(NEW YORK) — A recent viral food trend has not only grabbed the attention of TikTok viewers, it’s landed a spot on the menu at Chipotle Mexican Grill as well.
Chipotle announced the new Fajita Quesadilla will be hitting digital-only menus nationwide on March 2, thanks to popular social media personalities Keith Lee and Alexis Frost.
Frost, a creator who regularly shares videos of everything she tried at fast food restaurants, and Lee, who helps struggling local businesses get a boost of customers by trying and reviewing their food himself, went viral late last year after sharing a secret menu tip at Chipotle.
Frost’s initial review of the Chipotle steak quesadilla with fajita veggies was dubbed a perfect “10” to her 2.4 million followers.
Lee later stitched Frost’s video with one of himself trying her order for the first time, and created a DIY vinaigrette hack that combines chipotle-honey vinaigrette dressing and sour cream. His stamp of approval then flooded the feeds of his 10.7 million followers — and counting.
Lee’s order, soon to be known as the “Keithadilla,” is a quesadilla with fajita veggies and steak and sides of roasted chili-corn salsa, sour cream and chipotle honey vinaigrette. Frost’s “Fajita Quesadilla Hack” starts the same with a steak fajita quesadilla and similar sides, but instead of chipotle honey vinaigrette, her third option is the tomatillo red chili salsa.
Now for the first time, customers who order on the app or online can add fresh fajita veggies to any quesadilla order, plus the chipotle-honey vinaigrette dressing will now be available as a side option with quesadillas.
Despite mass appeal, the viral menu “hack” initially made things difficult for Chipotle employees because it was not an official offering on the restaurant’s typical digital ordering platforms. The company subsequently worked quickly on technology updates for nearly 3,200 restaurant locations and conducted training for over 100,000 employees to ensure a seamless experience for all.
“TikTok has not only changed the way we communicate with Gen-Z, but it’s proven it can identify areas of opportunity within our business,” Chipotle’s chief marketing officer Chris Brandt said in a statement. “With the launch of the Fajita Quesadilla, we are celebrating Keith, Alexis, and all our superfans who were craving this delicious customization while prioritizing support for our employees.”
The five new quesadilla options include steak, chicken, barbacoa, carnitas or sofritas — all with fresh fajita vegetables (sauteed bell peppers and onions).
Later next month, Chipotle will bring the two TikTokers together in Las Vegas — where Lee currently lives — to surprise select lucky fans with the new quesadillas.
(NEW YORK) — Buzzy catchphrases like “Quiet Quitting” and “Great Resignation” have captured frustration among some employees as the pandemic has upended their workplace routines and called into question work as a lifestyle priority.
Now there is a new viral trend: “Bare minimum Monday.”
Marisa Jo, who boasts 154,000 followers on TikTok, popularized the phrase with a series of posts that criticize angst-filled preparation for the workweek and ambition-fueled exhaustion brought about by overactivity on the first of five consecutive work days.
Instead, Jo encourages workers to do as little as possible at work on Mondays, restoring their energy and focusing on other interests.
In a post last month, Jo said she lamented her previous approach to Mondays.
“You’d make a to-do list that was way too long thinking you could over-achieve your way out of the stress — but you never did,” she said in the post. “You’ve always put more pressure on yourself than any boss, so you started to wonder why,” she added. “You knew it was time for something new.”
That video garnered 145,000 views and 18,000 likes. A separate viral post from Jo on the topic yielded 1.8 million views, Forbes reported.
“Bare minimum Monday” marks a convergence of pandemic-era trends: a blurring of the boundary between work and leisure amid the rise of work from home, a tight labor market that has afforded leverage to employees and social media content creators who’ve found a wide audience for workplace frustration, experts told ABC News.
“It’s a perfect storm of the type of expression and dissatisfaction we’re seeing put on these platforms in a very public way,” Brooke Duffy, a professor of communication at Cornell University who studies the impact of new technology on labor, told ABC News. “It isn’t just being posted, but it’s gaining traction.”
The new catchphrase has emerged as the job market is booming, despite high-profile layoffs at companies like Amazon and Twitter.
Last month’s unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, the lowest figure since 1969. Further, as of December, the economy had 11 million job openings, federal data this month showed.
In a tight labor market, workers typically wield greater leverage over an employer since they retain more latitude to seek a job elsewhere, experts said.
