(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, will face lawmakers Wednesday for a hearing about the potential harms of social media use for young people.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security will convene the hearing at 2:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, and it will mark the first time Mosseri has testified before Congress.
“After bombshell reports about Instagram’s toxic impacts, we want to hear straight from the company’s leadership why it uses powerful algorithms that push poisonous content to children, driving them down rabbit holes to dark places, and what it will do to make its platform safer,” subcommittee Chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement.
“I appreciate Mr. Mosseri voluntarily coming to the subcommittee and hope that he will support specific legislative reforms and solutions, particularly in its immensely potent algorithms,” Blumenthal added. “My conversations with parents have deeply moved me to fight for such reforms and demand answers that the whole nation is seeking.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), ranking member of the subcommittee, added, “Instagram’s repeated failures to protect children’s privacy have already been exposed before the U.S. Senate.”
“Now, it is time for action,” Blackburn said. “I look forward to discussing tangible solutions to improve safety and data security for our children and grandchildren.”
The hearing comes amid mounting controversies for Instagram and its parent company, Meta, after a whistleblower alleged blatant disregard from company executives over the potential harms of the social media platform for young users. Documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year by whistleblower Frances Haugen cited the company’s own internal research that reportedly said Instagram made body image worse for one in three teenage girls.
On Tuesday, just ahead of the hearing, Mosseri announced a slew of updates to Instagram that aim to protect teens and young users on the app. Among them is the “Take a Break” feature — which encourages young users to take a break from Instagram if they have spent a long time scrolling — and a hub of tools for parents and guardians set to roll out early next year.
In late September, Instagram announced plans to pause development of its “Instagram Kids” platform meant for children under the age of 13 in the wake of the Wall Street Journal investigation.
“While we stand by the need to develop this experience, we’ve decided to pause this project,” Mosseri said in a statement at the time. “This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators to listen to their concerns and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today.”
Wednesday’s hearing is the fifth in a series led by Blackburn and Blumenthal specifically related to social media companies and the potential dangers children face online. The hearing will be live-streamed on the Senate commerce committee’s website.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Lawmakers on Wednesday grilled Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in a wide-ranging hearing on the potential harms of social media use for young people. The senators pledged that the age of “self-regulation” for Big Tech is over and bipartisan legislation to protect kids online is imminent.
Mosseri claimed a lot of the issues raised by the lawmakers are not unique to Instagram but are an “industry-wide challenge” that requires “industry-wide solutions and industry-wide standards.”
Mosseri called for an “industry body” to determine best practices when it comes to young peoples’ safety online, focusing on verifying age, building age-appropriate experiences and parental controls. He said he hopes Instagram can work together with lawmakers to reach the goal of keeping children safe online.
The hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security marked the first time Mosseri has testified before Congress and came amid a spate of scandals plaguing social media giant Meta, the newly named parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
A company whistleblower, Frances Haugen, alleged blatant disregard from company executives over the potential harms of the social media platform for young users during a hearing before lawmakers in early October. Documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year by Haugen cited the company’s own internal research that reportedly said Instagram made body image worse for one in three teenage girls.
“In this series of hearings, we’ve heard some pretty powerful and compelling evidence about the dangers of Big Tech to children’s health, well-being and futures,” subcommittee Chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said during his opening remarks. “Our nation is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis. Social media didn’t create it, but it’s certainly fanned the fuel and the flames.”
The senator cited a surgeon general report issued Tuesday that found depression and anxiety among young people has doubled worldwide during the pandemic.
Blumenthal accused Big Tech of contributing to this mental health crisis “with addictive products and sophisticated algorithms that can exploit and profit from children’s insecurities and anxieties.”
He pledged that the time for “self-policing and self-regulation is over.”
Finally, Blumenthal blasted a set of proposals aimed at protecting young people on the platform — that Instagram unveiled just Tuesday — saying it “looks more like a public relations tactic brought on by our hearings.”
Mosseri defended Instagram in his testimony, saying the internet has “changed what it’s like to be a teenager.”
“Teenagers have always spent time with their friends, developed new interests and explored their identities. Today they’re doing those things on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat,” Mosseri told the senators. “I firmly believe that Instagram and the internet more broadly can be a positive force in young people’s lives. I’m inspired every day by teens on Instagram.”
He said he believes Instagram can actually help young people “dealing with difficult things in their lives.”
“Now I recognize that many in this room have deep reservations about our company, but I want to assure you that we do have the same goal. We all want teens to be safe online,” he said. “The internet isn’t going away, and I believe there’s important work that we can do together, industry and policymakers, to raise the standards across the internet to better serve and protect young people.”
“We have a specific proposal,” Mosseri said. “We believe there should be an industry body that will determine the best practices when it comes to what I think are the three most important questions with regards to safety: How to verify age, how to build age-appropriate experiences and how to build parental controls.”
On Tuesday, just ahead of the hearing, Mosseri announced a slew of updates to Instagram that aim to protect teens and young users on the app. Among them is the “Take a Break” feature — which encourages young users to take a break from Instagram if they have spent a long time scrolling — and a hub of tools for parents and guardians set to roll out early next year.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), ranking member of the subcommittee, also blasted these updates during her opening remarks, calling them “half-measures.”
