SOCIAL MEDIA

Biden to Facebook: Actually, It Is Your Fault

Facebook and the Biden administration are going at it like two bighorn sheep on Planet Earth.

The social media company pushed back on Saturday against increasing criticism from the White House that the company is allowing the spread of Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.

Some of that criticism:

• President Biden told reporters that social media firms were “killing people.” 
• WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki said health misinformation on social media is “leading to people not taking the vaccine, and people are dying as a result.”
• Also last week, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released his first formal advisory calling web-based vaccine misinformation “an urgent threat to public health.” 

No one likes to be accused of killing people, and Facebook published a blog post saying it’s not to blame. “The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased,” the company wrote, citing a study that showed vaccine acceptance among FB users has jumped 10–15 percentage points since January. “These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days.” 

Big picture: The CDC has called the recent surge in Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” More than 97% of new hospitalizations from the Delta variant are of people who’ve not been vaccinated, the agency said. 

This isn’t a new problem. For months Facebook and other social media companies have been playing whack-a-mole with accounts that falsely claim that Covid-19 vaccines don’t work (they’ve proven highly effective in studies, including against the Delta variant). Facebook has taken some steps to limit the spread of vaccine misinformation, but the Biden administration thinks those actions have been toothless.

Bottom line: As the Delta variant spreads, the US government is desperate to revive a stalled vaccination campaign. Canada, whose vaccination rates had been lagging the US for months, sprinted past its neighbor last week. 

CYBER

When Spyware Falls Into the Wrong Hands

Military-grade spyware licensed to foreign governments has been used to hack dozens of smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, and business executives since 2016.

That’s the main takeaway from the newly launched Pegasus Project. A consortium of 17 media organizations, including the Washington Post, PBS’s Frontline, and the Guardian, released the initial findings of a deep-dive investigation into the use of Pegasus, spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group. 

• The investigation was made possible by a data leak of 50,000 phone numbers that are believed to be potential targets by clients of NSO. 
• Journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had initial access to the list, then handed it over to the news outlets.

One notable finding: Pegasus was reportedly used to hack the phone of someone in journalist Jamal Khashoggi's inner circle four days after he was murdered.

Zoom out: NSO Group called the report “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.” But it does place more unwanted attention on the world’s most (in)famous commercial spyware provider.

ENTERTAINMENT

What Anthony Bourdain Didn’t Say

In Roadrunner, a documentary released Friday about the life of chef Anthony Bourdain, viewers hear Bourdain saying, “You are successful, and I am successful, and I’m wondering: Are you happy?”

But Bourdain never said that. Those words were from an email the chef sent to a friend before his suicide in 2018—one of three lines in the film manufactured by artificial intelligence software under the direction of filmmaker Morgan Neville. 

Neville told GQ that he received permission to recreate Bourdain’s voice from Bourdain’s literary executor and his widow “just to make sure people were cool with that.” Neville said he used the AI technique because it was “important to make Tony’s words come alive.”

But Neville’s sloppy approach has come under fire. Bourdain’s second ex-wife, Ottavia Busia, denied that she said Bourdain would’ve been “cool” with it. And WBUR film critic Sean Burns, frustrated that the use of AI wasn’t initially disclosed, tweeted, “I feel like this tells you all you need to know about the ethics of the people behind this project.”

Bottom line: The deepfaking of Anthony Bourdain's voice has raised questions about the ethics of using synthetic media in film, which won’t be resolved soon. 

SPONSORED BY MARKETWATCH

A Market Recap Worth Reading

There’s a lot of hullabaloo around the market, and it’s hard to “make money” when the news you’re reading doesn’t make sense for your finances. But we’ve got a fix for that (and no it’s not our newsletter).

It’s MarketWatch.

Instead of hyped-up billionaires and endless stock picks, you’ll understand how today's business practices, market dynamics, tax policies, and more impact you with real-time news and analysis. Their instant market data and insights will help you take action immediately—no matter your investing experience.

