AFP

Frustrated foodies gobble up South Korean grocery unicorn

28 Nov 2022

When Sophie Kim moved home to South Korea after 15 years in the United States, she couldn’t find anywhere to buy kale for her green juice. So she found a farmer, then built an app to help others seek out top-quality produce.

The next-day grocery delivery service Market Kurly that 38-year-old Kim founded is now one of South Korea’s most important startup unicorns, last valued at $3 billion and set for an initial public offering by February.

Kim, a self-professed “foodie”, came up with the idea after she got tired of endlessly going from shop to shop to find the high-quality groceries she wanted in Seoul’s supermarkets.

But she knew the products were out there and began driving to South Korea’s agricultural heartlands to find them, for example visiting the famous meat market in Majang-dong to procure half a cow’s worth of beef, which she would then split with her co-workers.

“While I was trying to figure out why it was so difficult to have access to great quality, fresh food in Korea, I got to know some farmers and fishermen, and they had exactly the same issue of not being able to find customers,” she told AFP.

Korean farmers “are proud of the fact that they can produce such nice quality products, but it is extremely difficult for them to get to the consumer”, she said.

At first, Kim said she thought about setting up a farmers market, before abandoning the idea as too unwieldy and — more importantly — unhelpful for producers, who don’t have the time to travel to Seoul.

– Lightbulb moment –

It was a lightbulb moment when Kim realised “if we can make this work for both consumers and producers, it would probably be a breakthrough for the entire industry”.

Kurly customers — initially urban working women but now a diverse cross section of society — can order rare beef, hand-made bread, or pick one of more than a dozen varieties of local, hard-to-find apples by 11pm and be guaranteed delivery by 7am the next morning.

As with companies from Amazon to Uber Eats, the rapid-fast shipments rely largely on gig economy drivers, and Kurly has not been immune to the global industry-wide complaints of overwork and poor conditions.

But consumer convenience has proved key to the app’s success — even though Kim says she’s most proud of how the complex data-driven logistics network she’s built supports South Korea’s beleaguered farmers.

Kim launched Market Kurly with 30 products, including her beloved kale, which was supplied by farmer Hwang Han-soo, who has been growing organic vegetables for 30 years at his farm in Gyeonggi province.

Hwang told AFP that his kale was originally popular only with cancer patients for its perceived health benefits. He sold so little of it he considered switching crops, but the pleas of one of his terminally-ill customers in Busan convinced him to keep going.

Farming is tough in South Korea, Hwang said, owing to thin profit margins and a reliance on hard-to-find overseas workers amid dwindling interest in the industry from young South Koreans.

But working with Kurly has helped.

“In the early days of Kurly, we sold around 20 to 30 bags each day (but now) our average daily sales is around 800 bags” of kale, he said.

Part of the growth can be attributed to changing consumer trends, with kale now popular with young women who see it as a trendy health food, Hwang said, but Kurly’s next-day cold-chain logistics network also plays a key role.

– Social costs –

“It takes less than a day to go from harvesting to the consumer’s doorstep,” he said, adding that before Kurly came along it would take two or three days for his kale to make it to stores.

Next-day delivery services are “very helpful because it is a system that goes directly from the farm to the consumers”, while Kurly also handled all the promotion and marketing, he said.

“I can focus on farming,” he added.

Hwang also said reading reviews of his products on Kurly’s app allowed him to feel more connected to the people who eat what he grows.

South Korea’s next-day delivery apps including Kurly and rival Coupang Fresh have been criticised for the strain they put on delivery drivers, with local media reporting on occasional deaths from extreme overwork, as workers make scores of deliveries each night.

The rise of such services has also sucked gig workers from other crucial sectors including city taxis, where the supply crunch is so severe that the Seoul government recently hiked basic fares in a bid to entice more drivers to provide late-night services.

It is important for South Korea’s unicorns like Market Kurly to take into account the social costs of their business models, said Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises and Start-ups Lee Young.

“It’s very possible for these platform companies to contribute to society,” she said.

“Market Kurly is a very good example because it has created a very innovative idea and they have gone through multiple struggles until they achieved current success.”

Frustrated foodies gobble up South Korean grocery unicorn

21 Nov 2022

When Sophie Kim moved home to South Korea after 15 years in the United States, she couldn’t find anywhere to buy kale for her green juice. So she found a farmer, then built an app to help others seek out top-quality produce.