“While telling teens to take a break might seem helpful on the face of things, it’s probably not going to get most teenagers to stop doing what they’re doing and take a break,” the senator said. “Educational tools for parents can be helpful, but frankly, I’m more concerned about the things we know kids and teens are hiding from their parents.”
“This is a case of too little too late, because now there is bipartisan momentum both here and in the House to tackle these problems we are seeing with Big Tech,” Blackburn warned.
When pressed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) over whether spending three hours on Instagram per day is a good idea for young people, which Klobuchar said was put in the new policies as an option for parents, Mosseri said he believes it’s the individual parent’s decision.
“I’m a parent, and I can understand that parents have concerns about how much screen time their kids have,” Mosseri said. “I ultimately think that it’s a parent that knows best what’s best for their teen. So the appropriate amount of time should be a decision by a parent about the specific teen. If one parent wants to set that limit at 10 minutes, and another parent wants to set that limit at three hours, who am I to say they don’t know what’s best for their children?”
In late September, Instagram announced plans to pause development of its “Instagram Kids” platform meant for children under the age of 13 in the wake of the Wall Street Journal investigation.
“While we stand by the need to develop this experience, we’ve decided to pause this project,” Mosseri said in a statement at the time. “This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators to listen to their concerns and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today.”
When pressed about Instagram Kids during the hearing Wednesday, Mosseri stopped short of permanently committing to stopping development of Instagram Kids. “What I can commit to today is that no child between the ages of 10 and 12, should we ever manage to build Instagram for 10- to 12-year-olds, will have access to that without their explicit parental consent,” Mosseri told the lawmakers.
Wednesday’s hearing is the fifth in a series led by Blackburn and Blumenthal specifically related to social media companies and the potential dangers children face online, leading many predict a bipartisan crackdown on Big Tech’s dominance now looms large.
(NEW YORK) — Instagram announced a slew of updates on Tuesday that aim to protect teens on the app, in an announcement that notably comes one day before Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri is set to testify before lawmakers on social media’s impact on young users.
Mosseri announced the new features in a company blog post on Tuesday, which includes launching the “Take a Break” feature in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“If someone has been scrolling for a certain amount of time, we’ll ask them to take a break from Instagram and suggest that they set reminders to take more breaks in the future,” Monserri said. “We’ll also show them expert-backed tips to help them reflect and reset.”
Mosseri said they will also be taking a stricter approach to what they recommend to teens on the app via search, explore, hashtags and suggested accounts and will stop people from tagging or mentioning teens that don’t follow them. Instagram will also start nudging teens towards different topics if they’ve been dwelling on one topic for a long time.
“We’ll also be launching our first tools for parents and guardians early next year to help them get more involved in their teen’s experiences on Instagram,” Mosseri said. “Parents and guardians will be able to see how much time their teens spend on Instagram and set time limits. And we’ll have a new educational hub for parents and guardians.”
The first tools for parents and guardians are set to launch in March, and will allow them to view how much time their teens spend on Instagram and set time limits. Teens can also notify their parents if they report someone, which Monserri says can give parents the opportunity to talk with their children about it. The educational hub for parents will also include additional resources like tutorials and tips from experts to help them discuss and understand their teens’ social media use.
“As always, I’m grateful to the experts and researchers who lend us their expertise in critical areas like child development, teen mental health and online safety, and I continue to welcome productive collaboration with lawmakers and policymakers on our shared goal of creating an online world that both benefits and protects many generations to come,” Mosseri said.
The updates come in the wake of a former Facebook employee testifying before lawmakers in October. Whistleblower Frances Haugen alleged blatant disregard from company executives when they learned their platforms could have harmful effects on the mental health of young people.
Documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal by Haugen cited the company’s own internal research said that Instagram made body image worse for 1 in 3 teenage girls.
Mosseri, meanwhile, is scheduled to testify on Wednesday before a Senate panel for a hearing titled “Protecting Kids Online: Instagram and Reforms for Young Users.” The hearing will commence at 2:30 p.m. ET.
(NEW YORK) — Charging an electric vehicle is simple and painless — if you have a charger installed at home.
Automakers are producing EVs at a feverish pace with government backing. Yet the number of public charging stations, critical for mass EV adoption, is lacking.
There are fewer than 46,000 EV public charging sites currently in the U.S., according to Department of Energy data. In comparison, the number of gasoline fueling stations in the country totals more than 150,000.
There are several EV-charging network providers currently in the market: EVgo, Blink, ChargePoint, Volta, Wallbox and Electrify America, which is owned by Volkswagen. These companies maintain, build, operate or lease their equipment to businesses, individuals and governments and offer subscription services to members.
The Biden administration has targeted half of all new car sales in the U.S. to be electric in less than 10 years. To reach this goal, at least 1 million fast-charging stations will be required, according to Cathy Zoi, the CEO of EVgo. There are currently 5,627 fast-charging sites in the nation.
At-home EV charging allows drivers to plug in their vehicles at night and wake up in the morning to a full battery charge. Many apartment and condo dwellers though are dependent on public charging stations to juice their emissions-free vehicles, a scenario that can mean long wait and charging times.
