
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>Tech executives Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggested in June they’d be interested in clashing in a UFC-style cage fight, and egged each other on while tensions escalated between the two billionaires and their companies—but Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/13/zuckerberg-thinks-its-time-to-move-on-from-planned-cage-fight-with-musk-elon-isnt-serious/">downplayed the potential</a>&nbsp;of a billionaire brawl Sunday when he said Musk “isn’t serious” about picking a date.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>The idea of a cage match was first posed by Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671364992665264131" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">over Twitter</a>, where the Tesla CEO responded to a thread about Instagram’s then-upcoming rival app Threads, saying, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”</p>



<p>Zuckerberg responded the next day with an Instagram story showing a screenshot of Musk’s tweet captioned “send me location”—a reference to a famous line from former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov (a Meta spokesperson confirmed to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/21/23769263/mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-fight-cage-match-worldstar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Verge</a>&nbsp;that Zuckerberg was being serious in his response to Musk).</p>



<p>As hype around a potential fight picked up, UFC president Dana White joined in on the anticipation, posting a video of himself sporting a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuCyF4HJQut/?img_index=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Zuckerberg vs Musk shirt</a>&nbsp;that was made available for purchase on the UFC’s website.</p>



<p>White was quoted in a July 1 story from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-match.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>New York Times</em></a><em>&nbsp;</em>saying he would help organize an exhibition match between the tech CEOs and that they both wanted to fight—with both men agreeing there should be a charity component to the bout.</p>



<p>On July 3, photos of Musk training with UFC legend Georges St. Pierre, mixed martial arts coach John Danaher and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt Lex Fridman surfaced online—with an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CuQLly_vqrT/?img_index=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Instagram post</a>&nbsp;from St. Pierre showing the four men in training gear.</p>



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<p>Zuckerberg, who is trained in the grappling combat discipline of Jiu-jitsu, also employed the training services of elite fighting talent in July—made evident by&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/stylebender/status/1678848822041255937" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">gym photos</a>&nbsp;taken with UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski on July 11.</p>



<p>The two billionaires reinvigorated interest in a potential match in early August, when Musk said he was weightlifting to prepare for the fight, suggesting it would be live-streamed on X—the rebranded Twitter platform—and that all proceeds would go to a charity for veterans.</p>



<p>Zuckerberg responded to Musk’s posts via Threads, asking if a “more reliable platform” should be used for a live-stream of the fight and adding he was “not holding his breath” for a fight to materialize.</p>



<p>Although Zuckerberg has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/CvnechDSJeC" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made clear</a>&nbsp;he is ready for a match, the same can’t be said for Musk, who said the date is “still in flux” and he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688377445957652480?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">may need surgery</a>&nbsp;before a fight can happen.</p>



<p>Days after calling the idea “in flux,” Musk said the Italian government agreed to an “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/08/11/elon-musk-says-italian-government-approved-epic-location-for-his-billionaire-clash-against-mark-zuckerberg/?sh=1d1742f043f9">epic location</a>” for a fight that would be managed by his and Zuckerberg’s respective foundations, not the UFC.</p>



<p>Zuckerberg shot down Musk’s plans, saying, “if he ever agrees on an actual date, you&#8217;ll hear it from me,” adding that he’d prefer to work with professional fight promotions such as UFC and ONE.</p>



<p>Just days after Zuckerberg expressed hesitation about Musk’s commitment to the match, the Meta CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/13/zuckerberg-thinks-its-time-to-move-on-from-planned-cage-fight-with-musk-elon-isnt-serious/">posted on Threads</a>&nbsp;on August 13 “it’s time to move on” because Musk won’t confirm a date, adding Musk said he needs surgery—and months of recovery—before fighting and wanted to do a practice round in Zuckerberg’s backyard.</p>



<p>The same day Zuckerberg announced the desire to move on, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1690747345674137600" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">posted</a>&nbsp;a screenshot to X of the purported conversation in which he suggested a practice round; Zuckerberg responded over text telling him he should train on his own and say when he’s ready to compete, adding he doesn’t “want to keep hyping something that will never happen.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



<p>In the background of Musk and Zuckerberg fight-related banter, tensions between the two have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2023/07/09/billionaire-brawl-now-whos-winning-the-fight-between-musk-and-zuckerberg/?sh=11d0221d26bc">increased</a>&nbsp;following the launch of Instagram’s Threads platform, a direct competitor to Twitter that launched July 5 and racked up its first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/10/with-100-million-users-in-five-days-threads-is-the-fastest-growing-app-in-history/?sh=287d252549ab">100 million users</a>&nbsp;on July 10. That same day, Musk called Zuckerberg a “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/10/musk-hits-below-the-belt-with-latest-zuckerberg-attacks-zuck-is-a-cuck/?sh=356527f622ee">cuck</a>” over Twitter and proposed a “dick measuring contest” with him. An attorney for Twitter accused and threatened to sue Meta for allegedly misusing Twitter’s &#8220;trade secrets and other intellectual property&#8221; and employing former Twitter staffers for help with developing Threads, labeling it as a “copycat” app of Twitter.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



<p>Musk biographer Walter Isaacson later claimed in a Twitter Spaces session that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-fight-match-unlikely-walter-isaacson-2023-7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he doubted</a>&nbsp;a fight would happen and that it was “a metaphor” for the competition between the CEOs’ rivaling social media sites.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



<p>-160. That was the&nbsp;<a href="https://dknation.draftkings.com/pop-culture/2023/6/22/23769810/mark-zuckerberg-vs-elon-musk-odds-cage-fight-who-will-win-wheres-the-asteroid" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hypothetical line</a>&nbsp;DraftKings set in June for Zuckerberg to win the match, making him the betting favorite, with bettors needing to wager $160 on Zuckerberg to return a $100 profit. DraftKings set the odds for a Musk upset at +140, meaning a $100 bet would deliver a $140 profit. The sports betting company attributed the lines to Zuckerberg’s younger age and his regular physical activity.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>A cage match between the tech CEOs might involve some parameters to account for their difference in size. Notably, Musk told White that he would not be willing to “lose any weight” for a potential matchup. Musk, 52, stands around 6’1” tall and has made clear on Twitter that he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671699387620237312" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">almost never works out</a>. Zuckerberg, 39, is 5 &#8216;7” and regularly takes to physical training and competition, recently securing two medals in his first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/09/business/mark-zuckerberg-jiu-jitsu-winner/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jiu-jitsu tournament</a>&nbsp;in May, though he was also choked out in one of his fights, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/02/style/mark-zuckerberg-workout.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>New York Times</em></a>&nbsp;(Zuckerberg has denied the claim). Zuckerberg also seems to be the more avid fight fan, as he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, attended a UFC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.insider.com/video-mark-zuckerberg-attends-ufc-event-priscilla-chan-looks-shook-2022-10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fight card</a>&nbsp;last October.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



<p>We estimate Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=5a59a8f87999">$225.2 billion</a>. Zuckerberg’s net worth is estimated at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?sh=350141a23e06">$107 billion</a>—placing him at No. 8 on&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>’ list of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#7b288cfb3d78">world’s real-time billionaires</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/07/11/mark-zuckerberg-training-with-ufc-champions-israel-adesanya-and-alexander-volkanovski-as-elon-musk-spat-intensifies/?sh=52e0cfd75d9a">Mark Zuckerberg Training With UFC Champions Israel Adesanya And Alexander Volkanovski As Elon Musk Spat Intensifies</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-match.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A ‘Cage Match’ Between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg May Be No Joke</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/10/musk-hits-below-the-belt-with-latest-zuckerberg-attacks-zuck-is-a-cuck/?sh=356527f622ee">Musk Hits Below The Belt With Latest Zuckerberg Attacks: ‘Zuck Is A Cuck’</a> (Forbes)</p>


Elon Musk Vs Mark Zuckerberg Illustration

Zuckerberg Vs Musk: Disputes Heat Up Over Billionaire Cage Fight—Here’s Everything We Know


<p><strong>TOPLINE</strong> Facebook published its guidelines on content distribution Thursday, reiterating that it throttles the reach of “problematic or low-quality” content including clickbait, misinformation and sensationalist health claims, as the company faces increasing pressure from users and lawmakers to reveal how it decides what content to display. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>There are dozens of reasons Facebook curtails the reach of content it displays in its News Feed, according to Content Distribution Guidelines&nbsp;<a href="https://transparency.fb.com/en-gb/features/approach-to-ranking/types-of-content-we-demote/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a>&nbsp;on Thursday, including spam, unsafe reporting on suicide and “posts from broadly untrusted news publishers.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Facebook said the guidelines, previously shared through earlier announcements, have been newly gathered in the platform’s months-old&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/05/20/facebook-launches-transparency-center-shares-data-on-content-removal/?sh=46511bcb1f53">transparency center</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Facebook said there are three reasons it will reduce the reach of content: to incentivize creators to build “high-quality and accurate content,” to foster a “safer community,” and in response to direct user feedback.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Publishing the measures in one place—which apply to problematic posts that do not warrant removal from the site—is supposed to provide more clarity on Facebook’s internal process, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/content-distribution-guidelines/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>, as it faces increasing fire around the world to reveal how it controls what users see.</p>



