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The Verge
14-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Meta's beef with the press flares at its antitrust trial
Long-simmering tension between Silicon Valley and the press that covers it is surfacing during the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust trial against Meta. During a heated cross-examination of the FTC's key economic expert, Scott Hemphill, Meta's lead attorney, Mark Hansen, noted that Hemphill joined Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and former Biden official Tim Wu in pitching regulators on an antitrust probe of the company back in 2019. The pitch deck for the probe that was shown in court included 'public recognition' of the company's aggressive acquisition strategy from two reporters: Kara Swisher, who currently hosts two podcasts for The Verge's parent company, Vox Media, and Om Malik, the founder of the early tech blog GigaOm who is now a venture capitalist. In an attempt to undercut Hemphill's credibility, Hansen caught Swisher and Malik in the crossfire. He called Malik a 'failed blogger' with an axe to grind against Meta. He then suggested that Swisher, whom he referred to as a Vanity Fair columnist (she last wrote for the site in 2015), was similarly biased against the company. In court, he projected a headline about her recently calling Mark Zuckerberg a 'small little creature with a shriveled soul.' The 2019 pitch deck shown at court by Hansen also cited a Post story to support that Facebook should be investigated as a monopoly. Meta's Hansen asked if Hemphill agreed that ' The New York Post is a scandal sheet,' to which he replied that he didn't 'have a view one way or another.' Hansen showed the infamous Post front page headline, 'Headless Body in Topless Bar,' to make his point. The exchange resurfaced years-old tensions between the press and tech titans. After experiencing relatively positive coverage during the early, aspirational days of Silicon Valley, Facebook and a handful of startups grew to become the largest platforms in the world. Along the way, they've chafed at increasingly critical coverage of their businesses. Malik and Swisher have indeed both criticized Meta and its executives. In 2016, Malik critiqued Facebook's intentions for offering free access to its apps and others in India, after board member Marc Andreesseen blamed local resistance to the program on 'anti-colonialism' in a later-deleted tweet. 'I am suspicious of any for-profit company arguing its good intentions and its free gifts,' Malik wrote at the time. It was not the first time Meta has pointed a finger at the media while at trial Swisher is famous for taking tech CEOs like Zuckerberg to task in public interviews. Zuckerberg defended platforming Holocaust deniers to her in 2018, and she has called him 'the most damaging man in tech.' Tuesday's exchange was not the first time that Meta has pointed a finger at the media while at trial. When discussing major scandals like Cambridge Analytica from the witness stand, company leaders have chalked up downswings in user sentiment to negative media attention and testified that Meta's services haven't seen comparable declines in engagement. The FTC has argued that this fact is a sign of monopoly power because people can't leave Facebook and Instagram without viable alternatives. A judge will ultimately decide if that is true or not. In the meantime, Meta's grudges with the press are on full display.
The Hill
16-04-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Zuckerberg stresses TikTok competition at Meta trial
Zuckerberg said Wednesday he considers TikTok the 'highest competitive threat' that Facebook and Instagram have faced in the past few years. Meta's lead attorney, Mark Hansen, pointed to a 2020 email from former Facebook executive Vijaye Raji, who described TikTok's growth as 'worrying' and lamented the company's strategy was 'unfortunately not working fast enough.' 'While Reels V2 is aggressive and promising, we still have some concerns if it is sufficient to neutralize the threat,' Raji wrote of an early version of Meta's short-form video format meant to compete with TikTok. 'TikTok in the US is a much bigger threat to our entire family of apps. And we need to put up a stronger assault,' he continued. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initially sued Meta in 2020, accusing the social media giant of seeking to eliminate competition and entrench its monopoly over personal social networking with its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta has argued that it does not have a monopoly, pointing to competition from other social media firms, such as TikTok, YouTube and X. It contends that the FTC's personal social networking market, which includes Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, fails to take into account other competitors because of its focus on platforms that connect friends and family. Zuckerberg spent three days on the stand, including facing about nine hours of questioning by the FTC on Monday and Tuesday. He faced questions from Meta's attorney Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning.
