Latest news with #Check
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
PINS vs. SNAP: TD Cowen Picks the Better Social Media Stock Ahead of Q2 Earnings
TD Cowen's top analyst, John Blackledge, issued his second-quarter fiscal 2025 previews for leading social media companies Snap (SNAP) and Pinterest (PINS). The firm's Q2 Ad Check survey indicates stronger demand momentum for Pinterest compared to Snapchat. As a result, Blackledge maintains a 'Buy' rating on PINS and a 'Hold' rating on SNAP stock. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. Both platforms are also benefiting from uncertainty over the future of Chinese short-form video app TikTok's operations in the U.S., as well as from leadership issues at rival platform X following CEO Linda Yaccarino's abrupt departure. First, Let's Understand the Background The advertising segments of these companies were expected to be impacted by the U.S. trade tariffs announced in Q1, due to the removal of the de minimis exemption for goods under $800 from China. However, SNAP relies more heavily on Chinese advertisers, while Pinterest benefits from a diverse advertiser base in Europe and other regions, helping it offset losses from China. With this in mind, the analyst raised the model estimates and price targets for both stocks. Blackledge increased the PINS price target from $40 to $43, implying 19.5% upside potential from current levels. Meanwhile, he lifted SNAP's price target from $9 to $10, representing 4.8% upside potential from current levels. Notably, Blackledge is a five-star analyst on TipRanks, ranking #307 out of 9,861 analysts tracked. He boasts a 60% success rate and an average return per rating of 13.60%. PINS Stock Benefits from Higher Advertising Uptake In Q2, Blackledge expects Pinterest's revenues to grow 14.6% year-over-year to $977.9 million, driven by improved monetization and a growing contribution from the company's new Performance+ advertising tools. The firm's Ad Check showed strong uptake of Pinterest's Creative & Automated Bidding offerings so far. Meanwhile, advertisers are increasing their ad spend on Pinterest, with some seeing their spending grow by 66% compared to the same period last year. These are the highlights of Blackledge's optimistic view on PINS stock: Pinterest's Global Monthly Active Users (MAUs) are estimated to reach 578 million in Q2, up 10.7% year-over-year and 1.4% over Q1. Nearly 40% of U.S. Pinterest users visit the app or site to search for or shop for products, which is more than double the same metric for other social networks, including Snapchat, Reddit (RDDT), X, and Meta's (META) Facebook and Instagram apps. The survey shows steady growth in the overall time spent and user penetration on PINS compared to both Q1FY25 and the same period last year. SNAP Is Benefiting from Growing Subscriber Base In Q2, Blackledge expects Snapchat's revenues to grow 12.4% year-over-year to $1.4 billion. This growth is mainly driven by increased advertiser spending on Direct Response (DR) ads and a higher number of users paying for Snapchat+ subscriptions, which are expected to contribute about 37% of new revenue growth in Q2. Moreover, the analyst stated that the impact of tariffs was not as bad as feared, further improving the company's outlook. These are the highlights of Blackledge's optimistic view on SNAP stock: Snap's Daily Active Users (DAUs) are estimated to reach 468 million in Q2, up 7.3% year-over-year and 1.7% over Q1. Snapchat is benefiting from the shift in some advertiser spending from TikTok to Snap due to ongoing uncertainty regarding TikTok's U.S. operations. Snap's brand advertising business remains weak, with most growth coming from DR ads and higher subscriptions. Ending Thoughts Overall, while both Snap and Pinterest show promising growth drivers ahead of Q2 earnings, TD Cowen's analysis suggests Pinterest currently holds a stronger position as the better social media stock to watch. According to the TipRanks Stock Comparison Tool, PINS stock has a 'Strong Buy' consensus rating, reflecting Wall Street's bullish outlook on the stock.
