Netflix said on Tuesday that "The Witcher" season one was watched by 76 million households in its first four weeks of release and is on track to be the streamer's biggest first season ever.But Netflix did change its viewership metrics — it now counts a view if an account watches at least two minutes of a movie or TV show episode, as opposed to at least 70% (which was its previous standard).In its letter to investors, Netflix compared "The Witcher" against Disney Plus' "The Mandalorian" in Google search trends.The company missed its subscriber growth forecast in the US, while exceeding expectations internationally.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Netflix's "The Witcher" will be the streamer's biggest TV show premiere of all time.

The hit fantasy show was watched by 76 million households in the first month of its release (it dropped December 20) and is on track to become the streaming giant's biggest first season ever, Netflix said during its 2019 fourth-quarter earnings report on Tuesday.

But there's a caveat: Netflix updated its viewership metrics. Now the company counts a view if an account watches at least two minutes of a program. Before, Netflix counted a view if an account watched 70% of a movie or an episode of a TV series. It said in the report that two minutes is "long enough to indicate the choice was intentional."

"Given that we now have titles with widely varying lengths — from short episodes (e.g. Special at around 15 minutes) to long films (e.g. The Highwaymen at 132 minutes), we believe that reporting households viewing a title based on 70% of a single episode of a series or of an entire film, which we have been doing, makes less sense," Netflix said.

Netflix said "The Witcher" was its second most popular of 2019, behind "Stranger Things." Audience demand data from Parrot Analytics, provided to Business Insider, backs up how popular it is. The show is currently the most in-demand TV series in the world, passing Disney Plus' "Star Wars" series, "The Mandalorian."

Netflix itself even compared the show to "The Mandalorian" during its investor letter, using Google search trends data, and providing a chart that showed that "The Witcher" was trending higher after its release than "The Mandalorian" was during any point after its release.

"In Q4, despite the big debut of Disney Plus and the launch of Apple TV Plus, our viewing per membership grew both globally and in the US on a year over year basis, consistent with recent quarters," Netflix said.

However, Netflix still missed subscriber growth expectations in the US during the quarter as Disney Plus launched, adding 420,000 paid net subscribers during Q4, below its forecast of of 600,000 (it exceeded expectations internationally, though, adding 8.33 million subscribers outside of the US).

Original author: Travis Clark

You can easily see who you blocked on Facebook by accessing a list of blocked users in the "Settings" of your profile. You can also unblock someone from your list, but you can't block the same user again within 48 hours. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you're an active user on Facebook, chances are you've come across users that make repetitive, inflammatory comments or even harassment on the platform. 

Fortunately, Facebook makes it very simple to block users on the site. Blocking a user on Facebook prevents the person from viewing your profile, messaging you, or tagging you in posts. 

It is also equally as easy to see who you've blocked on Facebook. Here's how. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

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How to see who you blocked on Facebook

1. Launch your preferred browser and go to https://www.facebook.com/ on your PC or Mac.

2. In the far right corner at the top of the page, select the downward-facing arrow icon. 

3. In the drop-down menu, select "Settings." 

Select "Settings" from the drop-down menu. Meira Gebel/Business Insider

4. Using the menu on the left, scroll down and click on "Blocking." 

Select "Blocking" from the menu on the left. Meira Gebel/Business Insider

5. Under "Block users," you will see a list of users you have blocked. 

A list of users you have blocked will appear under the menu "Block users." Meira Gebel/Business Insider

You can choose to unblock a user by selecting "Unblock" next to his or her name. Note that after you've unblocked someone, you cannot block the user again for 48 hours. 

Original author: Meira Gebel

SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday morning — and cause the rocket to fail 84 seconds into flight and explode shortly thereafter.The goal of the mission is to show that a new spaceship called Crew Dragon can safely escape from a rocket that's not working correctly.The in-flight abort test is a penultimate step toward SpaceX launching its first human passengers into space: NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.If the flight is successful, SpaceX should launch Behnken and Hurley this year.Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

SpaceX is about to do the unthinkable.

On Sunday morning, the company plans to launch a doomed Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a brand-new spaceship for NASA, called Crew Dragon, perched on top.

The 230-foot-tall vehicle is expected to heave itself off the ground between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET, but then suddenly shut down its engines about 84 seconds into flight. At that point, the Falcon 9 will be traveling nearly twice the speed of sound some 13 miles above Earth's surface. 

What comes next for the rocket will be catastrophic. Within seconds of cutting its engines, aerodynamic forces will throttle the uncontrolled, tube-shaped body and rip it to pieces. Inside, huge tanks full of liquid oxygen and RP-1 kerosene propellant will rip open — so a large explosion and fireball is almost a given.

But if all goes according to plan, the Crew Dragon will escape to safety moments after the failure begins. 

Such a scenario is one of an astronaut's worst nightmares, but NASA is excited to get on with the flight. That's because the spectacle is part of a highly orchestrated, human-free, and strenuous test of the Crew Dragon's launch escape or abort system. 

If the empty spaceship flies away to safety and splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean, as planned, SpaceX will be a penultimate step closer to launching astronauts — its first-ever human passengers — who are part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

"We are purposely failing a launch vehicle to make sure that our abort system on the spacecraft that we'll be flying for our crews works," Kathy Lueders, the manager of the agency's program, said during a televised press briefing on Friday. "This is a very important test."

'Way past ready for this to happen'

Nine astronauts will fly the first four crewed missions inside SpaceX and Boeing's new spaceships for NASA, called Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner, respectively. NASA via AP

More than the safety of SpaceX's launch system for astronauts is riding on the in-flight abort test. In fact, NASA's ability to launch astronauts from American soil at all partly depends on it.

In July 2011, NASA retired its space shuttle fleet without a new American ship to get astronauts to and from orbit from the International Space Station — a $150 billion, football field-size laboratory that orbits Earth. Since that time, the agency has had no practical choice but to buy tickets aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for astronauts, to the tune of about $80 million per seat today.

The first crewed flights of NASA's commercial program were supposed to start taking off around 2015. But neither SpaceX nor Boeing, which is also part of the agency's program, have not yet completed rigorous mandatory testing required to launch astronauts.

"Most of us are just way past ready for this to happen. It has taken a lot longer than anybody thought," Wayne Hale, an aerospace engineering consultant and retired NASA space shuttle program manager, told Business Insider. "This year we really need to do it. It really needs to be done."

Saturday's test is the next-to-last step toward that goal, which is why it's so crucial that everything go right.

"The number-one most important thing is we launch them safely," Benji Reed, SpaceX's director of crew mission management, said during NASA's briefing at Kennedy Space Center on Friday.

Hale said that "everybody hopes at this stage that success is the outcome." But he added that in-flight abort tests are not only rare — only a handful of them have been done since the Apollo moon program in the 1960s — but also "a very difficult situation" where "many things can go wrong."

SpaceX has had trouble with its parachutes, for example, though Hale noted that tweaking and testing has apparently resolved those difficulties. Meanwhile, Boeing also saw a parachute deployment hiccup with its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft due to an incorrect rigging. A clock error on the Starliner also caused Boeing's first uncrewed launch of the vehicle toward the space station to veer wildly off-course.

A rocket mission designed to fail — then to fall

SpaceX performs a parachute test for its Crew Dragon spaceship, which is designed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from space. NASA

Benji said the Crew Dragon is pre-programmed to detach itself from the Falcon 9 rocket "at the right point in time" if anything goes wrong.

"We're looking for anything that's off-nominal," he told Business Insider.

In the case of Sunday's test, the rocket will shut down while the vehicle is moving through extreme, though not maximum, forces in the atmosphere — what Lueders described as "a stressing test" for the entire system, and one that SpaceX ultimately chose over less trying and expensive ones.

"Getting this test behind us is a huge milestone," she said. (The launch was originally scheduled for Saturday, but NASA and SpaceX delayed it due to worsening weather conditions.)

Shortly after detaching from the rocket on Saturday, Reed said Crew Dragon should fire its SuperDraco escape engines for about 10 seconds. That should be enough to put many miles between the doomed rocket and the spaceship.

"We expect there to be some sort of ignition, and probably a fireball of some kind. Whether I would call it an explosion that you would see from the ground? I don't know," Reed said of the rocket. "We'll have to see what actually happens."

As the rocket breaks up, Crew Dragon will coast to an altitude of about 25 miles, shed its aerodynamic "trunk" (which serves as dead weight), and begin to fall toward Earth, according to a SpaceX animation on YouTube (below). The plummeting capsule will then use clusters of small rocket engines, called reaction-control thrusters, to right itself at high speed. The goal is to keep the gumdrop-shaped base facing down — and its parachute pods pointed up.