NBC News
06-04-2025
- Business
- NBC News
At America's last alumina refinery, a trade war spells trade-offs
Trump tariffs Trump wants the U.S. to make more aluminum. In Louisiana, home to the only domestic producer of a material essential to that process, some say a ramp-up would take years and worsen pollution. By Alexandra Byrne and Travers Mackel President Donald Trump wants to reinvigorate American industry with tariffs on metals, cars and dozens of foreign exporters. In Gramercy, Louisiana, home to the nation's last refiner of the key material for making aluminum, locals aren't sold on joining any such revival. 'It would be a good thing to go out of business,' Barbara Dumas, 58, said of the plant she's lived across the river from for 15 years. Like many residents, she bemoans the area's industrial pollution and believes her community would be better off without the refinery. 'It may hurt the people that's working there, but at least people around here can live safer.' Atlantic Alumina, also called Atalco, became the last U.S. refinery of its kind after another one 20 miles away closed in 2020. On the banks of the Mississippi River halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Atalco's 550 workers crush, wash and heat Jamaican-mined bauxite in a series of solutions. What starts as a rust-colored rock comes out as powdery white aluminum oxide, a compound known as alumina that resembles sugar but whose granules are hard enough to scratch glass. The product is sold to smelters to make 'primary' aluminum, the raw material that manufacturers turn into everything from beer cans to plumbing parts. The Atalco plant says it single-handedly supplies about 40% of the alumina used in the United States. If our company closed, we would be the only point of failure for that entire industry. Mark Hansen, CEO of Atlantic Aluminum's parent company 'It's been a very difficult operation,' said Mark Hansen, the CEO of Concord Resources, which became Atlantic Aluminum's majority owner in 2021. The complex, first commissioned in 1957, has been pummeled recently by hurricanes and inflation, but Hansen said it's important to keep the site running for national security. 'If our company closed, we would be the only point of failure for that entire industry in the United States,' he said, noting that the sector has seen 'a dramatic decline' in the last two decades. Trump's 25% tariffs on foreign-made aluminum, which took effect for most countries March 12 alongside comparable duties on steel, aim to reverse that. The sweeping levies he unveiled Wednesday on virtually all imports could prove a mixed bag, spurring demand for domestic wares while raising many producers' costs. Still, tariffs could buoy at least some parts of the domestic aluminum industry, analysts say: By making international supplies pricier, the American-made metal should become more competitive for buyers, at least in the short term. But the new metal tariffs don't cover alumina, and Hansen said his modest efforts to lobby Washington policymakers haven't had much success. 'It's not like we're Coca-Cola or something,' he said. 'We don't get that level of attention.' A White House spokesperson said the administration expects the aluminum tariffs to increase the nation's production capacity for the critical metal, adding that its efforts to reduce energy costs and slash regulations would also boost the primary aluminum industry. After decades of offshoring some of the most energy-intensive parts of the alumina refining process, the United States makes far less of the material than it uses. Smelters, just four of which remain domestically, rely on imports for about 60% of their alumina needs. Jobs in the primary aluminum sector have plummeted nearly 70% since 2013, the Aluminum Association estimates. Most job growth has been in secondary aluminum, among 'downstream' companies like product fabricators and recyclers. The domestic industry can't continue to expand without foreign-made primary aluminum, said Charles Johnson, the trade group's CEO. 'We are very encouraged by some of the actions that President Trump has taken as he has entered office,' he said, including the call to ramp up smelting in the U.S., but Johnson said that process could take a decade. Until then, the downstream sector needs access to foreign supplies — especially from Canada, which the Aluminum Association and other industry stakeholders have urged the administration to spare from tariffs even as they cheer duties on China, a top exporter of cheap metals. You don't see butterflies. You don't see nothing around here. Willie Youngblood Sr., Vacherie, La. 'It's not an easy thing' to reboot domestic metal production, said Morris Cohen, a supply chain expert at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. 'It takes time and a lot of effort' and involves 'a lot of trade-offs,' he said. Pollution is one of them, according to those who live near the Atalco plant. 'I wouldn't be breathing too much if I were you,' said Willie Youngblood Sr., 'not around here.' The 67-year-old said he's watched bauxite shipments roll up to the Gramercy complex for 40 years from his home across the river in Vacherie. Residents of St. James Parish, which includes both communities, say airborne particles from the alumina refinery are contributing to a number of illnesses. Youngblood, who uses an oxygen tank, partly attributes his lung troubles to the plant's emissions. He said he doesn't hang clothes out to dry because the bauxite dust turns everything red. 'Your car gets covered with it,' he said. 'You don't see butterflies. You don't see nothing around here.' The stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is widely known as 'Cancer Alley,' an industrial corridor once home to slave plantations and now the site of large petrochemical facilities that regulators and activists have long blamed for the area's well-documented health problems. Bauxite refinement generates hazardous waste with high levels of arsenic and chromium along with naturally occurring radioactive materials, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Atalco plant was investigated in 2020 by Louisiana regulators for alleged air-quality violations, a matter it settled in 2022 for $75,000 without admitting fault. If the trade war juices demand for Louisiana alumina and Atalco ramp ups its output in response, locals would suffer, said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental advocacy group. 'Increased production means a lot more fine particulate pollution for the people' in the area, she said. St. James Parish, where 47% of the residents are Black, was among a few parts of rural Louisiana where voters didn't back Trump by large margins. He won it by a single percentage point in November while netting 60% support statewide. 'We need some kind of economic development that's healthy, not just relying on these big polluters,' Rolfes said. Hansen said management has addressed concerns about dust from the refinery, which he said is always trying to be a good neighbor. 'There's no overriding concerns that make it an unworthy operation in the American industrial economy,' he said. 'It's been there for longer than I've been alive.' John Fleming, Louisiana's Republican treasurer, said Trump's tariff agenda could help businesses like Atlantic Aluminum 'because that's less competition from overseas.' He said the state lost major industrial employers after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994. Look, the United States can outcompete anybody. John Fleming, Louisiana State Treasurer 'Free trade did not work out well for us because it wasn't free or fair trade,' he said. 'In this case, we're returning to a fair trade.' 'Look,' Fleming added, 'the United States can outcompete anybody.' For now, Hansen is just trying to keep production levels steady and has no plans to expand. If tariffs wind up bolstering U.S. smelting capacity, he said it could boost Atalco's customer base — though that would likely take years. 'We think there's a future for that, but it does sometimes involve shorter-term higher costs to make sure that the resiliency of those industries is there,' Hansen said. Some locals would rather not wait around to see how the refinery fares. 'I've been here for about 15 years too long,' said Barbara Dumas in Vacherie. 'I'm ready to move back home to some fresh air.' Alexandra Byrne Alexandra Byrne is an intern with the NBC News Business and Economy Unit. Travers Mackel Travers Mackel is an anchor and reporter at WDSU, an NBC News affiliate station in New Orleans.
