Pause on tougher Hijab law, lifting of ban on WhatsApp, Google, Iran taking these steps due to...
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File this under nice problems to have: Bluesky is growing like gangbusters. But hiding beneath that nice problem is a whole viper pit of nasty ones, as any study of Twitter history will tell you. The Twitter-like social media underdog (or, given its logo, under-butterfly) zipped past the 20 million-user mark last week, with more than a quarter of those users arriving after the U.S. election. An election in which the owner of Twitter/X put his giant thumb on the scale for Donald Trump and made billions of dollars in a single day afterwards—events that led to what we might term an ongoing X-odus. Now leaving Musk's sinking ship for Bluesky: Taylor Swift stans . More importantly, the new users are highly active , and there's no sign of the trend abating. According to a live counter built atop Bluesky's API, the service is nudging the 23 million-user mark, and could cross it by the time U.S. families sit down to their Thanksgiving meals. The growth rate is 4 to 8 new users every second. That could easily climb once crazy Republican uncles everywhere unload on their distraught Democratic kin. So what's the problem? Say it with us now: content moderation. Bluesky doesn't just have to deal with disinformation coming from fake accounts , taking advantage of its lack of account verification, but also an explosion in child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — from two confirmed cases in 2023 to eight confirmed cases a day post-election. What did Twitter do when it was in this position? In a word: nothing. Twitter's early history was one of chaotic growth, company name changes, excessive "fail whale" downtime, and ego clashes between the shy male nerds who lucked into running it. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg famously described his rival social media service as "a clown car that fell into a gold mine." As a result, there's little data on account growth in the early years. We know Twitter, born in 2006, took until 2008 to reach its first 600,000 users. In April 2010, the company boasted 105.8 million accounts , according to an on-the-scene report from a social media news website called Mashable. In other words, the closest analog to Bluesky right now is Twitter at some point in 2009. 'We suck at dealing with abuse' And when did Twitter start policing for hate speech and other criminal activity? Before 2014, the company didn't even offer a way to report abuse on the platform, and that tool was notoriously slow. In 2015, well into the targeted harassment campaign known as Gamergate , Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote a mea culpa explaining how this was costing the company: Disney CEO Bob Iger concurred in 2016, when he nixed a deal to buy Twitter that had the support of both company boards. The reason? "Nastiness" and "hate speech," Iger wrote in his 2019 autobiography . That didn't faze Elon Musk — or did it? After all, even Musk tried to back out of his highly speculative $44 billion offer for Twitter in 2022 before a court forced him to mean what he had publicly said. By that point, Twitter had belatedly introduced content moderation (starting in 2018, when it permanently suspended the account of conspiracy maven Alex Jones). The growing moderation team under Aaron Rodericks was dismantled during Musk's first year . His "content moderation council" that was going to decide whether to reinstate accounts like Trump's (banned after it was used to lead an insurrection) never materialized. And what happened? A stream of users heading for the exits that has not abated since. By contrast, Bluesky has plans to quadruple the size of its content moderation team , from 25 to 100. "We're trying to go above what the legal requirements are, because we decided that we wanted to be a safe and welcoming space for a lot of users," Rodericks — now head of Trust and Safety at Bluesky after Musk ousted him from X — told Platformer . There are many challenges ahead for Rodericks and everyone else at Bluesky who aims to build trust among new users. Top of mind right now has to be those fake accounts. Twitter introduced its verification badges, the famous blue checks, in 2009; right in line with Bluesky at this stage in its growth. Plus, European Union chiefs noted this week, the platform is technically running afoul of its regulations . But the compliance problem is a small one. There's no sign yet that Bluesky intends to follow Musk into his ongoing state of war with the EU ; the problem simply seems to be that Bluesky is growing so fast it doesn't even have a European representative. Again, nice problem to have.Jimmy Carter had the longest post-presidency of anyone to hold the office, and one of the most active. Here is a look back at his life. 1924 — Jimmy Carter was born on Oct. 1 to Earl and Lillian Carter in the small town of Plains, Georgia. 1928 — Earl Carter bought a 350-acre farm 3 miles from Plains in the tiny community of Archery. The Carter family lived in a house on the farm without running water or electricity. 1941 — He graduated from Plains High School and enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College in Americus. 1942 — He transferred to Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. 1943 — Carter’s boyhood dream of being in the Navy becomes a reality as he is appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. 1946 — He received his naval commission and on July 7 married Rosalynn Smith of Plains. They moved to Norfolk, Virginia. 1946-1952 — Carter’s three sons are born, Jack in 1947, Chip in 1950 and Jeff in 1952. 1962-66 — Carter is elected to the Georgia State Senate and serves two terms. 1953 — Carter’s father died and he cut his naval career short to save the family farm. Due to a limited income, Jimmy, Rosalynn and their three sons moved into Public Housing Apartment 9A in Plains. 1966 — He ran for governor, but lost. 1967 — Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s fourth child, Amy, is born. 1971 — He ran for governor again and won the election, becoming Georgia’s 76th governor on Jan. 12. 1974 — Carter announced his candidacy for president. 1976 — Carter was elected 39th president on Nov. 2, narrowly defeating incumbent Gerald Ford. 1978 — U.S. and the Peoples’ Republic of China establish full diplomatic relations. President Carter negotiates and mediates an accord between Egypt and Israel at Camp David. 1979 — The Department of Education is formed. Iranian radicals overrun the U.S. Embassy and seize American hostages. The Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty is signed. 1980 — On March 21, Carter announces that the U.S. will boycott the Olympic Games scheduled in Moscow. A rescue attempt to get American hostages out of Iran is unsuccessful. Carter was defeated in his bid for a second term as president by Ronald Reagan in November. 