About 4 minutes and 30 seconds after launch, two small drogue shoots will pop out of the capsule's top to stabilize its fall. Four enormous main parachutes will deploy about a minute later and dramatically slow down the vehicle. A little while later — about nine minutes total into the mission — the Crew Dragon is supposed to splash down about 20 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, where SpaceX recovery crews on boats should be ready and waiting to recover it.

SpaceX and NASA will then review all of the data they collect from the safety test and see if it matches their predictive computer models. That process could take months, and smaller tests may be required afterward.

Assuming the abort test is a success, SpaceX will be poised to fly its first-ever humans — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — on a demonstration mission called Demo-2. (In March 2019, the company launched an uncrewed Crew Dragon to the space station and back on a mission called Demo-1.)

"The main objective of this test is to show that we can carry the astronauts safely away from the rocket in case anything's going wrong," Reed said.

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on January 17, 2019.

Original author: Dave Mosher

SpaceX plans to complete a crucial safety test this weekend to show NASA its Crew Dragon capsule is ready to carry astronauts to space.You can watch the test live on Sunday, January 19 via the embedded video below. Coverage should start about 15 minutes before 9 a.m. ET, weather permitting, though SpaceX has until 2 p.m. ET to launch.The aerospace company, founded by Elon Musk, plans to shut off the rocket in mid-flight to simulate an emergency. The rocket is likely to explode afterward.If the test is successful, the Crew Dragon spacecraft (with no people inside) will fly away from danger, deploy its parachutes, and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship is launching again this weekend — likely the capsule's final uncrewed flight before it carries its first astronauts later this year. 

On Sunday morning, the aerospace company plans to conduct a crucial safety demonstration called an in-flight abort test. The goal: demonstrate to NASA that the spacecraft's escape mechanisms that can whisk astronauts away from a failing rocket or other emergency arises during their ascent. NASA requires this demonstration before it will allow SpaceX to fly its astronauts into space.

The mission is now slated to lift off at 9 a.m. ET on Sunday, January 19 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. However, SpaceX has until 2 p.m. ET today to wait for the best conditions for launch.

The flight was originally scheduled for Saturday but delayed due to weather.

You can watch the action in real time via the YouTube video player below.

A major milestone for SpaceX and NASA

The goal of the Crew Dragon spaceship is to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

NASA hasn't been able to transport astronauts on its own spaceships since July 2011, when its space shuttle completed its final flight. Since then, the agency has relied exclusively on Russia to ferry its astronauts to and from orbit in Soyuz spacecraft. To develop new American-made spacecraft, NASA launched the Commercial Crew program: a competition between private companies for billions of dollars' worth of government contracts. Of about a dozen entrants, only SpaceX and Boeing passed NASA's muster.

On Saturday, the Crew Dragon will sit atop one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. After 84 seconds, engineers will intentionally cut the rocket's engines. By that point, it will be traveling so fast (nearly twice the speed of sound) that aerodynamic forces will rip the rocket to pieces. The fuel tanks should rupture, and an explosion will ensue. 

Before that catastrophe, though Crew Dragon is supposed to detach and escape by firing its own engines. If all goes well, the spaceship will get far enough away to stay safe, then deploy built-in parachutes and splash down about 20 miles away from Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean.

"We tried to design a way to save B1046, but not possible," Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, referring to the reusable first-stage rocket booster. He added that it would be "destroyed by dragon fire."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

SpaceX's recovery ship, called GO Searcher, will be stationed nearby to retrieve it.

Crew Dragon has been in development since 2012. In March 2019, SpaceX launched it into orbit for the first time, carrying a dummy and a plush toy. Crew Dragon autonomously docked with the space station then later returned safely to Earth.

However, the following month, a Crew Dragon capsule exploded during a ground test — a different NASA safety check on its escape system. The company said the problem was due to an improper valve design, which cause leakage and a catastrophic blast.

The company has worked with NASA to investigate the issue, correct it, and re-perform the test late last year, which was successful.

"We are doing everything we can to make it not happen again," Kathy Lueders, the manager of the agency's program, said during a televised press briefing on Friday.

A SpaceX Dragon capsule during a hover test-fire on November 23, 2015. SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)

If the test needs to be postponed again, there is additional launch window set aside on Monday.

If all goes smoothly on Saturday, SpaceX's first crewed launch is expected later this year, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley at the helm.

NASA and SpaceX will provide joint live coverage — watch below

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on January 17.

Original author: Holly Secon and Dave Mosher

Samsung is among the most inventive companies in the world after topping a US patent list compiled by data journalism site Sqoop. The study ranked companies on three metrics: number of utility patent grants applied for; number of utility patent applications granted; and number of design patents published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.Samsung topped all three, and IBM was ranked second.Speaking to Business Insider about the study, Sqoop's founder and CEO, Bill Hankes, said it is "staggering" how many patents Samsung and IBM are applying for and being granted.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Samsung has topped a US patent list compiled by data journalism company Sqoop, one metric to indicate its intellectual property dominance.

Sqoop measured companies on three metrics: number of utility patents applied for; number of utility patent applications granted; and number of design patents received, as recorded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Korean tech giant Samsung was top of all three lists, with US tech giant IBM ranked in second place for number of utility patent applications granted and number of utility patents applied for.

The study's methodology combined subsidiary firms under their parent firm, treating them as single entities.

In 2019, Samsung was granted 9,413 utility patents; made 8,668 utility patent applications; and received 605 design patents, while IBM was granted 9,190 utility patents and made 8,292 utility patent applications.

Speaking to Business Insider about the study's findings, Sqoop's founder and CEO, Bill Hankes, said: "I think it's very interesting when you look at IBM and Samsung in particular, [to see] how many more patents they have in their portfolios on an annual basis than, say, LG, Canon, Microsoft and the rest.

"When you look at it on a weekly basis, it's staggering how many patents [Samsung and IBM] applying for and that they're granted," Hankes continued. "It speaks to the value that they place on their patent portfolios.

"If you take a look at the increase in patent applications, in particular, as well as [the number of] design patents [they received], it suggests these companies – not just Samsung and IBM, but other technology and automotive companies – are investing even greater amounts of resources in shoring up their portfolios."

Meanwhile, none of the so-called big four companies – Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon – ranked especially highly.

On the list for number of design patents received, only Apple made the top ten, placing in fourth; while on the list for number of utility patents granted, only Google/Alphabet made the top ten, placing in ninth. None of the big four made the top ten for number of utility patent applications made.

Asked about the relatively low rankings of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, Hankes said people should remember IBM's and Samsung's status as older tech giants. Samsung was founded before the outbreak of World War Two, while IBM is over a century old. Accordingly, he said, the big four would ramp up their inventiveness over time.

Hankes said: "When you think of IBM, it doesn't have the sex appeal that companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon have, and yet, its value by the patent portfolio would suggest its got very high value. [Samsung and IBM] are also hardware companies, and they're much older companies.

"Facebook, in particular, has moved up steadily over the past few years; Amazon has as well. I think you'll see more investment in patents from these companies moving forward."

Original author: Charlie Wood

Not many people are fans of airline food, but as it turns out, you don't taste food in the air the same way you do on the ground. Several factors on the plane — including the background noise, pressurized cabin, and dry air — all suppress your ability to taste sweet and salty food by at least 30%.Airline caterers often modify their recipes to accommodate for the loss in taste. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video. 

Ever look at the beverage cart on a plane and see it piled high with tomato juice? It's not a common juice, like orange or apple. So why are so many people drinking it in flight? Put simply? Your taste changes while you're in the air. And there's a biological reason for that.

If you grab a bite before your flight, you probably have an idea of what it will taste like. But once you're in the air, your sense of taste isn't the same as it is on the ground. A lot of factors on the plane are all coming together to suppress your sense of smell, which makes up a large portion of our sense of taste.

Think back to the last time you had a cold. Remember how you couldn't taste anything because your nose was clogged up? When you have a weakened sense of smell, your perception of taste is reduced. So your in-flight nose is similar to your nose when you have a cold, but hopefully with less phlegm.

Let's start with the cabin, which is extremely dry. Drier-than-some-deserts dry. The dry cabin dries out your nasal passages, which means your taste buds become less perceptive. But that's not the only part of the cabin suppressing your sense of taste. The low cabin pressure actually decreases the levels of oxygen in your blood, which means your olfactory receptors, the part of your nervous system that responds to smells, become less sensitive, which actually weakens your sense of smell.

But it's not just the environment inside the cabin that's affecting your senses. The noise coming from the engine isn't helping either. A 2010 study tested people's sense of taste both inside and outside a simulated plane cabin. The researchers found sensitivity to sweet and salty food was reduced by 30% while in the cabin.

And that weakened sense of taste can cause a lot of problems for airline caterers, who have to modify every recipe to account for it. To top it off, not every flavor is affected equally. Some ingredients, like curry and lemongrass, actually become more intense in the sky, while cinnamon, ginger, and garlic tend to maintain their taste. Some airlines will use naturally intense flavors, like certain fruit and vegetable oils and concentrates, which helps to lessen the amount of extra salt a recipe might need.