The next-day grocery delivery service Market Kurly that 38-year-old Kim founded is now one of South Korea’s most important startup unicorns, last valued at $3 billion and set for an initial public offering by February.

Kim, a self-professed “foodie”, came up with the idea after she got tired of endlessly going from shop to shop to find the high-quality groceries she wanted in Seoul’s supermarkets.

But she knew the products were out there and began driving to South Korea’s agricultural heartlands to find them, for example visiting the famous meat market in Majang-dong to procure half a cow’s worth of beef, which she would then split with her co-workers.

“While I was trying to figure out why it was so difficult to have access to great quality, fresh food in Korea, I got to know some farmers and fishermen, and they had exactly the same issue of not being able to find customers,” she told AFP.

Korean farmers “are proud of the fact that they can produce such nice quality products, but it is extremely difficult for them to get to the consumer”, she said.

At first, Kim said she thought about setting up a farmers market, before abandoning the idea as too unwieldy and — more importantly — unhelpful for producers, who don’t have the time to travel to Seoul.

– Lightbulb moment –

It was a lightbulb moment when Kim realised “if we can make this work for both consumers and producers, it would probably be a breakthrough for the entire industry”.

Kurly customers — initially urban working women but now a diverse cross section of society — can order rare beef, hand-made bread, or pick one of more than a dozen varieties of local, hard-to-find apples by 11pm and be guaranteed delivery by 7am the next morning.

As with companies from Amazon to Uber Eats, the rapid-fast shipments rely largely on gig economy drivers, and Kurly has not been immune to the global industry-wide complaints of overwork and poor conditions.

But consumer convenience has proved key to the app’s success — even though Kim says she’s most proud of how the complex data-driven logistics network she’s built supports South Korea’s beleaguered farmers.

Kim launched Market Kurly with 30 products, including her beloved kale, which was supplied by farmer Hwang Han-soo, who has been growing organic vegetables for 30 years at his farm in Gyeonggi province.

Hwang told AFP that his kale was originally popular only with cancer patients for its perceived health benefits. He sold so little of it he considered switching crops, but the pleas of one of his terminally-ill customers in Busan convinced him to keep going.

Farming is tough in South Korea, Hwang said, owing to thin profit margins and a reliance on hard-to-find overseas workers amid dwindling interest in the industry from young South Koreans.

But working with Kurly has helped.

“In the early days of Kurly, we sold around 20 to 30 bags each day (but now) our average daily sales is around 800 bags” of kale, he said.

Part of the growth can be attributed to changing consumer trends, with kale now popular with young women who see it as a trendy health food, Hwang said, but Kurly’s next-day cold-chain logistics network also plays a key role.

– Social costs –

“It takes less than a day to go from harvesting to the consumer’s doorstep,” he said, adding that before Kurly came along it would take two or three days for his kale to make it to stores.

Next-day delivery services are “very helpful because it is a system that goes directly from the farm to the consumers”, while Kurly also handled all the promotion and marketing, he said.

“I can focus on farming,” he added.

Hwang also said reading reviews of his products on Kurly’s app allowed him to feel more connected to the people who eat what he grows.

South Korea’s next-day delivery apps including Kurly and rival Coupang Fresh have been criticised for the strain they put on delivery drivers, with local media reporting on occasional deaths from extreme overwork, as workers make scores of deliveries each night.

The rise of such services has also sucked gig workers from other crucial sectors including city taxis, where the supply crunch is so severe that the Seoul government recently hiked basic fares in a bid to entice more drivers to provide late-night services.

It is important for South Korea’s unicorns like Market Kurly to take into account the social costs of their business models, said Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises and Start-ups Lee Young.

“It’s very possible for these platform companies to contribute to society,” she said.

“Market Kurly is a very good example because it has created a very innovative idea and they have gone through multiple struggles until they achieved current success.”

Twitter turmoil, staff exodus aggravate security concerns

22 Nov 2022

Twitter’s owner Elon Musk has pledged the platform will not become a “hellscape,” but experts fear a staff exodus following mass layoffs may have devastated its ability to combat misinformation, impersonation and data theft.

Twitter devolved into what campaigners described as a cesspit of falsehoods and hate speech after recent layoffs cut half the company’s 7,500 staff and fake accounts proliferated following its botched rollout of a paid verification system.