<p>According to the guidelines, Facebook also demotes posts by people who “probably have multiple accounts for the purposes of evading enforcement,” news articles lacking clear authorship and links that lead to pages containing explicit or shocking content.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-we-don-t-know">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



<p>The guidelines offered only a top-level look at how Facebook controls News Feed and did not, for example, give details on how content is reduced, by how much or whether different kinds of posts have their reach cut in different ways.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>The guidelines are not a new initiative of Facebook’s and simply shine a small light on the company’s well-known and poorly-understood&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg-joel-kaplan-facebook-alex-jones" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">practice</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/10/facebook-mother-jones/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">manipulating</a>&nbsp;what users see. Recent investigations by the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Wall Street Journal&nbsp;</em></a>and the&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>&nbsp;uncovered details of a project to show people<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;positive stories&nbsp;</a>about Facebook,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/21/facebook-oversight-board-cross-check-moderation/?sh=3b04693351f7">separate rules</a>&nbsp;for high-profile users and politicians, and evidence the company is fully aware its products can be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">harmful</a>&nbsp;to users,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/09/14/facebook-internal-research-found-instagram-can-be-very-harmful-to-young-girls-report-says/?sh=1dad6885a2a5">including</a>&nbsp;young girls. In 2014, Facebook&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revealed</a>&nbsp;a clandestine experiment on nearly 700,000 to determine whether or not it could&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">manipulate</a>&nbsp;users’ emotions using News Feed (the study found they could).&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">No More Apologies: Inside Facebook’s Push to Defend Its Image</a>&nbsp;(NYT)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/21/facebook-oversight-board-cross-check-moderation/?sh=3b04693351f7">Facebook Oversight Board Will Investigate Whether The Company Has Different Rules For Powerful Users</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/23/22688840/facebook-releases-content-distribution-guidelines-for-news-feed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook is starting to share more about what it demotes in News Feed</a>&nbsp;(Verge)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zuckerberg-11631654215" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead.</a>&nbsp;(WSJ)</p>


Facebook Holds Virtual F8 Developer Conference

Facebook Reveals What Content It Will Suppress, But Not Remove — Though Crucial Details Remain Hidden


<p id="h-a-federal-district-court-ruled-in-favor-of-facebook-in-two-lawsuits-brought-by-the-federal-trade-commission-ftc-and-state-attorneys-general-monday-thwarting-government-efforts-to-break-up-the-big-tech-behemoth-and-sending-the-company-s-market-value-to-record-heights-though-the-court-said-the-ftc-can-file-their-complaint-again-and-make-another-attempt"><strong>TOPLINE</strong>: A federal district court ruled in favour of Facebook in two <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/12/09/48-us-states-ftc-file-antitrust-charges-against-facebook/?sh=24ef02ec7653">lawsuits</a> brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general Monday, thwarting government efforts to break up the big tech behemoth and sending the company’s market value to record heights—though the court said the FTC can file their complaint again and make another attempt.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



<p>The FTC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/191-0134/facebook-inc-ftc-v" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sued</a>&nbsp;Facebook in December 2020, alleging the company had violated antitrust law through practices like buying up competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp.</p>



<p>U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg&nbsp;<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224921/gov.uscourts.dcd.224921.73.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ruled</a>&nbsp;the government agency’s claims about Facebook being a monopoly were “legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed,” saying the government’s case was “light on specific factual allegations” even as the judge acknowledged the court “does not agree with all of Facebook’s contentions here.”</p>



<p>New York Attorney General Letitia James led 48 states in separately&nbsp;<a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2020/attorney-general-james-leads-multistate-lawsuit-seeking-end-facebooks-illegal" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suing</a>&nbsp;Facebook for alleged antitrust violations in December, which Boasberg also&nbsp;<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224923/gov.uscourts.dcd.224923.137.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dismissed</a>&nbsp;Monday, saying the states waited too long to bring their case.</p>



<p>The states’ case “is premised on public, high-profile conduct nearly all of which occurred over six years ago,” Boasberg wrote—“when Ebola was the virus dominating headlines”—and granting relief to the states now would result in harm to Facebook and its shareholders given that Instagram and WhatsApp have been fully integrated into the company.</p>



<p>The FTC lawsuit was dismissed “without prejudice,” which means it can be filed again with changes to address the court’s concerns, but the state complaint was dismissed in its entirety.</p>



<p>The favorable ruling&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/28/tech/facebook-trillion-ftc/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">led to</a>&nbsp;Facebook’s stock rising by more than 4% Monday and the company hitting a $1 trillion market cap for the first time, and the company said in a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1409611408371859459?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>&nbsp;they were “pleased” the court’s decisions “recognize the defects in the government complaints filed against Facebook.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h3>



<p>“The FTC alleges only that Facebook has ‘maintained a dominant share of the U.S. personal social networking market (in excess of 60%)’ since 2011&#8230;and that ‘no other social network of comparable scale exists in the United States.’ That is it,” Boasberg wrote to explain why he ruled in Facebook’s favor, saying the FTC did “not even provide an estimated actual figure or range for Facebook’s market share at any point over the past ten years” and their allegations “ultimately fall short of plausibly establishing that Facebook holds market power.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h3>



<p>The FTC is likely to submit an amended complaint to get the court to reconsider the issue, particularly considering the agency’s new director,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/technology/lina-khan-ftc.html#:~:text=Liz%20Cheney-,Biden%20Names%20Lina%20Khan%2C%20a%20Big%2DTech%20Critic%2C%20as,on%20the%20agency%20on%20Tuesday." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lina Khan</a>, has a history of being critical of big tech. The new FTC chief, who the Senate just confirmed in mid-June, expressed&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/business/lina-khan-ftc.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">concerns</a>&nbsp;about the dominance of big tech companies like Facebook during her confirmation hearing, saying she believed there was a “whole range of potential risks” associated with companies’ growing power.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



<p>The Facebook lawsuits are part of a growing government effort against Facebook and its big tech brethren. Government&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-are-the-u-s-antitrust-cases-facing-google-facebook-and-others-11608150564" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lawsuits</a>&nbsp;have also been brought against Google, the FTC is reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-planned-purchase-of-mgm-to-be-reviewed-by-ftc-11624379614" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">preparing</a>&nbsp;to investigate Amazon over its acquisition of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/05/26/amazon-buys-mgm---but-heres-why-you-still-wont-find-wizard-of-oz-or-gone-with-the-wind-on-there/">MGM</a>&nbsp;and the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/06/long-awaited-house-report-recommends-breaking-up-big-tech/?sh=7158f975c831">concluded</a>&nbsp;in October that Congress should consider updating its antitrust laws and breaking up big tech companies, among other efforts. Facebook, for its part, has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/tech-ceo-antitrust-hearing-opening-statement-385233" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">maintained</a>&nbsp;it does not practice anticompetitive behavior—even as emails&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">show</a>&nbsp;CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he viewed Instagram as a threat that “can hurt us meaningfully” before Facebook bought the company—and has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/11/facebook-breakup-antitrust/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">integrated</a>&nbsp;the tech behind its platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp reportedly in order to make the company harder to break up.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h3>



<p>Antitrust legislation that could result in big tech companies like Facebook potentially getting broken up is moving forward in Congress, with the House Judiciary Committee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/technology/antitrust-overhaul-congress.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">advancing</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/22/tech-industry-urges-congress-to-slow-down-new-antitrust-bills.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">legislation</a>&nbsp;last week that would prohibit companies from owning businesses that present a conflict of interest, stop tech platforms from advantaging their own services over those of competitors and give regulators more of an advantage over the tech companies. Those bills likely face an uphill battle in a closely divided Senate, however, even as both Republicans and Democrats have advocated against tech companies’ growing power.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h3>



<p>Among those who have called for Facebook to be broken up is the company’s own co-founder Chris Hughes, who wrote in a 2019 op-ed that the “government must hold Mark accountable.” “Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American,” Hughes wrote about Zuckerberg. “It is time to break up Facebook.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/12/09/48-us-states-ftc-file-antitrust-charges-against-facebook/?sh=24ef02ec7653">48 Attorneys General, FTC File Antitrust Charges Against Facebook</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/03/10/facebook-seeks-dismissal-of-antitrust-lawsuits/?sh=1458cb054e30">Facebook Seeks Dismissal Of Antitrust Lawsuits</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/28/tech/facebook-trillion-ftc/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook hits $1 trillion market cap after federal court dismisses FTC antitrust complaint</a>&nbsp;(CNN)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/11/facebook-breakup-antitrust/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Regulators want to break up Facebook. That’s a technical nightmare, insiders say. </a>(Washington Post)</p>



<p><em><strong>By Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff</strong></em></p>


In this photo illustration, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook Wins Antitrust Lawsuits — At Least For Now


<p id="h-topline"><strong>TOPLINE</strong> Facebook, the world&#8217;s largest social media company, posted its strongest first-quarter earnings yet Wednesday afternoon, shattering Wall Street expectations thanks to surging advertising revenues despite heightened competition from the likes of Google and threats on the regulatory front.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



<ul><li>Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook <a href="https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2021/Facebook-Reports-First-Quarter-2021-Results/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a> revenue of $26.1 billion in the first quarter, 48% more than the $17.7 billion it pulled in the first quarter of last year and nearly $3 billion more than analysts expected.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Net income also smashed expectations, hitting $9.5 billion, or $3.30 per share—well above average analyst expectations of $2.33 per share and nearly double income of $4.9 billion in the first quarter of last year.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Facebook’s monthly active users jumped about 50 million, meaning a record-breaking 2.85 billion people used the social network in the last month of the quarter. </li></ul>