DW
08-07-2025
- Politics
- DW
Fact check: Texas floods – cloud seeding theories dismissed – DW – 07/08/2025
Conspiracy theorists have blamed the devastating flash floods in Texas on cloud seeding, a technique used to chemically induce rainfall. Scientists have dismissed the theories as baseless. A DW Fact Check. Over 100 people have now been confirmed dead following flash floods in central Texas over the weekend, including 27 young campers and staff at a local girls' summer camp. Unfortunately, despite meteorological professionals explaining in news outlets all over the world how and why such devastating flooding occurs, parts of social media have become breeding grounds for disinformation. One popular conspiracy theory which has been given credence by current and former US political figures—including Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former National Security Advisor General Mike Flynn—concerns "cloud seeding" — the practice of chemically inducing rainfall from clouds in areas affected by drought. DW Fact Check takes a look. Claim: Cloud seeding over parts of Texas two days before the floods caused or contributed to the disaster DW Fact Check: False As of Tuesday, over 2.6 million people had viewed a post on X by a well-known conspiracy theorist account which suggested a link between the deadly floods and cloud seeding operations conducted two days earlier by Rainmaker, a weather modification start-up funded partly by US software billionaire Peter Thiel. In another post, viewed over 2.8 million times, the same account claimed that the state of Texas is "running seven massive cloud seeding programs" in an attempt to "enhance rainfall across millions of acres" and questioning: "Did they push the clouds too far and trigger this flood?" Accompanying the post was a video originally published on TikTok on May 2 in which the user questioned whether "blue rain" at a camping site in Texas was linked to "chemtrails" or, in the video description, "cloud seading" (sic). The video had been viewed over 3.1 million times by Tuesday. The claims gained traction among certain right-wing US politicians including Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene who said in a post on X, viewed over 8.3 million times, that she would be introducing a bill to Congress to "end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering." General Mike Flynn, former National Security Advisor to US President Donald Trump during his first term, further peddled the theory to his 2.1 million followers on X here and here. Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique used to induce rainfall. It involves dispersing insoluble salts such as silver iodide among existing clouds, either via aircraft, drone or shot up from the ground. Water vapor particles in the clouds are thereby "tricked" into forming larger droplets around the silver iodide particles, eventually becoming large and heavy enough to fall as rain. "Cloud seeding itself cannot create rain out of nothing," adds Edward Gryspeerdt, a Research Fellow at the Department of Physics at Imperial College London (ICL), pointing out to DW: "Cloud seeding aims to identify clouds that are not currently raining, but are very close to doing so." The first attempts at cloud seeding were made by US scientists at the General Electric Research Laboratory in the 1940s. Today, the method is used in various countries across the world to relieve drought, including in China and the Middle East. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Rainmaker, the company at the center of the Texas flooding claims, is contracted across the western United States by various municipalities and state governments to produce more water in regions impacted by drought, including in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas, its CEO Augustus Doricko confirmed on an X Space hosted by a conservative influencer on Monday, July 7. The most recent operation in the vicinity of Kerr County, where the floods took place, was on July 2 – two days before the floods, hence the speculation that the cloud seeding activity could have exacerbated the heavy rainfall. "The flooding, unequivocally, had nothing to do with Rainmaker's activities or any weather modification activities," insisted Doricko, 20 minutes into Monday's X Space – a claim backed up scientific consensus. "Cloud seeding might be able to modify a cloud that already exists, but a large thunderstorm requires a huge amount of water and energy," explains ICL's Gryspeerdt. "Cloud seeding cannot provide either of these — it only creates small modifications to existing clouds." Travis Herzog, award-winning chief meteorologist at broadcaster AB13 in Houston, Texas, concurs, stating in a Facebook post on July 6: "Cloud seeding cannot create a storm of this magnitude or size. In fact, cloud seeding cannot even create a single cloud. All it can do is take an existing cloud and enhance the rainfall by up to 20% — and even that is on the high end. It is physically impossible for [cloud seeding] to have created this weather