So, what does tomato juice have to do with all of this? Well, tomato juice tends to have a savory flavor referred to as umami. It's one of the five categories of taste, along with sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. A 2015 study found that, with umami, the taste phenomenon is actually reversed. Umami is actually enhanced in the air.

So the next time you're on a flight, give the tomato juice a try. And don't get too upset if your meal doesn't taste as good as you hoped. The chefs are just trying to accommodate for something you didn't know was happening right underneath your nose.

Original author: Jade Tungul

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand original TV shows on streaming services in the US.Netflix's "The Witcher" is back on top this week and the new addition is Disney Plus' "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Netflix's "The Witcher" and Disney Plus' "The Mandalorian" are engaged in a streaming battle. "The Witcher" topped "The Mandalorian" as the most in-demand streaming series in the US this week, trading places from last week.

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand TV shows on streaming services in the US. The data is based on "demand expressions," Parrot Analytics' globally standardized TV-demand measurement unit. Audience demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership weighted by importance, so a stream or a download is a higher expression of demand than a "like" or a comment on social media, for instance.

The new addition to the list this week is Disney Plus' "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series."

Below are this week's nine most popular original shows on Netflix and other streaming services:

Original author: Travis Clark

Data science consultant Cathy O'Neil said discrimination in hiring starts with job advertising sites like LinkedIn, Monster.com, Facebook, and ZipRecruiter.In an interview with Business Insider, O'Neil said that by focusing on demographic data, algorithms used by job sites often prevent qualified people from ever seeing job openings.O'Neil said algorithms are biased by definition, so rather than making them "colorblind," companies need to continually assess whether they're disproportionately filtering out candidates from marginalized groups.

Data science consultant Cathy O'Neil helps companies audit their algorithms for a living. And when it comes to how algorithms and artificial intelligence can enable bias in the job hiring process, she said the biggest issue isn't even with the employers themselves.

A new Illinois law that aims to help job seekers understand how AI tools are used to evaluate them in video interviews recently resurfaced the debate over AI's role in recruiting. But O'Neil believes the law tries to tackle bias too late in the process.

"The problem actually lies before the application comes in. The problem lies in the pipeline to match job seekers with jobs," said O'Neil, founder and CEO of O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing.

That pipeline starts with sites like LinkedIn, Monster.com, Facebook, and ZipRecruiter, where algorithms can play a significant role in determining which candidates see which job postings, filtering out those deemed unqualified.

"[Algorithms] are intended to discriminate, they're trying to discriminate between someone who's going to be good at this job versus someone who's not going to be good at this job," O'Neil said, adding that "the question is whether it's legal or illegal discrimination."

O'Neil has written extensively about the role algorithms play in fueling inequality both in her book, Weapons of Math Destruction, and on her blog mathbabe.org. In an interview with Business Insider, she talked about how bias shows up in the hiring process and what employers — as well as platforms like LinkedIn — should do to weed it out.

AI hiring tools are far from perfect

Federal laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of categories like race, religion, gender, national origin, disability status, genetic information, and other categories.

While algorithms may speed up the process of narrowing the pool of job candidates, they're often not great at finding the most qualified ones, and instead end up disproportionately filtering out people in those exact categories.

"I actually don't think that most hiring algorithms are that meaningful," O'Neil said, arguing that in many cases, they're no better than "random number generators" at identifying qualified candidates.

In 2018, Amazon shut down a tool it had built to automate its hiring using artificial intelligence because it was biased against women. Researchers have also shown how AI tools that analyze video interviews are often biased against people with disabilities.

But it's not just employers who have run into issues with biased AI hiring tools, it's also a problem for the companies that help them find candidates.

A study in 2019 found that ads placed on Facebook for jobs with taxi companies — even when targeted at a broad audience — were seen by an audience that was 75% Black. And an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times found that Facebook allowed employers to exclude users explicitly by age.

Bad data in, bad data out

There are several reasons why algorithms can end up discriminating against certain groups. One is the problem of "bad data in, bad data out."

Programmers "train" an algorithm by showing it a massive set of historical data. In the case of a job site, they show it information about past candidates, telling it to look for patterns among people who ultimately got jobs, which it then uses to identify potential candidates with those same qualities. That can lead to problems, however, if the dataset is already skewed.

"If they're trained on historical data, which they all are, then they're going to be as racist and as sexist and as classist as human society is," O'Neil said.

That's exactly what happened in Amazon's case. Since men had predominantly applied (and gotten) jobs in the past, the tool determined that men were preferable and penalized women's résumés as a result.

Big data means biased noise

A second issue gets at why O'Neil believes biased job sites are particularly problematic: they factor in information that may have no bearing on a candidate's ability to do a job, rather than focusing only on relevant details.

Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and Monster.com use a wide range of demographic information to train their algorithms. Those algorithms then help determine which job ads are shown to which candidates as well as which candidates appear in recruiters' search results.

Companies collect as much data as possible because they think it will give them "a larger picture of the person," O'Neil said, "but what it's really doing is picking up all kinds of distracting and biased information."

Even if that information isn't explicitly about a candidate's race or gender, it can still lead to racist or sexist results.

How companies — and job sites — can reduce bias

Some job sites have tried to combat this problem by not collecting or considering information that could introduce bias into their algorithm.

ZipRecruiter told Business Insider in a statement that its algorithms aren't allowed to take into account "explicit markers (e.g., age, race, gender, etc.) or implicit markers (e.g., surname, specific residential address, etc.) of status within any protected class." ZipRecruiter also prevents those models from differentiating between gender in titles or job postings.

LinkedIn, in a similar statement, said "we proactively detect potentially discriminatory language and review/block these jobs from being posted." It also requires advertisers placing job ads to "certify that they will not use the ad to discriminate on the basis of gender or other protected characteristics."

O'Neil said those steps don't necessarily address the issue, however.

"It's not going to be convincing for you to say 'well, we don't collect that information, so we're colorblind,'" she said. "There is no way to get rid of proxies — everything is a proxy for race because race affects everything in our country."

Instead of companies trying to make AI hiring tools "colorblind" by blocking explicitly or implicitly biased data points, O'Neil said they need to be more intentional about the information they do consider when filtering out job applicants.

"We should be defining what it means to be qualified and then ignoring other things," she said.

One example she cited is the use of "blind auditions" by major orchestras, where they reduced gender bias by having auditioners play from behind a curtain. In deciding that "being qualified" really meant "sounding good," they were able to structure the hiring process so it highlighted candidates' qualifications. Just as importantly, they made it blind to other factors, like appearance, surname, or hometown.

"This is something that none of these AI hiring algorithms do," O'Neil said.

But her ultimate concern isn't even how these tools are designed, though that's still important. O'Neil's main point is that companies be more transparent about how they do things and what the end result is. That means continually testing their algorithms to see which candidates end up seeing jobs, and then correcting for any undesired bias.

LinkedIn should be "forced to prove that what they're doing isn't exacerbating inequality,' O'Neil said.

LinkedIn has taken small steps in this direction, telling Business Insider "we ensure our Recruiter search delivers balanced gender representation, and we offer gender insights in reporting, so employers can understand dynamics in their Jobs and Sourcing funnels." The company also prohibits advertisers from targeting job ads by age.

Gender and age are just two of the many dimensions along which people face discrimination, however. And while LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter both said they don't tolerate discrimination on their platforms against any protected class, neither provided information about how they test the results of their algorithms to make sure that's actually the case.

Facebook and Monster.com did not immediately respond to questions about bias and the use of algorithms on their platforms.

Original author: Tyler Sonnemaker

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that people use their smartphones more for consumption than for creation, creating an imbalance.He says that he sees an opportunity for Microsoft's Teams workplace chat app to help balance things out, by providing something like a social network that helps people collaborate on actually getting things done."What is perhaps not there, is that...intimate circle," Nadella said. "How do I collaborate, communicate, form relationships with that? And so that's another dimension that we would want to think deeply about and continue to." While he doesn't think Teams will take on the huge thriving social networks already in place, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, there is room for a social media network to focus on building private social networks, similar to the way people used Skype. Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that when it comes to how we use our smartphones and other gadgets, things are way out of whack. In his view, these devices are more often used for consumption — watching videos, or scrolling through Facebook or Twitter — than for production, or getting things done.

For Nadella, that's a challenge, opportunity, and responsibility all at the same time.

"It's new habits that we will have to instigate in changing that balance. And I'm not, again, saying one thing is bad, one thing is good, but we feel that as a company, we need to think about that balance," Nadella said at a press event on Monday.

Microsoft's fast-growing workplace chat app, Teams, is big piece of Microsoft's play to address this. Nadella said he sees an opportunity for Teams to act as a bridge between the consumer-focused world of social media, and the idea to actually get things done.