<ul><li>A slew of analysts upped their Facebook price targets this week in anticipation of the better-than-expected earnings report, with Credit Suisse&#8217;s Stephen Ju on Monday saying improving ad trends should bode well for Facebook and Instagram&#8217;s bottom lines.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Facebook stock futures jumped 7% within minutes of the announcement; shares closed up 1.2% on Wednesday and have climbed about 14% for the year—better than the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 11% increase.</li></ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h3>



<p>$341.50. That&#8217;s how high analysts think Facebook shares can go over the next year, according to Bloomberg data, giving the stock about 11% upside to Wednesday’s closing price of $307.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h3>



<p>Facebook&#8217;s third-quarter&nbsp;<a href="https://investor.fb.com/investor-events/event-details/2021/Facebook-Q1-2021-Earnings-/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">earnings call</a>&nbsp;is at 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE&nbsp;</h3>



<p>&#8220;We had a strong quarter as we helped people stay connected and businesses grow,&#8221; said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/">Mark Zuckerberg</a>, Facebook’s billionaire founder and CEO. &#8220;We will continue to invest aggressively to deliver new and meaningful experiences for years to come, including in newer areas like augmented and virtual reality, commerce, and the creator economy.&#8221;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



<p>Founded in 2004 by a group of Harvard College classmates including Zuckerberg and fellow billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/dustin-moskovitz/">Dustin Moskovitz</a>, Facebook is now the fifth-largest U.S. company by market cap, worth a staggering $862 billion. More than 95% of the company&#8217;s revenue comes from advertising, with about 50% of sales saturated in the U.S. and Canada. Though Bank of America expects the stock could soar another 20% in the next three years, the biggest risks to watch for include declines in user activity, privacy issues, big-tech regulation and any adverse impact on advertising prices.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/04/27/facebooks-stock-to-grow-as-earnings-expected-to-beat-market-estimates/">Facebook&#8217;s Stock To Grow As Earnings Expected To Beat Market Estimates?</a>&nbsp;<em>(Forbes)</em></p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/04/28/why-mark-zuckerberg-wants-influencers-to-get-rich/">Why Mark Zuckerberg Wants Influencers To Get Rich</a>&nbsp;<em>(Forbes)</em></p>



<p><strong><em>By Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff</em></strong></p>


Facebook Posts $26 Billion In Revenue, Shattering Wall Street Expectations As Income Nearly Doubles


<p><strong>Despite the pandemic, it was a record-setting year for the world’s wealthiest—with a $5 trillion surge in wealth and an unprecedented number of new billionaires.</strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p class="has-drop-cap">It’s been a year like no other, and we aren’t talking about the pandemic. There were rapid-fire public offerings, surging cryptocurrencies and skyrocketing stock prices. The number of billionaires on&nbsp;<em>Forbes’</em>&nbsp;35th annual list of the world’s wealthiest exploded to an unprecedented&nbsp;<strong>2,755</strong>—660 more than a year ago. Altogether they are worth&nbsp;<strong>$13.1 trillion</strong>, up from $8 trillion on the 2020 list.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There are a record high&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/06/nearly-500-people-have-become-billionaires-during-the-pandemic-year/?sh=386c528125c0"><strong>493 newcomers</strong></a>&nbsp;to the list—roughly one new billionaire every 17 hours, including 210 from China and Hong Kong and 98 from the U.S. The richest newcomer, at $38.2 billion, is&nbsp;<strong>Miriam Adelson</strong>&nbsp;of Nevada, who inherited her husband Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire following his death in January. Other notable new entrants include movie and TV producer&nbsp;<strong>Tyler Perry</strong>, Bumble dating app cofounder&nbsp;<strong>Whitney Wolfe Herd</strong>—the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, and Europe’s&nbsp;<strong>Guillaume Pousaz</strong>, founder of payments firm Checkout.com. Another 250 people who’d fallen off the billionaires’ list in the past came roaring back. Altogether, a staggering 86% of all billionaires are richer than a year ago.https://embedly.forbes.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fe.infogram.com%2F203c82a4-0962-4ff3-b2f9-883366e688b1%3Fsrc%3Dembed&amp;display_name=Infogram&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram.com%2Fdesktop-2021-billionaires-recirc-1ho16vojl5w8x4n&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram-thumbs-1024.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com%2Fd1c81d9b-cd07-4ed9-ae1f-456751923c71.jpg&amp;key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=infogram</p>



<p><strong>Jeff Bezos</strong>&nbsp;is the world’s richest person for the fourth year running, worth $177 billion, up $64 billion from a year ago as a result of surging Amazon shares.&nbsp;<strong>Elon Musk</strong>—the biggest gainer in dollar terms—rocketed into the No. 2 spot with a $151 billion fortune, a whopping $126.4 billion more than a year ago, when he ranked No. 31 and was worth $24.6 billion. The main reason: a 705% climb in Tesla shares. French luxury goods tycoon&nbsp;<strong>Bernard Arnault</strong>&nbsp;holds onto his spot at No. 3 but his fortune nearly doubled to $150 billion, from $76 billion, due to an 86% rise in the shares of LVMH, owner of brands including Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior and cosmetics retailer Sephora.&nbsp;<strong>The top ten richest are worth $1.15 trillion, up by two-thirds from $686 billion last year</strong>. Altogether,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2021/04/06/europes-billionaires-are-1-trillion-richer-than-a-year-ago/?sh=623d979f76e5">Europe’s billionaires</a>&nbsp;are $1 trillion richer than a year ago.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-net-worth-of-the-world-s-richest-person"><strong>Net Worth of the World’s Richest Person</strong></h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/606b6013b0a2afc5b16302b6/0x0.png?fit=scale" alt="Richest person net worth"/></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>This year there are four people worth $100 billion or more—up from just one (Bezos) on last year’s list. Besides Bezos, Musk and Arnault, there’s&nbsp;<strong>Bill Gates</strong>, who ranks No. 4 at $124 billion, buoyed by the strength of shares he owns in Microsoft, Canadian National Railway and tractor maker Deere &amp; Company.</p>



