Twitter's Content Moderation and Expedia's Earnings

hit pause. Plus Expedience CEO joins us to talk about the travel rebound and plans to take on Airbnb after reporting record revenue. Will I keep up in a recession? And Bloomberg analyze more than one million tweets and Facebook posts from hundreds of midterm elections candidates who said they believed somewhat or fully that the election was stolen from former President Trump. Turns out, amplification of the so called

big lie on social media drives engagement. We're gonna get to all of that in a moment, but first I want to get to Twitter now and the slow of companies pulling their advertising from the platform. Bloomberg's Alex Barrinka has been following it all for us, so Alex Elon Musk has said there's been a massive drop in revenue. He blames it on activist activist groups pressuring advertisers over

content moderation issues, even though nothing has changed yet. Who's leaving Audias, leaving GM is leaving either leaving really big names are leaving, Emily. And to your point there, Elon, with tweeting yesterday you did a poll thing what you advertise or stand behind free speech or political correctness, those are the only two choice of that. Emily actually think that's probably a little bit of a false choice for

these brands. They are looking at Twitter as the plates to put dons and find some return on that advent. That return is going to be kind of number one in their minds. As we've seen um Twitter the business kind of you know, convulsing over the last week, with laying off about half of the workforce, with questions around who is leading different departments, and with Elon trying to counter that by assuring advertisers that they will be moderating

content on the platform. It seems like a lot of these big names are deciding right now to take a pause. And I would say this is a pretty problematic thing for Twitter. You'll remember the last earnings report they had, they actually saw revenue decline from a year prior in that quarter. And now Ellen is taking a company that is private and will have about a billion dollar interest bill every year for the debt that they used to take this company private. So advertisers here are the lifeblood.

Ellen's coming in with um a little bit of perhaps sauciness at them for leaving the platform, but they will absolutely need those dollars who forward. All right, So we're talking Volkswagen Fiser General Mills. Let's talk about the layoffs. Employees started getting emails early, early in the morning that they were being terminated, cools getting let go. Is it that thirty seven hundred number that we've been reporting right now?

It seems like it is inching toward that number. And you have some teams like you mentioned at the top, like the communications team, that have been completely gutted, losing about eighty eight of their ninety employees. So you have folks kind of all the way across the board, and Emily. One of the reasons why advertisers might actually be pausing, it's sort of related to how this is being handled.

It is typical in a acquisition or in a change of leadership for the new leaders to come in to kind of take a survey of the land and to kind of approach these things a little bit differently. The way that Ellen has come in with these kind of emails sometimes overnight for employees and UM, what some employees are looking at is kind of a coin flip has injected a lot of UM, someone call it chaos into the business. So we're seeing the cuts across the board.

There are some areas he's staying and urging UM perhaps for that advertise advertiser audience, that he is bringing the tools back online for content moderation UM, and areas like that that he has put make care to reference in the last forty eight hours. But it does seem like it's pretty broad based across the company and in terms

of word that those head count cuts are coming from. Meantime, Twitter is being sued uh in a class action lawsuit by employees who say their termination is wrongful or that at least under California employment law, he can't make big changes like this before sixty days have passed. Can you explain the lawsuit to us and how good of a

case they have? Sure in the state of California. We're we're rebooth our Emily right now, there's something called a war notice where employers have to give a sixty day notice before be off above a certain threshold of people. That Twitter is certainly clearing that threshold. This is a lawyer who's bringing this class action suit, who actually has let a suit against Musk before over a similar matter

for layoffs at Tesla. You'll remember, um, he elon must hold our very own editor in chief that he saw that suit is trivial. Um, so you can imagine what he how he might perceive this suit today. That lawyer did come back, uh, just this afternoon and say that she's happy to see that some of the severance packages are actually paying out employees over the number of day

some employees over the number of days that are legally required. Um. So it seems like there could still be some activity on that case, but certainly with the swiftness of the decision that was made, there are a lot of questions raised around legality, both here in the state of California and you can probably imagine in some of the other countries where Twitter has offices as well. All Right, Alex Brenka.

