Racist Emojis Are Latest Test for Facebook, Twitter

dot com. You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on the Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Searched Bloomberg clovel News well handful of headlines when it comes to the fight against COVID nineteen in the United States and around the world. Pretty we mentioned that there is a panel of scientists from around the world who've been cautioning that most people won't actually need a booster shop because vaccines are performing so well.

In the meantime, we do see on the Bloomberg Vaccine Track or more than five point seven one billion doses have been administered cases those are passing two four point seven million deaths exceeding four point six three million let's get into it with Dr lager Day Williams, chief of Staff of Neurology at Columbia University, also the founder of Hip Hop Public Health. The organization works to deliver positive health behavior change through the transformative power of music, art

and science. Dr Williams, it's great to have you back on the show. I should know Bloomberg Philanthropies has provided a grant to Hip Hop Public Health. Uh, what I want to start with the booster news? Dr Williams, Where do you fall when it comes to whether or not we need boosters? Well, I I think that we the general population. I don't think that's compelling evidence to support

UM the fact that the general population needs booster shots. However, UM, I do support UM booster shots for certain populations, especially those who are immuno compromise UM and and more. What about age? Does does age? Where does general population fall when it comes to age? Should people over the age

of sixty or sixty five? Yeah? I think yeah, yeah, I there's not enough compelling evidence outside of those who have really weak immune systems UM to you know, to receive the booster And even those situations, I think the booster is not really looked at as a booster shot, but a third dose UM as opposed to a true

booster where we we really don't have sufficient effortency. You know, what we're seeing is that there is UH, you know, there is a difference between falling antibody levels and vaccine efficacy. And we we know you know from immunology that UM, you know, mild disease is more dependent on you know,

protection from these neutralizing antibodies. However, more severe disease UM you know, involves not just your humor le or humoral immune system, which is in the neutralizing antibodies that people are also concerned about that are falling to vie a disease also involved memory responses in another type of immunity called cell mediated immunity UH and the cell mediated community and these many memory responses have generally have a longer,

longer lived lifespan. And so we are going to see breakthrough cases that we are going to see some mild disease, but the vaccines are still pretty good at keeping people out of the hospital and preventing to VIA disease. Dr

Williams to be a great point about that. Essentially, this idea that when you do take the vaccine, your your symptoms become a lot less severe, But does that also lead to potentially a more like a larger likelihood of contracting the virus simply because you do have your guard down. I believe there was a study coming out of I want to say Scotland or the UK really really where they started to see a lot of the new new virus cases coming or happening in people that were actually vaccinated.

How do you how do you kind of think about that? Well, my my biggest con earn is remains the unvaccinated. Uh that that is my biggest concern, the unvaccinated and also um, the you know countries around the world where they don't even have um, they don't even have vaccines available for their populations. I'm concerned about those two situate situations for

the same reason. One, I think the focus on on you know, getting booster shots, you know, has kind of clouded um, it kind of begins to slowly eclipse the more serious issue, which is getting the unvaccinated vaccinated, because that is where the real threat lies. You know, we know that the vaccine because it's sufficient to prevent severities even now. But what we also know is that the cases we're seeing in our hospital. As of today, we have two d and twenty cases of COVID in our

in our hospital where I am. I'm at New York Vegetarian Columbia. Thankfully, our cases seem to be PLATEAUNG. But one of the things that's completely unequivocal is that ninety nine percent of our cases are among the unvaccinated um you know, break the breakthroughs that we see a type typically in the outpatient setting, people coming to the officers, they have a little mild infective breakthrough and they go

they go home, and they quarantine, etcetera, etcetera. But the real threat is that, yes, you know, with the delta variant, we can be carriers of this of the virus even if we're asymptomatic or exhibiting mild disease. But if we come across the unvaccinated individuals, they can be severely get severely sick from this disease to and potentially die. And

that is what we're seeing today. And so our emphasis, in my opinion, needs to really focus on those unvaccinated people because they're the ones that are most vulnerable to getting sick and dying in the hospital and on the same note, we also need to pay attention to some to some of some of our low middle income countries because you know, if that's where we're more likely to get a new variant, another new area appearing um and

and potentially causing havoc around the world. R. Williams, you make a great point about simply there's the divergence that you're seeing between those emerging markets and developed markets. I want to very quickly ask you if what you're seeing in kind of the emerging market space where they are really trying to kind of accelerate their vaccinations, what does the time frame look like to really do that well.