“Thirty percent of Americans do not have access to home chargers,” Zoi told ABC News. “We need the infrastructure to get the consumer confidence.”
EVgo has been partnering with major retailers like Safeway, Albertsons, Whole Foods and Kroger to install charging stations in their shopping parking lots. The company also teamed up with General Motors in 2020 to build 2,700 new fast stations over the next five years.
“We’ve identified 40 metro areas in America’s heartland that are part of this program,” Zoi explained. “The Biden infrastructure money can get us into places even farther afield in rural America.”
President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package, which was recently passed by Congress, includes $7.5 billion toward a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030.
Michael Farkas, CEO of EV charging operator and provider Blink, said the $7.5 billion — half of Biden’s $15 billion proposal as presidential candidate — will not be enough to accomplish the electrification goals cited by automakers and government officials.
“It will push things along but it will take substantially more [money] than that,” he told ABC News. “Every state is lacking in infrastructure — even California. We have a massive need for chargers both in the U.S. and globally.”
Construction of an EV station can take four to eight weeks, according to Zoi, and the cost depends on the type of charger. A Level 2 charger, commonly found in residential and commercial/workplace settings, costs between $3,000 and $5,000 to install. DC fast chargers, which allow drivers to recharge 80% of a vehicle’s battery in 30 minutes, start at $125,000 but can top out at $300,000.
The bigger challenge to installing charging networks may not be the cost. Getting approvals from local officials and municipalities can often be a complicated process that lasts weeks or even months, said Zoi. Plus, connecting to the grid presents its own hiccups.
“We’re working with the electric utilities to make sure the local power infrastructure can support fast charging,” Zoi said.
Even in California, which has the highest share of EVs of any U.S. state, public charging stations are far from ubiquitous, said Karl Brauer, executive analyst of iSeeCars.com and a longtime California resident.
“EVs still take a whole lot of planning. You have to know how long your trip is and carefully plan your charging schedule and locations,” he told ABC News. “The infrastructure is terrible. The good news is that there are not many EVs on the roads.”
The ability to charge on the go and travel long distances will move the needle on EV adoption and sales, Brauer said. Yet installing and deploying chargers is a risky business right now.
“There doesn’t seem to be any money being made in EV charging stations,” he said. “What’s the incentive to buy an EV station when there isn’t a profit motive?”
Not enough public EV chargers could dissuade some Americans from swapping their gas-powered conveyances for green vehicles, according to Mark Wakefield, managing director of consulting firm AlixPartners.
“The charging infrastructure is tricky. There are a lot of stakeholders involved and an awful lot of players to coordinate, government included,” he told ABC News. “Range is the No. 1 reason [among Americans] not to buy an EV. The No. 2 reason? Not enough places to charge.”
He added, “Consumers want automakers to curate their charging experience. They want it to be seamless.”
Only 93 U.S. airport locations have charging infrastructure in place, with as few as two stations, according to AlixPartners. EV public infrastructure coverage continues to grow steadily though “most of the growth has been driven by Level 2 chargers,” the firm said in a recent report. DC fast chargers, however, are largely seen as the solution to revolutionizing EV ownership.
Federal tax incentives and subsides from states and and local ordinances can help offset the costs of these networks, said Wakefield. But the U.S. needs to invest $50 billion to accommodate EV growth, he noted.
John Voelcker, contributing editor to Car and Driver magazine who has covered EVs extensively, said part of Tesla’s sweeping success was its ability to create a supercharging network exclusive to its vehicles from the very beginning.
“I don’t think Tesla would have sold so many expensive EVs as it did without the ability to drive cross country. The company publicized the existence of this Tesla-branded network,” he told ABC News. “I am not seeing carmakers except for Tesla putting in big efforts to build these stations.”
He went on, “It says a lot about carmakers’ reliance on the free market to solve everything and their lack of understanding in EVs beyond the vehicle itself.”
EV stations in city streets and parking garages will also multiply to placate urban drivers, said Voelcker, noting that public charging stations in London have become part of the city landscape, with EV owners hooking up their vehicles to stations built curbside.
EVgo has big plans to expand its charging network from 1,600 DC fast chargers to 10,000 by 2025. Zoi’s team of site developers are actively scouring the country, looking for opportunities to service new EV owners.
“Chargers will become commonplace,” Zoi said reassuringly. “The arrival of EVs can create more car enthusiasts.”
(LOS ANGELES) — When passengers board an Alaska Airlines flight, most don’t know it but that plane is lighter than other Boeing 737s or Airbus A320s, according to the airline.
That’s because during the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline used the slowdown in travel to develop, test and introduce new products to replace plastics on board.
Gone are plastic water bottles and plastic cups. Lighter alternatives are being used. Food containers have been redesigned. It not only allows the airline to cut the use of plastics, which can take over 400 years to decompose in the environment, but the airline says less weight onboard means it is burning less fuel, saving money and reducing carbon output.
Airlines and plane manufacturers have a fairly new and very honed focus on going green. United Airlines is promising to go carbon neutral by 2050. Alaska Airlines says it will go carbon neutral by 2040. Other airlines promise to pay to offset their carbon output.