Meanwhile, some indicators of job dissatisfaction have emerged.
Last year, labor unions reached their highest level of approval in the U.S. since 1965, a Gallup poll showed.
The number of workplace strikes rose 52% in 2022 compared to the year prior, researchers at Cornell University found.
Meanwhile, workers at Amazon and Starbucks astonished allies and adversaries last year, delivering landmark labor victories. Starbucks workers unionized more than 260 stores last year, according to federal data.
“People have been annoyed with their work for a long time, and now all of a sudden there’s a lot of media attention to worker organizing and strikes, and it has made a lot of workers say, ‘Oh, gee, maybe that would be better for me than putting up with this,'” Ileen DeVault, a professor of labor history at Cornell University, told ABC News.
“That’s certainly tied to the tight labor market,” she added. “Workers are much more likely to quit their jobs than get fired right now, and their employers panic if they even make noises about quitting.”
(NEW YORK) — YouTube personality Steve Hammes leased a Hyundai Kona Electric sport utility vehicle for his 17-year-old daughter Maddie for three reasons: it was affordable, practical and allowed Maddie to put her cash toward college, not fuel. Now, the upstate New York resident has a dilemma many EV owners can relate to: finding available charging stations far away from home.
“We’re going through the planning process of how easily Maddie can get from Albany to Gettysburg [College] and where she can charge the car,” Hammes told ABC News. “It makes me a little nervous. We want fast chargers that take 30 to 40 minutes — it would not make sense to sit at a Level 2 charger for hours. There isn’t a good software tool that helps EV owners plan their trips.”
Last week the Biden administration said Tesla would open its Supercharger network to non-Tesla owners by the end of 2024. The plan includes 3,500 Tesla fast chargers and 4,000 of its slower, Level 2 chargers — a small number in Tesla’s sprawling network. Setting up an account on Tesla’s app is also required for access.
John Voelcker, an industry expert on EVs and the former editor of Green Car Reports, said this arrangement will allow Tesla to learn a lot about U.S. drivers — “how you charge, where you drive and what car you have.” He does not expect Tesla to commit to additional charging stations.
“Tesla does not want its highly reliable and tightly integrated charging network to be clogged with people whose cars can’t charge as fast as Teslas,” he told ABC News.
President Joe Biden prioritized emissions-free vehicles in the 2021 infrastructure law, vowing to increase the number of green vehicles on America’s highways and local roads. The president’s goals include installing 500,000 new chargers across the U.S. and dramatically boosting EV sales by 2030.
Voelcker said he’s seen little improvement in the nation’s charging infrastructure in the last four years and frequently hears complaints of dead chargers and sticky cables.
“The incentive right now is to get stations in the ground,” he said. “It’s not making sure they actually work.”
Tony Quiroga, editor-in-chief of Car and Driver, has been forced to wander the aisles of a Walmart in Burbank, California, while the EV he’s testing that day sits and charges. He’s become a familiar face at a Mexican restaurant in Mohave, California, where a Tesla charger is located. A coffee shop recently opened nearby that caters specifically to EV drivers.
“I imagine an ecosystem will be built around charging stations eventually,” he told ABC News. “Longer trips bring up flaws with EVs. People are leery of taking them on long trips — that’s why older EVs don’t have 40,000 miles on them.”
Sandwich chain Subway announced Wednesday it was partnering with GenZ EV Solutions to build “Oasis Parks” at select dining locations. EV customers can expect charging canopies with multiple ports, picnic tables, Wi-Fi, restrooms, green space and playgrounds to make the charging experience more “seamless,” Subway said.
Last March Swedish automaker Volvo and Starbucks said they were teaming up to install as many as 60 DC fast chargers at 15 Starbucks stores along a 1,350-mile route that spans from Seattle to Denver.
Quiroga’s sister, who lives in Northern California, takes her internal combustion car — not her Tesla Model S — when she needs to drive across the state. Even Quiroga’s team of reporters has to carefully plan and calculate how far EV charging stations are when they conduct comparison tests among manufacturers.
“These comparisons tests are a logistical nightmare. We plan meals around recharging the vehicles,” he said. “We need to have the battery at 100% or close to it to test a vehicle’s performance. We have to time everything — it requires more work.”
