Facebook to rely on ‘Community Notes,’ replacing fact checkers, Zuckerberg says
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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.
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.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Michael Kreisel and Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday announced a decision to block the $14 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel, saying domestically produced steel is essential to U.S. national security.
“Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure,” Biden said in a statement.
The move marks the latest effort on the part of the Biden administration to protect U.S. markets from foreign-owned firms.
Biden has preserved many of the tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump, and he enacted a law that would ban China-based social media platform TikTok later this month if the company doesn’t find a new parent company. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments this month in a legal challenge brought by TikTok.
The decision comes weeks after a federal committee declined to issue a recommendation on the merger, leaving Biden an opportunity to block the deal.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, tasked with the potential acquisition, shared concerns about the national security risks posed by the loss of the country’s second-largest steel producer.
In response to the committee’s decision, Nippon Steel alleged the White House had “impermissible undue influence” on the review. Nippon Steel has previously threatened to challenge the White House decision in court.
The fate of U.S. Steel – a storied 120-year-old firm based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – became a lightning rod during the 2024 election season.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Thousands of Starbucks baristas are set to walk off the job on Tuesday, expanding the dayslong holiday strike to 300 stores in dozens of cities and towns nationwide, according to the union Starbucks Workers United.
In all, 5,000 Starbucks employees will go on strike in more than 25 states on Tuesday, spanning from Maryland to Montana to California, Workers United said.
Workers in Columbus, Ohio, Cheyenne, Wyoming, Buffalo, New York, and a host of other locations are set to join the strikes, the union said.
The work stoppages on Christmas Eve mark the final wave of a five-day strike meant to disrupt Starbucks during one of the busiest times of the year for the coffeehouse giant.
“These strikes are an initial show of strength, and we’re just getting started,” Lauren Hollingsworth, a Starbucks barista in Ashland, Oregon, told ABC News in a statement.
Starbucks Workers United and Starbucks announced earlier this year that they would work on a “foundational framework” to reach a collective bargaining agreement for stores, something the union says has not come to fruition.
“We were ready to bring the foundational framework home this year, but Starbucks wasn’t,” Lynne Fox, President of Workers United, told ABC News in a statement.
The strike began on Friday and has escalated each day since. On Monday, about 60 stores were forced to close as result of work stoppages, the union said.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, Starbucks Spokesperson Jay Go Guasch said the strikes had impacted a fraction of its U.S. stores.
“Only around 170 Starbucks stores did not open as planned. With over 10,000 company operated stores, 98% of our stores and over 200,000 green apron partners continuing to operate and serve customers during the holidays,” Go-Guasch said.
Sara Kelly, Starbucks’ executive vice president and chief partner officer, downplayed the impact of the strikes in a public letter to employees late Monday.
“The overwhelming majority of Starbucks stores across the country have opened as planned and are busy with customers enjoying the holidays,” Kelly said, noting that the company operates 10,000 stores and employs 200,000 people nationwide.
Anticipating the expansion of the strike on Tuesday, Kelly said work stoppages in hundreds of stores would cause “very limited impact to our overall operations.”
“The union chose to walk away from bargaining last week,” Kelly said. “We are ready to continue negotiations when the union comes back to the bargaining table.”
The union and the company remain far apart on the key issue of potential wage increases, according to statements from both sides about the other’s proposal.
Workers United told ABC News in a statement that Starbucks had proposed no immediate wage increases for most baristas and a guarantee of only 1.5% wage increases in future years.
Meanwhile, Starbucks said in a statement that the union had proposed an immediate increase in the minimum wage of hourly partners by 64%, as well as an overall 77% raise over the duration of a three-year contract. “This is not sustainable,” a Starbucks spokesperson told ABC News.
Starbucks United contests those figures as a disingenuous characterization of its proposal, the union told ABC News.
Baristas have unionized more than 100 Starbucks stores this year, expanding a union campaign that has spread to hundreds of stores across 45 states since an initial victory three years ago at a location in Buffalo, New York, the union said.
The union has filed hundreds of charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging illegal anti-union activities carried out by Starbucks, including alleged bad-faith negotiations over a potential union contract setting terms at the unionized locations.
Starbucks has denied wrongdoing and faulted the union for breaking off negotiations. The company offers better pay and benefits than its competitors, Starbucks said.
(NEW YORK) — The price of bitcoin topped $107,000 for the first time this week, climbing to a fresh high days after President-elect Donald Trump reaffirmed support for a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve akin to its strategic oil reserve.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency has seen its price climb more than 50% since the election of Trump, who voiced support for bitcoin on the campaign trail.
Proponents of a potential government stockpile of bitcoin say it could diversify the nation’s financial holdings and prevent other countries from dominating the ascendant digital currency market. Critics warn, however, that the highly volatile asset lacks the type of financial or national security import that would warrant a strategic reserve.
Here’s what to know about a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve, according to experts:
How would a bitcoin strategic reserve work?
A U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve would amount to a substantial government holding of bitcoin similar to the country’s stockpile of oil or gold.
A strategic reserve typically acts as a safeguard against an emergency shortage or another sudden event that would require the government to draw upon its stockpile of a given asset.
For instance, the strategic petroleum reserve, or SPR, was established after the Arab Oil Embargo triggered an energy crisis in the early 1970s with devastating consequences for the U.S. economy. The SPR, in turn, provides an emergency source of oil that protects the U.S. against a sudden supply crunch.
A bitcoin strategic reserve would help ensure the U.S. plays a significant role in the cryptocurrency market, which supporters view as a fast-growing part of the global financial system, Nik Bhatia, a professor of finance and business economics at the University of Southern California who studies cryptocurrency, told ABC News.
“Bitcoin has now become the largest decentralized asset in human history,” Bhatia said.
“Having some ownership in the network would be natural for the U.S. given its leadership in technology,” Bhatia added, citing the nation’s role in the invention of the internet.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of a bitcoin strategic reserve?
Speaking at a pro-bitcoin conference in July, Trump said a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve would ensure the country exerts influence over bitcoin and prevents China from controlling the digital currency market.
Supporters of a bitcoin strategic reserve also say the asset would help diversify the nation’s financial holdings, protecting it from the potential decline in value of other assets, such as the U.S. dollar or gold.
Some proponents have said bitcoin holdings could help the U.S. pay down its national debt, since the price of bitcoin has recently climbed.
“While U.S. adversaries acquire traditional gold from a position of relative financial weakness, the U.S. can countermove by stockpiling digital gold in a way that amplifies its incumbent financial strength,” the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that supports a bitcoin strategic reserve, said earlier this year.
Some critics say bitcoin, launched 15 years ago, remains a relatively new asset lacking the kind of social utility or financial import that would necessitate a strategic reserve.
“You’re going to be hard pressed to say someone needs bitcoin the day-to-day way that they need petroleum,” Ananya Kumar, deputy director for future of money at the GeoEconomics Center, a part of the nonpartisan Atlantic Council, told ABC News.
Since the price of bitcoin is highly volatile, a large purchase of the asset could end up threatening the nation’s financial stability rather than safeguarding it, some critics say.
When asked about forecasts of future bitcoin gains that could ease the nation’s debt, Kumar says the long-term outlook for bitcoin remains uncertain. “The coin’s price has obviously been rising over time, but I’m not sure if that rise will continue,” Kumar said.
