Latest news with #InternetAge
Forbes
2 days ago
- General
- Forbes
Our Communications Have A Credibility Problem
Jennifer Best is the head of marketing for AmICredible, the smart platform where credibility starts with you. If the potential for misinformation makes you not want to read anything online, you aren't alone. A 2024 Pew Research report noted that 40% of Americans who get their information online say inaccuracy is the aspect they dislike the most, a number that's increased nearly 31% over the past five years. For the better part of a decade, we're increasingly aware that misinformation and disinformation exist, yet few understand the difference. Misinformation, or the inadvertent spreading of false or misleading information, is typically when people don't realize they are sharing something false. Its more sinister counterpart is disinformation, when a blatant and coordinated attempt to confuse and mislead is malicious and intentional. These challenges are leading to an erosion of our trust in media and online news platforms. A 2023 study from the University of Southern California found that frequent, habitual users on Facebook forwarded six times more fake news than occasional or new users. Once false information spreads, it's much harder to control or limit. The Online Credibility Conundrum The internet thrives on sensationalism, not credibility. Online platforms prioritize content that gets a lot of engagement (clicks, shares and comments) regardless of how factually accurate it might be. After all, doing so is good for business; it keeps users engaged, stock prices climbing and board members happy. But it does little to stem the spread of misinformation, not to mention that it's not always easy to differentiate legitimate news from clickbait. You might be asking yourself, 'Is everything I read online false or misleading?' No, but based on the research, odds are that there is misinformation in your news and social feeds right now. Nearly 80% of Americans are concerned that the information they see online is fake, false or a deliberate attempt to confuse people. You're definitely not alone. While some may be quick to blame recent advancements with artificial intelligence (and there are plenty of challenges there to choose from), the reality is this: The Internet Age democratized the sharing of content, giving writers the opportunity to create and publish what they believe is an authoritative piece of content and maximize its visibility, regardless of factuality or truth. The internet leveled the playing field for online content creators. This is when the sharing of misinformation online began—not with the launch of social media or recent advancements with AI, although both of these have perpetuated the spread of misinformation. The problem has now become too large to ignore. Communications In The Era Of Misinformation As communications professionals, we know much of our professional value lies in our ability to be influential. Our corporate reputation becomes our personal brand, and it's how we present ourselves in public, speak to the media and make the case for investment when budgets are tight. When we speak publicly either for ourselves or our organizations, we need to do so with great authenticity, empathy and credibility. What we say demonstrates our values and contributes to the larger narrative. Getting it right can make a career; getting it wrong can send stock prices tumbling. Trust is the new currency of the workplace. It's won and lost, and you always have room for more. You can't be successful without it, especially in corporate communications. Changing The Narrative More professionals are taking notice of the importance of the quality of and credibility in communications. The Oxford-GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs 2025 Survey Report reflects its increased importance. Whether you are speaking on behalf of an organization or for your personal brand, here's how to start changing the status quo and to bring trust back to the table. • If it seems too outrageous to be true, be skeptical. Question everything. Before sharing, check several reputable sources and use tools and platforms to help you identify potential blind spots and verify factuality and credibility. • Stop, look and listen. Stop and take a moment before you do anything. There is great power in the pause. Firing off one reactive and rushed comment on social media can sideline a career. Look closely at what you're posting and read it through before you even consider sharing. Even the majority of influencers don't verify what they share. Verify your claims and content with reputable sites. • If you spot misinformation, report it. Whether you choose to question or inform the person who posted it, or report misinformation to the online platform directly, you have an opportunity to help solve this challenge. The only way we bring trust and credibility back to our online conversations is by making small, incremental changes. Rather than ignoring the problem, we each need to become part of the solution. Nothing changes if nothing changes. The next time you read something that seems too good to be true, you know what to do. Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Longtime Investor Has Been 'Selectively Adding' to His Mag 7 Holdings
Constellation Research founder and Chairman Ray Wang, who owns all seven of the Mag 7 stocks, told CNBC recently that he had been "selectively adding" to his holdings in the names. Wang stated that he had been buying the stocks on weakness because he "really believes in the AI Revolution." The Mag 7 consists of Nvidia (NVDA), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Meta (META), Tesla (TSLA), and Alphabet (GOOG). Why Wang Is Bullish on the Mag 7 The power of AI's intelligence is doubling every seven months, Wong said. At that pace, AI's intellectual capacity will soar 1,000 times in six years, he reported. Buying AI stocks now is "like betting (on internet stocks) early in the Internet Age. Most of the winners (among those names) outdid the losers," the veteran investor said. Additionally, the Mag 7 have "strong business models," according to Wang. Reasons To Be Worried in the Shorter Term Although Wang is bullish on the Mag 7 in the long term, he noted that the names "are priced to perfection" at this point. He added that worries about tariffs have been hindering the names' performance recently. While we acknowledge the potential of AMZN our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMZN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this . READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires Disclosure: The author owns shares of AMZN but has no intention of trading them in the next 48 hours. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Al Jazeera
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Jazeera
No, ‘nerds' and their technologies are not going to save the world