I think a lot of a lot of these low middle income countries they have they're really crippled by poor infrastructure UM and you know, poor testing capabilities for infrastructure, poor backing distribution capability. That is a real challenge. And and but a lot of these governments are really trying uh to kind of ramp up their infrastructure, and they're getting some support from from the international community now and we're seeing, uh, you know, more vaccines arrived in some

of these countries. I want to get right back to Dr lager Day Williams, Chief of staff of Neurology at Columbia University. Also the founder of Hip Hop Public Health. Bloomberg Filancer has provided a grant to hip Hop Public Health. The organization works to deliver positive health behavior changed the transformative power of music, art and science. Dr Williams, I want to get an update from you about what has worked and what has not been working when it comes

to getting communities of color vaccinated. If I look at New York City statistics, I can see that uh, black and Hispanic or black UM demographically, blacks only here of all ages who are eligible to be vaccinated in the city have gotten vaccinated. That compares to eighty percent of Asians, fifty seven percent of Hispanic and Latinos, and fifty of whites. Give us an update from your end. Yeah, Well, the

good news is that the numbers are going up. Um. We we've seen these numbers go up, especially over the last a few months. Um and um. And I expect that these numbers to continue to rise. And and I think it's a it's it's a combination of up with the factors that are driving these these rising vaccination rates. I think one of them is dis continued you know, ground ground. Uh, you know, grassroots, you know, one on

one counseling just just completely overwhelming. Uh. You know the media, you know, community organizations, getting our churches on board, working one on one with individuals just to the message has become almost ubiquitous now in that and these conversations have been you know, have been really supported by some of the mandates, you know, the sticks that are coming into play across New York City where employers, including where I

am right now, are now mandating the vaccine. Dr Williams, just in the last minute that we have with you, can you talk a little bit about the success of Community Immunity and the follow up that you're working on in just a couple of weeks. Sure. Yeah, we're so excited by Community Immunity UM. It's been received across the country. Multiple organizations are are sharing this resource, community organizations, community health workers. Uh. And what we're seeing is this really

sparkling a lot of conversations. Uh. And it's really we believe, helping to move the needle that we're seeing not only in New York City but across this country. We recently added a new video on the variant um and which we released recently and our most recent project is the big launch of our Spanish community Immunity series and we're very very excited about that. And when does that one launch? That will be launching within the next next few weeks, so please um stay tuned, UM and UM, we will

be making some announcements very soon UM. And we're very very excited by this because we think it not only has direct uh, it's not only important for this country, but I think it could also help with some of our Latin South American countries in our lands, that Spanish speaking countries surrounding us. Dr large Day Williams, it is always great when you join us. Thank you so much for taking the time. Dr Williams, Chief of Staff of Neurology at Columbia University, also the founder of Hip Hop

Public Health. Bloomberg Philanthropies has provided a grant to hip Hop Public Health is an organization that works to deliver positive health behavior change through the transformative power of music, art and science. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So you might remember just a few months ago after Elon England that lost to Italy in July and the final UEFA European Championship, black players for the British side

faced an onslaught of bananas. It wasn't physical fruit, they were emoji slung at their social media profiles, along with other racist imagery, including images of monkeys. With us now is Joel Weber, editor at Bloomberg Business weekis with us in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Also joining us Ivan Levingston, European tech and advertising reporter at Bloomberg News. He joins

us on the phone from London. Joel, Whenever I read a story like this, I think to myself, I thought, we had the best and brightest working for these companies. How can they not get these get this type of content moderation under control. Well, it's one thing when it's words, which I think is a struggle in and of itself, and something that the tech companies have done a reasonable

job of at least attempting to address. But emojis bring up a whole other challenge, and I thought that that was interesting, especially just because of the One of the interesting things about this article I found was even just a history of of bananas and once upon a time. Thirty years ago, there was there was an episode that the story goes into where physical bananas were used, and