1981 — President Carter continues to negotiate the release of the American hostages in Iran. Minutes before his term as president is over, the hostages are released. 1982 — Carter became a distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and founded The Carter Center. The nonpartisan and nonprofit center addresses national and international issues of public policy. 1984 — Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter volunteer one week a year for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that helps needy people in the United States and in other countries renovate and build homes, until 2020. He also taught Sunday school in the Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains from the mid-’80s until 2020. 2002 — Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 2015 — Carter announced in August he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain. 2016 — He said in March that he no longer needed cancer treatment. 2024 — Carter dies at 100 years old. Sources: Cartercenter.org, Plains Historical Preservation Trust, The Associated Press; The Brookings Institution; U.S. Navy; WhiteHouse.gov, GallupSyrian government forces have lost control of Daraa city, a war monitor said, in another stunning blow for President Bashar al-Assad's rule after rebels wrested other key cities from his grip. Daraa was dubbed "the cradle of the revolution" early in Syria's civil war, after activists accused the government of detaining and torturing a group of boys for scribbling anti-Assad graffiti on their school walls in 2011. While Aleppo and Hama, the two other main cities taken from government control in recent days, fell to an Islamist-led rebel alliance, Daraa fell to local armed groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "Local factions have taken control of more areas in Daraa province, including Daraa city... they now control more than 90 percent of the province, as regime forces successively pulled out," the Britain-based Observatory said late Friday, which relies on a network of sources around Syria. Daraa province borders Jordan. Despite a truce brokered by Assad ally Russia, it has been plagued by unrest in recent years, with frequent attacks, clashes and assassinations. Syria's civil war, which began with Assad's crackdown on democracy protests, has killed more than 500,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes. Never in the war had Assad's forces lost control of so many key cities in such a short space of time. Since a rebel alliance led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched its offensive on November 27, the government has lost second city Aleppo and subsequently Hama in central Syria. The rebels were on Friday at the gates of Homs, Syria's third city, as the government pulled out its troops from Deir Ezzor in the east to redeploy towards to the centre. In an interview published on Friday, the leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the aim of the offensive was to overthrow Assad. "When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal," Jolani told CNN. HTS is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. Proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Western governments, it has sought to soften its image in recent years. According to Fabrice Balanche, a lecturer at France's Lumiere Lyon 2 university, HTS now controls 20,000 square kilometres (more than 7,700 square miles) of territory, nearly seven times as much as it did before the offensive started. As the army and its Iran-backed militia allies pulled out of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, Kurdish-led forces said they crossed the Euphrates and took control of the territory that had been vacated. The Observatory said government troops and their allies withdrew "suddenly" from the east and headed towards the oasis town of Palmyra on the desert road to Homs. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed by the United States, expressed readiness for dialogue with both Turkey and the rebels, saying the offensive heralded a "new" political reality for Syria. The rebels launched their offensive the same day a ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group has been an important Assad ally, alongside Russia and Iran. Turkey, which has backed the opposition, said it would hold talks with Russia and Iran in Qatar this weekend. Ahead of the talks, the top diplomats of Iran, Iraq and Syria met in Baghdad, where Syria's Bassam al-Sabbagh accused the government's enemies of seeking to "redraw the political map". Iran's Abbas Araghchi pledged to provide Assad's government with "whatever (support) is needed". In Homs, scene of some of the war's deadliest violence, tens of thousands of members of Assad's Alawite minority were fleeing, fearing the rebels' advance, residents and the Britain-based Observatory said. Syrians who were forced out of the country years ago by the initial crackdown on the revolt were glued to their phones as they watched current developments unfold. "We've been dreaming of this for more than a decade," said Yazan, a 39-year-old former activist who now lives in France. Asked whether he was worried about HTS's Islamist agenda, he said: "It doesn't matter to me who is conducting this. The devil himself could be behind it. What people care about is who is going to liberate the country." On the other side of the sectarian divide, Haidar, 37, who lives in an Alawite-majority neighbourhood, told AFP by telephone that "fear is the umbrella that covers Homs now". The army shelled the advancing rebels as Syrian and Russian aircraft struck from the skies. At least 20 civilians, including five children, were killed in the bombardment, the war monitor added. At least 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed since the offensive began last week, according to the Observatory's figures, while the United Nations said the violence has displaced 280,000 people. Many of the scenes witnessed in recent days would have been unimaginable earlier in the war. In Hama, an AFP photographer saw residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of city hall. "Our joy is indescribable, and we wish this for every honourable Syrian to experience these happy moments that we have been deprived of since birth," said Hama resident Ghiath Suleiman. Online footage verified by AFP showed residents toppling a statue of Assad's father Hafez, under whose brutal rule the army carried out a massacre in the city in the 1980s. Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International think tank, called the loss of Hama "a massive, massive blow to the Syrian government". Should Assad lose Homs, it wouldn't mean the end of his rule, Lund said, but "with no secure route from Damascus to the coast, I'd say it's over as a credible state entity". bur-ser/rsc