Further throwing the influential platform into disarray -– and raising doubt about its very existence -– reports said hundreds of employees chose to depart the company Thursday in defiance of an ultimatum from Musk.

“The huge number of layoffs and resignations raises serious questions about content moderation and the security of user data,” Cheyenne Hunt-Majer, from the nonprofit Public Citizen, told AFP. 

“It is imperative that (US regulators) act with urgency as users could have their sensitive data exploited or even stolen given the lack of sufficient staff that remain to adequately protect it.”

The hashtag #RIPTwitter gained huge traction on the site after resignations poured in from employees who chose “no” to Musk’s demand that they either be “extremely hardcore” or exit the company.

Twitter has plunged into turmoil as Musk, a self-professed free speech absolutist, seeks to shake up the money-losing company after his blockbuster $44 billion buyout late last month.

– ‘Debacle’ –

The site’s content moderation teams -– largely outsourced contractors that combat misinformation –- have been axed and a number of engineers fired after openly criticizing Musk on Twitter or on an internal messaging board, according to reports and tweets.

Wary brands have paused or slowed down ad spending -– Twitter’s biggest revenue source -– after a spike in racist and antisemitic trolling on the platform.

“Misinformation super spreaders” –- or untrustworthy accounts peddling falsehoods — saw a 57 percent jump in engagement in the week after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, according to a survey by the nonprofit watchdog group NewsGuard.

“Elon Musk has swiftly decimated Twitter’s ability to maintain the platform’s integrity, health and safety,” said Jessica Gonzalez, co-chief executive officer at the nonpartisan group Free Press.

“If there is one lesson that all social-media platforms must take away from this debacle, it’s that without protecting users from hate and lies you have no company at all.”

In a response to critics, Musk on Friday indicated a new direction for content moderation on the site.

While not being totally removed from the site, Musk said that “negative/hate tweets” will be “max deboosted (and) demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”

“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” he added.

But his plan fell on skeptical ears.

– ‘Significant blow’ –

“We could certainly see a spike in misinformation, hate speech, and other objectionable content because of Musk’s latest moves,” Zeve Sanderson, executive director of the New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.

“Content moderation is a lot harder to do without people around to actually do content moderation.”

Potentially adding to the pressure: Musk on Saturday restored the Twitter account of Donald Trump, 22 months after the then-president was suspended over the US Capitol riot by his supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 election result.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, a regulatory agency, a group of Democratic senators blamed Musk for introducing “alarming” new features that undermined safety despite warnings that they would be “abused for fraud, scams and dangerous impersonation.”

“Users are already facing the serious repercussions of this growth-at-all-costs strategy,” they wrote in the letter published Thursday, noting the recent spike in fake accounts impersonating companies, politicians and celebrities.

Among the victims was drugmaker Eli Lilly, whose stock price nosedived — erasing billions in market capitalization — after a parody account stamped with a verification tag purchased for $8 tweeted that insulin was being made available for free.

Last week, Twitter disabled sign-ups for the contentious feature known as Twitter Blue, with reports saying it had been temporarily disabled to help address impersonation issues — but not before several brands took a hit.

Given the apparent vulnerabilities, digital experts have warned activists, particularly in autocratic countries, of the increased risk of identity theft or their private messages falling into the hands of hackers. 

“Around the world, Twitter is used to organize against oppression,” said Hunt-Majer.

“If Musk’s mismanagement kills it, that would be a significant blow to freedom of information and, frankly, human rights in general on a global scale.”

Twitter turmoil, staff exodus aggravate security concerns

21 Nov 2022

Twitter’s owner Elon Musk has pledged the platform will not become a “hellscape,” but experts fear a staff exodus following mass layoffs may have devastated its ability to combat misinformation, impersonation and data theft.

Twitter devolved into what campaigners described as a cesspit of falsehoods and hate speech after recent layoffs cut half the company’s 7,500 staff and fake accounts proliferated following its botched rollout of a paid verification system.

Further throwing the influential platform into disarray -– and raising doubt about its very existence -– reports said hundreds of employees chose to depart the company Thursday in defiance of an ultimatum from Musk.

“The huge number of layoffs and resignations raises serious questions about content moderation and the security of user data,” Cheyenne Hunt-Majer, from the nonprofit Public Citizen, told AFP. 