system." "Cloud seeding played ZERO role in [the] deadly Texas floods – rudimentary, basic physics explains that," agreed Matthew Cappucci, an atmospheric scientist and senior meteorologist at MyRadar, a leading Florida-based weather app. "In dry environments, adding cloud condensation nuclei can help clouds drop subtly more rain," Cappucci added in one of several posts on the subject on X. "You don't spontaneously make 4 trillion gallons of water appear in Texas." What's more, CEO Doricko claimed, given the almost two-day gap between Rainmaker's last operation over Kerr County, any rain-inducing silver iodide particles dispersed on July 2 would have long since dispersed into entirely inconsequential densities — a statement which is also backed up by scientific consensus. "The horizontal winds at cloud level would have moved the air volume that was cloud seeded at least 1,000 kilometers away from the location of the cloud seeding between 2 and 4 July," explained Dr. Sandra Yuter, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciencesat North Carolina State University, speaking to DW. Dr. Yuter's calculation was based on average horizontal wind dispersal speeds of approximately 10 m/s (36 km/h, 22.3 mph), after consulting nearby weather balloon data from July 3. Given that the state of Texas is about 1,320 kilometers (820 miles) wide at its broadest point, Dr. Yuter concludes: "Any cloud seeding on July 2 in the vicinity of Kerr County would not have changed the rainfall from the storms that hit the region on July 4." ICL's Edward Gryspeerdt concludes that "the floods in Texas were driven by record amounts of atmospheric moisture over a region that is known for flash floods" and warns that, as the atmosphere warms due to climate change, such extreme rainfall events are likely to become worse: "Climate models predict that while Texas may become slightly drier on average due to climate change, the intensity of rainfall will likely increase, suggesting that these types of thunderstorms will become more common in the future."
![[Watch] Stadium Shah Alam: The RM3.28 Billion Question That's Got Malaysians Talking](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.therakyatpost.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F07%2FUntitled.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
![[Watch] Stadium Shah Alam: The RM3.28 Billion Question That's Got Malaysians Talking](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fall-logos-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ftherakyatpost.com.png&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Rakyat Post
03-07-2025
- Sport
- Rakyat Post
[Watch] Stadium Shah Alam: The RM3.28 Billion Question That's Got Malaysians Talking
Subscribe to our FREE The aerial shot says it all – where Stadium Shah Alam once stood, there's now just a massive dirt crater. And Malaysian taxpayers are feeling some way about the bill. Despite numerous renovation attempts, the stadium was suffering from long-term neglect, leading to its disrepair and ultimately the decision to demolish. It cost Phase one of rebuilding the new stadium complex is clocking in at That's not even the whole picture – we're talking about just the first phase of the Shah Alam Sports Complex (KSSA). The real jaw-dropper? The entire KSSA project – including the new stadium, Malawati stadium, hotels, commercial areas, and flood mitigation projects – is projected to hit Kenapa SSA tidak diupgrade jadi Fully Football stadium without total demolish. isu paling kritikal di SSA ni 1- bumbung covering polycarbonate panel dah reput tp main steel and concrete structure masih utuh. 2- kawasan padat yg jadikan SSA ni high risk flood prone area — Mohd Dez (@Mohddez) Taxpayers Aren't Thrilled Social media reactions have been… let's call them 'passionate.' A journalist and editor, The sentiment is straightforward: people are questioning whether this massive spending spree is essential, especially when the money could be allocated to other public needs. The scope of this project has expanded way beyond just replacing a football stadium. We're looking at a full-blown entertainment and commercial complex that includes: New stadium facilities Hotel accommodations Commercial retail spaces Flood control infrastructure Multiple sporting venues The Reality Check The photo shows the current state of affairs – a giant, empty lot where childhood memories once lived. Construction equipment scattered around the perimeter hints at the massive undertaking ahead. The construction work for Phase 1 of the KSSA is Whether this RM3.28 billion investment will deliver the world-class facilities Malaysia deserves, or if it's an expensive lesson in project scope creep, remains to be seen. What's certain is that Malaysians will be watching every ringgit spent on this one. The question everyone's asking: Is this the future of Malaysian sports infrastructure, or just really expensive dirt? Share your thoughts with us via TRP's . Get more stories like this to your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.
