chicken is infected, farmers are forced to cull the remainder, after which comes the challenge of repopulating their flocks.
But even as the U.S. faces an egg shortage, demand for the commodity remains relatively constant, creating a perfect storm for egg prices to soar. Consequently, those small businesses that rely on eggs, like Ferrara Bakery and Square Diner, are forced to make difficult decisions.
Unlike larger restaurant chains like Denny’s and Waffle House, which have adjusted to the surging costs by adding an egg surcharge to their menu item prices, smaller businesses are less inclined to follow suit, according to Dartmouth College economics professor Bruce Sacerdote.
“In the case of a restaurant, they aren’t necessarily able to pass on the full price increase. We’re not talking about a simple commodity where the markets clear immediately and you just have to pass on the full price increase,” he told ABC News. “Restaurants may be taking a hit to their margins in order to not pass on the full price increase.”
At Tom’s Restaurant on New York City’s Upper West Side – famous as the setting for the fictional Monk’s Café in the TV series “Seinfeld” – the soaring cost of eggs means that co-owner John Ieromonahos is spending an additional $2,000 a week to pay for eggs to continue supplying the restaurant, where approximately 70 percent of their business is breakfast.
“Of course, we don’t want to charge extra to customers,” Ieromonahos said. “This is not our customer’s fault, but I don’t know how long we’re going to last without charging extra.”
At The Hungarian Pastry Shop in Manhattan, owner Philip Binioris told ABC News that he’s trying his best not to pass the higher cost of eggs on to consumers, though he, too, isn’t sure how long he can absorb the increasingly prohibitive cost.
“It’s frustrating. I would like to not raise our prices. I think that we have fair prices, and I like to be able to keep them stable,” he said. “I’m just kind of waiting to see how bad this gets before I make a decision on how I’m going to change prices. It’s tight.”
While consumers, small businesses and their customers continue to shell out more for eggs amid the avian flu outbreak, the nation’s largest producer and distributor of eggs has reported soaring profits.
Cal-Maine Foods, according to SEC filings, saw an over three-fold increase in their gross profits in their fiscal year 2023, at the dawn of the bird flu outbreak. And according to their most recent filing, their gross profits are up 342% through the second quarter of their fiscal year 2025 versus the previous fiscal year.
Rispoli also told ABC News that grocery shoppers could see increased prices even when the egg supply does begin to recover, as grocery stores may seek to recoup lost earnings. She said that happened when egg prices soared at the beginning of the current avian flu outbreak.
“In the aftermath of that, as the market corrected and came down substantially, retailers were then holding shelf prices higher to try and recapture some of the margin that they had previously forfeited,” she said.
Back at Ferrara in Little Italy, Lepore is searching everywhere to find other ways to save money so he doesn’t have to increase their prices. He recently upgraded his building’s cooling system and improved his refrigerators, saving money on electricity in the long term. He also is taking a lesson from his grandparents, who kept the business going through the Great Depression, by baking smaller batches of goods in order to more easily keep product fresh and avoid waste.
“Eggs are determining production,” he said. “As we are going into Easter, I am going to be baking at the last minute not to waste an egg, because there can’t be any left over.”
(NEW YORK) — Shares of Netflix soared 12% in early trading on Wednesday, just hours after the streaming giant announced price increases set to impact all of the company’s U.S. subscribers.
The standard monthly subscription without advertisements will climb from $15.49 to $17.99, and a standard monthly subscription with ads will increase one dollar to $7.99, Netflix said.
The price hikes arrived alongside a stellar earnings report that showed the largest subscriber gains over a three-month period since the company’s founding more than a quarter-century ago.
Netflix added 19 million subscribers over the last quarter of 2024, vaulting the company to 302 million subscribers worldwide. Revenue jumped 16% over the final three months of 2024 compared to a year earlier, topping $10 billion in a single quarter for the first time.
“As we continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members, we will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix,” Netflix said in a letter to investors.