And once you fill your noggin with relevant financial knowledge, you can build your portfolio and react to the markets with their free-to-play investing game, The Virtual Stock Exchange.

For those of you who like winning (we’re looking at you Leos), you can compete against your friends or coworkers to earn your spot at the top of the leaderboards. 

Subscribe for 50% off MarketWatch today.

GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

Stat: Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank and major WeWork investor, once calculated that the coworking company would be worth $10 trillion in a decade, according to a new book on WeWork. 

Quote: “Germany is a strong country and we will stand up to this force of nature in the short term—but also in the medium and long term, through policy that pays more regard to nature and the climate than we did in recent years.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to address climate change after touring the “surreal, ghostly” scene of a German village destroyed by flooding. Last week’s heavy rains, and subsequent flooding, killed more than 180 people across Germany and Belgium. 

Read: The truth behind the Amazon mystery seeds. (The Atlantic)

GRAB BAG

The Week Ahead

Gonna be a fun one.

Bezos in space: Jeff Bezos will blast off to space in a Blue Origin rocket tomorrow, joined by a record-setting crew. Former test pilot Wally Funk, 82, would be the oldest person to reach space and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, 18, would be the youngest. 

Earnings: Maybe the only thing more exciting than that space mission is this week’s packed slate of earnings reports, which include Netflix, Coca-Cola, IBM, Twitter, Snap, Intel, J&J, and Verizon. 

Tokyo 2021: The opening ceremony for the Olympics will air at 7am ET on Friday, though with fans banned from the stadium and many athletes not arriving until the weekend, it won’t achieve the pageantry of years past. 

Everything else: Ted Lasso season 2 hits Apple TV+ on Friday. That’s it. That’s everything else that matters. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Zoom is buying Five9, which makes cloud contact center software, for $14.7 billion, its biggest acquisition ever.
• Giving the IRS more resources to collect taxes won’t be a part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Sen. Rob Portman said yesterday.
• Two athletes and a staff member have tested positive for the coronavirus in Tokyo’s Olympic Village just days before the Games are supposed to start.
• Julia Ducournau became the second female filmmaker to win the Cannes Film Festival’s top award for her movie, Titane.

BREW'S BETS

The Cryptotal package. eToro provides everything you need to become a crypto investor. Browse over a dozen cryptocurrencies. Play around with a virtual portfolio. Copy the moves of top-performing traders with CopyTrader^TM. The list goes on. Buy $1000 of crypto and get $50 today.*

Heard of metabolic flexibility? If you're looking to kickstart your metabolism and achieve metabolic flexibility, Sakara's Metabolism Super Powder can help you get there with natural, plant-based ingredients. Get 20% off with code JULYBREW today.*

Resale is exploding: Learn about resale’s impact on traditional retail and sustainability at a Retail Brew event next week. Register here.

Dive back into the week:

• Shallow dive: Life lessons from Giannis
• Medium dive: The 50 best dystopian movies of all time
• Deep dive: Tiny purchases that have drastically improved peoples’ lives
• Cannonball: The metaverse primer

GAMES

The Puzzle Section

Kriss Kross: After a smashing debut last week, here's another edition of our newest game format, Kriss Kross. This week's theme is Lego action figures. Play it here.

Nutritional Facts

Can you guess the popular food product from its ingredient list? 

Vegetable oil (soybean and/or canola), water, egg yolk, sugar, salt, cultured nonfat buttermilk, natural flavors (soy), less than 1% of: spices (mustard), dried garlic, dried onion, vinegar, phosphoric acid, xanthan gum, modified food starch, monosodium glutamate, artificial flavors, disodium phosphate, sorbic acid and calcium disodium edta as preservatives, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate. Contains: Egg, Milk, Soy.

ANSWER

Hidden Valley's ranch dressing. Yummmmm.

✤ A Note From eToro

eToro USA LLC; Investments are subject to market risk, including the possible loss of principal.