In December, Quiroga was in Florida driving BMW’s luxury i7 all-electric sedan. He watched as its range dropped from 240 miles to 220 as soon as he turned on the heat.
“You use the luxuries … and the range plummets,” he said.
Sharon Bragg of Clifton Park, New York, has to charge her Ford Mustang Mach-E GT more frequently in the winter months. The GT’s EPA rating is 270 miles on a full charge. Bragg said it’s closer to 200 in the colder weather. Last December a Level 2 charging plug got stuck in her Mach-E and would not budge. After multiple failed attempts by bystanders, she called an electrician, who blew hot air on the plug for 20 minutes to release it.
“The whole process took two hours,” she told ABC News. “I was in the parking lot from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. It was a cold day.”
Bragg said her parents, who also bought a Mach-E, have complained of broken public chargers and endless lines. Sometimes they drive for miles before they can find a public charger that’s working properly, she said. Bragg, a former minivan owner, is still enamored with her electric SUV despite the winter challenges.
“I love the tech and the giant screen [inside] won me over,” she said. “The only time I go to a gas station now is to buy coffee.”
Quiroga of Car and Driver said the “teething pains” EV owners previously experienced have greatly improved.
“Where we are now versus 10 years ago — it’s radically different,” he said. “Range has tripled, even quintupled. Look at the Lucid Air — it gets over 500 miles of range in a single charge.”
Voelcker pointed out that the bulk of charging for EV owners takes place at home, not on the road. The majority of owners use public chargers two or three times a year, he said.
“The more you live with an EV, you don’t have to take every last opportunity to charge it,” he said. “It’s rare that you cover 250 miles in a day.”
Florida resident Jared Rosenholtz, editor at large at CarBuzz, has downloaded at least eight apps on his phone from companies like EVgo, Electrify America, ChargePoint and Shell Recharge so he can “juice up” the EVs he’s tasked with reviewing. The apps clutter his phone — and even worse — require an outstanding balance to use.
“It’s like having an E-ZPass account,” Rosenholtz, an apartment dweller, told ABC News. “If your account balance gets low, the app pulls from your credit card on file and charges another $10.”
He added, “I probably have $8 to $10 in each of these apps, just sitting there.”
Parking spots at EV chargers are sometimes occupied by gas-powered vehicles, Rosenholtz said. Or a charging cord is too short and won’t connect to the vehicle. Then there are times when the charger is dead … or the wait time is more than an hour. The bad experiences are frustrating, he said. The one upside? Meeting fellow EV drivers.
“I can meet a lot of cool people at these stations,” he said. “I always ask them how their EV experience has been. One Polestar owner helped me with a payment issue I had.”
Hammes said EV owners have also come up to him at public charging stations, knocking on the Kona’s window to say hello.
“It’s a social experience … EV owners love to talk about their cars and talk to other EV owners,” he noted. “It’s a new tech and everyone is learning at the same pace and sharing their experiences.”
Hammes, a first-time EV owner, said his experience overall with the Kona Electric has been positive. He installed a 240-volt Level 2 charger in his garage last December and has only praise for the Hyundai Home system. His one gripe? The sales associates at his local Hyundai dealership were unknowledgeable and poorly trained about the intricacies of EV ownership, he explained.
“The dealership experience is so far behind. I get solicitations for oil changes. The staff is so disconnected from the product they’re selling,” he said.
Hammes said he will likely choose another EV when his lease is up next spring — only this time he’s adding more range.
“For me personally the new threshold would be 300 [miles]. That number makes me feel more comfortable,” he said. “That’s what I am aiming for in our next EV.”
(NEW YORK) — To call Ukraine home is to embody the love of food and sharing it with others — a tradition the country has historically embodied in the role it plays in feeding the world.
The fertile soil in the region, known as the “breadbasket of the world” due to its abundance in grains like wheat, barley, corn, soybeans — and other food including sunflower oil and poultry — had ensured in decades past that Ukraine would remain one of the top food producers and exporters in the world. An estimated 70% of land in Ukraine is used for farmland.
The Russian invasion one year ago may change all of that.
Ukraine’s role as the breadbasket of the world is in jeopardy as war rages on, tearing apart the country’s agricultural lands and leaving behind dangerous obstacles, further hindering the cleanup and rebuilding that must take place in order to restore the fields.