<p>Rounding out the top five is Facebook founder&nbsp;<strong>Mark Zuckerberg</strong>, at $97 billion. He’s worth an eye-popping $42.3 billion more than a year ago; Facebook’s shares have risen 80% in the past year as people around the world used its social media platforms to stay in touch. (For more on the richest tech billionaires, see&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2021/04/06/here-are-the-richest-tech-billionaires-in-2021/?sh=691f42bb4d70">here</a>; and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mominakhan/2021/04/06/the-10-richest-american-billionaires-2021/?sh=7e747aa4d981">here</a>&nbsp;for the richest Americans.) The richest woman this year is cosmetics heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France; see here for the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2021/04/06/the-top-richest-women-in-the-world-in-2021/?sh=59cfe7094598">richest women</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Warren Buffett&nbsp;</strong>is the world’s sixth richest person, worth $96 billion. It’s the first year since 1993 that the revered investor running Berkshire Hathaway has not appeared in the top five. Not that the 90-year-old Oracle of Omaha had a bad year—he’s still worth $28.5 billion more than he was on the 2020 list.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-number-of-billionaires-worldwide-and-combined-net-worth"><strong>Number of Billionaires Worldwide and Combined Net Worth</strong></h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/606b5e244876c7b64f423816/0x0.png?fit=scale" alt="Number of Billionaires and combined net worth"/><figcaption>Forbs.com</figcaption></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>The<strong>&nbsp;U.S.</strong>&nbsp;still has more billionaires than any other country, with 724 (up from 614 last year), but China is closing the gap with 698 (including 71 from&nbsp;<strong>Hong Kong</strong>&nbsp;and 1 from&nbsp;<strong>Macao</strong>). Last year the U.S. had 614 billionaires and China had 456 (including 66 from Hong Kong and 1 Macao).&nbsp;<strong>India</strong>&nbsp;has the third highest number of billionaires, with 140. Altogether, the 1,149 billionaires from Asia-Pacific countries are worth $4.7 trillion, while the U.S. billionaires are worth a total $4.4 trillion.&nbsp; (For more on the countries with the most billionaires, see&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/04/06/the-countries-with-the-most-billionaires-2021/?sh=42c017c0379b">here</a>. Plus&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/2021/04/06/the-10-richest-chinese-billionaires-in-2021/?sh=7e5164685ca2">China’s richest</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/2021/04/06/asia-ascendant-the-richest-new-chinese-billionaires-in-2021/?sh=3361ff131a1a">China’s newcomers</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/naazneenkarmali/2021/04/06/indias-10-richest-billionaires-2021/?sh=2922cf8359b7">India’s richest</a>.)&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-countries-with-the-most-billionaires"><strong>The Countries With The Most Billionaires</strong></h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/606b7cca1391bb569e6302b6/0x0.png?fit=scale" alt="Countries With The Most Billionaires"/><figcaption>Forbes.com</figcaption></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>A record 1,975 billionaires are self-made, up from 1,457 last year. That equates to 72% of the list (vs. about 70% in 2020). It’s a marked change from the 2001 list of billionaires, when 49% of the total 565 billionaires were self-made.&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;uses the term “self-made” as a contrast to “inherited” and “inherited &amp; growing;” it’s not meant to indicate that someone created a billion-dollar fortune all on their own. To achieve such a feat takes teamwork.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-total-number-of-billionaires-and-self-made-status"><strong>Total Number of Billionaires and Self-Made Status</strong></h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/606c413115a36070b1428bf7/0x0.png?fit=scale" alt="Self-Made Status"/><figcaption>Forbes .com</figcaption></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>One hundred and five of the list members are under 40, two-thirds of whom are self-made. The new youngest self-made billionaire is 26-year-old American&nbsp;<strong>Austin Russell,</strong>&nbsp;who dropped out of Stanford to found automotive sensor firm Luminar Technologies; he is worth $2.4 billion and ranked No. 1299. There’s a new youngest billionaire as well: 18-year-old&nbsp;<strong>Kevin David Lehmann</strong>&nbsp;of Germany, whose father Guenther Lehmann transferred his stake in drugstore chain dm-drogerie mkt to him; he’s worth $3.3 billion and ranks No. 925. (Read more about the youngest billionaires&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/04/06/the-worlds-youngest-billionaires-2021-include-a-teenager-from-germany-a-crytpo-magnate-and-a-stanford-dropout/?sh=5e87182a509d">here</a>.). At the other end of the spectrum,&nbsp;the oldest billionaire, at age 99, is U.S. insurance tycoon&nbsp;<strong>George Joseph</strong>.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mukesh Ambani</strong>&nbsp;of India has become the richest person in Asia, ranked No. 10 and worth an estimated $84.5 billion. He nudges out&nbsp;<strong>Jack Ma</strong>&nbsp;of China, Asia’s richest person a year ago, whose rank dropped to No. 26 (from No. 17 last year) despite a nearly $10 billion jump in his fortune to $48.4 billion. The biggest gainer in percentage terms this year is from China:&nbsp;<strong>Zhong Shanshan</strong>&nbsp;took his bottled water company Nongfu Spring public last fall on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and shares soared, lifting his net worth to $68.9 billion, up 3,345% from $2 billion a year ago.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-total-new-billionaires-and-combined-net-worth"><strong>Total New Billionaires and Combined Net Worth</strong></h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/606b5ea2affa9dd12fb89021/0x0.png?fit=scale" alt="Total Newcomers over the years"/><figcaption>Forbes.com</figcaption></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#1 | Jeff Bezos</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$177 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>AMAZON</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE: <strong>SEATTLE</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#2 | Elon Musk</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$151 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>TESLA, SPACEX</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE: <strong>AUSTIN, TEXAS</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#3 | Bernard Arnault</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$150 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>LUXURY GOODS</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>PARIS</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#4 | Bill Gates</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$124 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>MICROSOFT</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>MEDINA, WASHINGTON</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#5 | Mark Zuckerberg</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$97 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>FACEBOOK</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#6 | Warren Buffett</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$96 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>OMAHA, NEBRASKA</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#7 | Larry Ellison</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$93 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>SOFTWARE</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>LANAI, HAWAII</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#8 | Larry Page</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$91.5 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>GOOGLE</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#9 | Sergey Brin</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$89 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>GOOGLE</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA</strong></h4>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>#10 | Mukesh Ambani</strong></h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NET WORTH:&nbsp;<strong>$84.5 BILLION</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SOURCE OF WEALTH:&nbsp;<strong>DIVERSIFIED</strong></h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RESIDENCE:&nbsp;<strong>MUMBAI, INDIA</strong></h4>



<p><em><strong>By Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes Staff</strong></em></p>


Billionaire Elon Musk Receives Axel Springer Award

Forbes’ 35th Annual World’s Billionaires List: Facts And Figures 2021


<p><strong>TOPLINE</strong> Tech CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey will soon have to answer to lawmakers about the rise of misinformation on their platforms and how they plan to address it, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced Thursday a hearing with the Facebook, Google and Twitter leaders will take place on March 25.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



<p>Zuckerberg, Pichai and Dorsey—who lead Facebook, Google and Twitter, respectively—will testify at a remote hearing on “misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms,” the House committee announced.</p>



<p>The hearing will further the committee’s work of “holding online platforms accountable” for the issues on their platforms, committee chair Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and subcommittee chairs Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said in a statement.</p>



<p>The lawmakers singled out misinformation on election fraud and the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccine as particular matters of concern.</p>



<p>The tech leaders have previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/facebook-twitter-ceos-senate-judiciary-committee-prepared-testimony.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">testified</a>&nbsp;before lawmakers in recent months, including an October&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/facebook-google-and-twitter-ceos-testify-in-congress-over-section-230-live-updates.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hearing</a>&nbsp;with all three CEOs before the Senate Commerce Committee on Section 230, which shields tech companies from legal liability for the content their users post.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h3>



<p>“For far too long, big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences. Industry self-regulation has failed,” Pallone, Doyle and Schakowsky said in a statement. “We must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.”</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h3>



<p>93%. That’s the percentage of Americans who say they are either very or somewhat about the spread of misinformation on the internet, according to a Gallup/Knight Foundation&nbsp;<a href="https://knightfoundation.org/articles/most-americans-would-believe-social-media-misinformation-warnings/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;conducted in September.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h3>



<p>The House Judiciary Committee also separately announced plans to investigate big tech Thursday, unveiling a series of antitrust hearings aimed at curbing tech giants’ market dominance as it develops antitrust legislation. The renewed investigation will continue the antitrust subcommittee’s ongoing work probing the tech giants and their monopolistic power, which included a July&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/07/29/republicans-use-tech-antitrust-hearing-to-rail-against-anti-conservative-bias/?sh=6f7e186855aa">hearing</a>&nbsp;with Dorsey, Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



<p>Online misinformation and its spread on major social networks has come under significant scrutiny in recent months, particularly amid the Covid-19 pandemic and around the November election. Social media companies have taken significant&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/01/31/heres-how-facebook-twitter-and-tiktok-are-battling-coronavirus-misinformation/?sh=2dfca99c6651">steps</a>&nbsp;to curb the spread of false information, such as Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/10/09/twitter-new-rules-try-to-prevent-election-and-trump-related-chaos-misinformation/?sh=262d250f6840">adding safeguards</a>&nbsp;to limit sharing posts that have been flagged for misinformation and Facebook&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/02/18/facebook-continues-fight-against-misinformation-plans-to-debunk-climate-change-myths/?sh=7cac8aee4804">announcing</a>&nbsp;Thursday new efforts to combat misinformation around climate change. Despite their efforts, however, misinformation still continues to persist: an October study by the German Marshall Fund of the United States&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/10/12/facebook-users-interacting-with-misinformation-way-more-now-than-in-2016-study-finds/?sh=403d34415973">found</a>&nbsp;that engagement with false content producers on Facebook had gone up by 102% since 2016, for instance, while a September&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news/releases/covid-related-misinformation-videos-spread-primarily-through-facebook-as-its-fact-checkers-fail-to-spot-false-information-finds-new-oxford-study/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;from the University of Oxford found Facebook’s third-party fact checkers had only caught less than one percent of Covid-19 misinformation videos on the platform.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/18/house-antitrust-amazon-apple-facebook-google/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">House to grill Facebook, Google, Twitter CEOs as Washington seeks to crack down on disinformation, antitrust</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/02/18/facebook-continues-fight-against-misinformation-plans-to-debunk-climate-change-myths/?sh=7cac8aee4804">Facebook Continues Fight Against Misinformation, Plans To Debunk Climate Change Myths</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/01/31/heres-how-facebook-twitter-and-tiktok-are-battling-coronavirus-misinformation/?sh=2dfca99c6651">Here’s How Facebook, Twitter And TikTok Are Battling Coronavirus Misinformation</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/10/12/facebook-users-interacting-with-misinformation-way-more-now-than-in-2016-study-finds/?sh=403d34415973">Facebook Users Interacting With Misinformation Way More Now Than In 2016, Study Finds</a> (Forbes)</p>



<p><em>By Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff</em></p>


US-politics-computers-internet

Facebook, Google, Twitter CEOs Set To Testify About Misinformation


<p id="h-topline"><strong>TOPLINE</strong> Apple will introduce privacy features this spring limiting the ability of apps to track users—but while the change is applauded by privacy advocates, Facebook is staging an all-out offensive by announcing Monday it would send out its own notifications extolling the benefits of tracking.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



<ul><li>Apple’s new privacy update will ask all users whether they want to be tracked across different apps, preventing third parties like Facebook from collecting data from other apps and using it to build profiles on individual users for targeted advertising.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Currently, if a user puts something into their cart on the Amazon app, for example, Facebook can access that data,  and users might see an ad for that same product on Facebook. </li></ul>



<ul><li>The new notifications that allow users to opt-out will pop up as soon as users open or download an app, making them more visible than Apple’s current system, which requires users to go into their settings to make that choice.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Facebook has been outspoken against the change because it threatens its lucrative advertising business, and could result in a 7% revenue dip, according to recent <a href="https://mobiledevmemo.com/facebook-may-take-revenue-hit-from-apple-privacy-changes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">estimates</a>.</li></ul>