now obviously we're talking digital ones. So I then talk to us about emojis and why they are such a challenge for tech companies, sure saying, and you know, thanks for the interest. Um. You know, tech companies have grappled for years with abusive speech on their platform, and in some ways, emojis are just an extension of that. You know, people adapting new forms of communication into harassment. Unfortunately, it happens um and and you know, as speech and and

you know, abuse adapts. Opposes a new challenge for social media companies and content moderating algorithms because these algorithms will be trained oftentimes on older texts, and so when they encounter a newer character like in emoji, they have to have to start from scratch essentially and figuring out what it means. So I've even heard emoji's described as a sort of a loophole because the algorithms are a little

bit behind on analyzing them. That's really interesting. How do you really tackle something like this in a world where pictures are always evolving, when their messages are constantly evolving, especially in this climate. How does a tech company actually manage this? Is it just about the algorithms or do you actually have to have kind of the human component in it a little bit? Yeah, I mean that's that's

something I explored in the story. I think. On the one hand, you know, defenders of the tech company will say that that emojis are very complex. Understand, you know, pictures work a thousand words. Uh you know, is a winky face a flirtation or suggesting a joke? Um. On the on the other hand, um, perhaps is the place where human moderators and and some kind of basic uh you know, ground rules I guess can can play a part.

You know, maybe an algorithm that might take millions of examples to understand if an emoji is being used appropriately or not. The human moderator might be able to very quickly make that doesn't call and help train the algorithm,

or you know. I interviewed a startup called Respondology that works with a lot of sports organizations, and they offer a very simple screening tool where you can say, okay, these are some emojis that we just don't want on our athletes profiles, and just we're not going to worry about what do they mean in this context of that we're just gonna kind of blanket hide these comments. So where specifically do the tech platforms will come into this?

What did what did Facebook the company that Instagram tell you? And what about Twitter? Um? You know, they they stressed that, you know, they're worried about all abusive speech, including emojis, UM, and that they were you know, active in the hours

um after the Euro's football match. UM. But it's it's hard to really know what's going on inside the black box in terms of, uh, you know, how they're tweaking the algorithms to tackle emojis and and are there you know, you mentioned a couple in the story and obviously we've mentioned a couple already that that um our emojis that can be you know, used for for hate and and is that is there sort of like is anyone keeping score about like what the ones that are are the

worst are? And is one of the solutions simply to like in a moment where something is trending, just to make it not available anymore. Yeah, I think, um, I think you know, Facebook, that's one of the things that they're doing, is they've added a few classic strings of emojis that are used almost always in in uh an abusive way. UM, but sounds like a no fly list. UM. I haven't seen any kind of score, but unfortunately UM

that that we would even need one. But UM, you know, I think like the monkey emoji, the banana emoji, these are um, you know, classic used in racist ways. And I also mentioned the piece, um you know, the money bag emoji. I think I saw the yellow star emoji

had been linked to you know, anti Semitic incidents. What's and what's crazy here is also that professional athletes end up being the ones that are are targeted the most, and obviously they're high profile and have huge social following, so it's sort of some extent it makes sense there. But has there been noteworthy sort of hate UM directed at anybody else that has caught UM attention of the

network of the social social media companies and tech companies. UM. To be honest, when I was searching, UM, you know, in terms of very recent the soccer players actually found to be kind of the of the sphere on this UM you know, it's been going on for a couple of years, but there seems to be a real issue, um, in terms of soccer players getting an abusive emojis on social media, and I thought it was really interesting. I mean,

it's not only limited to the soccer. Again, this startup respondology that works with sports teams, uh, you know, their president was telling me that when they go and they work with the Detroit Pistons, the NASCAR, and their president was telling me, you know, when we sit down with sports executives, emojis almost always, you know, come up pretty quickly. It's it's a widespread issue for athletes. I and let's take this international here, because we're talking about a European championship.