The war is exacerbating an already delicate food system that could have consequences for decades to come, experts told ABC News.
Here is how the war in Ukraine has complicated issues of food security around the globe:
Food prices have stabilized, but global food supplies are at risk, experts say
Within about a week of Russia crossing into eastern Ukraine in the dawn of Feb. 24, 2022, prices for grains like soybeans and some vegetable oils spiked about 50% to 60%, Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, told ABC News.
Experts on global food systems almost immediately began warning of the repercussions the war could have on food shortages and the subsequent malnutrition that vulnerable populations in places like the Horn of Africa and Yemen could face.
“Maybe people don’t even know about Ukraine there, but they feel that they cannot afford to buy food anymore,” Anna Voloshyna, a Ukranian chef who now resides in San Francisco and has worked with the World Food Programme to bring light to the issue, told ABC News.
Those prices have since stabilized to pre-war levels by the end of summer, as surplus goods from the rest of the world made up for the difference in what Ukraine was no longer able to export, Glauber said. The Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities released by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, showed a spike in March 2022, but then dropped back down to pre-war levels several months later.
The global food supply “dodged a bullet” after places like the U.S., Canada, European Union and other big exporting regions saw “fairly decent” crop production, Glauber said. There was concern that Russia’s output would be affected, but Russia ended up exporting much more wheat than anticipated, he added. Australia also saw a “record” wheat crop, Glauber said.
The implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement between Russia and Ukraine made with Turkey and the United Nations to ensure the safe transportation of grain and foodstuffs out of Ukraine, has been “critical” in keeping food prices stable since it went into effect in July, James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson in Ukraine, told ABC News.
However, Voloshyna, who uses sunflower oil almost exclusively in her cooking, said she can no longer find the staple at reasonable prices.
She said that she used to turn the bottle over and see, “Made in Ukraine.” Ever since the war started, those bottles of sunflower oil now mostly come from Mexico, she said.
Food prices have not returned to pre-pandemic levels
While food prices have returned to pre-war levels, they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, when prices were “considerably lower,” Glauber said.
The Food Price Index declined during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflected uncertainties faced by commodity markets, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2022 World Food and Agriculture Report. However, between May 2020 and March 2022, the index surged to its highest-ever value at 159.7 points.
However, Glauber pointed out that only about 25% of the food prices at the grocery store are directly attributable to the underlying commodity price, meaning that if the price of corn goes up, then so will the cost of feeding the chickens and pigs that are later slaughtered for meat or the cows that produce milk that is later sent to the grocery store.
The surge was sparked more by the pandemic’s effect on the supply chains before rising in conjunction with the rebound in activity and demand experienced in 2021, according to the report. The disruption to exports of cereals and vegetable oils from war in Ukraine finished off the spike in 2022, according to the report.
In January 2023, the Food Price Index stood at 135.6. In 2020, before the spike began, the Food Price Index was 98.1, according to the U.N.
Inflation is also to blame. December 2021 and January 2022 saw some of the highest meat prices ever recorded, which was driving the food inflation at 5% to 6%, “really high levels” compared to the typical 2% to 3% increases in food inflation, Glauber said.
“We’ve had very few times when we’ve seen food inflation much higher than that,” he said.
The fact that the dollar has remained strong means that Americans have not felt the full scale of food price increases around the world, Glauber said.
But that could change. There is not a lot of crops in reserve, leaving the world food supply without a cushion,
“We’re in a phase of the market where, at least for the time being, it’s too early to say that we’re out of the woods,” he said.
The war adds complicated dimensions on energy and fertilizer prices, goods that Russia is a large exporter of, is also indirectly affected food prices, Glauber said.
Continued disasters will have large-scale affect on human health
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows no signs of stopping, which will affect the ability for millions around the world to obtain proper nutrition, experts say.
The rise in food prices — as well as increases in fuel costs — have plunged millions of more vulnerable families into food insecurity, Elder from UNICEF, told ABC News.
“Normally, that means someone in the family is missing out on on meals,” Elder said.
The price of nutritious foods — think foods that contain a lot of vitamins, minerals and micronutrients such as fruits and vegetables, eggs and fish — have increased the most, Saskia Osendarp, executive director of the Micronutrient Forum and co-coordinator of Standing Together for Nutrition, a consortium of nutrition, economics, food and health experts.