Teams is a major priority for Microsoft: This weekend, Microsoft will debut a big new ad campaign that aims to sell the app on "the powers of teams." This marketing push comes just months after Microsoft shared that Teams crossed the milestone of  20 million daily active users — more than its chief Silicon Valley rival, Slack, which had 12 million at last count.

Nadella said while he doesn't think Teams will take on the huge thriving social networks already in place, like Facebook, Twitter, or Microsoft's own LinkedIn, there is room for some kind of app specifically designed to help people connect to each other to get work done.

"What is perhaps not there, is that...intimate circle," Nadella said. "How do I collaborate, communicate, form relationships with that? And so that's another dimension that we would want to think deeply about and continue to." 

Nadella drew a comparison between Teams and Skype, the Microsoft-owned video calling app, because they both focus on one-to-one conversations, or chats between smaller groups of people.

"Skype originally has always been the most intimate social network. People you Skyped with are people with whom you really had a real connection," Nadella said, echoing Microsoft's previous comments on the role of Skype in its lineup of products.

Microsoft has argued along similar lines before: When Microsoft Teams first launched in 2017, the company said that it was for the "inner loop" of people you work with every day, while Yammer — the Facebook-like news feed for the workplace that Microsoft acquired in 2012 — is for the "outer loop" of people you work with outside your own team. 

At the same time, Microsoft's competition isn't going to let the company take this market without a fight.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield has criticized Teams, saying its growth is not organic and that Microsoft uses "unsportsmanlike" tactics to compete in the workplace productivity space. Slack also highlights figures that suggest users are highly-engaged with its app, implying that customers actually enjoy using it.

On a final note, Microsoft clearly has social networks on the brain: At the same event where Nadella made his comments, Nat Friedman, the CEO of GitHub, described the Microsoft-owned code sharing site as "the most valuable social network that's ever been built," thanks to its popularity with programmers.

Nicholas Carlson contributed reporting to this story.

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Original author: Paayal Zaveri

WeWork only hit 73% of a key growth target, according to internal data obtained by Business Insider. The company is betting on enterprise customers – companies with more than 500 employees – as a more stable and profitable customer base than small businesses.WeWork added 108,000 enterprise desks last year, which was only 73% of its target. For more stories about WeWork, click here. 

WeWork is focused on inking deals with big companies, betting that working with Fortune 500 businesses like IBM and BlackRock will provide more stability and value than small startups and freelancers. 

But the embattled office company came in under target for adding desks with big businesses last year, according to data obtained by Business Insider. 

"While we fell short in Q4, you never gave up," one executive wrote to employees in communications reviewed by Business Insider.

Because the company has not released its fourth-quarter financials to bondholders – last year's numbers came in late March – it's not yet possible to get a full accounting of WeWork's bottom line. But the leaked numbers, along with third-party data, provide key indicators of the company's economic picture.

The following figures come from the North American enterprise team, which focuses on leases with companies with over 500 employees. They are unaudited.

2019: 108,000 new desks for enterprise clients in North America, representing 73% of the target.2019: $1.9 billion in "committed revenue" – noncancelable contracts that will turn into revenue – which represented 113% of the goal.Fourth quarter: 21,000 desks added, with more than $240 million in committed revenue. 

Committed revenue is an important metric that WeWork tracks in quarterly reports to bondholders. In its third-quarter presentation reviewed by Business Insider, the company had a total of $4.3 billion in committed revenue backlog in the third quarter. 

"WeWork signed fewer new leases in the fourth quarter of 2019 as we put in place our go-forward strategy that's focused on profitable growth," a spokeswoman for WeWork said in a statement. She declined to comment on the numbers leaked to Business Insider. 

WeWork added a total of 253,000 new desks through the third quarter of 2019, compared with 140,000 over the same time period in 2018, per investor documents reviewed by Business Insider. The company did not break out how many of those desks were for enterprise customers.

Overall, enterprise made up 43% of WeWork's third-quarter memberships – up from 34% a year ago. 

Overall, the company lost $1.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with $500 million in the third quarter of 2018, according to its third-quarter financials reviewed by Business Insider.

In the spring, Artie Minson, who is now one of WeWork's co-CEOs, told Business Insider that WeWork was "really just getting started" with enterprise clients.

"From an employer standpoint, WeWork is a better experience for their employees and meaningfully cheaper on a per-employee basis" than traditional office space, Minson, then WeWork's copresident and chief financial officer, said. "The CEOs like us and the CFOs like us."

WeWork, in turn, likes those clients back. Big businesses sign average commitments of 23 months, compared with 14 months for non-enterprise clients, per an October WeWork investor presentation. 

Money-losing deals with Sprint and Bank of America

Some of WeWork's enterprise deals were done at a loss last year, according to the person familiar with the deals, including Sprint and Bank of America. A representative for Sprint declined to comment, and a representative for Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.

Bank of America was one of the nine banks working on WeWork's initial public offering, which was ultimately shelved. WeWork signed deals with a number of those banks for office renovations or memberships, including UBS and Citi. It's common for companies set to go public to do business with IPO advisers, including banks and law firms.  

Adam Neumann, who was ousted as CEO in September, often pushed for deals to be done regardless of the economics, said multiple people who worked closely with him. 

WeWork chairman Marcelo Claure, who SoftBank installed in September to right the company, was the CEO of SoftBank-owned Sprint until May 2018. SoftBank is WeWork's largest investor.

In November, Claure brought in Publicis, the ad agency holding company, to WeWork, and tapped Publicis chairman Maurice Levy as interim chief marketing officer. Publicis was the ad agency for Sprint during Claure's tenure. 

Leases show fourth-quarter slowdown

Another fourth-quarter metric indicates a future slowdown in WeWork's activity. Per real estate company CBRE, WeWork signed just four new US leases with landlords in the fourth quarter. Those leases represented a 93% drop from an average of 2.54 million square feet leased over the previous four quarters. Real estate data is notoriously opaque; data from another major real estate company, JLL, says that WeWork had no new leases in the fourth quarter. 

As WeWork inks fewer deals with landlords, the company will have less space to then sublease in the future. 

All flexible office companies surveyed by CBRE saw a slowdown in the fourth quarter, but WeWork had the most significant change.

Knotel leased 80% less space in the fourth quarter than its one-year average, per CBRE. On Friday, the company laid off 7% of its staff in a restructuring first reported by The Real Deal.  

"Knotel has grown from two employees in one city to 500+ people in 17 cities over the past four years to become the leading global flexible workspace platform, and our business will continue to evolve and change to best meet the needs of our customers," a Knotel representative said in a statement to Business Insider. 

CBRE called the industry slowdown "expected" after WeWork decided to slow its rapid expansion.

On Friday, Business Insider published 58 pages of correspondence between the SEC and WeWork about the coworking company's IPO filing and questions or concerns the agency had about the document. 

Have a WeWork tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 768-1627 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or Twitter DM at @MeghanEMorris. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Meghan Morris

Tesla's stock price has rallied 100% over the past three months and is now at an all-time high above $500 per share.The company's market cap, at about $92 billion, is almost as much as Ford's and GM's combined.The rally has been driven not by Tesla's familiar up-and-down story, nor by CEO Elon Musk's cult of personality, but by facts and fundamentals.Tesla sold over 100,000 more vehicles in 2019 than in 2018 and has been posting profitable quarters.The fundamentals aren't going to change; there are no looming plot twists, and consequently the naysayers' case now lies in ruins.Click here for more BI Prime articles.

At the risk of invoking a cliché, I'll point out that Tesla isn't a company whose stock trades on fundamentals, but rather on a story.

Think about that. At a simple level, the fundamentals are facts, while the story is an illusion — a suspension of disbelief. When I was in my 20s, I spent a lot of time on story, before I dropped out of a doctorate program in literature at NYU. Stories have plots, subplots, plot twists, complicated characters who do complicated things. Stories can turn on a dime: in the space of a page, comedy becomes tragedy. As an author, you want to take readers on a ride.

For years now, story has dominated the debate around Tesla. And some large-scale characters, ranging from CEO Elon Musk to big-name hedge-funders like Jim Chanos and David Einhorn, have populated the tale. Even the minor characters have been interesting, and the plotlines and plot twists have been endless.

But the truth is that this story — something of an epic, really — filled a vacuum. Established automakers such as Ford and General Motors, have less lively stories because their actual businesses are so ... busy. The fundamentals — the business facts — produce millions of vehicles every year.

Tesla has only recently joined that club: 2019's total sales were about 367,000, a notable move up from 2018's roughly 250,000. But just a couple of years back, the company barely sold 50,000.

Story trumped fundamentals — but that's all changed in a hurry

Sorry, shorts. Markets Insider

The sprawling, obsessively detailed, constantly argued over Tesla story happened only because there wasn't enough production or sales to stop it. If Tesla had built a competent franchise dealer network in the US (or joined with an existing mega-dealer) rather than trying to sell vehicles direct to customers, and if Tesla had hired a seasoned contract manufacturer to build some vehicles and meet demands sooner, the story would have petered out in 2017 or 2018.