Last week, United flew the first commercial airliner with passengers onboard using 100% sustainable fuels made of sugar water and corn. The fuels output far less carbon but cost much more than traditional fuels. United’s Boeing 737-Max 8 demonstration flight flew from Chicago to Washington D.C.
Onboard efforts like those at the airlines combined with attempts from plane maker Boeing are leading to a seismic shift in the airline industry. It wasn’t that long ago that the smell of jet fuel was just a normal part of the airport experience. Between utilizing sustainable fuels, electric and hydrogen airplanes that are in development and reducing overall fuel use, the industry vows it is trying to cut the exhaust that comes out of a plane’s engines and goes into the environment.
Boeing’s flying laboratory
ABC News recently got access to a flying laboratory that Boeing calls the ecoDemonstrator. Boeing borrows brand new airliners before they are delivered to a carrier. It strips each plane of its normal interior and sets up a flying testbed with racks of computers, cables and wires running all over, and sensors all around the plane. For at least a few more weeks, the current ecoDemonstrator is on board a new Boeing 737-Max that will soon have the regular interior installed and will be delivered to the airline that ordered it. But for now, engineers and scientists are able to test all kinds of technology that could soon make flying greener.
“The ecoDemonstrator program has been around for about a decade,” program manager Rae Lutters explained to ABC News while on board the aircraft. “We take innovative technologies out of the lab, put them on an airplane and fly them around to really help explore our learning and understanding of sustainable technologies.”
The special wingtips now seen on Boeing aircraft, called split scimitar winglets — those V-shaped ends of wings on newer planes — are a direct result of an idea that was tested on a previous ecoDemonstrator and showed to save fuel and improve performance. The winglets are now part of planes flying all over the world.
On the current ecoDemonstrator, Boeing’s teams are testing items like wall panels made out of excess carbon fiber from the Boeing 777, which they hope will be lighter and quieter. They are also testing new lower profile warning lights that will cause less drag on the plane and, in return, burn less fuel. And they are working on new touchscreens in the cockpit and air sensor equipment to test the air quality at airports globally when a plane lands.
The current ecoDemonstrator has been flying all over the world with sensors and computers analyzing all of the experiments on board to determine if they will help make the aircraft greener.
“We’re trying to get the airplane to operate as efficiently as possible,” said Lutters.
Getting rid of plastics onboard
Down the road from Boeing Field in its new high-tech headquarters overlooking Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Alaska Airlines is also trying new ideas to cut down on weight and fuel burn. By ditching plastic water bottles and cups in November, the airline said it will save 18 Boeing 737 worth of weight every year. It’s a feat no other large airline in the U.S. has accomplished. Alaska is the first airline to team up with premium brand Boxed Water to serve water from milk carton-like containers rather than plastic bottles.
“The biggest issue we were having was single-use plastic,” Alaska Airlines manager of guest products Todd Traynor-Corey said. “Even if you have the best recycling program possible, a percentage of that plastic is going to end up in the landfills and even into the ocean. Being based on the West Coast, ocean life and sustainability are really important to us.”
During the pandemic, the airline carried out a long process of recruiting alternatives to plastic bottles. They did taste tests and asked for feedback from staff and passengers. Eventually, they settled on Boxed Water.
“This is a very visible change. It’s not a free change. There’s a cost that comes with it. We are a premium water that’s out in the industry and Alaska saw that we are doing better. Our lifecycle analysis shows that. Super big kudos to Alaska for stepping up and making the change away from plastic and to cartons,” said Boxed Water founder and CEO Daryn Kuipers.
The iconic plastic cup that used to sit on passengers’ tray tables is now gone from Alaska Airlines. It has been quite a ride trying to find a simple paper cup that fits the needs of the airline as its planes fly around North America.
“We partnered to really find a more sustainable cup and we just sourced a simple paper cup that is meant cold and hot liquids,” Traynor-Corey said, showing the cup.
For months, different paper cups were tested with different liquids. Most passengers would have no idea so much work went into changing to a paper cup. The work is still underway. They have yet to find a biodegradable plastic cup that can hold hard alcohol.
Many alcohols eat through paper, which they found was an issue aboard their planes.
Using artificial intelligence to guide planes
Alaska Airlines’ efforts are not stopping with what flight attendants are serving on board. The airline is now employing an artificial intelligence (A.I.) program called Flyways to suggest routes that can get passengers to their destinations faster, smoother and while burning less fuel.
“Flyways is probably the most exciting thing that I’ve come across in airline technology since I can remember,” said Pasha Saleh, who is head of corporate development at Alaska Airlines.
Saleh is also a pilot for Alaska.
Alaska Airlines has uniquely teamed up with a Silicon Valley startup to develop Flyways using A.I. to better suggest the best way to route aircraft. Airline dispatchers are given suggestions on how and where to fly planes. They can accept or reject what the A.I. is suggesting. As the weeks and months go on using Flyways the platform is getting better at its suggestions due to machine learning in the A.I.
“We found this company called Airspace Intelligence and at the time that we met them it was only two guys. Two guys backed by Google,” explained Saleh. At that time, Airspace Intelligence was developing software to better route vehicles on the ground. There was a realization that technology could work in the air.