Acute malnutrition is life-threatening, as lacking these foods diminishes children’s ability to grow and develop and adults’ ability to function optimally, Osendarp said.
The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that a 5% increase in food prices will lead to 9% children who suffer from wasting, a form of acute malnutrition.
Just over 13 million children suffer from what we call severe wasting, Elder said.
“With a worsening climate, we’ll keep hurting these children who really don’t have a carbon footprint, and we’re going to keep seeing that number increasing,” Elder said.
The world is on its way to a “raging food catastrophe,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders at the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November.
The global food supply is in a “tight market” in the coming year, especially as the war continues, Glauber said. Plantings in Ukraine are down 35% to 40%, meaning that one of the major exporters in the world is going to produce far less again this year, he said.
“That means that if the world wants to keep prices moderate, it’s going to have to find that production from somewhere,” he said, adding that there is very little margin for poor crop elsewhere.
Climate change could also soon affect other major food producers around the world, Osendarp said. There is continued drought in the Horn of Africa, and flooding rains have been ruining crops in South Asia, Osendarp added.
“All of these crises combined have led to these high food prices,” Osendarp said.
Cleanup from the war will take years
Much of the agricultural land in Ukraine has been destroyed or contaminated, Osendarp said.
“It will take us 10 years to remove all the dangerous bombs and mines and the stuff that our friendly neighbor left us,” Voloshyna, whose family has a farm in southern Ukraine, said. “Most of those minds are in the fields, so people cannot go and harvest crops. And they cannot plant new crops.”
The country’s agriculture sector lost $4.3 billion as a result of the war, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.
Even if the war ended tomorrow, it could take up to a decade or more for much of the agricultural land to be restored, Osendarp said. In addition, many farmers have fled the country, she added.
“The long-term impact on production has been devastating,” Glauber said.
Ukraine is in desperate need for money to clear the fields and buy new farming equipment, Voloshyna said.
“The only way to provide that security for farmers is to win the war,” she said.
The economic fallout in the future could be swift as well, Osendarp said. The World Bank is warning countries, especially poorer countries, could soon face debilitating debt after absorbing the increase in food prices to protect their citizens.
“Moving forward, the situation still looks rather grim,” Osendarp said.
The Cohasset Police Department demonstrates the equipment used to mine cryptocurrency in the crawl space. — Cohasset Police Department
(COHASSET, Mass.) — A small Massachusetts town enlisted the help of the Department of Homeland Security to track down the person who illegally installed a cryptocurrency mining operation in a crawl space of a middle school.
According to the Cohasset Police Department, the director of facilities for the Cohasset Middle/High School called the police in Dec. 2021 after noticing out-of-place electrical wires, computers and temporary ductwork. With the assistance of the town’s IT director, detectives located a cryptocurrency mining operation, connected to the school’s electrical system, in a crawl space.
The process of “mining” cryptocurrency utilizes computers to verify transactions by solving complex equations, requiring a “considerable amount of electricity,” according to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
According to the University of Cambridge, bitcoin (which is just one of many cryptocurrencies) requires roughly 14 gigawatts of electricity daily. According to the Department of Energy, the daily energy needs of bitcoin would require approximately 43 million solar panels or 4,662 utility-scale wind turbines.
After discovering the unauthorized mining setup, the Cohasset Police Department contacted the Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security to remove the computer and conduct a forensic examination.
Police identified the Town of Cohasset’s assistant facilities director Nadeam Nahas, 39, as a suspect after a three-month investigation. Nahas resigned from his role in 2022.
Nahas was charged with vandalizing a school and fraudulent electricity use in Quincy District Court. According to ABC’s Boston affiliate, Nahas failed to appear at his Thursday court appearance, prompting an arrest warrant for his arrest. He is accused of stealing nearly $18,000 in electricity from the school district.
(NEW YORK) — European Commission employees will have to remove TikTok from their work phones for security reasons, the European Union’s executive body said Thursday.
The Commission said in a statement that all its employees will have to comply by March 15.
This measure aims “to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyber-attacks against the corporate environment of the Commission,” the statement said.
“The security developments of other social media platforms will also be kept under constant review,” the statement added.
The new rule will apply to work phones, but also employees’ personal phones if they have an EU app on it, said Sonya Gospodinova, a spokesperson at the executive body.