“It is imperative that (US regulators) act with urgency as users could have their sensitive data exploited or even stolen given the lack of sufficient staff that remain to adequately protect it.”

The hashtag #RIPTwitter gained huge traction on the site after resignations poured in from employees who chose “no” to Musk’s demand that they either be “extremely hardcore” or exit the company.

Twitter has plunged into turmoil as Musk, a self-professed free speech absolutist, seeks to shake up the money-losing company after his blockbuster $44 billion buyout late last month.

– ‘Debacle’ –

The site’s content moderation teams -– largely outsourced contractors that combat misinformation –- have been axed and a number of engineers fired after openly criticizing Musk on Twitter or on an internal messaging board, according to reports and tweets.

Wary brands have paused or slowed down ad spending -– Twitter’s biggest revenue source -– after a spike in racist and antisemitic trolling on the platform.

“Misinformation super spreaders” –- or untrustworthy accounts peddling falsehoods — saw a 57 percent jump in engagement in the week after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, according to a survey by the nonprofit watchdog group NewsGuard.

“Elon Musk has swiftly decimated Twitter’s ability to maintain the platform’s integrity, health and safety,” said Jessica Gonzalez, co-chief executive officer at the nonpartisan group Free Press.

“If there is one lesson that all social-media platforms must take away from this debacle, it’s that without protecting users from hate and lies you have no company at all.”

In a response to critics, Musk on Friday indicated a new direction for content moderation on the site.

While not being totally removed from the site, Musk said that “negative/hate tweets” will be “max deboosted (and) demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”

“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” he added.

But his plan fell on skeptical ears.

– ‘Significant blow’ –

“We could certainly see a spike in misinformation, hate speech, and other objectionable content because of Musk’s latest moves,” Zeve Sanderson, executive director of the New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.

“Content moderation is a lot harder to do without people around to actually do content moderation.”

Potentially adding to the pressure: Musk on Saturday restored the Twitter account of Donald Trump, 22 months after the then-president was suspended over the US Capitol riot by his supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 election result.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, a regulatory agency, a group of Democratic senators blamed Musk for introducing “alarming” new features that undermined safety despite warnings that they would be “abused for fraud, scams and dangerous impersonation.”

“Users are already facing the serious repercussions of this growth-at-all-costs strategy,” they wrote in the letter published Thursday, noting the recent spike in fake accounts impersonating companies, politicians and celebrities.

Among the victims was drugmaker Eli Lilly, whose stock price nosedived — erasing billions in market capitalization — after a parody account stamped with a verification tag purchased for $8 tweeted that insulin was being made available for free.

Last week, Twitter disabled sign-ups for the contentious feature known as Twitter Blue, with reports saying it had been temporarily disabled to help address impersonation issues — but not before several brands took a hit.

Given the apparent vulnerabilities, digital experts have warned activists, particularly in autocratic countries, of the increased risk of identity theft or their private messages falling into the hands of hackers. 

“Around the world, Twitter is used to organize against oppression,” said Hunt-Majer.

“If Musk’s mismanagement kills it, that would be a significant blow to freedom of information and, frankly, human rights in general on a global scale.”

Trump Twitter account reappears after Musk poll

20 Nov 2022

Donald Trump’s notorious Twitter account was reinstated Saturday after the platform’s new owner Elon Musk ran a poll in which a narrow majority of voters supported the move, days after the former US president announced another White House bid.

Trump’s account was banned from the platform early last year for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted, shortly after the 24-hour Twitter poll on his account ended.

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” he added, repeating a Latin adage he also posted Friday, meaning “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”

Ultimately, more than 15 million people — out of 237 million daily Twitter users — voted on whether to reinstate the controversial profile, with 51.8 percent in favor and 48.2 percent against.

Trump, who had more than 88 million users when his accounted was suspended, reveled in using Twitter as a mouthpiece during his presidency, posting policy announcements, attacking political rivals and communicating with supporters.

On Saturday, several of his political allies were highlighting his return.

“Welcome back, @realdonaldtrump!” tweeted House Republican Paul Gosar.

Musk’s poll asked for a simple “yes” or “no” response to the statement “Reinstate former President Trump,” which the billionaire Twitter boss posted Friday.