<ul><li>In its fiercest opposition yet, Facebook said Monday it would send out its own prompt directly countering Apple’s, telling users that collecting such data allows for more personalized ads and supports “small businesses that rely on ads to reach customers.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>Facebook argues that if users opt-out, they won’t see fewer ads, the ads will just be less relevant, and at the same time, small businesses would lose some of their ability to serve hyper-targeted ads, forcing some to raise prices or turn to a subscription model.</li></ul>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



<p>&nbsp;Facebook and Apple have been on a collision course since Apple made the App Tracking Transparency announcement over the summer. Facebook took out full page ads in several newspapers declaring it was “standing up to Apple for small businesses.” And last week Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4401479-facebook-inc-fb-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-on-q4-2020-results-earnings-call-transcript" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said&nbsp;</a>Apple is increasingly one of the social network’s biggest competitors. Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook fired back, saying “if a business is built on misleading users on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise” during a speech in Brussels.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h4>



<p>&nbsp;“This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook’s business,”&nbsp; the Electronic Frontier Foundation&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/facebooks-laughable-campaign-against-apple-really-against-users-and-small" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said&nbsp;</a>in December. “Requiring trackers to request your consent before stalking you across the Internet should be an obvious baseline, and we applaud Apple for this change.”&nbsp;</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h4>



<p>Public polling has&nbsp;<a href="https://epic.org/privacy/survey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">consistently&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-and-privacy-concerned-confused-and-feeling-lack-of-control-over-their-personal-information/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shown&nbsp;</a>that users don’t like being tracked. It’s unclear just how many iOS users will opt-out when prompted, but dating app Bumble&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/bumble-ipo-filing-warns-apple-privacy-changes-could-harm-its-business.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">estimates&nbsp;</a>that only 0-20% will choose to be tracked.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h4>



<p>Apple’s privacy update will go into effect early this spring, Apple says.</p>



<p><em>By Rachel Sandler, Forbes Staff</em></p>


In this photo illustration the Apple and Facebook logos are

Apple Wants To Make It Harder For Apps To Track You. Facebook Isn’t Happy.


<p><strong>TOPLINE</strong> Facebook will no longer recommend political groups to users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday, amid criticism for how the platform was used by pro-Trump extremists to plan the attack on the Capitol earlier this month.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



<p>Facebook had already halted political and social issue group recommendations leading up to the November election last year, but Zuckerberg said on an earnings call Wednesday that the change will become permanent.</p>



<p>The move is significant because private Facebook groups are rife with misinformation and conspiracy theories, researchers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/22/881826881/facebook-groups-are-destroying-america-researcher-on-misinformation-spread-onlin" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">say</a>, with some involved in the planning of the Capitol riots, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/some-pro-trump-extremsists-used-facebook-plan-capitol-attack-report-n1254794" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report&nbsp;</a>from the Tech Transparency Project.</p>



<p>The ban comes the day after Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote a scathing letter to Zuckerberg saying, “Facebook’s system of recommending political groups poses grave threats to American democracy and public safety.”</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



<p>&nbsp;Critics have long pressured Facebook to crack down on calls for violence, hate speech and misinformation. They argue Facebook is a cesspool of extreme views, and can play a role in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/opinion/facebook-far-right.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">radicalizing&nbsp;</a>normal users. At least in part recognizing Facebook’s divisiveness, Zuckerberg also said Wednesday the social network plans to reduce the amount of political content people see in their feeds. “One of the top pieces of feedback that we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” Zuckerberg said.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h4>



<p>Facebook’s revenue and profit grew in 2020, despite a looming antitrust investigation, privacy mishaps and scrutiny over content moderation. But the company warned in its fourth-quarter earnings report that it would face significant obstacles this year as Apple plans to make it harder for Facebook to track iOS users.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h4>



<p>Facebook already <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/17/21443742/facebook-health-groups-recommendations-new-admin-rules" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stopped</a> recommending health-related groups in September to address coronavirus and other health misinformation.</p>



<p><em>By Rachel Sandler, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Facebook Will Permanently Stop Promoting Political Groups


<p>Despite seeing his net worth skyrocket in recent months—and a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-06/musk-close-to-surpassing-bezos-as-world-s-richest-person#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%2C%20the%20outspoken%20entrepreneur,the%20world's%20500%20wealthiest%20people." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;from Bloomberg on Wednesday that he’s now the world’s richest person—<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/">Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;remains the second-richest person in the world, according to&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>’ estimates.</p>



<p>Shares of Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TSLA</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla">+6.9%</a>&nbsp;rose by 7% as of 2:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, pushing Musk’s net worth up by $9.8 billion, to $175.2 billion. That makes him $22 billion richer than the planet’s third-wealthiest person, French luxury tycoon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=rtb/">Bernard Arnault</a>, but still $11 billion behind the world’s number one, Amazon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AMZN</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon">+1.8%</a>&nbsp;CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=rtb/">Jeff Bezos</a>.&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;estimates that Bezos has a net worth of $186.8 billion.</p>



<p>Musk’s net worth has grown at an astronomical clip over the past year. He has added nearly $150 billion to his fortune since March 2020, when he was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/">worth $24.6 billion</a>. Much of that increase comes from Tesla’s skyrocketing share price, which rose more than 720% in 2020. It has gained another 10% so far over the first week of 2021.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As Tesla’s stock soared ahead of its inclusion in the S&amp;P 500 Index on December 21, Musk surpassed Facebook&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FB</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook">+1.9%</a>&nbsp;CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?list=rtb/">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;(who is worth $98.2 billion today) to become the world’s fourth-richest person in early November, then leapfrogged Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MSFT</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft">+3%</a>&nbsp;cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=rtb/">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;(worth $121.9 billion today) for the number three spot.</p>



<p>Musk owns around 21% of Tesla’s shares, plus a stake in private rocket company SpaceX. Tesla stock still sits at record highs, now trading for over $800 per share. The company’s $765 billion market cap makes it by far the most valuable car company in the world.</p>



<p><em>-By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff</em></p>


No, Elon Musk Is Not The Richest Person In The World—Yet


<p>Even with the presidential election in flux, the U.S. stock market—led by a rally in tech shares—jumped on Wednesday, helping America’s ten richest people add billions of dollars to their fortunes.</p>



<p>Both Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden claimed they would win the race, despite several battleground states still not called, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Despite the uncertainty, markets surged on Wednesday, with shares of major tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft leading the rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 400 points, or 1.3%, as of market close on Wednesday, while the S&amp;P 500 was up 2.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite soared 3.9%.</p>



<p>Some experts on Wall Street attributed the strength in tech stocks to the potential for a split Congress—as it looks less and less likely that Democrats will be able to win back control of the Senate. Although Democrats retained control of the House, Republicans won key Senate races in Iowa and Montana, according to NBC News.</p>



<p>With tech shares soaring, America’s ten richest people—including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg—subsequently gained a combined $28.2 billion in net worth as markets moved higher.</p>



<p>Leading the way was the world’s richest person, Amazon founder and CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#683c93f51b23">Jeff Bezos</a>, whose net worth rose by $10.5 billion, to $190.6 billion. Amazon stock was up 6.3% on Wednesday.</p>



<p>Facebook CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?list=rtb/#29585cf43e06">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;gained $8 billion as Facebook shares rose 8.3%. The world’s fourth richest person, he now has a net worth of $105.5 billion.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=rtb/#41cb54a7689f">Bill Gates</a>, the world’s third-richest person, saw his fortune rise $663 million—pushing his net worth up to $115.9 billion. Gates, who cofounded Microsoft in 1975, has sold or given away much of his stake in the company—but still owns an estimated 1% of shares, which rose nearly 5% on Wednesday.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Another former Microsoft executive,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-ballmer/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=430303664818">Steve Ballmer</a>, gained $2.8 billion, with his net worth moving up to $73.5 billion amid the market rally. He owns an estimated 3.5% stake in Microsoft.</p>



<p>Google cofounders&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-page/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=2e97a1ec7893">Larry Page</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/sergey-brin/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=d67b8cc4b432">Sergey Brin</a>&nbsp;saw their fortunes rise $4 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively, as Google’s stock jumped over 6%. Both are major shareholders of Google-parent company Alphabet; Page is worth $77 billion while Brin is worth $74.9 billion.</p>



<p>Among America’s ten richest people, four saw a drop in their fortunes on Wednesday. Tesla CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=fda57287999b">Elon Musk</a>’s net worth fell by about $560 million as shares of his electric vehicle maker were down 0.7%. He owns a 21% stake in the company and is now worth $93.1 billion.</p>



<p>Renowned investor&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=5e3030bb4639">Warren Buffett</a>&nbsp;also saw his fortune drop slightly. His investing conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, saw its stock fall by 0.4%, shaving $215 million off of Buffett’s net worth, which now stands at $78 billion.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-ellison/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=fa0347724c2c">Larry Ellison</a>, cofounder and chief technology officer of software giant Oracle, lost $391 million, lowering his net worth to $75.1 billion. Ellison owns about 35% of Oracle’s stock, which was down 0.6% on Wednesday.</p>



<p>Walmart heiress <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/alice-walton/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=360204a4eb21">Alice Walton</a>, meanwhile, saw her fortune fall $309 million as Walmart’s stock lost 0.6%, giving her a net worth of $66.6 billion.</p>