The EU is more than ever forced to pay attention to “foreign interference” and potential data collection threats, Michel Maroy, an EU policy expert based in Brussels, told ABC News.
Maroy added, “European Union needs to reshape its geopolitical dimension and it does include new discussions and technical rules that are now becoming as important as sanctions for example.”
TikTok in a statement called the Commission’s decision “misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions.”
The app, owned by the China-based company ByteDance, has faced growing scrutiny from officials in the U.S. and Europe over fears that user data could fall into the possession of the Chinese government.
With more than 125 million European users, none of the 27 EU members has so far imposed a full ban on the application. However, Dutch officials in January asked public authorities to stop using the app.
The European Commission declined to comment on whether any specific incident made them rush this decision.
“We do not know at what level Chinese intel could be involved and could use our 125 millions users’ data. This is unclear. This is a protective action,” Maroy said.
To build trust in Europe, TikTok announced last week that they will open two additional data centers on the continent.
(NEW YORK) — Two million Cosori Air Fryers have been recalled due to fire and burn hazards, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety and Commission announced in a press release Thursday.
About 250,000 air fryers in Canada and 21,000 air fryers in Mexico have also been recalled.
According to the CPSC announcement and an official Cosori recall website, a wire connection in the air fryers can overheat, which could potentially cause fire and burn hazards.
Cosori has so far received 205 reports of its air fryers “catching fire, burning, melting, overheating and smoking,” including “10 reports of minor, superficial burn injuries and 23 reports of minor property damage,” according to CPSC.
Both CPSC and Cosori have advised consumers impacted by the recall to immediately stop using the recalled products and contact Cosori to receive a free replacement or another Cosori product.
“All of our products are rigorously and routinely tested for consumer safety and are in full compliance with established industry standards,” Cosori stated on its official recall website. “COSORI is committed to the safety of those who use and love our products, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.”
The air fryers, priced between $70 and $130, were sold at retailers nationwide from June 2018 through December 2022.
The recalled units were sold at brick and mortar retailers including Best Buy, Target and The Home Depot, as well as online retailers including Amazon, Bed Bath and Beyond, Homegoods, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Macy’s, QVC and Walmart, among others.
For more information on the recall, and to view a full list of affected products, visit recall.cosori.com.
(NEW YORK) — Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces four additional criminal charges of conspiracy contained in a superseding indictment unsealed Thursday.
The new charges include conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business.
Bankman-Fried, 30, now faces a total of 12 charges since the collapse of FTX.
He pleaded not guilty to eight counts of fraud and conspiracy in early January and remains free on a $250 million bond, confined to his parents’ house in Palo Alto, California.
No new appearances were immediately scheduled for his arraignment on the additional counts.
(NEW YORK) — One year into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a new report by the social media company Meta details the evolution of pro-Russian influence campaigns online.
The report describes a declining presence for Russian state media outlets on Meta’s platforms Facebook and Instagram, as well as crude efforts by covert pro-Russian networks to maintain their reach in the face of a crackdown by Meta.
According to Meta’s report, the company responded to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine with restrictions on Russian state-controlled media outlets, including curbs on advertising and limiting the reach of the outlets’ content in users’ feeds.
Since then, Meta observed, Russian state media outlets have become less active on its platforms and their posts have attracted less attention.
However, at the same time, some Russian state media outlets have been inviting their audiences to follow them on other platforms.
“Russian state media outlets have significantly reduced their activity on our platforms and pivoted elsewhere,” the company noted.
Meta also cracked down in 2022 on covert, unofficial networks promoting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including a group it identified as “Cyber Front Z,” which the company said had links to Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin was charged in 2018 by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller for allegedly funding the Internet Research Agency, an online “troll farm” accused of attempting to influence U.S. politics.
In Nov. 2022, Prigozhin admitted in a social media statement that he had interfered in U.S. elections.
In an August 2022 report, Meta said the Cyber Front Z network was operated in part by individuals linked to the Internet Research Agency. The network’s existence was first revealed earlier that year in a March exposé by the Russian outlet Fontanka.
Along with another pro-Russia network known as “Doppleganger,” Cyber Front Z was reportedly active not just on Meta’s platforms but on other services including Telegram, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn.
In the August report, Meta said the Cyber Front Z network was “clumsy and largely ineffective,” noting that on Instagram, for example, more than half of the fake accounts created by the network were quickly detected and removed upon creation.