By analyzing numerous sources, the platform can predict what the weather, air traffic, and other aspects impacting the flight will be when a plane reaches any area of the country. It might, for instance, choose to delay a flight by two or three minutes knowing that will help avoid a thunderstorm over Oklahoma in three hours or help the flight avoid gridlock in the landing pattern in New York, which would waste time and fuel.
“Flyways will, in many cases, reduce the length of a flight therefore reducing the fuel burn, and reducing the emissions,” said Diana Birkett Rakow, senior vice president of sustainability at Alaska Airlines.
During a six-month pilot program at Alaska Airlines, Flyways shaved off, on average, five minutes from flights and saved 480-thousand gallons of jet fuel.
“If you went a teeny bit slower, you were on time, you had a gate, and because you went a teeny bit slower the airplane actually burned less fuel, that might be a win/win combination for both the guest and the operation and sustainability impact,” said Rakow.
The airline said Flyways is also quite good at helping flights avoid turbulence by analyzing lots of weather data and providing smoother flights.
“This is what machines are really good at, taking huge data sets and putting them together,” according to Saleh.
The team at Alaska Airlines says the benefits are enormous and they would like other airlines to get onboard with Flyways because it would help make the aviation system safer, faster and more environmentally friendly.
Mixed reaction from environmental groups
Yet environmental groups are mixed on the efforts.
The Environmental Defense Fund has teamed up with the Rocky Mountain Institute to create the Sustainable Fuels Aviation Buyers Alliance. Some of the world’s largest companies have agreed to join the EDF’s initiative to help make sustainable fuels more available and cost effective for airlines to buy.
“Airlines are definitely going in the right direction,” Kim Carnahan, secretariat lead of the Sustainable Fuels Aviation Buyers Alliance told ABC News.
Carnahan, who is former U.S. chief negotiator for climate change, said airlines are in a tough position with the cost of sustainable products being so much higher than traditional fuels.
“They compete fiercely with one another and have very slim margins. Sustainable aviation fuel which is really the only option they have to fully decarbonize is anywhere between two and four times the cost of fossil jet fuel,” according to Carnahan.
But at Greenpeace, the organization believes much of what the industry is doing is so-called “greenwashing.” It doesn’t believe such solutions are viable long term and that the changes being made are minor cosmetic measures distracting from a bigger problem of rising emissions in the air travel sector. The group says the aviation industry is a major polluter that needs to be completely revamped by reducing the number of flights to truly become carbon-neutral.
“That’s why Greenpeace is calling for a phase-out of short-haul flights in Europe, when a train or ferry alternative under six hours exists,” said Herwig Schuster, Greenpeace in Europe’s transport campaigner.
The group is calling on governments globally to invest in better rail service.
“Airlines have introduced a number of alleged ‘green’ measures based on excessive optimism on so-called ‘sustainable aviation fuels,’ carbon offsetting and future aircraft designs,” said Schuster. “But these technologies are not the answer to tackling the rising emissions in this sector and will largely not be marketable solutions.”
But the airlines and plane makers say they are investing huge amounts of money to make a true change and that they have to work within the confines of current technology while they plan for the decades ahead.
(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of a sluggish November jobs report, President Joe Biden on Friday touted the country’s employment landscape as improving despite there being fewer jobs added last month than economists expected.
“We’re looking at the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment ever. Simply put, America — America is back to work. And our jobs recovery is going very strong,” Biden said in remarks from the White House on Friday morning. “Today’s historic drop in unemployment rate includes dramatic improvements for workers who have often seen higher wages and higher levels of unemployment.”
With Biden sounding congested for the second day in a row, a reporter said his voice sounded “different” and asked the 79-year-old president if he was OK.
“I’m OK. I have a test every day to see — a COVID test,” Biden said. “I have a 1-and-a-half-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his pop.”
“But it’s just a cold,” the president said with a smile.
Friday’s remarks came as concerns climbed over the potential economic and health impacts of the new omicron variant detected in five states so far.
The Labor Department released its report ahead of Biden’s remarks revealing that 210,000 jobs were added in November, the fewest in nearly a year — a number well below economists’ expectations of more than 550,000 jobs.
Biden, instead, focused on the report showing that the nation’s unemployment rate fell sharply from 4.6% to 4.2% — the lowest it’s been since the pandemic began but still higher than the pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 3.5%. Still, he touted the report as “incredible news” and a sign that the economy is “stronger” than it was a year ago.
The president said the unemployment falling more than two percentage points since he took office marked the “fastest decline on record and three times faster than any other president in their first year in office.”
With inflation still at a three-decade high amid ongoing worker shortages and supply chain issues, the November jobs report still reflects a resilient economic recovery nearly two years after COVID-19 arrived on U.S. soil.
“Even after accounting for rising prices, the typical American family has more money in their pockets than they did last year. In fact, we are the only leading economy in the world where household income and the economy as a whole are stronger than they were before the pandemic,” Biden said.
Despite the progress the president noted, he said he recognizes Americans are still “anxious.”
“But I also know that despite this progress, families are anxious. They’re anxious about COVID. They’re anxious about the cost of living, the economy more broadly. They’re still uncertain. I want you to know I hear you,” he added. “You need to see it and feel it in your own lives around the kitchen table and in your checkbooks.”