Didn't go that way, and thus we got an insane episode of Musk tweeting his way into an SEC investigation and eventual settlement, a pitched battle between the #TSLA fanboy and the #TSLAQ bankruptcy crowds, and a preoccupation with Tesla's inner-workings that resembled Cold War Kremlinology.

But look what's happened since Tesla's output of actual cars has picked up: the stock has been on a tear, blasting through $300 per share, $400 per share, and (remarkably) $500 per share in a matter of months. Tesla's market cap, at $90 billion, is nearly equal to GM's and Ford's combined.

This isn't a rally story. Tesla completely dominates the electric vehicle market and can now look forward to potential competitors having to spend, spend, and spend some more if they want to duke it out for market share. This is going to be painful because the traditional automakers won't have to break a sweat to build EVs, but they'll be forced to expend millions if not billions of dollars convincing consumers to buy them. 

Tesla, meanwhile, isn't spending anything, and hasn't. That doesn't constitute a first-move advantage so much as an only-mover leg up. Electric cars were stupid risky in the past, but Tesla gobbled up that risk. Now, the reward.

Busting through three resistance levels on the stock in three months is mind-blowing. And there isn't necessarily anything on the horizon to slow Tesla down. It reports fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 earnings in late January, and they're expected to be positive. If Tesla meets or beats, look out above. The 100% return of the past three months could look like a tame precursor, as Tesla's substantial short interest is decisively flushed out of the action.

Tesla has challenges, but the old story is over

Tesla could have service issues in the future. Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

Tesla has some looming challenges. The biggest is that as it sells more Model 3 vehicles — and soon, Model Y SUVs — at lower price points to less well-heeled buyers, it's going to be highly stressed on the service front. Like any relatively new automaker, Tesla's vehicles lack ironclad reliability, so the company compensates consumers with a great warranty. 

But without dealerships, Tesla doesn't have a solid built-in servicing model. Poor service means often means that owners who aren't living with fleets of vehicles at home fail to buy again from a manufacturer. Up to this juncture, Tesla has been selling to patient early adopters who probably own two or three cars; now that it's moving toward single-vehicle households, it could endure some pain.

That's merely the cost of doing business, however. With shares above $500, Tesla can now effortlessly make good on its convertible debt obligations and, should it want to, raise additional capital to bolster its balance sheet. I think that would be smart, and if Tesla goes for it in 2020, the approximately $5 billion that the company has in cash could swell to $10 billion, and Tesla could start to deleverage.

This leaves Tesla's naysayers, so previously dependent on a story, with not much to use to push the stock around. The facts are the facts, the fundamentals are the fundamentals, and if you think the market for EVs could grow in the US, Europe, and China, then Tesla stock looks cheap in a world were EVs now make up just 2% of global sales.

I'll use the analogy of a predicted snowstorm to depict the naysayers' plight. The weather report is uncertain: we could get a few inches, but we could also get a blizzard. The discussion is speculative: What would we do in the worst case, assuming that it probably won't happen? 

But then, the blizzard comes. And you have no choice but to surrender and dig yourself out.

Original author: Matthew DeBord

Skyrocketing costs of living may have made traditional tech hubs like San Francisco less appealing for tech workers, but other more affordable opportunities still exist around the country. A new study by coding boot camp Coding Dojo ranks cities by weighing the cost of living versus the number of available job postings for developers. The ten highest-ranked cities are largely the suburbs of large tech hubs, but include some surprising outposts in places like Alabama or Missouri.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Developers, hold on to your wallets. 

For programmers, developers, and software engineers of all sorts, it's increasingly unnecessary to live in a tech hub like San Francisco or Seattle — which is good news, as the cost of living in each city only continues to skyrocket.

So why pay the median $4,128 in monthly rent for a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment when you could build your career in a city that isn't among the most expensive? 

A new research report from coding bootcamp Coding Dojo ranked American cities by weighing their cost of living versus the number of open job postings for entry-level and mid-career developers within a 25-mile radius.

Coding Dojo says it assigned a composite score to cities based on the number of open developer postings on job site Indeed, and its cost of living using the median rent of a two-bedroom apartment, as calculated by cost comparison site NerdWallet.

Here are the ten cheapest American cities with the most opportunity for developers:

Original author: Bani Sapra

IHeartMedia recently announced a round of layoffs, saying it was part of a "modernization" process for the company, as it relies increasingly on technological investments to power operations.Laid-off employees from local iHeartMedia radio stations told Business Insider they were caught off guard by the cuts, especially of those who worked in high-performing markets.IHeartMedia is the largest radio network in the US, and the reorganization suggests the company will rely more on central programming and syndication for local stations. Business Insider spoke with 12 laid-off employees who described how they received the news and what they think was behind their layoffs.Click here for more BI Prime articles.

Adam Diaz first started listening to iHeartRadio when he was in the hospital recovering from a back injury that resulted in his medical retirement from the US Coast Guard.

Seven years later, he was hired as a part-time board operator at one of the company's local radio stations in the Delaware area, where he went on to work as an executive producer for country music show "Nashville's Next with Benny."

Diaz said he loved his industry, his company, and his job.

But when iHeartMedia announced this week that it would reorganize to keep up with the modernization of audio, he became one of many local radio workers laid off at the largest radio network in the US.

AllAccess, a radio industry news site, published lists of employees who were laid off, and their count shows more than 100 were let go. Business Insider spoke with 12 laid-off employees, some of whom reported hearing that thousands could be laid off. 

IHeartMedia has 12,500 employees in all, and the company said in a statement to Business Insider the number of layoffs was "relatively small" but wouldn't give an exact figure.

But whatever the exact number, a handful of former employees said the loss of on-air hosts and program directors around the country was already noticeable in local markets.

"I hope the best for the company's and radio's future, but I'm afraid this move will prove damaging to the emotion that makes radio successful, to the culture and soul of the industry," Diaz said.

IHeartMedia insiders were surprised by the layoffs, although some said a recent managerial meeting was an omen

Some former employees who worked at iHeartMedia for decades — since the days when the company was known as Clear Channel — said morale has been declining for several years as traditional radio struggled to maintain audiences who are turning to streaming and podcasting. 

Still, despite red flags, former employees who spoke with Business Insider soon after being laid off described being blindsided by this latest blow to the radio industry.

Looking back, some said they should have expected a reduction in force last week, when iHeartMedia called a meeting in New York City for high-level managers.

"We knew something bad was going to come of it, but we didn't know what," said one former program director who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity because his severance package had not been finalized.

Then, on the morning of Jan. 14, CEO Bob Pittman sent a company-wide email referencing restructuring, and the company publicly announced layoffs. Minutes later, hosts, program directors, executive producers, board operators, and other local staffers around the country felt their phones buzz with calls from their managers.

Managers tasked with conveying the news of the layoffs were given scripts to read, several former employees said, and without specific reasoning as to why they were being let go, many employees caught up in the reduction were left wondering why they were out of a job.

Billy D'Ettorre, a producer of the "Brother Wease" morning show on WAIO in Rochester, New York, said he felt as if his more than 10 years of work at iHeartMedia were all for nothing when he lost his job.

"It caught me totally off guard," D'Ettorre said. "I was literally talking to one of my coworkers about how we were going to handle an upcoming vacation day I had … when our program director came and said, 'Billy, I need to see you.'"

IHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman. Tony Barson/Getty Images for iHeartMedia

IHeartMedia recently emerged from bankruptcy

In 2018, iHeartMedia filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a leveraged buyout in 2008 left it with over $20 billion in debt for the next decade.

Less than a year ago, the company completed a separate restructuring process that reduced its debt from $16.1 billion to $5.75 billion and split it from Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings.

Considering the remaining debt, a few former employees speculated that the most recent round of layoffs was an attempt to save money.

But even well-performing markets with beloved hosts were not spared, some former employees said.

IHeartMedia said the new structure would allow the company to "take advantage of the significant investments it has made in technology and artificial intelligence and its unique scale and leadership position in the audio marketplace."

In a statement, the company said the job cuts were determined by "location" and "function," but wouldn't elaborate.

As iHeartMedia turns to tech to power programming, localized radio content falls by the wayside

IHeartMedia already relies on some centralized programming, or generalized broadcast content meant to be played across multiple stations, but this recent round of layoffs is indicative of a further push into centralizing programming.

As examples, company insiders described how one disc jockey can curate playlists for dozens of local stations, and one morning show host can record content from one city to be broadcast around the whole state. AI technology can even customize playlists for specific communities.

"We are now using our considerable investments in technology to modernize our operations and infrastructure, further setting us apart from traditional media companies," Pittman said in a statement.

