JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Facebook issued a disappointing quarterly report, sending its stock price down by 6%, reports CNBC. In the report, Facebook reported a 51% rise in expenses and “warned of advertising headwinds related to privacy and regulatory changes on the horizon, leading to slowing growth in the U.S. Facebook said privacy improvements on Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Android software could hurt its ability to target advertising.”
Here are the key numbers from Facebook’s fourth-quarter earnings report, per CNBC:

Earnings (EPS): $2.56 vs. $2.53 per share forecast by Refinitiv.
Revenue: $21.08 billion vs. $20.89 billion forecast by Refinitiv.
Daily active users (DAUs): 1.66 billion vs. 1.65 billion forecast by FactSet.
Monthly active users (DAUs): 2.5 billion vs. 2.5 billion forecast by FactSet.
Average revenue per user (ARPU): $8.52 vs. $8.38 forecast by FactSet.

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Source: Slashdot – Facebook Stock Plummets 6 Percent After It Reported Fourth-Quarter Earnings, Wiping Out Billion In Market Value

Several delivery services, including Postmates, Seamless, Grubhub, and DoorDash, are offering food from restaurants without their explicit permission. “The delivery apps pull up restaurant menus listed online, from which customers make their selections, and couriers working for the apps place orders on their behalf,” reports Eater. “The process essentially inserts third-party apps as middlemen into a service many restaurants say they want control over, or wish to opt out of entirely.” From the report: Recently, in a move to compete with the Postmates and Doordash model, Grubhub and Seamless adopted a similar policy, adding “non-partnered” restaurants to their platform. Starting a few months ago in some cities like San Francisco, Grubhub added restaurants without their permission based on local demand — i.e., searches — for them. If Grubhub can demonstrate public interest in getting delivery from a particular restaurant, the plan goes, maybe restaurants will actually partner up. In a previous statement to Eater, a Grubhub spokesperson said the company has been adding non-partnered restaurants “so we will not be at a restaurant disadvantage compared to any other food delivery platform.” “The non-partnered model is no doubt a bad experience for diners, drivers and restaurants,” the spokesperson admitted. “But our peers have shown growth — although not profits — using the tactic, and we believe there is a benefit to having a larger restaurant network: from finding new diners and not giving diners any reason to go elsewhere.”

According to a report by the Counter, Grubhub has registered more than 23,000 web domains for real restaurants, creating “shadow pages” that often compete with restaurants’ real websites. If its shadow pages show up higher on Google search results than a restaurant’s own site — or are added by Google’s listings themselves — it’s an advantage for Grubhub, since the delivery service charges higher fees to restaurants when it can claim it helped customers discover them. Grubhub argues that its contract with restaurants includes a provision reserving the right to purchase domain names to set up “microsites” on their behalf. In a similar maneuver, Grubhub also sets up new phone numbers for restaurants with whom they have contracts, displaying those numbers instead of the restaurant’s direct lines on their websites and apps. Grubhub then forwards those calls to restaurants and charges fees for calls that lead to orders. Some restaurants, like Tiffin Indian Cuisine in Philadelphia, claim that Grubhub charges fees for every phone call, many of which don’t result in orders, or are just calls to check in on existing orders. Tiffin’s owner filed a class-action lawsuit in in Philadelphia federal court seeking $5 million in damages; Grubhub disputes the restaurant’s claims.

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Source: Slashdot – Delivery Apps Keep Adding Restaurants Without Their Consent

140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Tesla announced its 2019 Fourth Quarter results. “Expectations were high this quarter after Tesla destroyed earnings expectations with surprisingly high profits last quarter. Today, Tesla announced that it made $7.384 billion in revenue and it reported surprising profits of $2.14 per share (Non-GAAP) in Q4 2019 — over expectations for both revenue and earnings. The automaker continues to improve its financial position with strong results and increased its cash position by almost $1 billion to now $6.3 billion.” Stock zoomed in after hours trading and continued to rally today. The short interest tracker S3 Partners reported that shorts lost another $1.5 billion today, as the stock zoomed very quickly on open giving them very little time to cover at anything close to yesterday’s prices. According to this report they had $5.6 billion YTD profit last June. They have raked up losses of almost $13 billion dollars since.

The investor conference call revealed nuggets like improved range for dual motor cars, Model Y production starting sooner than expected, the solar side has started growing again, etc. Despite all the headlines about first “profitable” year, technically the company lost money on GAAP basis.

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Source: Slashdot – Tesla Posts Its First Annual Profit

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Research presented at the ACM FAT 2020 conference in Barcelona today supports the notion that YouTube’s platform is playing a role in radicalizing users via exposure to far-right ideologies. The study, carried out by researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, found evidence that users who engaged with a middle ground of extreme right-wing content migrated to commenting on the most fringe far-right content.

Their paper, called “Auditing radicalization pathways on YouTube,” details a large-scale study of YouTube looking for traces of evidence — in likes, comments and views — that certain right-leaning YouTube communities are acting as gateways to fringe far-right ideologies. Per the paper, they analyzed 330,925 videos posted on 349 channels — broadly classifying the videos into four types: Media, the Alt-lite, the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) and the Alt-right — and using user comments as a “good enough” proxy for radicalization (their data set included 72 million comments). The findings suggest a pipeline effect over a number of years where users who started out commenting on alt-lite/IDW YouTube content shifted to commenting on extreme far-right content on the platform over time. The rate of overlap between consumers of Media content and the alt-right was found to be far lower. “The researchers were unable to determine the exact mechanism involved in migrating YouTube users from consuming ‘alt lite’ politics to engaging with the most fringe and extreme far-right ideologies — citing a couple of key challenges on that front: Limited access to recommendation data; and the study not taking into account personalization (which can affect a user’s recommendations on YouTube),” reports TechCrunch.

“But even without personalization, they say they were ‘still able to find a path in which users could find extreme content from large media channels.'”

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Source: Slashdot – Study of YouTube Comments Finds Evidence of Radicalization Effect