“On our platforms, these networks resembled brute-force, ‘smash-and-grab’ attempts to use a large number of low-quality accounts all at once, in the hope that at least a few might survive and escape detection,” the company said in its latest report.
When Meta cracked down on Cyber Front Z and Doppleganger, they responded “aggressively” in an effort to restore their online presence, at a scale the company described as unusual for Russia-based covert influence campaigns.
Meta said in its report that it had detected and disrupted “thousands” of attempts to create fake accounts and “hundreds more” efforts at sharing fake websites, including some masquerading as real news outlets.
Meta suggested in its report that this aggressiveness could result from a lack of preparation by the networks’ operators for the unique context of a fast-paced, full-scale war, adding that those responsible for the covert networks were likely still paid despite the low quality and minimal impact of their work.
“These actors can provide plausible deniability to their customers, but they also have an interest in exaggerating their own effectiveness,” Meta said in its report.
Prigozhin, the Internet Research Agency’s alleged operator, is also known as the owner of the private military company Wagner, whose members have fought alongside Russian troops in Ukraine.
Meta’s latest report on covert pro-Russian online networks comes amid an increasingly public feud between Prigozhin and the Russian military establishment. In a recent audio statement, Prigozhin accused top Russian military and defense officials of depriving Wagner fighters of ammunition.
(NEW YORK) — A pilot program that involved nearly 3,000 employees testing out a four-day workweek is giving new hope to those seeking to change the way people work.
Over 90% of the employees and 61 companies that took part in the pilot program supported keeping a four-day workweek, according to the program’s findings, which were published this month.
Companies also reported that both revenue and the retention rate of employees increased with the four-day workweek model, while a majority of employees said the model reduced burnout.
Around 15% of employees who took part in the pilot program reported that no amount of money could get them to accept returning to a five-day workweek, according to the findings.
The six-month pilot program, billed as the “world’s largest four-day working week trial to date,” took place in the United Kingdom.
It was organized by an advocacy group, 4 Day Week Global, that worked in collaboration with researchers at Boston College and the University of Cambridge.
Each company was allowed to design their own four-day workweek model, from taking Fridays off to working in more staggered schedules, according to 4 Day Week Global.
The group reported that the “most extensive benefits” of the four-day workweek pilot were seen in the mental and physical health of employees.
Employees reported less stress, less burnout and decreased levels of anxiety, fatigue and insomnia, while also reporting increased satisfaction with their relationships, finances and time management, according to the report.
The findings come on the heels of a Gallup survey released late last year that found 4 out of 10 workers in the United States reported their job had either a somewhat negative or extremely negative impact on their mental health.
Overall, the Gallup survey found almost 1 in 5 workers reported that their mental health was poor or fair, the two lowest ratings on the survey.
The four-day workweek pilot program’s findings also come as employees in the U.S. have experienced more flexibility than usual during the past three years of the coronavirus pandemic. Many companies now allow their employees to work fully remote or hybrid schedules, while others have already or are in the process of requiring employees to return to the office full-time.
What the findings of the U.K. pilot program on a four-day workweek could mean for workers in the U.S. remains to be seen, according to ABC News chief business, technology and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis.
“The issue is culture, and you really have to change the culture of the overall work week in order to make these changes,” said Jarvis. “A lot of companies are very set in their ways. We saw big changes in the pandemic. There’s a chance they will go that way.”
A report released in November by consulting firm Ernst & Young LLP found that 40% of the U.S.-based companies it surveyed for its annual EY Future Workplace Index are either implementing a four-day workweek or have already begun using one.
The survey also found that 64% of executives surveyed said they believe “flexible working options motivate employees.”
Jarvis said the motivation employees feel could be what begins to shift the tide towards more companies experimenting with a four-day workweek.
“It really does feel like a bonus, and that’s the thing,” she said. “If you decide you’re going to work harder because you feel good, that’s a win for employers, so it is something they’re thinking about.”
For employees who want to ask for more flexibility in their current schedule, Jarvis said the first step is making sure your work stands out.
“You have to be a winner on the team and be a really good contributor to your overall work environment,” Jarvis said. “Talk to your boss about flexibility, see how you can incorporate it into your schedule. But go in after a big win. That’s your best time.”