“Fascinating to watch Twitter Trump poll!” Musk mused Saturday morning in a blast of tweets from the controversial and hard-charging new owner of the one-to-many messaging platform.

He has posed similar polls in the past, asking followers last year if he should sell stock in his electric car company Tesla. Following that poll, he sold more than $1 billion in shares.

– Twitter chaos –

Trump has said he will not return to the popular platform but would instead remain on his own network, Truth Social, launched after he was banned from Twitter.

Appearing via video Saturday at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Trump said he welcomed Musk’s poll, and was a fan of the man himself, but appeared to reject any return.

“I do like him… you know, he’s a character and again, I like characters,” he said.

“He did put up a poll and it was very overwhelming… but I have something called… Truth Social.”

As to whether he would return to the platform, he said: “I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.”

Musk, also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has come under fire for radical changes at California-based Twitter, which he bought less than a month ago for $44 billion.

Since then, he fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff, scrapped a work-from-home policy and imposed long hours, all while his attempts to overhaul the company faced backlash and delays.

His stumbling attempts to revamp user verification with a controversial subscription service led to a slew of fake accounts and pranks, and prompted major advertisers to step away from the platform.

On Friday, Musk appeared to be pressing on with his plans and reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of comedian Kathy Griffin, which had been taken down after she impersonated him on the site.

The company’s offices were locked down Friday and hundreds of employees quit rather than yield to Musk’s demands that they resign themselves to working long, grueling days at the new Twitter.

Trump Twitter account reappears after Musk poll

20 Nov 2022

Donald Trump’s notorious Twitter account was reinstated Saturday after the platform’s new owner Elon Musk ran a poll in which a narrow majority of voters supported the move, days after the former US president announced another White House bid.

Trump’s account was banned from the platform early last year for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted, shortly after the 24-hour Twitter poll on his account ended.

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” he added, repeating a Latin adage he also posted Friday, meaning “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”

Ultimately, more than 15 million people — out of 237 million daily Twitter users — voted on whether to reinstate the controversial profile, with 51.8 percent in favor and 48.2 percent against.

Trump, who had more than 88 million users when his accounted was suspended, reveled in using Twitter as a mouthpiece during his presidency, posting policy announcements, attacking political rivals and communicating with supporters.

On Saturday, several of his political allies were highlighting his return.

“Welcome back, @realdonaldtrump!” tweeted House Republican Paul Gosar.

Musk’s poll asked for a simple “yes” or “no” response to the statement “Reinstate former President Trump,” which the billionaire Twitter boss posted Friday.

“Fascinating to watch Twitter Trump poll!” Musk mused Saturday morning in a blast of tweets from the controversial and hard-charging new owner of the one-to-many messaging platform.

He has posed similar polls in the past, asking followers last year if he should sell stock in his electric car company Tesla. Following that poll, he sold more than $1 billion in shares.

– Twitter chaos –

Trump has said he will not return to the popular platform but would instead remain on his own network, Truth Social, launched after he was banned from Twitter.

Appearing via video Saturday at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Trump said he welcomed Musk’s poll, and was a fan of the man himself, but appeared to reject any return.

“I do like him… you know, he’s a character and again, I like characters,” he said.

“He did put up a poll and it was very overwhelming… but I have something called… Truth Social.”

As to whether he would return to the platform, he said: “I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.”

Musk, also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has come under fire for radical changes at California-based Twitter, which he bought less than a month ago for $44 billion.

Since then, he fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff, scrapped a work-from-home policy and imposed long hours, all while his attempts to overhaul the company faced backlash and delays.

His stumbling attempts to revamp user verification with a controversial subscription service led to a slew of fake accounts and pranks, and prompted major advertisers to step away from the platform.

On Friday, Musk appeared to be pressing on with his plans and reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of comedian Kathy Griffin, which had been taken down after she impersonated him on the site.

The company’s offices were locked down Friday and hundreds of employees quit rather than yield to Musk’s demands that they resign themselves to working long, grueling days at the new Twitter.

What could a world without Twitter look like?

21 Nov 2022

After another chaotic week of mass staff departures and policy reversals, Twitter’s future seems highly uncertain, with users — and everybody else — increasingly asking one question: What would a world without the so-called bird app even look like?

With about 237 million daily visitors at the last count in late June, Twitter’s user base is still smaller than Facebook’s nearly two billion, TikTok’s one billion plus and even Snapchat’s 363 million.