As part of the restructuring, iHeartMedia said it would group its markets into three categories based on common needs and characteristics: The region, metro, and community divisions.

The company's largest markets that encompass hundreds of cities, like New York City and Los Angeles, make up the region division. The metro division is comprised of slightly smaller markets that still reach multiple communities, and the community division includes small markets grouped by geographic location and cultural similarities.

"We will continue to serve every local community in which we operate, just as we always have," the company said in a statement.

But it may serve them in a different way. A former program director said that over the past year he's seen national teams of DJs working out of one city to curate playlists for multiple stations, but that he expected that sort of content, as well as syndication, to become even more common in 2020.

"I think a lot of centrally programmed stations will come out of this," the program director said. "You're going to see local stations with one or two disc jockeys now have none."

But while centralized programming reduced the need for DJs and hosts, those who lost their jobs said many listeners quickly noticed the change.

"The response to my being let go has been overwhelming," said D'Ettorre, who announced his departure on Facebook. "It's stunning. I've gotten hundreds, maybe thousands of responses."

Original author: Alyssa Meyers

Facebook is rowing back on plans to put ads in WhatsApp and has disbanded a team that was working on the effort.The surprise move suggests it will not be as simple for Facebook to monetize the app, which it acquired for $22 billion, as analysts hoped.Instagram was a template for a successful Facebook acquisition, with the company filling it with ads and turning it into a massive cash cow.But WhatsApp will need to find a new model, and the team is working on features that will let businesses interact with users.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Facebook is backing off on plans to stick ads inside WhatsApp — raising questions about its vision for monetizing the messaging app.

The Menlo Park, California-based social networking giant acquired WhatsApp for a cool $22 billion in 2014, and the expectation has long been that it would — eventually — load it up with ads to monetize its millions-strong userbase.

But industry watchers that were hoping that day would soon materialise are out of luck: On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook has paused its plans to add ads to WhatsApp. It has disbanded the team working on a team exploring the app's potential for ads, it reported, and "the team's work was then deleted from WhatsApp's code."

Facebook insists that it is still committed to adding ads to WhatsApp over the long term, and the full circumstances of the team's shuttering aren't yet known. But the news makes clear that WhatsApp's path to profitability won't be as simple as some had hoped.

Instagram stands as the prime example of Facebook's success with acquisition, acquired for a not-insubstantial $1 billion in 2012, it is now worth more than a hundred times that: An estimate in 2018 pegged it as worth $100 billion, and its value seems certain to have increased since then.

Instagram's advertising business is thriving, helping power Facebook's continued growth in profits, revenues, and users, and has been hailed as "arguably the best acquisition in the history of tech." Its ad business is functionally similar to the core Facebook app's — ad buyers pay to target users with ads that appear in their feeds, and later, in the ephemeral Stories feature too — and was viewed as a business template for how Facebook could spin up wildly profitable advertising units in other services it builds or acquires.

WhatsApp's future will now evolve differently. A company spokesperson told Business Insider that it is now focusing on building other features that allow businesses to interact with ordinary users, like catalogs that can show what a business has for sale. They said it does still plan to eventually add ads to Status, WhatsApp's version of stories posts that delete after 24 hours, but didn't offer any kind of timeframe for doing so.

The messaging app may still make money off this business-feature approach, either by charging for access to certain features or via developing its ecommerce tools that might allow it to take a cut of purchases and payments made through the platform. (Ecommerce and payments may ultimately bring in billions of dollars a year in new revenue for Facebook.)

Bank of America analysts previously predicted in December 2019 that advertising — along with payments and transactions — on WhatsApp and Messenger could add $12 billion in annual revenue over the next three to five years, working to offset the cost of maintaining the messaging apps for Facebook and start generating profits. Facebook's decision raises question marks over such estimates.

WhatsApp remains an incredibly strong product, with more than 1.5 billion monthly active users (as of 2018). But Facebook's strategic shift indicates that turning it from a popular app into another cash cow won't be as simple as turning an ad spigot to replicate Instagram's success.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at (+1) 650-636-6268 using a non-work device, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.)

Original author: Rob Price

Silicon Valley seems to be ever more curious about basic income.

The idea of providing a financial safety net in the form of free money has gained favor among Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield, and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

Now, the county government may try it out.

Santa Clara County is considering a basic-income pilot for young adults who have either left or are preparing to leave the foster-care system, The Mercury News reported. The county has suggested giving these residents $1,000 per month for one to two years to them help start their adult lives.

Another California city, Stockton, is already trialing a basic-income program by delivering monthly payments of $500 to 125 residents.

"When I first announced we were doing this pilot almost two years ago now, people thought of it as scary or crazy," Stockton's 29-year-old mayor, Michael Tubbs, told Business Insider in December. "It has now become mainstream in a way. People are really debating its merit."

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has thrust basic income into the national spotlight; Yang promises to deliver payments of $1,000 per month to all US citizens over 18 if elected. His proposed program would require some Americans to choose between a monthly stipend and their existing needs-based assistance (though retirement benefits like Social Security would be preserved and veterans and differently abled citizens would keep getting their current benefits).

Basic income in Stockton and Santa Clara

The basic-income trial in Stockton is meant to test whether guaranteeing free money to citizens on a regular basis can limit their financial hardship and improve their overall quality of life.

To qualify for the program, residents had to be at least 18 and reside in a Stockton neighborhood where the median household income was the same as or lower than the city's overall: $46,033.

For Tubbs, it was important that participants continued to receive their existing welfare benefits from the government.

"I would oppose any policy that will get rid of the existing safety net and replace it with a cash transfer," he said. 

Early results from Stockton suggest that participants so far are spending most of their money on food. Critics of basic income argue, however, that regular payments could encourage people to make frivolous purchases or undermine their motivation to find work.

A homeless encampment in San Jose, California. Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

The pilot idea in Santa Clara differs from Stockton's program in that it would offer regular payments to residents who are losing a social service: foster care. 

The county estimates that nearly 60 people in Santa Clara transition out of foster care each year. Foster care typically ends when a person turns 18, though some people are eligible until they're 21. Nearly 200 young adults per year receive "extended foster care" — including housing support and financial assistance for college tuition — beyond age 18 in Santa Clara, according to county estimates. 

So the basic-income trial proposed by the Santa Clara County Supervisors would target one of two groups: either young adults ages 18 to 21 who are still eligible for extended care, or young adults ages 21 to 24 who have aged out of the system. 

If the program were limited to the nearly 60 residents who are transitioning out of foster care, the county told The Mercury News, it could cost around $700,000. 

Basic income has been tested many times, with mixed results

Neither Stockton's program nor Santa Clara's proposed trial abide by the purest definition of universal basic income, since only a small portion of the population is eligible for the stipend. 

The US has never conducted a nationwide universal-basic-income trial, but it has tested a few welfare experiments since the 1960s.

From 1968 to 1982, the US experimented with a negative-income tax, which allowed low-income citizens to receive money from the government instead of paying taxes. The trials ultimately involved about 9,000 citizens in New Jersey, Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana, Seattle, and Denver. The results showed a decrease in employment by the end of the program, but the experiments were considered too small to generate significant conclusions.

Alaska runs what many see as the country's largest basic-income program: the Permanent Fund Dividend, which has been distributing cash to state residents since 1982.

Other non-government basic-income trials have found it difficult to get off the ground.

In 2016, Y Combinator conducted a small basic-income test that gave 100 Oakland families monthly stipends of $1,500. Before stepping down as Y Combinator's president in March 2019, Sam Altman had plans to expand the program to give $1,000 monthly payments to 1,000 participants across two states. 

Skye Gould/Business Insider

But that hasn't happened. 

"It's harder to give away money than you might think," Elizabeth Rhodes, the research director for Y Combinator's basic-income test, told Wired in 2018.

Santa Clara's foster youth are vulnerable to homelessness

Young adults aging out of the foster care system are at high risk of becoming homeless, according to a 2013 study. That's because these adults are quickly cut off from access to a permanent residence. 

In Santa Clara County, the median sale price of a home is more than $1.1 million and the average rent for a 900-square-foot apartment is around $2,900 per month. That makes it difficult for many residents to afford a place to live. 

The latest estimates of Santa Clara County's homeless population suggest around 9,700 live on the streets — an increase of more than 30% since 2017. 

Recipients of the county's proposed stipends wouldn't have to put them towards housing, though. The idea is to allow young adults to make their own decisions about money.

"It's not prescribed specifically to health-care deductibles or medical costs or registration for school or groceries," County Supervisor Dave Cortese said at a meeting in August. "It is the idea that, much like the few UBI pilots that are out there, it is a much more fungible or flexible fund."

