Arijit Sarkar
The relevance of social media platforms in swaying global politics was first highlighted with the rise of Facebook (rebranded later to Meta), which was accused of manipulating information based on user demographics. Twitter, which was recently acquired by Elon Musk, got the short end of the stick as United States President Joe Biden accused the website of spewing lies.
Biden attended a fundraising event in Chicago for upcoming elections, wherein he called out Elon Musk for purchasing Twitter. He stated:
“Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world.”
While the Biden administration has previously clarified its stance to promote the suppression of hate speech and misinformation on social media platforms, the president highlighted the lack of supervision on Twitter, adding:
“There’s no editors anymore. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake.”
Ever since Bitcoin launched in 2009, the crypto community chose Twitter as its home for discussing various nuances and attaining consensus on the decisions made. Musk’s $44 billion Twitter acquisition came with a promise of free speech. However, with the increase in hate speech, numerous advertisers have backed out from doing business with Twitter over content moderation concerns.
Musk’s immediate course of action for Twitter includes imposing an $8/month fee for users that wish to retain their account verification.
Supporting Musk’s Twitter acquisition drive, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of crypto exchange Binance, chipped in $500 million using fiat currency.
Binance has laid out plans to form a team to support Twitter’s blockchain efforts, however, an official statement is currently being awaited.
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Brayden Lindrea
Social media and tech giant Meta is reportedly gearing up for “large-scale layoffs” this week amid rising costs and a recent collapse of its share price.
According to Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Nov. 6 citing people familiar with the matter, the planned layoffs could impact thousands of employees in a broad range of divisions across Meta’s 87,000-strong workforce.
It is not currently understood whether the firm’s Reality Labs division, which registered a $3.7 billion loss in the third quarter, would see staff cuts.
Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would be focusing its investment on “a small number of high-priority growth areas,” including its artificial intelligence (AI) Discovery Engine and its advertisement and business messaging platforms in addition to the metaverse, stating:
“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year [...] In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
During the earnings call, the billionaire entrepreneur appeared to double down on the firm’s investments in these areas, saying he believes they’re “on the right track with these investments” and should “keep investing heavily in these areas.”
The report comes only a week after Meta reported its third-quarter earnings, which missed revenue expectations and saw a rise in its operating costs. Its stock price also took a battering, with shares in Meta currently priced at $90.79 — down 7.56% over the last five days and 73.19% year-on-year, according to Yahoo Finance.
The company appears to still be actively hiring into its metaverse division regardless, with its list of job openings revealing 38 of its 413 listings are related to augmented reality and virtual reality.
Cointelegraph has reached out to Meta for clarification and whether there would be any changes to its metaverse division but did not receive an immediate response.
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Jesse Coghlan
The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, said his company will liquidate the entirety of its position in FTX Token, the native token of competing exchange FTX.
In a Nov. 6 tweet, Zhao said the decision was made after “recent revelations that have came to light.”
In a later tweet, CZ explained the FTT liquidation was “just post-exit risk management,” referring to lessons learned from the fall of Terra’s Luna Classic (LUNC) and how it impacted market players.
He also added “we won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs.”
Liquidating our FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We gave support before, but we won't pretend to make love after divorce. We are not against anyone. But we won't support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs. Onwards. November 6, 2022
Cointelegraph understands that Binance’s decision to liquidate the token is due to reports surrounding a recently leaked balance sheet from Sam Bankman-Fried-founded Alameda Research, which alleges billions of dollars worth of Alameda’s assets are tied up in FTX’s token.
Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, in a Nov. 6 tweet, however, said the balance sheet wasn’t reflective of the true story, noting that the sheet in question is only for “a subset of our corporate entities” and other assets worth over $10 billion “aren’t reflected there.”
- the balance sheet breaks out a few of our biggest long positions; we obviously have hedges that aren’t listed
- given the tightening in the crypto credit space this year we’ve returned most of our loans by now November 6, 2022
Bankman-Fried backed Ellison’s claim in a tweet, saying a “bunch of unfounded rumors have been circulating.”
Cointelegraph contacted Binance for clarification about the reasons behind the liquidation, a spokesperson said the company has no further updates “at this time.”
Zhao didn’t state how much FTT Binance would sell but revealed the exchange held around $2.1 billion United States dollar equivalent in Binance USD (BUSD) — the exchange’s stablecoin — and FTT due to its exit from FTX equity last year.
He added Binance would try to sell the tokens in a way that “minimizes market impact” stating he expects the token sales to take “a few months to complete.”
On-chain analysis showed nearly 23 million FTT, worth around $584 million at the time of writing, transferred from an unknown wallet to Binance, which Zhao confirmed as part of the exchange’s token offloading.
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