But in Twitter’s 15 years of existence, the platform has become the predominant communication channel for political and government leaders, businesses, brands celebrities and news media.

Some, like New York entrepreneur Steve Cohn, are convinced the Twitterverse is only an artificial microcosm of the real world, with limited actual importance.

Twitter is “not ‘essential’ in any way,” Cohn declared — from his own Twitter account. “The world works just fine without Twitter.”

Few people actually tweet, he went on. “Almost all tweets come from (the) 1%. Most normals never log into Twitter.”

But for others, including Karen North, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the site is indispensible for bringing light to little-known conversations.

“Most of the time, people without prominence are not heard,” she said. But on Twitter, “there’s the opportunity to announce things.”

In situations of conflict, social movements or crackdowns, “Twitter I think has become the central platform for being able to disseminate the truth and the ground reality,” Charles Lister, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told AFP.

Like most other social networks, Twitter is also used to spread propaganda and misinformation, and the company has developed moderation tools to try to limit the worst of it.

But their ability to keep up with the demands of such a task has been thrown into question after more than two-thirds of those teams have left since Elon Musk’s controversial takeover.

A 2018 study found that false information circulates faster than posts that have been fact-checked. 

“That’s an unrealistic expectation to imagine a platform where misinformation and disinformation is impossible,” Lister cautioned. 

But “to see information, good and bad, vanish,” with the potential disappearance of Twitter, “is by definition a bad thing,” Lister said. 

“Autocrats and anyone who doesn’t want information widely shared, would potentially benefit from Twitter being gone,” added Mark Hass, a professor at Arizona State University (ASU).

– ‘Public square’ –

A Twitter fail could have devastating effects on journalism, experts say. 

“Twitter… is really not a social network,” North explained. “It’s a network of news and information.”

“It’s the place, the core hub of where journalists go to get a heads up, or a story idea or a headline or a source or a quote,” she said. 

With the reduction of the workforces and budgets in newsrooms, the resources just aren’t there, even at the most well-funded news operations, “to go find sources out in the world,” North lamented. 

Twitter, she said, is where much of that work can be done.

Another knock-on effect of a potential collapse of the platform, according to North, is that without Twitter, the world’s rich and powerful stars and politicians will still be able to command the media’s attention, while those less in the spotlight will struggle for attention.

“With Twitter, anybody can announce a story,” she said.

The site functions as a way to share information in real time.

“Twitter has been a vital source of information, networking, guidance, real-time updates, community mutual aid, & more during hurricanes, wildfires, wars, outbreaks, terrorist attacks, mass shootings… etc,” tweeted University of Maryland researcher Caroline Orr.

“It’s not something that can be replaced by any existing platforms.”

For now, the solution for a potential Twitter alternative is not obvious. 

“Facebook is valuable, but I think it’s almost a bit old fashioned,” Lister said.

Smaller Twitter competitors are likely to syphon off users, including Mastodon, which has grown in popularity since Musk purchased Twitter. 

“But these will likely remain niche, with none of them becoming the public square that Twitter tries to create,” ASU’s Hass said. 

He and North both listed Reddit as a possible substitute, though North said the forum-based network is limited by its fragmented and cluttered design that cannot replicate Twitter’s ease of use.

Could a replacement emerge? “Of course,” Lister added, but he noted such ingenuity takes enormous resources and significant time.

“You can’t just do it overnight.”

What could a world without Twitter look like?

21 Nov 2022

After another chaotic week of mass staff departures and policy reversals, Twitter’s future seems highly uncertain, with users — and everybody else — increasingly asking one question: What would a world without the so-called bird app even look like?

With about 237 million daily visitors at the last count in late June, Twitter’s user base is still smaller than Facebook’s nearly two billion, TikTok’s one billion plus and even Snapchat’s 363 million.

But in Twitter’s 15 years of existence, the platform has become the predominant communication channel for political and government leaders, businesses, brands celebrities and news media.

Some, like New York entrepreneur Steve Cohn, are convinced the Twitterverse is only an artificial microcosm of the real world, with limited actual importance.

Twitter is “not ‘essential’ in any way,” Cohn declared — from his own Twitter account. “The world works just fine without Twitter.”

Few people actually tweet, he went on. “Almost all tweets come from (the) 1%. Most normals never log into Twitter.”