Original author: Aria Bendix

 After years of increasing costs and slowing sales, 2020 looks like the year that smartphone prices may finally come down. Advanced features, like edge-to-edge screens and facial recognition, are starting to become more widely available on smartphones that cost far less than $1,000.Apple and Google are also both expected to debut cheaper versions of their respective smartphones this year, in another sign that large tech firms are acknowledging that $1,000 upgrades can be hard for many customers to justify.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.  

It's 2020, which means it's been roughly 13 years since Apple laid the foundation for the modern smartphone with its original iPhone in 2007.

To say that smartphones have made leaps and bounds since then would be an understatement. While the original iPhone was essentially an iPod touch with cellular connectivity, today's mobile devices have evolved into superfast pocket-sized computers with professional-grade cameras.

But the most exciting change in the smartphone industry to emerge over the next year may not have anything to do with boosting performance, creating new screens that bend and fold, or enhancing their cameras. Rather, it's the notion that high-quality phones with features like facial recognition and borderless screens may no longer come at $1,000 a pop. 

Following several years of increasing smartphone prices, 2020 is already shaping up to be a banner year for cheaper smartphones as advanced features begin trickling down to more affordable products.

The year has just begun, but based on the smartphone launches that have occurred in 2020 so far – and the ones that are rumored to arrive in the coming months — it looks like a wave of compelling new devices that cost noticeably less than recent flagships from Apple and Samsung are on the horizon.

Original author: Lisa Eadicicco

Business Insider obtained 58 pages of correspondence between the SEC and WeWork about the coworking company's IPO filing and questions or concerns the agency had about the document.One crucial piece of the back-and-forth centered on the company's use of a non-GAAP financial metric.The SEC originally asked WeWork to "remove disclosure of this measure throughout your registration statement."After pushback from WeWork's lawyers, including a former chief of the same SEC division asking the company to scrap the metric, the agency relented and allowed the company to continue using the metric after it made some changes. Click here for more BI Prime stories.

When WeWork first released the documents for its initial-public-offering filing in mid-August, investors, analysts, and journalists zeroed in on a creative financial metric the company was using to show the performance of each location. 

Dubbed the contribution margin after an earlier and quite similar metric called community-adjusted EBITDA was universally panned, it departed from general accepted accounting principles (GAAP, in accounting speak) in how it accounted for lease costs.

The metric was intended to reflect the true timing of revenue and costs associated with the real-estate leases, according to the company. The figure was positive when key GAAP numbers were in the red. 

It turns out the Securities and Exchange Commission had concerns about the metric. In a nine-page letter to then-CEO Adam Neumann dated August 30, the SEC's division of corporation finance raised numerous issues and concluded one section with the words: "Please remove disclosure of this measure throughout your registration statement."

After the company offered to change the disclosure as long as it could keep the metric, the agency relented. A subsequent letter from the SEC asked WeWork to clarify some elements and change its name to reflect its purpose as a location profitability metric but otherwise allowed it.

WeWork now uses something called "location contribution margin," which includes straight-line lease costs, according to an October 11 presentation. The exclusion of those lease costs was one of the SEC's chief gripes.

Business Insider got the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request that was initially denied before a successful appeal. The Wall Street Journal first reported on some of this in November, but we're making all 58 pages of correspondence between the company and the SEC available here for the first time.

A WeWork spokesperson declined to comment for this story, as did a spokesperson for Neumann. The SEC declined to comment. 

The correspondence is interesting because it came after WeWork had publicly revealed its filing, suggesting the company thought it had successfully answered the bulk of the SEC's questions.

The company had filed an S-1 confidentially in December 2018, meaning draft revisions were shielded from broader view. Because of the JOBS Act behind the confidential filing process, Business Insider has not been able to secure any of the correspondence between when the company filed confidentially and when the S-1 was made public in mid-August. 

The lengthy and dense letters show a back-and-forth over a figure that was critical to WeWork selling itself. Comment letters from the SEC are often part of the S-1 process — but what was unusual here is that so much still needed to be worked out and that an SEC accountant would go on to publicly slam the issue. 

At a December accounting conference months after WeWork shelved its offering, Patrick Gilmore, a senior SEC accountant, chided an unnamed subleasing company over its use of contribution margin. The company had used its own "tailored" way of calculating the number — even though its gross margin, a comparable "official" number, was negative, he said. "It was eye-opening." (The SEC's August 30 letter cited the gross margin specifically.)

The company spent a lot of space in its SEC filing justifying its use of contribution margin, he said in December, and if simply explaining why a company is using a metric is that complex, "you probably want to rethink that measure."

The SEC's August 30 letter took a more measured tone, specifically raising four points with respect to the use of the metric. On September 5, WeWork lawyers Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP pushed back in a letter signed by John White, who once led the SEC division he was now communicating with. It came a day after other lawyers at Skadden Arps addressed the agency's comments on everything but that metric and a related point.

Below, we've presented both group's comments about the contribution margin point by point to make it easier to understand how the company successfully countered the agency's argument. The contribution margin stayed in WeWork's IPO prospectus all the way through the company's official cancellation of the offering in September.

Each excerpt contains a link to the source documents.

SEC (August 30): "The measure 'Contribution Margin excluding non-cash GAAP straight-line lease cost' ignores the recognition principles prescribed by ASC 842, specifically paragraph 2025-6, resulting in a performance measure that excludes a material aspect of your lease costs and primary cost of sales." Link.

Cravath (September 5): "The Company understands from conversations with the Staff that this could be considered misleading in violation of the principle enunciated in the Staff's Non-GAAP Compliance and Disclosure Interpretation 100.01. The Company respectfully disagrees, however, and would note, respectfully, that whether a non-GAAP financial measure is misleading is ultimately a legal determination which must be informed both by Supreme Court and other judicial precedent and by Commission rules and guidance relating to materiality." Link.

SEC (August 30): "We understand from your disclosure on page 82 that there will be periods during which your non-GAAP measure will include revenues from leasing certain properties without the related lease costs. In this regard, we note that the average rent free period for your lease arrangements is nine months, with some leases containing provisions for significantly longer periods of free rent. We also note that the same property may start generating revenue as early as five months after your date of possession." Link.

Cravath (September 5): "The Company wishes to respectfully point out that while some locations may earn revenue for a short period of time during which there are no related lease costs, the limited period of time in which this occurs is only a one-time period toward the beginning of the opening of a new location." Link.

SEC (August 30): "Your measure excludes the straight-line aspect of lease cost, while including the benefit related to lease incentives." Link.

Cravath (September 5): "The Company respectfully submits that the Registration Statement is fully transparent about its treatment of lease incentives and contains robust disclosure regarding the treatment of the benefit related to lease incentives and why those amounts are not adjusted out of the Company's two Contribution Margin non-GAAP measures. ... The Company believes that including the impact of amortization of lease incentives also helps it compare the performance of locations across its portfolio, as in some cases— particularly in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions where the Company is opening new locations—the Company has not always been able to negotiate a tenant improvement allowance into the terms of its leases." Link.

SEC (August 30): "On page 72, you characterize Contribution Margin as a measure of unit economics or non-GAAP gross profit. Your current disclosure does not include a presentation of the most directly comparable financial measure, gross profit, calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. Gross profit should contemplate all cost of sales per Rule 503 of Regulation S-X including, but not limited to pre-opening costs, depreciation or amortization expense associated with leasehold improvements, equipment and furniture, which are an integral part of your customer offerings." Link.

Cravath (September 5): "The Company respectfully advises the Staff that it has revised the disclosure on page 74 of the Registration Statement to remove reference to the term non-GAAP gross profit in response to the Staff's comment. Contribution Margin is a measure of non-GAAP unit economics (not of gross profit) and the Company does not present gross profit on its consolidated statement of operations [link]. ... Accordingly ... the Company views loss from operations as the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP as presented on the Company's consolidated statement of operations. The Company thus provides reconciliations of its Contribution Margin non-GAAP measures to loss from operations as presented on its consolidated statement of operations." Link.

Lastly, the SEC concluded by asking WeWork and Neumann to "Please remove disclosure of this measure throughout your registration statement."

The lawyers answered the broad point, citing the items above and telling agency staffers that their interpretation of the agency's regulations weren't necessarily correct. 

Cravath (September 5): "In light of the Company's desire to find a course forward, the Company proposes for your consideration a revision to the Company's future disclosures of Contribution Margin to present only Contribution Margin including non-cash GAAP straight-line lease cost and then to provide the amount and description of non-cash GAAP straight-line lease cost impact immediately next to such measure, and to not present Contribution Margin excluding non-cash GAAP straight-line lease cost (as shown in the attached changed pages removing Contribution Margin excluding non-cash GAAP straight-line lease cost), while otherwise leaving the calculation and presentation of Contribution Margin as reflected in the Registration Statement being filed today. If such an approach would address your concerns and allow the Company to move forward, the Company will include a revised presentation reflecting such an approach in the next amendment to the Registration Statement." Link.