The second season of hit show “Squid Game” helped propel the subscriber bounce, Netflix said, noting that the series is on pace to be the most-watched season of original programming in the company’s history.
Netflix also found success in the latter part of 2024 with the holiday movie “Carry On” and a live boxing match between influencer Jake Paul and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, the company said.
“It’s great that all these big swings worked very well in the quarter,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on a conference call with investors on Tuesday.
The price hikes at Netflix follow a string of price jumps imposed by competitors last year.
In August, Disney announced price increases for streaming services Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ that amounted to hikes of between $1 or $2 for each platform. Two months earlier, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max increased prices for its ad-free membership by $1 per month. (Disney is the parent company of ABC News.)
Stock analysts lauded Netflix in memos to clients on Wednesday.
In a note shared with ABC News, Bank of America Global Research described the earnings report as “very strong.”
Tigress Financial, a New York City-based advisory firm, said Netflix’s performance foretells further increases in the company’s share price.
“The incredible power of its subscriber growth and subscriber base will continue to drive further gains in the stock,” Tigress Financial wrote in a letter shared with ABC News.
Netflix led all studios with 36 nominations for the Golden Globes, which took place earlier this month. “Emilia Pérez,” a film starring Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, won four awards, including best motion picture – musical or comedy.
Speaking to investors on Tuesday, Sarandos said the wildfires in Los Angeles would not delay the company’s releases this year or reduce anticipated revenue.
“No meaningful delays in the delivery of the projects and no meaningful impact to the cash in 2025, but very meaningful disruption in people’s lives,” Sarandos said.
“So, our goal is to keep everything on schedule safely, be mindful of folks who need time to work through the challenges of the fires, including, in some cases, loss of life and home. But this industry has been through a really tough couple of years, starting with COVID, going into the strikes, and now this,” Sarandos added.
(NEW YORK) — Shares of Boeing fell in early trading on Monday, one day after a Boeing model 737-800 was involved in the Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea that killed scores of passengers.
The stock price dropped more than 4% at the open of trading on Monday morning. The slide came hours after South Korea’s transportation ministry announced it would investigate the crash and conduct a full inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in use in South Korea.
All but two of the 181 people on board died Sunday in what authorities said was the deadliest plane crash in South Korea in decades.
The only survivors, a man and a woman, were among the six crew members onboard the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 when it skidded along a runway, crashed into a wall and burst into flames on Sunday morning, officials said.
In a statement posted on X on Sunday, Boeing said the company had established communication with Jeju Air about the incident.
“We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them,” Boeing said. “We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew.”
Boeing did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Jeju Air said it would not suspend operations of its 737-800 aircraft.
“There are no plans to suspend operations, but they will examine those parts once more and check them thoroughly during the inspection process,” said Song Kyung-hoon, head of Jeju Air’s Management Support Division.
As the aircraft approached South Korea’s Muan International Airport at 8:54 a.m. local time, the control tower gave it permission to land on a south-to-north runway, according to an official timeline by the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport.
Three minutes later, the flight control tower issued a warning of a possible bird strike, the transport ministry said. About two minutes after that warning, a pilot sent a distress signal, saying, “Mayday, mayday, mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around,” the ministry said.
An official cause of the crash is under investigation by South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board.
The fatal crash and ensuing stock slide mark the latest setback for Boeing, which sought to put a series of scandals behind it last month when it struck a deal with a union representing thousands of West Coast factory workers, who had undertaken a seven-week strike.
The labor action began days after Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft returned to Earth without its crew due to mechanical issues, and months after a door plug blew out of the company’s 737 Max 9 aircraft mid-flight, which itself happened five years after Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft were first grounded worldwide following a pair of tragic crashes.
The losses for Boeing on Monday coincided with a broader decline in the stock market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 700 points in early trading, dropping the index about 1.5%.
The S&P 500 slid 1.5% in early trading on Monday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq also declined 1.5%.
ABC News’ Joohee Cho and Kevin Shalvey contributed to this report.