But for others, including Karen North, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the site is indispensible for bringing light to little-known conversations.

“Most of the time, people without prominence are not heard,” she said. But on Twitter, “there’s the opportunity to announce things.”

In situations of conflict, social movements or crackdowns, “Twitter I think has become the central platform for being able to disseminate the truth and the ground reality,” Charles Lister, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told AFP.

Like most other social networks, Twitter is also used to spread propaganda and misinformation, and the company has developed moderation tools to try to limit the worst of it.

But their ability to keep up with the demands of such a task has been thrown into question after more than two-thirds of those teams have left since Elon Musk’s controversial takeover.

A 2018 study found that false information circulates faster than posts that have been fact-checked. 

“That’s an unrealistic expectation to imagine a platform where misinformation and disinformation is impossible,” Lister cautioned. 

But “to see information, good and bad, vanish,” with the potential disappearance of Twitter, “is by definition a bad thing,” Lister said. 

“Autocrats and anyone who doesn’t want information widely shared, would potentially benefit from Twitter being gone,” added Mark Hass, a professor at Arizona State University (ASU).

– ‘Public square’ –

A Twitter fail could have devastating effects on journalism, experts say. 

“Twitter… is really not a social network,” North explained. “It’s a network of news and information.”

“It’s the place, the core hub of where journalists go to get a heads up, or a story idea or a headline or a source or a quote,” she said. 

With the reduction of the workforces and budgets in newsrooms, the resources just aren’t there, even at the most well-funded news operations, “to go find sources out in the world,” North lamented. 

Twitter, she said, is where much of that work can be done.

Another knock-on effect of a potential collapse of the platform, according to North, is that without Twitter, the world’s rich and powerful stars and politicians will still be able to command the media’s attention, while those less in the spotlight will struggle for attention.

“With Twitter, anybody can announce a story,” she said.

The site functions as a way to share information in real time.

“Twitter has been a vital source of information, networking, guidance, real-time updates, community mutual aid, & more during hurricanes, wildfires, wars, outbreaks, terrorist attacks, mass shootings… etc,” tweeted University of Maryland researcher Caroline Orr.

“It’s not something that can be replaced by any existing platforms.”

For now, the solution for a potential Twitter alternative is not obvious. 

“Facebook is valuable, but I think it’s almost a bit old fashioned,” Lister said.

Smaller Twitter competitors are likely to syphon off users, including Mastodon, which has grown in popularity since Musk purchased Twitter. 

“But these will likely remain niche, with none of them becoming the public square that Twitter tries to create,” ASU’s Hass said. 

He and North both listed Reddit as a possible substitute, though North said the forum-based network is limited by its fragmented and cluttered design that cannot replicate Twitter’s ease of use.

Could a replacement emerge? “Of course,” Lister added, but he noted such ingenuity takes enormous resources and significant time.

“You can’t just do it overnight.”

Coming soon, dueling probes in divided Washington

21 Nov 2022

While Joe Biden’s administration has named a special counsel to oversee investigations of Donald Trump, Republicans due to take over the US House of Representatives have pledged their own flurry of probes of the president.

So from now until presidential and legislative voting in 2024, Americans could witness a long battle between two camps accusing each other of subverting the justice system for their own political ends.

Repeating a common Trump refrain, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, for instance, said Friday on Twitter that “Joe Biden has completely weaponized the Department of Justice to attack his political opponents.”

Cruz was reacting to Attorney General Merrick Garland naming a former war crimes prosecutor, Jack Smith, as special counsel to lead two probes of Trump that have been under way for months.

One is focused on the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

The other is an investigation into a cache of classified government documents seized in an FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in August.

But as Trump and part of the right wing of his party denounce what they call a witch hunt, Democrats are gearing up to make the same criticism of the Republicans.

Republicans say they plan to use the power of being the controlling party in the House to launch a series of investigations, the first of them centering on the president’s son Hunter.

They suspect him of engaging in shady business deals in Ukraine in China, capitalizing on his last name and his father’s influence as vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

“There’s no plans to subpoena Joe Biden. There are plans to subpoena Hunter Biden,” Representative James Comer said Thursday on CNN, outlining his party’s strategy.

This Kentucky lawmaker has emerged as a chief investigator of sorts for the Republicans after the November 8 midterm elections in which they won control of the House, albeit by a slim majority, but failed to take the Senate.