To that end, he reiterated his nine-point plan to combat COVID-19 this winter as a way to show that the administration is aiming to protect the economy as the pandemic continues and the new omicron variant spreads.
While he said it’s impossible to “build a wall around America” to keep the virus out, Biden said the new measures he announced Thursday are “sufficient” to deal with the omicron variant, and the White House is not considering any new measures for domestic travel, such as requiring travelers be vaccinated.
ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of a sluggish November jobs report, President Joe Biden on Friday touted the country’s employment landscape as improving despite there being fewer jobs added last month than economists expected.
“We’re looking at the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment ever. Simply put, America — America is back to work. And our jobs recovery is going very strong,” Biden said in remarks from the White House on Friday morning. “Today’s historic drop in unemployment rate includes dramatic improvements for workers who have often seen higher wages and higher levels of unemployment.”
With Biden sounding congested for the second day in a row, a reporter said his voice sounded “different” and asked the 79-year-old president if he was OK.
“I’m OK. I have a test every day to see — a COVID test,” Biden said. “I have a 1-and-a-half-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his pop.”
“But it’s just a cold,” the president said with a smile.
Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, later released a letter saying it’s “readily apparent” that he’s been experiencing congestion this week and is currently taking over the counter medication. O’Conner said Biden was tested three times this week for “COVID-19, other coronaviruses, influenza, streptococcus” among others, and were all negative.
Friday’s remarks came as concerns climbed over the potential economic and health impacts of the new omicron variant detected in five states so far.
The Labor Department released its report ahead of Biden’s remarks revealing that 210,000 jobs were added in November, the fewest in nearly a year — a number well below economists’ expectations of more than 550,000 jobs.
Biden, instead, focused on the report showing that the nation’s unemployment rate fell sharply from 4.6% to 4.2% — the lowest it’s been since the pandemic began but still higher than the pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 3.5%. Still, he touted the report as “incredible news” and a sign that the economy is “stronger” than it was a year ago.
The president said the unemployment falling more than two percentage points since he took office marked the “fastest decline on record and three times faster than any other president in their first year in office.”
With inflation still at a three-decade high amid ongoing worker shortages and supply chain issues, the November jobs report still reflects a resilient economic recovery nearly two years after COVID-19 arrived on U.S. soil.
“Even after accounting for rising prices, the typical American family has more money in their pockets than they did last year. In fact, we are the only leading economy in the world where household income and the economy as a whole are stronger than they were before the pandemic,” Biden said.
Despite the progress the president noted, he said he recognizes Americans are still “anxious.”
“But I also know that despite this progress, families are anxious. They’re anxious about COVID. They’re anxious about the cost of living, the economy more broadly. They’re still uncertain. I want you to know I hear you,” he added. “You need to see it and feel it in your own lives around the kitchen table and in your checkbooks.”
To that end, he reiterated his nine-point plan to combat COVID-19 this winter as a way to show that the administration is aiming to protect the economy as the pandemic continues and the new omicron variant spreads.
While he said it’s impossible to “build a wall around America” to keep the virus out, Biden said the new measures he announced Thursday are “sufficient” to deal with the omicron variant, and the White House is not considering any new measures for domestic travel, such as requiring travelers be vaccinated.
ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — At least until June 2021, Facebook had significant gaps in its efforts to tackle COVID-19 misinformation from one of the most prominent anti-vaccine groups in the world, according to a study from ISD Global, a U.K.-based think tank that studies polarization, extremism and misinformation.
During the first year of the pandemic, Facebook pages associated with the World Doctors Alliance — an anti-vaccine group whose members regularly post false information about COVID-19 — ballooned in popularity, according to ISD Global, despite consistent breaches of Facebook’s own COVID-19 and vaccine policies. The group’s primary page was removed from the platform in July 2021.
“The World Doctors Alliance is a collective of pseudo-science influencers … that hijacked the pandemic to build up a significant audience online in a multitude of languages in multiple continents,” Ben Decker, CEO of Memetica, a digital investigations consultancy firm, told ABC News.
On its website, the WDA lists 12 key members from seven different countries, a number of whom have become leading voices within the COVID-denier and vaccine-skeptic movements.
The ISD Global study also says that Facebook failed to implement its own policies “at a very basic level.”
For example, the report outlines some of the false claims from members of the WDA group that were allowed on Facebook, from claims that the COVID-19 virus does not exist, to others acknowledging its existence but downplaying its severity.
The report also claims that other WDA members have propagated overarching conspiracy theories that allege the entire pandemic has been a “scam” or “hoax” “perpetrated by governments, health care authorities and the media.”
Last October, documents released by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen showed that employees were concerned about how the social media giant was handling COVID-19 misinformation.
Researchers at ISD Global looked at the WDA’s presence on other social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and TikTok but primarily focused on Facebook as it’s where the group has the largest following. WDA is also an international group with members posting in multiple languages, even though the members with the largest followings come from English-speaking countries.
According to the research, Facebook is fact-checking some of the COVID-19 misinformation posted by the group but failing to take appropriate action and in many other cases failing to detect the misinformation altogether. The data also suggests that Facebook’s fact-checking in languages other than English is insufficient and almost nonexistent in some languages.
