After Fact Check, Trump Threatens Twitter Regulations; Instagram Will Share Revenue With Creators; Facebook Buried Evidence of Algorithms Encouraging Polarization; Tesla Cuts EV Prices

After Twitter…at LONG last….mildly reined in Donald Trump, the Tweeter in Chief went crazy, as could have been predicted by a 3 year old. According to techcrunch.com, Trump started Tweeting threats to regulate the platform or even shut it down. “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” he tweeted. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016.” After railing against Twitter, Trump again went into his recent mantra about how bad mail-in ballots are, calling them “free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft.”

In a first for the platform, Instagram will begin sharing revenue with creators through ads in IGTV and badges that viewers can purchase on Instagram Live. Theverge.com reports that next week, ads will begin showing up in IGTV for about 200 approved English-speaking creator partners. Instagram will share a 55% cut with creators…the same percentage as what creators get on Facebook Watch. They plan to open up the cash payout to creators around the world as they expand the program. The ads will run about 13 seconds.

Some internal research showed that Facebook’s algorithms encouraged polarization, and apparently CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other brass killed the idea of fixing the problem. Businessinsider.com, quoting the Wall St. Journal, noted that the report concluded “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” Zuckerberg and policy head Joel Kaplan repeatedly nixed fixing the problem either because they feared appearing biased against conservatives or simply lost interest in solving the problem. Multiple reports date back to 2016! Facebook teams pitched multiple fixes, including: limiting the spread of information from groups’ most hyperactive and hyperpartisan users; suggesting a wider variety of groups than users might normally encounter; and creating subgroups for heated debates to prevent them from derailing entire groups. However, these proposals were often nixed entirely or significantly diluted by Zuckerberg and policy chief Joel Kaplan.

Tesla has…without fanfare… whacked prices of its electric cars in the USD by thousands. Engadget.com says Model S and Model X have been given a $5000 haircut. The Model S Long Range Plus EV was $79990, and is now $74,990. The Model X SSUV is now $79,990, also 5 grand lighter than the prior price. The Model 3 has been trimmed by a lesser amount, $2000, while the new Model Y price is unchanged. Tesla will reportedly also cut prices in China by around 4%. Apparently making the money back on the back end, Tessa has eliminated free access to its Supercharger service for Model S and Model X SUVs.