New York Times
27-02-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Sick and Skipped Over: How We Investigated the Organ Transplant System
I walked into the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia last June chasing down one story. I left with an idea for another. It was the weekend of the American Transplant Congress, an annual gathering of doctors and scientists, where the offerings included panels on 'novel antifungals in transplantation' and 'antibody-mediated rejection.' I was looking into a tip I'd received about organ transplant programs. But while there, I decided to check out a session on a different topic: kidney allocation, or the process of deciding who gets a transplant and who doesn't. I knew the organ transplant system in the United States maintained waiting lists to help ensure that organs were distributed to patients fairly, and that the sickest patients received priority for transplants. And I had heard that sometimes there were exceptions. But I was surprised when panelists discussed, rather matter-of-factly, the way those once-rare exceptions were becoming more common. The system, they said, was increasingly disregarding the rules and sending kidneys to patients who were nowhere near the top of the lists. So I shifted gears. Though we never lost interest in the original tip, my editor, Kirsten Danis, and I agreed that I should focus on this topic first. This week, my colleagues and I published an investigation into the growth in instances where patients in line for lifesaving transplants are being skipped over. Officials are routinely passing over patients when allocating kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs. We found that last year, officials bypassed patients on organ waiting lists in nearly 20 percent of transplants from deceased donors. Those organs often went to patients who were not as sick, or had not been waiting as long. Over months of reporting, we spoke with more than 275 people involved in the transplant system. At first, some were reluctant to talk. The panelists from the conference — two transplant surgeons and a researcher with the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit federal contractor that oversees the U.S. transplant system — wouldn't speak with me. Nor would many of the other people I had seen at the convention center in June. We decided to get hold of the data and conduct our own analysis. The Times paid $1,000 to UNOS for a database containing details on nearly a quarter-century's worth of donated organs, lists of possible recipients and offers made to patients (no names, however; the data was anonymized). It was enormous, and included 377 million rows of data. Thankfully, we were working with Mark Hansen, a data scientist at Columbia who leads the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation. For weeks, Mark painstakingly pored through the information. He consulted with medical researchers on how to navigate the database, wrote code to help comb through the rows and built checks in to make sure our analysis was accurate. While he was working through the data, I spoke with doctors around the country, asking them what they had seen in their dealings with organ procurement organizations, the nonprofits in each state that have government contracts to manage organ donation and distribution. These organizations are supposed to follow a strict allocation process, which can be time-consuming. By the fall, we knew which organizations were regularly ignoring waiting lists, and how they were doing it. By then we also had learned that the practice was bigger than kidneys. But we still didn't know why. Two of the nonprofits agreed to let me embed with them. I shadowed workers as they allocated organs, and spoke to dozens of employees at other procurement organizations. Leaders of the organizations said they ignored the lists only as a last resort, in order to place organs that were deteriorating and at risk of going to waste, and that so doing was allowed under federal regulations. But we found that the organizations sometimes ignored the lists as a way to reduce staffing costs, or to steer high-quality organs to selected hospitals. The organizations, we realized, were often prioritizing ease and expediency over the order of the names on the lists. We also found when patients were skipped over, organs disproportionately went to white patients, Asian patients, men and college graduates, amplifying existing disparities in the health care system. Over the past five years, we found, more than 1,200 people died after they had neared the top of a waiting list but were passed over. It is possible that those organs wouldn't have been a good fit medically, but patients didn't have the opportunity to find out. From the start, we felt strongly that this story needed to be told not just through words, but through visual depictions that could convey both the complexity and the human consequences of the transplant system. Jeremy White, an editor in The Times's Graphics department, meticulously created and used 3D-printed models to translate the data into visual representations of waiting lists and organ allocations. The photojournalist Alyssa Schukar helped introduce readers to Marcus Edsall-Parr, a teenager in Michigan who was passed over last year when he was first in line for a new kidney. (The person who got it was 3,558th.) Marcus's doctor was appalled, and told The Times about the incident. With the family's permission, he put us in touch. This month we sent a detailed summary of our findings to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees UNOS. It has since ordered UNOS to address the practice of skipping patients. That convention, and our ensuing investigation, was another reminder that a vital part of reporting is being open to receiving unexpected information. Our team will continue to report on the transplant system — including digging into that original tip.