One week after receiving Cravath's response, on September 11 the SEC appeared to concede on the contribution margin, dropping its demand to remove mention of the metric and instead offering five suggestions of how to frame it in the document. The agency asked the company to change its name and to remove the qualifying language that the company had proposed. Link. 

In its initial letter, the agency also took issue with other elements of WeWork's filing, including its decision to group the underwriters in a circle rather than the customary lineup, its various membership levels, and a chart that seemed to suggest that some locations broke even before they were open to members. The lawyer responses here are from Skadden Arps, another firm hired by WeWork.

SEC (August 30): "Please highlight the lead or managing underwriter(s) as required by Item 501(b)(8)(i) of Regulation S-K." Link.

Skadden (September 4): "As discussed with the Staff on August 30, 2019, the Company respectfully advises the Staff that the underwriters highlighted on the cover page of the prospectus are the lead underwriters for the offering." Link.

SEC (August 30): "We note the chart on page 5 depicting a timeline for your locations. Your chart seems to indicate that your locations 'breakeven' prior to the location opening for members. Please revise to make clear the number or percentage of your mature locations that are profitable and operate on a cash flow positive basis." Link.

Skadden (September 4): "The Company respectfully advises the Staff that is has revised the disclosure on pages 4, 81, and 134 to address the Staff's comments and has removed the chart to which Staff's comment referred." Link.

SEC (August 30): "In this regard, it appears you have several categories of membership types. In order to give investors more insight and understanding of your business, disclose your various membership types and the revenue associated with each membership type. For each membership type, disclose the average length of their contractual commitments." Link.

Skadden (September 4): "The Company respectfully advises the Staff that it has revised the disclosure on page 70 to address the Staff's comment. As disclosed on page 70, the Company has only two types of memberships: WeWork memberships and on-demand memberships." Link.

Read the entire 58 pages at this link.

Original author: Dakin Campbell

Ex-YouTube strategist Will Eagle gave us his biggest tips on becoming famous online, ahead of the release of his new book next month. He shares advice from some of the people behind some of the biggest YouTube channels in the world, including Bad Lip Reading, The King of Random and How To Cake It. Eagle told Business Insider how he learned that being a YouTuber was "genuinely hard work", saying that the most successful vloggers are the ones who stick at it. Click here for more BI Prime stories. 

Becoming a YouTuber is, for some kids, a career aspiration.

Luckily for next-generation PewDiePies, a former YouTube strategist has revealed his hottest tips for going viral online, gathering advice from 45 of the platform's biggest stars.

Will Eagle is a Brit who headed up the company's brand strategy in California until last year.

In his upcoming book, "Read This If You Want to be YouTube Famous", Eagle shares advice from some of the firm's biggest channels, including Bad Lip Reading and How To Cake It, which boast close to 12 million subscribers between them. 

Eagle's new book is set to be released on February 4 and can be pre-ordered here.

We got our hands on some exclusive extracts below, featuring advice from channels with millions of followers including Bad Lip Reading, How to Cake It and Molly Burke: 

Original author: Martin Coulter

A new report on global internet shutdowns found there were 122 major shutdowns in 2019, and in total they cost the world economy roughly $8 billion.Internet shutdowns are frequently used to clamp down on civil unrest, particularly during protests and national elections.
The countries hardest hit by the economic cost of internet shutdowns in 2019 were Iraq, Sudan, India, and Venezuela.One of the report's authors told Business Insider there is good reason to think the number of shutdowns will continue to rise in 2020.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Governments around the world are getting quicker and quicker to cut their citizens off from the internet, and according to new research, they're likely to get more trigger-happy.

According to a new report from Top 10 VPN, there were a total 122 major internet shutdowns around the world in 2019 — not counting a further 90 regional shutdowns imposed in India alone. This added up to a total of 18,225 hours, and included social media shutdowns as well as complete internet blackouts.

Internet shutdowns are a tool deployed by governments to quash civil disobedience amongst their citizens, and often go hand-in-hand with more sweeping — and sometimes brutal — government clampdowns.

Anti-government protests have been ongoing in Iraq since October 2019, when the government enforced internet blackouts. Murtadha Sudani/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Naturally the shutdowns hugely disrupt people's daily lives, and Top 10 VPN put a cash figure on this disruption. Using the Cost of Shutdown Tool developed by NGOs NetBlocks and The Internet Society, Top 10 VPN calculated that internet shutdowns cost the global economy $8.05 billion in 2019.

Four countries lost over $1 billion to shutdowns:

Iraq imposed 263 hours of internet shutdowns, and suffered $2.3 billion in losses.Sudan imposed 1,560 hours of internet shutdowns, and suffered $1.9 billion in losses.India imposed 4,196 hours of internet shutdowns in specific regions around the country, and suffered $1.3 billion in losses. Top 10 VPN noted that in real terms the economic loss is likely to be higher because it was unable to include all India's highly localized shutdowns — the Indian government sometimes shuts off internet to specific city districts for a few hours at a time.Venezuela imposed 171 hours of internet shutdowns and suffered $1.1 billion in losses.

In 2019 India also imposed the longest-ever internet shutdown of any democracy. In August the Indian government imposed an internet blackout on the disputed territory of Kashmir which lasted more than 150 days, during which it axed Kashmir's semi-autonomous status.

The indefinite shutdown was ruled unlawful by India's supreme court last week, and the government was given seven days to review the restrictions on Kashmir. Broadband and 2G internet were partially restored to the region on Tuesday, although a block remained in place for social media sites.

Kashmiri women protesting the scrapping of Kashmir's semi-autonomous status in September 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas

Often governments cite public safety as a reason for shutting off the internet, or curbing the spread of misinformation. However another surprising justification is preventing students from cheating during exams. Iraq, Algeria, and Ethiopia all enforced internet shutdowns during national exam periods — although Ethiopia kept the shutdown in force at the weekend when no exams were being held.

According to the report the cost of internet shutdowns has shot up by 235% in the last three years. "Unless there is a dramatic shift in approach from the international community, we expect the number of intentional network disruptions to continue to rise," one of the report's authors, Samuel Woodhams, told Business Insider.

Woodhams added that since the biggest correlating factor linking shutdowns in 2019 was major protests and national elections.

"As the events of 2020 have so far demonstrated, we can certainly expect popular protests in authoritarian countries to continue. As there are also several important elections planned in countries that have previously restricted access to the internet, there is good reason to believe the number of internet shutdowns will continue to rise in 2020," he said.

Just five days into 2020 Netblocks reported a social media blackout in Venezuela ahead of its National Assembly leadership vote. Internet Shutdowns, a site which tracks shutdowns in India, has logged three new localised shutdowns since the year began.

"Despite becoming increasingly common, internet shutdowns are a disproportionate and unnecessary measure that infringe on fundamental human rights and significantly damage the economy. There is also no evidence that they work in terms of restoring public order and may actually contribute to an escalation of violence," Woodhams added.

Original author: Isobel Asher Hamilton

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks during a news conference, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Associated Press

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.

Alphabet broke a market cap of $1 trillion for the first time ever. Alphabet joins Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon in a small group of US companies that have reached the milestone. Nancy Pelosi slammed Facebook, calling the tech giant "shameful" and "very irresponsible." House Speaker criticized the social media juggernaut as the row over the company's size and influence over elections continued. Microsoft announced its plan to become carbon negative by 2030. The company's ultimate goal is to remove from the environment by 2050 all of the carbon the company has emitted since it was founded in 1975.Facebook has cancelled efforts to put ads in WhatsApp, more than a year after its founders resigned in protest of the effort. The decision to disband a team dedicated to implementing ads on WhatsApp is a surprising turnaround in Facebook's efforts to monetize the messaging app.An Amazon Prime Air partner is laying off 1,600 workers as Amazon brings more jobs in-house. Amazon partner Pinnacle Logistics is laying off workers based at Baltimore-Washington International airport.Facebook has blocked an Israeli firm which claims to be able to "subconsciously influence" users. The social media giant has issued a cease and desist notice to The Spinner which uses posts disguised as editorial content, according to the BBC.SoftBank has offered to invest up to $40 billion in Indonesia's capital. Bloomberg reports that the Indonesian government is set to meet SoftBank's Masayoshi Son in Davos and Tokyo as the Japanese firm decides its investment strategy.Turkey has lifted a ban on Wikipedia after two and half years after the country's top court ruled it unconstitutional. The online encyclopedia was blocked in Turkey in April 2017, after it refused to delete articles critical of the country's government, the New York Times reported.A Tesla sales employee sent a mass email to her coworkers asking for salespeople to get a pay raise after a "devastating" cut in commissions. Tesla salespeople have had their ability to earn commissions cut with one staff member asking for a 15% salary increase to compensate. NBC will launch its streaming service Peacock in July. The company's platform will likely include ads alongside exclusive content and will likely have three separate subscription tiers, The Verge reported.

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Original author: Callum Burroughs