“Facebook should use the knowledge of fact-checking organizations to take action on misinformation super-spreaders”, the study author, Aoife Gallagher, told ABC News. “Our report highlights how often some of the WDA members have been featured in fact-checks, yet no decisive action seems to be taken.”
The Facebook pages of WDA members have increased their number of followers by 13% since the start of the pandemic, according to ISD Global. Their posts have garnered 5.7 million interactions since January 2020 and those numbers have increased by 85% in the first six months of 2021. The data also showed that the Facebook posts containing false claims and misinformation got more engagement (likes, views etc.) than others.
Dr. Scott Jensen (with 394,857 Facebook followers) and Dr. Dolores Cahill (with 128,942 Facebook followers) are responsible for the vast majority of the group’s followers, according to the study.
Jensen is a Minnesota state senator who came to prominence with anti-vaccine groups when in an interview he gave to Fox News he expressed concerns that COVID-19 fatality numbers could be exaggerated.
Subsequent studies found that the number of deaths due to COVID-19 was actually likely underestimated. Four anonymous complaints challenging his medical license based on his COVID-related comments were investigated and dismissed by state regulators last year, a CBS Minnesota news outlet reported.
Cahill is an Irish scientist who lost her job as a professor at University College Dublin earlier this year, after the college’s student union called for an investigation into her for “gross misconduct, ” according to Irish newspapers. She was also fined for breaching U.K. lockdown restrictions.
Cahill did not respond to ABC News when asked for comment on the ISD Global study and the fine.
Facebook uses third-party investigators to fact-check posts to determine whether a post containing false or misleading information needs to be either labeled or removed. However, the study states there was “minimal application of these labels across the 50 most popular posts mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members in English, Spanish, Arabic and German, despite these posts containing problematic claims.” Only 13% of English-language posts were labeled and even less in German (8%) and Spanish (4.5%).
Moreover, the report states that the labeled posts received even more engagement from Facebook users than the posts which were not labeled.
According to Decker, a relatively small number of independent fact-checkers can never hope to police the billions of Facebook posts on the platform. “Fact-checking has always been a Band-Aid on a broken leg to this problem because fact-checking can’t address scale,” he said.
There was also a huge disparity in fact-checking across different languages, according to the report. The study examined 189 fact-checking articles mentioning the WDA. There were 61 articles written in English, 26 in Spanish and 13 in German, but there were none at all in Romanian, Hungarian, Swedish and Italian despite there being more than 5,528 posts mentioning the WDA in those languages.
Report author, Aoife Gallagher, called on Facebook to put more human resources into its fact-checking efforts but also to improve its automated detection methods. The ISD found examples of one video in English which was labeled as containing misinformation but the exact same video translated into Spanish was not labeled and seemingly went undetected. There were other examples such as an interview Dolores Cahill did with infamous spreader of COVID-19 misinformation, Del Bigtree, which was fact-checked and labeled, yet clips of the same video that were in the form of embedded videos uploaded to Facebook, went undetected.
“It’s not about new rules, it’s about enforcing the ones they already have,” said Gallagher. “Facebook’s policies on COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation go into a lot of detail on what content is prohibited and removed, but this report shows they are failing to implement these at a very basic level,” she added.
Decker of Memetica said that Facebook should be using the same automated technology to track COVID misinformation that it uses to detect ISIS content and child pornography. “You could feed 5,000 COVID-19 conspiracy memes into a system and it would learn to go seek out those things and either prevent them getting uploaded, prevent engagement or apply a fact-check label,” said Decker. “The question is why are these resources not being made available.”
ABC News reached out to all 12 members of the WDA for comment.
Only Belgium’s Dr. Johan Denis, who had his medical license suspended earlier this year after a Belgian provincial commission found he was placing patients and the public health at risk by violating mask requirements, responded by calling the study “revolting” and incorrectly claiming that COVID-19 is a “scam.”
Facebook responded to ABC News saying that the study only looked at a narrow sample of 14 accounts. “This small sample is in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook,” according to a Facebook spokesperson. However, when asked, Facebook did not provide ABC News with data to support a claim that this sample was not representative of a wider trend.
Facebook also said, “Since the pandemic began, our goal has been to promote reliable information about COVID-19, take more aggressive action against misinformation, and encourage people to get vaccinated. So far, we’ve connected over 2 billion people to authoritative information from health experts, removed 24 million pieces of COVID misinformation, and labeled more than 195 million pieces of COVID content rated by our fact-checking partners.”
The study authors told ABC News that one of the reasons they chose this group was that it was a prominent well-known spreader of misinformation which, in theory, should be easier to police than lesser-known accounts.
“I think it’s just a sliver of the pie, just a tiny part of how bad the actual problem is,” said Decker. “What about other [Facebook]-owned properties like Instagram and even worse, WhatsApp, where disinformation can spread really quickly because it’s already in these kind of baked-in trusted family and local communities,” he added.
Decker also said that after the improvements Facebook promised following the 2016 election that the pandemic was a real stress test to see if Facebook has learned anything. “My inclination is that based on what we see now that they haven’t really learned anything,” he said.
Though ISD Global has publicly released its methodology, the study has not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.
(NEW YORK) — Microsoft Corp. shareholders voted on Tuesday to force the company to more transparently address sexual harassment claims via independent investigations and public reporting.