Things mean different, Different pictures mean different things in various countries, in various part of the world. Did you come across your reporting basically how some of these international tech companies or are translating, for example, these international messages, like you said, a banana emoji, for example, might mean something different in the UK might mean something completely different. And let's say

Southern Asia for example. UM yeah, I mean I was actually discussing with someone today an example of um, you know, a player, a player whose nickname is the gorilla. Apparently I wasn't aware of this example, but his nickname is the Gorilla, and I guess, um, you know, there were issues with people kind of cheering him on posting gorillas on his page, and uh, you know these comments, I guess for being deleted because they were being taken at the time of abuse when they really weren't. So it's

it's certainly a nuanced issue. UM And again asking I mentioned the piece, Uh, you know a few other kind of examples in the past, like you know Apple about five years ago. I think there was encouragement, uh you know, allow for you have different skin tones emojis and UM, and then they ended up being some criticism that actually allowing different tone emojis created, you know, enabled new kinds of um abuse and and the Indonesian government. Yeah, it's

we're gonna have to leave it there. But this is a story that everybody should check out. It's available at Bloomberg dot com. Ivan Lemmingston European tech and advertising reporter. His story will be featured in the upcoming issue of Business Week magazine. Read it now on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg Duck hom Slash business Week. Also joining us Joel Webber, editor of Bloomberg business Week. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and

Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovy on Bloomberg Radio. It's Bloomberg Business Week, Tim stane A and Credy Gupta live in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. These stories continue to come out of China. We are fortunately joined by Andy Brown, editorial director at Bloomberg New Economy. He joins us on

the prone from New Hampshire. Andy, your your Saturday Bloomberg New Economy newsletter, you write about After President Hi Jan Pain came to power in twelve, he made it known that he wanted to turn China into a soccer superpower, host the World Cup and win it. Responding to that challenge, some of China's richest tycoons developed a passion for the quote beautiful game, and they splashed out on soccer clubs

and star players. But today the fortunes of the tycoons who sought to cry favor with she they are sinking fast. What's going on? Yeah, So this is a sort of

a little morality tale if you like. As you just note, he comes to power and and he wants to turn around Um Chinese soccer, and the Billy and some of the richest tycoons in China decide that they want to ingratiate themselves with him by investing massively in soccer the game, both in China and overseas, and they set up clubs that you know, attract players from the top clubs in

Europe and Latin America. UH. And the best example is a prime example is Guangzo ever grand Um, which was set up by Shijayen the term of of Evergranded massive real estate conglomerate conglomerate and Ali Bapa's Jack Ma. So this whole effort has basically blown up UM. The Chinese men's soccer team is about as pitiable today as it was when Shi Jimping took power. It ranked something like seventy in the world versus seventies seventh twenty when he took over. UM. It's just about to crash out of

the World Cup qualifiers, lost one nail to Japan. Meanwhile, billionaires as a class out of favor UH in China and in particular Jack mar is in trouble. So what is the international reaction to this? I mean, you talked about one in your in your commer should say one foreign signing such as Colombian Stricord Jackson Martinez. So, I mean, people know this is happening. What has the international fallout

been like? This is this is really apart from the fact that China is not the global soccer superpower that Chi Jim being hoped it would be. Um, this is really a domestic story where um Si jimping is now uh decided that he's seen enough of the of seeing wealth being generated by a relatively small number of billionaires and although a number that is increasing very rapidly um and he wants them to give back and they're being shaken down for billions of dollars to promote what equals

common prosperity or a more equipible society. So Andy, connect this to what's happening with the Evergrand Crisis. As it escalates this protests breakout across China. The group is facing mountain protests by homebuyers, retail investors, and even its own employees, raising the stakes for authorities in Beijing as they try to prevent the property giants debt crisis sparking social unrest. Yeah, this is a this is a different aspect of the crisis.

This is the government deciding that it wants to reign in the debt of China's biggest property companies um and it is it's taking out a swath of billionaire profits and wealth. The latest, the latest billionaire couple actually to run into trouble the husband and wife power couple John Keen and Panther, the co founders of the Soho China, which is one of China's primary office and retail property developers.

They had tried to sell the comp their company to black Stone Stephen Schwartzman's Black Stones for three billion dollars, and that deal then got stuck in an anti monopoly review, and for reasons that are still unclear but probably not unconnected to that review, which was going nowhere fast, blacks own and so Hope hold the plug. On Friday today you saw Soho China shares in Hong Kong plugs something like.