<p><em>-By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Amazon CEO And Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos  Speaks At Air Force Association Air, Space And Cyber Conference

America’s Ten Richest People Are $28 Billion Richer As Election Bolsters Big Tech Prospects


<p><strong>THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST</strong></p>



<p class="has-drop-cap">After briefly becoming the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2020/08/31/elon-musk-100-billion-net-worth/#7d8e258880ed">fifth centibillionaire in the world</a> on Monday, August 31, Tesla CEO Elon Musk ended the week down $9.9 billion as tech companies — and their founders’ fortunes — took a hit.</p>



<p>While tech companies have largely been driving the stock market’s surge during the pandemic, heavyweights like Facebook and Amazon took a spill on Thursday and Friday during what some observers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd5804ef-94d0-45b4-9c2b-8fb7996ec5f6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">are calling a correction</a>. The S&amp;P 500 was down 2.3% for the week, while the Dow Jones Industrial Index fell 1.8%. Tesla stock started to falter on Wednesday,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/02/teslas-largest-outside-shareholder-reduces-holding-citing-portfolio-restrictions.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">after news broke that</a>&nbsp;its largest outside shareholder, Scottish investment firm Ballie Gifford, reduced its stake in the company. The stock ended the week down 5.5%.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Even with the decline, Musk is four times wealthier than he was a year ago, with a net worth of $87.9 billion. He is currently the fifth richest person in the world, $5.5 billion ahead of Warren Buffett.</p>



<p>The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, hit a milestone last week when he became the first person tracked by Forbes with a fortune that exceeded $200 billion. With Amazon shares worth 3% less than a week ago at the market close on Friday, Bezos’ fortune dropped  $5.8 billion to $193.5 billion. His ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott (net worth: $62.4 billion), is $2 billion poorer this week.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="594" height="425" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/gettyimages-1148401100-594x594-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-46514" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/gettyimages-1148401100-594x594-1.jpg 594w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/gettyimages-1148401100-594x594-1-300x215.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption>Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 6, 2019.   (Photo by MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune fell $4 billion as Facebook shares dropped 3.7% in the past week. He’s been more vocal than ever before about political misinformation on the social media platform and announced steps to mitigate the problem. On Wednesday, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced a&nbsp;<a href="https://gizmodo.com/zuckerberg-drops-300-million-to-support-u-s-elections-1844921516" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$300 million donation</a>&nbsp;to support voting infrastructure, such as protective equipment for poll workers and polling place rentals. On Thursday, he said that Facebook would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/09/03/facebook-will-block-new-political-ads-in-the-week-leading-up-to-election-day/#30873f0b7950">block new political ads</a>&nbsp;during the week before Election Day, and flag posts in which a candidate tries to claim a premature victory.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Quicken Loans cofounder Dan Gilbert had a chaotic week as shares of the online mortgage lender’s parent company, Rocket Companies, soared midweek ahead of the company’s first earnings report since it went public in August. Although <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.thestreet.com/investing/rocket-rkt-earnings-mortgage-initial-public-offering" target="_blank">it reported strong profits</a>, the stock corrected itself and ended the week down more than 13%. As of Friday, September 4, Gilbert is worth $51 billion — $7.3 billion less than last week, but nearly eight times richer than he was a year ago.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p><strong>HERE ARE THE BILLIONAIRES WHOSE FORTUNES FELL THE MOST THIS WEEK.</strong></p>



<p><em>The net worth change is from close of markets Friday, August 28, to Friday, September 4.</em></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>1 | ELON MUSK</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$87.9 BILLION, DOWN $9.9 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong>&nbsp;TESLA</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>2 | DAN GILBERT</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$51 BILLION, DOWN $7.3 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> QUICKEN LOANS</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>3 | JEFF BEZOS</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$193.5 BILLION, DOWN</strong>&nbsp;<strong>$5.8 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES﻿</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> AMAZON</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>4 | </strong> <strong>STEVE BALLMER</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$72.9 BILLION, DOWN $4.1 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> MICROSOFT</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>5 | MARK ZUCKERBERG</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH | &nbsp;<strong>$103.8 BILLION, DOWN $4 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> FACEBOOK</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>6 | LARRY ELLISON</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$74.2 BILLION, DOWN $2.7 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> ORACLE</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>7 | AMANCIO ORTEGA</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$65.3 BILLION, DOWN $2.5 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>SPAIN</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> ZARA</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>8 | MA HUATENG</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$57.5 BILLION, DOWN $2.3 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>CHINA</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> TENCENT</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>9 | LARRY PAGE</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$70.6 BILLION, DOWN $2.2 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> GOOGLE</strong></p>



<h4 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color wp-block-heading"><strong>10 | SERGEY BRIN</strong></h4>



<p>NET WORTH |&nbsp;<strong>$68.7 BILLION, DOWN $2.1 BILLION</strong></p>



<p>COUNTRY |&nbsp;<strong>UNITED STATES</strong></p>



<p>SOURCE OF WEALTH |<strong> GOOGLE</strong></p>



<p><em>-Ariel Shapiro, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Key Speakers At The Satellite 2020 Conference

Elon Musk Down Nearly $10 Billion In One Week As Tech Stocks Plunge


<p><strong>Nearly a decade ago, Zuck’s college roommate became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire by moving fast and breaking things. Now Moskovitz is set to take his radically chiller cloud standout Asana — a software success story powered by patience and the pandemic — public.</strong></p>



<p class="has-drop-cap">At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, upbeat synth music announces the arrival of Dustin Moskovitz. Clad in an untucked dark gray button-down, jeans and white sneakers, his beard closely cropped, he strides onstage with a microphone and presentation clicker before plunging into a rapid-fire overview of the new look and feel of Asana, his work-collaboration app.</p>



<p>The calendar says July 16, but Moskovitz isn’t at the museum that day. Conducted in the middle of a resurgence of the coronavirus in California, his keynote address, pretaped in an empty auditorium and streamed on YouTube, lasts all of five minutes. No matter: If anything, the lack of an audience is welcome to the low-key, low-profile CEO, who matter-of-factly lays out his vision of the future of work, Asana-style.</p>



<p>Moskovitz, 36, who is worth $14.2 billion, is best known as cofounder of Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg. He was the world’s youngest billionaire for a few years starting in 2011. But for the past dozen years since he left the high-flying social network, Moskovitz and his Asana cofounder, Justin Rosenstein, 37, have been lying low, quietly toiling behind the scenes to solve an age-old problem: how much effort we waste in the meta-work around work.</p>



<p>“We were just kind of shocked and frustrated at how much of our collective time was going toward trying to establish clarity and getting everyone on the same page,” Moskovitz says in a recent video call.</p>



<p>Today Asana’s software is used by employees at more than 75,000 companies including AT&amp;T, Google and NASA to help them take back control of their days by managing everything from writing a memo to planning an event. (Soon its AI-powered app will even set agendas and suggest ways to make workdays more efficient.)</p>



<p>Moskovitz took back his own control by steadfastly rejecting Silicon Valley’s hard-charging style. Once knee-deep in Facebook’s “move fast and break things” culture, Moskovitz has been careful to craft Asana in a more deliberate way. Wary of being another flash-in-the-pan unicorn, Asana has focused on long-term viability, with a decade-old rule not to boost its head count by more than double in any year.</p>



<p>Valued at $1.5 billion in November 2018, Asana operates without hype or splashy fundraises. That’s in stark contrast to its competition, which includes monday.com, a New York– and Tel Aviv–based team-management business recently valued at $2.7 billion, and Notion, a next-gen note-taking app worth $2 billion. Part of that is due to its self-described introverted CEO. Moskovitz admits he has agreed to speak at length with Forbes only because his PR execs promised he wouldn’t have to do any more interviews for the rest of the year.</p>



<p>“It takes time to build the snowball,” he says, refuting the notion that he was deliberately growing the business slowly. “The goal was to be fast, but fast in the long run, not fast in the short run. Now we’re getting to reap the rewards that we sowed.”</p>



<p>Asana is indeed picking up speed. All evidence points to a record year, thanks in part to Covid-19 and the way workplaces are changing. (The company declined to comment on any financials because it’s in a quiet period prior to an IPO, likely to happen this fall.) Traffic to its website is up an estimated 24% since February. In August, Asana disclosed revenue of $142.6 million for fiscal 2020, up 86% year-to-year, in a regulatory filing. Revenue for its most recent quarter ended April 30 was $47.7 million, up 70%. It’s enough to put Asana at No. 17 on this year’s Cloud 100, our annual ranking of the world’s top private cloud-computing companies, up from No. 41 a year ago.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47456" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-scaled-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-953899616-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Justin Rosenstein, Co-Founder, Asana on stage during day two of Collision 2018 at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. (Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Moskovitz was just 19 in 2004 when he helped start Facebook with his roommate, Zuckerberg, in their Harvard dorm. A year and a half later, he dropped out and moved to Silicon Valley with Zuck. He was a jaded 23 when, as head of engineering at one of the fastest-growing tech companies ever, he met Rosenstein, a hotshot one year older whom Facebook had poached from Google in early 2007. The son of a small-town Florida psychiatrist and teacher, Moskovitz was known at Facebook for feats of marathon coding, but otherwise preferred to hang in the background. A Bay Area native and Stanford graduate, Rosenstein was his perfect foil: a gregarious, artistic product whiz who had helped build Gmail’s popular chat service.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At the time, Moskovitz was spending his weekends and nights building a simple task manager for Facebook’s product team to track their projects, and Rosenstein revealed that he had tinkered on a similar internal tool at Google. Joining forces, they spent the next few months working full-time on Tasks, which spread across Facebook to include agendas, product management and even a bit of office equipment inventory tracking. Soon, they became certain that to properly build the tools they wanted, they needed to leave the Facebook nest. “We were pretty convinced that there would be something like Asana in the future, even if we weren’t the ones to build it,” Moskovitz says.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It wasn’t buzzy like a social network, or conceptually ambitious like rockets or artificial intelligence. But even hotshot space companies and disease-fighting nonprofits need to coordinate staff. Asana, which the avid yoga enthusiasts named for a Sanskrit word meaning&nbsp;<em>alignment,&nbsp;</em>could help them all. “It felt like an opportunity we couldn’t say no to,” Rosenstein says.&nbsp;</p>