Comer is apparently in line to head the House Oversight Committee, the congressional panel that among things watches over the behavior of the executive branch and, if need be, can investigate it.

But Comer made clear that not just Hunter Biden but his father will be investigated.

“This needs to be called the Biden investigation and not the Hunter Biden investigation,” he said.

– Origins of Covid 19 –

Comer also said the panel will probe the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and what role a laboratory in Wuhan, China may have had. The issue is a bone many Republicans have gnawed on for years.

Republicans have also said they plan to investigate the Biden administration’s handling of incoming migration across the US border with Mexico.

While Democrats deny Hunter Biden did anything wrong, Comer gave assurances that the probe will not be a political circus.

“This isn’t a dog-and-pony show. This isn’t a committee where everybody’s gonna scream and be outraged and try to make the witnesses look like fools,” Comer said in an interview on November 8 with Politico.

One of the most outspoken lawmakers on the far right, the election denier Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has made remarks dismissed by critics as outlandish and racist, has said she wants a seat on the oversight committee.

Democrats are preparing a counteroffensive.

Politico reports that supporters of the party have created something called the Congressional Integrity Project, designed exclusively to respond to Republican congressional investigations.

The idea is to “investigate the investigators, expose their political motivations and the monied special interests supporting their work,” the founder of the project, Kyle Herrig, a lawyer and activist, told Politico.

The main goal of the Republicans, Herrig said, is not to seek the truth but rather “to smear Joe Biden and do the political bidding of Trump.”

Trump gets warm reception at Republican gathering as rivals lash out

20 Nov 2022

Donald Trump received a standing ovation at a Republican Party gathering Saturday, even as several possible White House rivals lashed out at his election denialism and insisted it was time to move on from the former US president.

In his first major appearance since announcing his intention to run again in 2024, Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas that the party had grown under his leadership.

The 76-year-old falsely insisted once again that the 2020 presidential election — which he lost — was rigged, and rejected responsibility for the GOP’s poor performance in the November midterms.

In 2020 “we had a really disgraceful election, many millions of votes more than we had in 2016… and the result was, in my opinion, an absolute sham,” he told the audience by video link.

“The election as rigged, and it’s too bad it was.”

Asked about how he could improve the party’s appeal to suburban voters, among whom it did badly in this month’s midterms, Trump insisted he had a record of picking winners.

“In the midterms, as you’ve probably heard, I was 222 wins and 16 losses, the press doesn’t want to mention that, and the Republican Party got five million more votes than the Democrats,” he said, despite the final vote tallies not yet being finalized. 

“The Republican Party is a much bigger and more powerful party than it was before I got there,” he said.

Trump was warmly welcomed by the crowd, which had earlier heard from key party figures whose names are often mentioned as possibly 2024 presidential contenders.

Many of them hit out at Trump’s grievance-laden style of politicking, which Republican Party operatives have said was to blame for their tepid showing on November 8.

– ‘Joy and a smile’ –

New Jersey’s former governor and one-time Trump confidante Chris Christie said candidate quality had been the issue.

“Donald Trump picked candidates with one criteria. Not electability, not experience, not wisdom, not charisma, not the ability to govern, but ‘do you believe the 2020 election was stolen or not?’ If you do I endorse you. If you don’t I reject you,” he said.

“The fact of the matter is the reason we’re losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.”

Chris Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, agreed.

“I got a great policy for the Republican Party. Let’s stop supporting crazy unelectable candidates in our primaries,” he said.

On Friday evening, Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who is also understood to be mulling a run at the White House, urged fellow Republicans to be more forward-looking and more positive.

While he did not mention his old boss by name, Pompeo made none-too-subtle digs about the need to be doers, rather than complainers.

“As we present the conservative case, as we make the argument… we do so with joy, and a smile,” he said.

“We don’t simply rail against the machine… we don’t simply go on Fox News or send tweets, we actually do the hard work.”

Trump did not address the potential rivals in his appearance on Saturday, but has already begun his customary bomb-throwing about potential presidential competitors, dubbing Ron DeSantis, who is set to speak later Saturday, “Ron DeSanctimonious” and saying Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s name “sounds Chinese.”

The gathering, which also featured an address by Israel’s prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, runs until Sunday.

Close Bitnami banner
Bitnami