I want to ask you about why the American investor should really paying attention to the story going on thousands and thousands miles away connected to us, for for for those of us who are unfamiliar, well, for two reasons. For firstly, because China is now a major investment destination for Wall Street firms. They're rushing in the China to take advantage of the country's massive pools of savings, and they want to mediate those savings create wealth management products.

One day, they hope that they'll be able to to help some of that money invest overseas. But second of all, that there are a lot of two trillion dollars worth of Chinese shares which are traded in the US, and so American funds, including pension funds, pretty heavily exposed to what's happening over there. And what's happening right now is there's crackdown on the tech sector, which appears to be broadening now too much of the private entrepreneurial class in China.

Is any sector safe from the crackdown? Well, you hear people like Cathy Wood of saying, you know, you've got to invest in those sectors that the government favors, and so that might be heart so called hard tech versus soft tech or consumer consumer tech. UM, it's really hard to say. I mean, you know, the crackdown has been so broad, it's covered so many sectors, from fintech to

add tag to real estate. UM it's really difficult to know what exactly the government's intention is and if it really is a generally attempt to eventually soaked the rich to pay the poor. The government says it's not, but it does certainly seem to be that way. UM. Pretty much any company now that you know, has wealthy private billionaire owners is going to find itself in some way or another. UM a target. That's certainly a large number of companies and relatively large number of people as well.

Andy Brown, editorial director of Bloomberg New Economy form Andy, thank you as always for taking the time. We really appreciate it, he joins us on the phone from New Hampshire Brock the Journal. Yeah but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no no, no, honey, please, I'll do the right revel exst me, I don't want to drive to drive, baby, it's the questions kept drying Greeken. This drive to the close give me things well, dry n on Blueberg Radio.

It is the Drive to the close. And we're just over ten minutes away from the market close on this Monday, September another choppy session. Market really looking for direction. We do see the SMP five hundred higher, but just barely right now, not even a point. The Dow higher by close to six tenths of one percent, the Nastact though in the red, down close to three tenths of one percent. Let's get all into it with Ross Gerber, president and

CEO at Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. He joins us on the phone from beautiful Santa Monica, California. Ross Howard things by the beach. It actually is beautiful, interesting, like it always is there. Yeah, that's a California and

I know that it's always nice. Um. Hey, I want to talk a little bit about what you think has been happening in the markets, because if we do see the SMP five closed lower today, and it could it's fluctuating between positive and negative territory, it'll be a six day in a row of declines thing that we haven't stu for for months. Um, what do you make of it? I think it's great. I mean, you can't have a

stock market only goes up every day. That concerns me a lot more, you know, So a healthy pullback in stocks, you know it's good because this isn't even two percent yet. Yeah, it's not really a healthy pullback. I was gonna say it's supercent pullback is not even really a pullback, most mostly a statistical anomally right. But let's say the market goes down five or ten percent, I think we get down to a value that makes sense. So we we think the SMP is worth about four thousands trading a

good ten percent higher than it should. But that's mostly because of the tremendous liquidity that we have in markets in our economy right now, and and enormous levels of spending and economic activity that we're seeing across the board. So so you know, the markets can warrant a higher valuation at this time because we have an abnormal government policy at this time. So having a little bit more volatility, I think it's an advantage for investors who know what

they're doing. I want to ask you, Ross, how does someone know when to actually buy this dip, because that was something that we saw year to date. We saw plenty of pullbacks less than three percent, not huge pullbacks, but pullbacks nonetheless, and people immediately bought the dip. So is this one of those times when you have kind of the seasonality of September kind of in your back pocket? Yeah? Absolutely,