<p>From a dingy office in the eastern part of San Francisco’s Mission district, Moskovitz and Rosenstein raised seed funding from a who’s-who of the Bay Area tech elite, including Facebook veterans Zuckerberg, Sean Parker and Peter Thiel. But privately, many were skeptical, says Moskovitz’s friend Eric Ries, author of <em>The Lean Startup.</em> “It just didn’t seem like it was going to be big.” </p>



<p>Freed from a startup’s typical fundraising pressures, Moskovitz and Rosenstein spent months coding and talking to potential customers before&nbsp;<a href="https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/facebook-co-founder-dustin-moskovitz-unveils-new-company-.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shipping</a>&nbsp;the first version of their product in November 2011. When they did, they kept it free for the first six months. The idea: Get users hooked, then upsell a premium version—the “freemium” playbook used to great effect by Dropbox and Zoom.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Asana introduced a paid version of its product in 2012 (it now charges $10.99 a month per person) but resisted hiring a large sales team, instead preferring to find customers largely through cheap search-engine optimization tactics and word of mouth. At Chicago-based online software marketplace G2, Asana got a toehold when a new chief marketing officer wanted to track his team’s traffic and revenue targets, then spread to its more than 250 employees worldwide. At the German heating-and-cooling company Viessmann, now one of its largest customers, Asana’s tools are used by more than 2,500 staffers, alongside Google’s suite of products. Corporate leadership uses it to map product launches. Such flexibility has been key to Asana’s success.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Internally, Moskovitz and Rosenstein took their time crafting their idealized corporate culture. They interviewed experts, brought in executive coaches and tapped a diversity-and-inclusion officer and a “head of people” over the years to get it just right. Moskovitz, who spent years studying Buddhism and leadership strategies, set up a company org chart with himself at the bottom, to represent the trunk of the company tree. Asana eschews traditional executive titles and instead makes people heads of a particular topic or business outcome. Moskovitz says it’s only right that a company focused on better teamwork invest in it as well: “We want to practice what we preach, figure out what’s best and export that.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Along the way, Moskovitz leveled up as a leader, too. Known for his temper as a twenty-something at Facebook, he says he has learned not to agonize so much over setbacks. He invokes a saying from mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn: “You can’t stop the waves from coming, but you can learn to surf.” </p>



<p>“We had a conversation five or six years ago about the idea that everyone has an internal age they’ve always been their whole life,” says Scott Phoenix, founder of Vicarious, an artificial general intelligence startup and Moskovitz’s only investment for which he serves as a board director. “I asked Dustin what his internal age was, and he said it was probably like 112.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Moskovitz passed another test in 2019, when Rosenstein left day-to-day operations for a part-time role on the board of directors. Into that vacuum stepped Moskovitz, now not just the CEO but the sole face of Asana, too. His next big step is finally taking his company public. Asana filed its public S-1 on August 24; Moskovitz is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/asana-weeks-away-from-a-listing-projects-annual-revenue-growth-of-66" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;preparing for an investor roadshow as soon as the first week of September. Those close to Moskovitz say his plan to take it public is motivated by a desire to benefit employees and validate not his ego but Asana’s model of company building. It’s not as though Moskovitz needs the money. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard them speak about profits,” says Diana Chapman, a leadership coach who advises not just Moskovitz and his leadership team but also his mother, as well as his wife, Cari Tuna. (A former&nbsp;<em>Wall Street Journal</em>&nbsp;reporter, Tuna oversees philanthropic efforts for the couple, who have signed the Giving Pledge.) “With the wealth Dustin has gained, he takes [his responsibility to others] like a sacred task to do everything he can.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Moskovitz says he finds it easier to get motivated to go to work these days, with many customers looking to Asana for support, than when the business was a fledgling startup a decade ago.</p>



<p>“If this problem wasn’t worth solving or wasn’t a viable business, I’d just stop,” he says. “Our mission is really well-suited for this moment, and we’re energized by the opportunity.”</p>



<p><em>-Alex Konrad, Forbes Staff</em></p>


PORTUGAL-TECHNOLOGY-WEB-SUMMIT

The Anti-Facebook: 12 Years In, Facebook Cofounder Dustin Moskovitz’s Slow-Burn Second Act Asana Finally Has Its Moment


<p><strong>It’s not just Amazon stock that has boosted the fortunes of its billionaire backer. Dramatic changes in the share prices of Tesla, Reliance and Microsoft have reshuffled the ranks of the top ten richest in the world since March.</strong></p>



<p><br>Between last Friday afternoon after markets closed and 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Jeff Bezos’ net worth fell by $8 billion. That’s a huge sum — the combined value of the NFL’s New England Patriots ($4.1 billion) and the New York Giants ($3.9 billion). But for Bezos, who’s worth about $181 billion, it was just a routine couple of days on the job —and a 4.4% decline in his fortune.</p>



<p>Since March 18, the date that <em>Forbes</em> used to calculate net worths for the 2020 World’s Billionaires list, and days after the President declared a national emergency due to the coronavirus, Amazon’s stock price has soared nearly 69%. As shoppers who sheltered at home during the pandemic turned to Amazon for ordering more purchases, its market cap reached a record $1.5 trillion, and Bezos’ fortune jumped $68 billion. Even with the slight downtick in the last two days, investors aren’t worried – mostly chalking it up to portfolio rebalancing, or momentum stocks retreating a bit after a strong run.</p>



<p>Bezos is not the only billionaire to get much richer during the pandemic. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has gone from No. 31 wealthiest in the world in mid-March to No. 9 as of Tuesday. His net worth has nearly tripled in the last four months, to $69.1 billion from $24.6 billion, largely due to a massive 320% rally in Tesla’s stock. It’s the first time Musk ranks among the world’s top ten richest. “I really couldn’t care less,” Musk told <em>Forbes </em>in early July, commenting on the size of his fortune. “Those numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.”</p>



<p>Another big gainer of the past several months is Mukesh Ambani, an Indian business magnate and chairman of Reliance Industries, whose telecom firm Reliance Jio has attracted billions of dollars in investments in 2020, including $5.7 billion from Facebook in April and $1.2 billion from U.A.E.’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala in June. On July 15 Google confirmed it would invest $4.5 billion in Jio. That, in turn, has helped lead to a surge in the share price of Reliance. Ambani is now the seventh richest person in the world, worth $71.4 billion, nearly twice his net worth in mid-March. The last time Ambani was in the top 10 was in 2011, with a $27 billion fortune.</p>



<p>Also new to the top ten since March: Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft. Microsoft stock is up a striking 47% since mid March, landing Ballmer at the world’s No. 6 richest, worth $72.1 billion.</p>



<p><strong>Whiplash 2020: Shakeup Among Top 10</strong></p>



<p>Musk and Ballmer join the ​upper echelon, while Buffett falls to his lowest rank in at least 20 years.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/billionaires.png" alt="" class="wp-image-46513" width="686" height="664" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/billionaires.png 592w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/billionaires-300x290.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 686px) 100vw, 686px" /></figure>



<p>Of course, as some climb up the ranks, others must go down – and some go up and down a lot. Bernard Arnault was worth $108 billion in late January. He fell to $76 billion in mid March, as people worried about spending on luxury goods. He is back up to $111.1 billion, and number three in the world.</p>



<p>Despite only a $3.5 billion drop in his net worth since March, Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, is down four spots and now the eighth richest person in the world. It’s the lowest Buffett has ranked in at least 20 years. The Waltons, the family behind Walmart, had three members – Jim Walton, Alice Walton and Rob Walton – who rounded out the top ten in mid-March. While their net worths on Tuesday were actually up $3 billion, those increases were not enough for them to hold onto their spots as others including Musk, Ambani and Ballmer surged ahead.</p>



<p>The only certainty with markets like this is that billions can be gained – and lost – and regained in a matter of hours.</p>



<p><em>&#8211;  <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/">Angel Au-Yeung</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/worlds-billionaires">Billionaires</a></em></p>


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Why Jeff Bezos Lost $8 Billion In The Last 2 Days – And Why That’s Not A Big Deal


<p><strong>TOPLINE</strong>   Dozens of Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout on Monday, in an escalation of protests against CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s failure to act on President Trump’s “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” post.</p>