The proposal, approved during the company’s annual shareholder meeting, was brought by Arjuna Capital, an investment firm known for its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) activism. The vote may be seen by some as a win for activist investors seeking to drive change from the inside out in the private sector.
Under the proposal, Microsoft would have to prepare and release a report “assessing the effectiveness of the company’s workplace sexual harassment policies, including the results of any comprehensive independent audit/investigations, analysis of policies and practices, and commitments to create a safe, inclusive work environment,” according to a statement released by the investment firm.
Microsoft’s board urged shareholders to strike down the proposal, citing existing policies and mechanisms in place to tackle sexual harassment in the workplace.
Still, some 78% of shareholders voted for the proposal, Arjuna Capital said after the meeting. The firm said that, immediately following the vote, Microsoft committed to a third-party, independent assessment of its sexual harassment processes, in addition to public reporting on them.
“A majority of Microsoft’s investors are now calling on the company to shine a bright light on sexual harassment. The fact that executives responded so quickly following the vote is a sea change from how Microsoft has dealt with this issue in the past,” Natasha Lamb, managing partner at Arjuna Capital, said in a statement.
Microsoft confirmed the proposal had been approved in a statement following the meeting, adding that, “Microsoft already shares with employees annual data on the volume of sexual harassment concerns raised and the results of harassment investigations and has adopted plans to begin annual public reporting.”
During the question-and-answer portion of the shareholder meeting, Microsoft’s President and Vice Chair Brad Smith said the issue of sexual harassment is “of enormous importance” to Microsoft.
“There are new steps that we are going to take that we were thinking about, and I think that the resolution and the dialogue we’ve had has helped us advance our decision-making,” Smith added. “So for one, we will take new steps to be more transparent as a company. We have been sharing more data internally. We recognize that there are shareholder interest, and so we’ll share more data externally as well. You’ll see us publish more reports, just to reflect where this is going.”
Smith also pledged to bring in a third party to do an “independent assessment of all of the work that we do to investigate” sexual harassment cases.
“We’ll share what that independent report says and we will listen,” he added. “And if there’s recommendations for change, we will think hard about making them.”
(NEW YORK) — In a rare move, the National Labor Relations Board has ordered a union election do-over for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama.
A date has not yet been determined for the second vote, but the looming new union election comes as the labor movement has gained new steam in recent months, propelled by unique market conditions and increased workplace activism seen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the initial election in April, Amazon warehouse workers overwhelmingly voted against forming a union at the Bessemer warehouse despite high-profile support for unionization at the time from lawmakers and even President Joe Biden.
The order for a new election stands unless Amazon files a request for review with the NLRB, which the board could reject (allowing the second union election to proceed) or grant (which would reverse the order for a second election). It also has not yet been determined whether the do-over vote will be in-person or by mail.
The re-run decision comes after the objections to the initial vote last April that were filed by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which sought to represent the workers.
At the core of the union’s objections was Amazon’s installation of a Postal Service box outside the warehouse, which they said was aimed to make voting easier and improve turnout, but the union argued gave the impression that Amazon oversaw the election.
“The Employer’s flagrant disregard for the Board’s typical mail-ballot procedure compromised the authority of the Board and made a free and fair election impossible,” NLRB Regional Director Lisa Henderson wrote in her decision calling for a second election.
“By installing a postal mailbox at the main employee entrance, the Employer essentially hijacked the process and gave a strong impression that it controlled the process,” Henderson added. “This dangerous and improper message to employees destroys trust in the Board’s processes and in the credibility of the election results.”
Stuart Appelbaum, president of the RWDSU, welcomed the board’s decision in a statement, saying it “confirms what we were saying all along — that Amazon’s intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace.”
“Amazon workers deserve to have a voice at work, which can only come from a union,” he added.
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, called the decision “disappointing” in a statement, adding that the company believes in the benefits of direct relationships with employees without a union in the middle.
“Our employees have always had the choice of whether or not to join a union, and they overwhelmingly chose not to join the RWDSU earlier this year. It’s disappointing that the NLRB has now decided that those votes shouldn’t count,” Nantel said. “As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees. Every day we empower people to find ways to improve their jobs, and when they do that we want to make those changes — quickly.”
“That type of continuous improvement is harder to do quickly and nimbly with unions in the middle. The benefits of direct relationships between managers and employees can’t be overstated — these relationships allow every employee’s voice to be heard, not just the voices of a select few,” Nantel added. “While we’ve made great progress in important areas like pay and safety, we know there are plenty of things that we can keep doing better, both in our fulfillment centers and in our corporate offices, and that’s our focus — to work directly with our employees to keep getting better every day.”
Union membership has dwindled in recent decades, falling to 10.8% in 2020 among salaried and wage-earning workers in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1983, the first year the BLS collected this data, that figure was 20.1%.
Despite the slumping figures, approval for labor unions in the U.S. is at its highest level since 1965, according to Gallup data. Some 68% of Americans approve of labor unions in 2021, the highest recorded by Gallup since a 71% mark in 1965.
Some labor economists have attributed this gap between support for unions and union membership rates to increased employer resistance to unionization and outdated labor laws that make it difficult to organize in the workplace.