And so you know, I I do a lot. You know, I'm I'm kind of old now, so I do a lot of research about my you know, twenty eight years that I've been doing this as professional and many years before that as as a kid. But like when you think about what really hurts markets, So you have corrections, Okay, that's normal, you get one a year, a temper cent correction, but then you have bear markets, and you have very very difficult markets, and most of the time that's predicated

by the FETE. So almost every real market declient we've had is because of the federal reserve or a banking crisis. So I don't see a banking crisis on the horizon in any way, So it's really the federal reserve. So the only thing that's gonna make stocks go down is when you take liquidity away, and so that process is going to begin with the tapering soon. But that's not even really taking liquidity away, you know what I mean,

that's just like taking a ridiculous bond buying away. And so rates themselves don't even look like they're going to go up for another year. So for investors, you want to buy the depths and and keep playing the game until the FED takes the punch bowl away. What does it look like the what does the FED look like when it takes the punch bowl away? What does that look like to you? If it's not tapering, is it

just raising rates? Yeah, that's raising rates. And it's usually like what do they say, it's after the third increases when it all goes downhill. And and you really can look at this historically. You can go back to the nineties. What killed the bullmark of the nineties was Alan grease Band.

He killed it. And then we had September eleven, so it extended the bear market to one of the worst three year bear markets, probably one of the worst bear markets we had, and then followed by the financial cry as which was really a self created event from green and stuff, also created because of low rates and a lack of you know, oversight and such and and so when you go back to it was raising rates again

and a banking crisis. So you know, like when you think about COVID, you know, when Margot was down and next thing you know, they're buying everything in sight to protect the market. I would argue that investors have a level of safety they've never had before. In the history of markets when the Federal Reserve is also out as one of their mandates to protect the stock market. So

they don't say it, but that's what they're doing. So how bad of a bearer market are we really going to get before the Fed comes in and starts buying stocks or whatever? You know, Ross, It sounds like you're completely discounting, and maybe for a good reason, whether or not we even have a taper tantrum at all, what

do you think? Yeah, I mean, like, once again, I I've been doing this so long in you know, their value as are elevated to a ten percent correction is warranted and I don't know when or if that's going to happen, but I don't play the game of waiting for the correction and then when there is one, I buy it, you know what I mean. But like, you

just have to look at liquidity. There's so much liquidity because they just keep printing money and and and hence why cryptocurrencies are doing so well and why so many investors are moving money out of the traditional financial system into the cryptosystem. Rosse. Let's transition from the macro picture to the micro picture, because I have a really interesting piece in my notes here say like, you want not only own shares of Tesla, but you have a Model three.

I'm curious and I've been dying to ask this question to someone who looks at individual stocks. How do you value how do you price a stock like Tesla, or, for that matter, any electric vehicle maker. Well, a full disclosure. I got the Model as plaid recently in June and sold the Model three for Yeah, I sold it for five thousand dollars less than I bought it for after driving it for three years. So was the best return I've ever had on a car. I was like, built

equity in my car. Like, that's how cool this ev businesses or electric vehicle business that Tesla is built. But I think so many investors are caught up with what I call twentieth century mentality towards valuations. Okay, we're in the twenty one century now, fift p s aren't a reality. This country is the most competitive country in the world. You literally cannot invest in any other country in the world with the same level of confidence that you do

in US equities. Not only that the companies are good, but also run with accounting standards and ethics and corporate standards that are higher than anywhere else in the world. So when you think about, if I'm a global investor, where do I put my money, Well, you know it's got to be the U S. And then you think about companies that are innovating and creating amazing products and services that are going to change the world, and there's

only a handful of those. And then you think about one of the two biggest industries that are being disrupted right now, and you have transportation and you have energy, and Tesla is the one doing it. So to look at a traditional pe ratio would be a mistake when you're trying to value Tesla when you're talking about a company that is really cornered the market in battery production and technology as well as EV production and technology, AI robotics.

I mean, it's it's endless. Tesla is trading. I think for what it's worth right now, I think that's I think it's worth about seven fifty and and I think it's upside is to about a thousand when they complete their two factories and get those up and running, which could be by the end of the year. So you know, when they get the two more factories they'll be able to double production. And so if they have the production capability to double production in the time most car companies

are cutting production because they simply can't make cars. It's a huge opportunity not to mention the enormous demand for vehicles irrelevant of Tesla. Unfortunately, have to leave it there. We always love chat with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Ross's president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. He joins us on the phone from Santa Monica, California. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg

Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Search to Bloomberg Global News.