New York Post
02-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Popular dating app Tinder launches new facial recognition requirement
Popular dating app Tinder rolled out a new verification method that requires users to utilize facial recognition technology to prove they are a real human when they first sign up for the app. The technology – called Face Check – will be used to confirm that the person signing up is real by taking a short selfie video of themselves. The safety measure will then determine if the person is real by matching it against their profile picture. As first reported by Axios, the new verification method launched on Monday and, for now, will only be required for users in California. 'Creating a fun and respectful environment where Tinder users can be their true selves is our priority,' Philip Price Fry, Vice President of Communications for Tinder, told FOX Business. 'As part of our continued efforts, we are always testing ways to deliver the best experience for our users to seek authentic connections.' If the biometric face scan determines that the user is eligible to sign up, a photo recognition badge will be added to the user's profile. Shortly after determining eligibility, the submitted selfie video will be deleted with only two screenshots being saved to maintain the feature, according to Tinder's website. Face Check will also make sure that the user signing up doesn't have multiple accounts, according to the app. 3 The technology – called Face Check – will be used to confirm that the person signing up is real by taking a short selfie video of themselves. Tinder 3 The new verification method launched on Monday and, for now, will only be required for users in California. VSzili – The verification process is separate from Tinder's ID check as it does not rely on one's government ID. Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety of Tinder's parent company, Match Group, told Axios that the company sees this as an insurance measure for users. 'We see this as one part of a set of identity assurance options that are available to users,' Roth told Axios. 'Face Check… is really meant to be about confirming that this person is a real, live person and not a bot or a spoofed account.' 3 Face Check will also make sure that the user signing up doesn't have multiple accounts, according to the app. Tinder According to Axios, Roth said that the program has already shown promising results in Colombia and Canada. California is the first state in the U.S. where Tinder is requiring the new Face Check verification. Roth also told Axios that California was selected for its 'size, demographics and strong online safety and privacy laws.' Nick Butler is a reporter for Fox Business. Do you have any tips? Reach out to
India Today
01-07-2025
- India Today
Fact Check: Viral pic of Muslim man's beard being pulled is NOT communal
'A man suddenly came and started hitting a Muslim man by grabbing his beard! The extent to which hatred has become poison in society is now visible at every step,' claimed a Facebook post featuring two photos showing a man pulling on the beard of a visibly Muslim man in what looks like an post further said, 'Muslim identity is enough to harass Muslims. They can become victims of hatred and mob lynching anytime because of their beard, cap and identity! The most unfortunate thing is that this hatred has the protection of the government!'advertisement Another Facebook post claimed that the attacker was Hindu and shared the photo with hashtags like 'India'. Some also shared the video of the incident and demanded police action against the Today Fact Check found that not only is this photo not from India, but it also does not have a communal angle. This photo shows an altercation between two Muslim men in PROBEReverse-searching keyframes from the video led us to a News18 report from June 28, which said that this video was from Ghior in Bangladesh, and showed a local computer shop owner being assaulted by a customer. Reportedly, the CCTV footage recorded inside Manik Computer captured shopkeeper Ali Azam Manik being attacked by Nasim we found several local news reports about this incident which stated the same information. According to these reports, Nasim would force Ali to do his work without pay, and would threaten to shut his shop down when he asked for June 23, when Nasim demanded the same again, Ali, who was busy with another customer, asked him to wait. Nasim subsequently attacked Ali. During the scuffle, Nasim also damaged property inside the June 27, the police reportedly arrested it's clear that the viral video does not show a communal incident from India.- EndsTrending Reel Want to send us something for verification? Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000 You can also send us an email at factcheck@