<p><strong>KEY FACTS</strong></p>



<ul><li>Staff members flocked to rival platform Twitter for a second day, to denounce Zuckerberg’s “do-nothing” approach to Trump’s post that threatened violence toward George Floyd protesters.</li></ul>



<ul><li>One employee, Owen Anderson, announced in a&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/OwenResistor/status/1267568422327447552?s=20" target="_blank">tweet</a>&nbsp;that he had quit the company.</li></ul>



<ul><li>“To be clear, this was in the works for a while.&nbsp;But after last week, I am happy to no longer support policies and values I vehemently disagree with,” he wrote.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Employees have also been circulating messages internally, with one staffer writing on a staff message board: “The hateful rhetoric advocating violence against black demonstrators by the U.S. President does not warrant defense under the guise of freedom of expression,” the&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/technology/facebook-employee-protest-trump.html" target="_blank">reported</a>. Others urged Zuckerberg to take down Trump’s post.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said employees will not have the protest days taken out of their vacation allowance, Reuters&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-trump-employee-criticism/facebook-staffers-walk-out-saying-trumps-posts-should-be-reined-in-idUKKBN2382D0" target="_blank">reported</a>.</li></ul>



<ul><li>The walkout, staged virtually as all Facebook employees are working remotely in the pandemic,was triggered by Facebook&#8217;s refusal to take action over Trump&#8217;s inflammatory posts, while Twitter took the unprecedented step of flagging his comment for “glorifying violence.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>Zuckerberg has reportedly pushed the company’s weekly employee Q &amp; A session from Friday to Tuesday.</li></ul>



<p><strong>CRUCIAL COMMENT</strong></p>



<p>In a joint statement, a number of the virtual demonstrators tweeted: “Facebook’s recent decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe. We implore the Facebook leadership to #TakeAction.”</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The React Core team is joining the Facebook employee walkout in solidarity with the Black community.<br><br>Facebookʼs recent decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe. We implore the Facebook leadership to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TakeAction?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TakeAction</a>. <a href="https://t.co/0i33nNQTLN">pic.twitter.com/0i33nNQTLN</a></p>&mdash; Dan (@dan_abramov) <a href="https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1267544361929256966?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p><strong>TANGENT</strong></p>



<p>Online therapy company Talkspace has cut ties with Facebook over the issue. CEO Oren Frank&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/orenfrank/status/1267504648275005440?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;on Monday: “We at Talkspace discontinued our partnership discussions with Facebook today. We will not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies. #BlackLivesMatter.”</p>



<p><strong>NEWS PEG</strong></p>



<p>President Trump has driven a wedge between Facebook staff and the social network&#8217;s founder. Facebook&#8217;s no-leak culture, and the largely united front between management and staff had largely weathered previous storms in its march to &#8220;connect the world.” That accord was shattered in a flood of tweets condemning Zuckerberg&#8217;s decision to keep Trump&#8217;s post on the site. Before the walkout, several senior employees blasted Zuckerberg’s defence of keeping the post on the site. Design manager Jason Stirman tweeted on Monday: “I‘m a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark’s decision to do nothing about Trump’s recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I’m not alone inside of FB. There isn’t a neutral position on racism.”</p>



<p>In a post on Monday, Zuckerberg said Trump’s post and use of the historically racially charged phrase did not breach Facebook policies. “Our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111961824369871" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>.</p>



<p><strong>KEY BACKGROUND</strong></p>



<p>The death of George Floyd after white policeman Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes last Monday sparked outrage across the U.S. and subsequent protests in more than 75 cities. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/06/01/corporate-donations-tracker-here-are-the-companies-giving-millions-to-anti-racism-efforts/#701eab0037dc">Companies</a>, facing public pressure to speak out, have released statements pledging support to the black community, including Amazon, Netflix, Twitter and Peloton. On Monday, Zuckerberg<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/06/01/facebook-pledges-10-million-to-racial-justice-campaigns/#2c2f71374250"> announced</a> Facebook is donating $10 million to groups campaigning for racial justice.</p>



<p><em>&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/">Isabel Togoh</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a></em></p>


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Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Revolt Against Zuckerberg’s Inaction On Trump’s ‘Shooting’ Post


<p>The coronavirus pandemic has continued to take a catastrophic toll on America’s small businesses. According to Facebook’s State of Small Business&nbsp;<a href="https://dataforgood.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SMBReport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>, 31% of small businesses and 52% of personal businesses have stopped operating as a result of the crisis.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“What we know today is pretty sobering,” says Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “We’re in a really hard economic situation that is hitting all businesses, but particularly, small businesses really hard. We also know how critical small businesses are for jobs—long before coronavirus,” she says. “Two thirds of new jobs in this country happen because of small businesses and so that means what’s happening with small businesses has always been important, but it’s more important than ever.”</p>



<p>Especially concerning is that only 45% of business owners and managers plan to rehire the same number of workers when their businesses reopen. That number is just 32% for personal businesses. </p>



<p>“If these businesses are letting people go, it’s not that they don’t want to rehire them,” Sandberg says. “It’s because they don’t think they’re going to be able to. That’s a pretty serious thing for us to be facing.”</p>



<p>Businesses that have been able to maintain operations still face significant hurdles, namely access to capital and customers. Some 28% of businesses surveyed say their biggest challenge over the next few months will be cash flow, while 20% say it will be lack of demand. </p>



<p>The report, conducted in partnership with the Small Business Roundtable, was based on a survey of 86,000 owners, managers and workers at U.S. companies with fewer than 500 employees. It is also a part of the company’s broader data collection initiative with the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on the Future of Business.</p>



<p>“We were already in the process of developing this report before the coronavirus pandemic hit,” Sandberg says. “We expected it to be a pretty rosy tale back then of low unemployment, flourishing entrepreneurship, and jobs growing all over the world. Fast forward to today and we’re in a very different position.”</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="960" height="540" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/facebook.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-45576" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/facebook.jpg 960w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/facebook-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/facebook-600x338.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/facebook-768x432.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /><figcaption>An example of Facebook&#8217;s new Shops feature, which creates digital &#8220;storefronts&#8221; for businesses.<br> <br><small>FACEBOOK</small></figcaption></figure>



<p>Now, the company is launching&nbsp;<a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook-shops/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook Shops</a>, an ecommerce product that allows businesses to set up online “storefronts” on Facebook and Instagram. Businesses can customize their digital shops, using cover images to showcase their brands and catalogs to highlight their products. And just as customers can ask for help when shopping in physical stores, they can message business owners directly via WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram Direct to ask questions, track deliveries and more. “Our goal is to make shopping seamless and empower anyone from a small business owner to a global brand to use our apps to connect with customers,” wrote Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111927602176421" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">post</a>&nbsp;announcing the new product. As was the case with the survey, the rollout was planned prior to the pandemic, but was accelerated as businesses have turned to online tools to adapt in the face of the ongoing crisis. According to the survey, 51% of small business owners have&nbsp; increased their online interactions with customers, and 36% of operational businesses are now conducting all sales online.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“One of the things I find so amazing is how much of the activity has migrated online and that we’re doing things we never thought were possible,” says Sandberg. “If I had asked you or you had asked me, could I work entirely from home? Can my whole company go home? I would have said ‘No way.’ But we did it. Small businesses have even more entrepreneurial spirit.”</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Sheryl Sandberg On The Pandemic&#039;s Threat To Small Business And Facebook&#039;s Latest Product | Forbes" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U4FKBcEScWU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



<p>There are more than 30 million small businesses in the U.S., many of which are struggling to stay afloat amid forced closures and are still hoping to receive financial relief from the government. According to a recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000-small-businesses/US/infographic-small-business-relief/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>&nbsp;by Goldman Sachs, 71% of Paycheck Protection Program applicants are still waiting for loans and 64% don’t have enough cash to survive the next three months. As of April 19, more than 175,000 businesses have shut down—temporarily or permanently—with closure rates rising 200% or more in hard-hit metropolitan cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, according to Yelp’s Q1 Economic Average&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/yea-q1-2020.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>.</p>



<p>Employees of these businesses are disproportionately affected, with 74% and 70% reporting not having access to paid sick leave and paid time off, according to Facebook’s survey. For hotel, cafe and restaurant employees, those figures are over 90%.</p>



<p>Facebook, which relies heavily on small businesses for advertising revenue, was among the first major tech companies to provide much-needed aid. On March 17, the company announced $100 million in grants for small businesses, the majority of which will be distributed in cash, with some ad credits for business services. Of those funds, $40 million will be distributed across 34 American cities, with 50% being reserved for women, minority and veteran-owned businesses. The other $60 million will be distributed to small business owners throughout the world. In addition to financial assistance, the company also rolled out various product offerings including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/business" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">digital gift cards</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/fundraisers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fundraisers</a>&nbsp;and easier ways for businesses to communicate service changes to their customers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Small businesses are resilient, even during times of crisis. According to the report, 57% of businesses are optimistic or extremely optimistic about the future, with only 11% of operating businesses expecting to fail in the next three months, should current conditions persist.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“The report raises awareness about the struggles small businesses face from the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Rhett Buttle, founder of Public Private Strategies and co-executive director of the Small Business Roundtable. “But small businesses have brought us out of previous economic downturns and they will do so again.”</p>



<p><em>&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maneetahuja/">Maneet Ahuja</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs">Entrepreneurs</a></em></p>


Tag: Mark Zuckerberg

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