The United States is in the midst of a soft coup. The country is being reshaped and restructured under the second administration of Donald Trump. It is not Trump himself, but his billionaire special adviser, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, who is guiding this change. And in Musk's America, there is one demographic that seems to have found itself at centre stage and rapidly gaining power: 'nerds'. Indeed, Musk's mendacious band of merry, young white and white-adjacent acolytes, including Gavin Kliger, Edward Coristine, and Marko Elez, who has gained control over multitrillion-dollar government systems, easily fit the mold of nerd. The Information Age and the Internet Age that it spawned in the 1990s had already seen 'nerds' – awkward, unattractive men with limited social skills but immense commitment to and enthusiasm for tech and STEM – become billionaires and gain widespread respect and admiration for delivering the world technologies that change lives. It was, we were repeatedly reminded, nerds who first gave us PCs and iMacs and then iPhones and Androids. In numerous articles in tech magazines and in movies like Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Oppenheimer (2023), Steve Jobs (2015), and The Social Network (2010), creatives have portrayed nerds like nuclear weapons developer J Robert Oppenheimer, Apple's Steve Jobs, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg as underdogs. Popular media have long described such nerdy visionaries as complex people with a tremendous need to save the world and make it a better place. Three decades ago, the UK's Channel 4 and the US's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired the three-part documentary titled Triumph of the Nerds. Referencing the computer revolution the nerd set launched between 1975 and 1995, longtime technology journalist Robert X Cringely said, 'The most amazing thing of all is that it happened by accident because a bunch of disenfranchised nerds wanted to impress their friends.' This perception of billionaire nerds may by now be a deep-rooted part of our culture, but the idea that the robber barons of the late 20th century accumulated immense wealth, almost by accident, while trying to save the world is a ridiculous lie. Especially given the iron-fisted ways in which we know many 'nerd billionaires' – and especially Jobs and Bill Gates – ran their capitalist ventures. In light of the heavy-handed censorship that billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong have exercised with the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times in recent months, it is apparent that the tech-savvy billionaire class wants to control the flow of truth as well. A much better description of the 'nerds' who came to rule America under Trump was given in a single line in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), when Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), having extralegally entered the South African consulate, said to Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland) and his group of apartheid-loving white South African mercenaries, 'Well, well … it's the master race!' This quote is far more than just a reference to Musk's dubious path to US citizenship through South Africa and Canada. It's about the reality that, like the South African henchmen in Lethal Weapon 2, tech nerd billionaires such as Musk and the people he has employed at DOGE believe in apartheid, eugenics, and other racist, misogynistic, and queerphobic paradigms. Sure, many of the Musk fanboys are engineers, can write, and make contributions to Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink that lead to important and useful-to-humanity discoveries and inventions. Nevertheless, they also repost tweets on X and other social media platforms that refer to a woman as a 'huzz' or declare 'I just want a eugenic immigration policy, is that too much to ask?'. They are not exactly great role models for a multicultural democracy or for any workforce. And, like white men in general, they don't seem to be concerned about making the world a better place for anyone other than themselves. They would too readily agree with Zuckerberg's ridiculous claim that the tech world needs more 'masculine energy', when, in fact, white men remain the dominant demographic leading this economic sector. I was once a part of the computer-crazy nerd world in the 1980s and 1990s. I learned Basic in eighth grade, took Pascal in 11th grade, and spent my first three semesters at the University of Pittsburgh as a computer science major before changing my path to becoming a writer and academic historian. As a work-study student, I worked in Pitt's computing labs for two years. I observed as my equally geeky co-workers made jokes about our 'computer illiterate' classmates (including the regular use of the r-word). I watched my male counterparts rub up too closely to the women who needed their help troubleshooting computer issues. And in my last three months on staff, I experienced sexual and racial harassment from an older white woman, a co-worker who groped me twice while at work. Social awkwardness can easily be portrayed as innocent and endearing in a film. But it rarely if ever translates to 'sweet' in a world that socially defaults to racist, misogynistic, queerphobic, and xenophobic behaviours. Nerds or not, all white men in a white male supremacist society hold a metric tonne of racial and gender privilege – a sense of entitlement that, when left unchecked, makes them no different from 'cool' white guys. Booger asking Gilbert, 'Why? Does she have a penis?' – a transphobic reference to his friend not getting laid in Revenge of the Nerds – isn't much different than Musk declaring that he 'lost' his 'son' – his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson – to 'the woke mind virus'. There's also the embedded assumption that the technologies created by the elite nerd set have always been good for the world. Not when addiction to social media has led to millions of younger Americans becoming depressed, anxious, and isolated. Not with a new generation of American males doxxing and committing image-based sexual abuse against girls and women. Certainly not when the plagiarism machines of AI (which isn't true artificial intelligence, anyway) are the tools of choice for people unwilling to develop critical thinking, media literacy, and writing skills. In this world of white male privilege, being a cool athlete versus being a dictatorial, socially awkward pencil neck is truly a distinction without difference. Nerds and their technological breakthroughs were only meant to empower and enrich their individual worlds for the better. This is why no one in any other billionaire nerd camp has used their skills to break into Apple's or Amazon's offshore accounts and redistribute trillions of dollars to everyday Americans. Nor have they wiped out the student debt of every student in the country. For in the end, these nerds want wealth and power over marginalised people, too.