I'm sure there'll be lots of news more and more over the Again, thank you so much for bringing us the very latest. Will continue to watch your reporting. Zooming out to the tech space at large. Now, things not looking much better, the Nasdaq one hundred dropping more than five percent this week as the sector veils from economic uncertainty. We're gonna get more on the bigger picture here with Bloomberg's Emily Grafeo. Emily, how is tech weighing on overall markets?

It's not just Twitter, but Apple, Amazon, where we're also seeing significant changes in strategy when it comes to spending and hiring. We are seeing these stocks falling, but in terms of how much they're impacting the overall market, I think that story is really beginning to change as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. I was actually looking at just how much um these tech stocks and the movements in these stocks impact the broader SMP five hundred. For

a really long time. In the last two years, the narrative has been, you know, these megacat tech stocks make up such a large portion of the SMP five hundred, we can't see the market gain without the strength there. But if you look at the month of October UM, four out of the five largest mega cap tech stocks in the SMP five hundred posted a negative return, and we saw the SMP five hundred gain about eight percent, So the equal weighted index was even higher, almost ten

percent there. So it is starting to seem like investors can play the broader stock market and they don't need that tech strength like they did before. And we're really starting to see that this federal reserve tightening is weighing on these big tech companies. What are money managers saying about this? Are they getting skittish? It's interesting. I was actually at an investing conference last week and I have to say, Emily, there weren't a lot of conversations about

where can I invest in tech? The questions were more about, you know, where the value stocks? Um, how can I position my fixed income portfolio. I was talking with Jan von Eck, he's the CEO of van Eck Funds. We were talking a little bit of out technology stocks. He said he probably wouldn't go overweight, but the valuations have come down in that sector, so he said that is attractive. But um, when you look at overall money managers, they are thinking about value stocks more than just Oh my gosh,

I need Apple overweight in my portfolio. There is some fear that the federal reserve tightening is going away on the stocks more than it already has, and that earnings do have to come down even more. All right, Emily, thank you so much for zooming out. Bloomberg's Emily graffo so much to continue to watch the Fed trying to tamp down affordability, but people continue to pay top dollar

for experiences. Expedia posted record quarterly revenue and third quarter bookings free cash flow for the first nine months three point one billion dollars, more than double levels. Expedia CEO and vice chair Peter Kern joins me. Now, so, uh, Peter, let's talk about the bigger picture here. It looks like people are continuing to spend on travel. I know we had some hurricanes that interrupted some of the flow, but outside of that, how good was the summer travel season?

The summer travel season was great, Emily. You know, it was everything I think most of us expected, which was tons of pent up demand anywhere in the world where people could travel. Of course, there's parts of the world still even now, in an apac and other places where it's still quite difficult to travel. So there is more to come in terms of opening up world travel. But the summer was great. Business has continued to be quite strong,

and demand really hasn't ebbed since then. So you know, everything so far looks pretty good, notwithstanding all the macroeconomic warriors that you talk about all day. So um, so we're feeling pretty good about things. But if we had into a recession, I mean, I know people are spending money on travel to this point, who's to say that people aren't going to say, oh, maybe I should take a maybe I shouldn't take that vacation, or let's just

you know, drive um to a vacation rental nearby. Yeah, listen, I think, uh, macroeconomics will be what they will be. I think so far what's been demonstrated is that while there has have been a few cracks and other categories, travel hasn't cracked. I think partly because people have missed it so much during COVID and they've realized how much they want those experiences more generally. Uh, And we've seen corporate travels start to come back and other pieces start

to come back. So I think, you know, we have some good running room, but there's nothing to say that people can start to change their minds. But remember, you know, global travels a two plus trillion dollar industry, so this isn't a zero sum game. And we're a growth company. We're trying to build our base of members, build our business up, offer great new tools for travelers, great new benefits. So we believe there's ample reason for us to continue

to attract travelers. And even if they're trading down a little bit or making slightly different adjustments to their travel, we think they're still gonna want to travel. Do you think that there's something fundamentally different in terms of how people approach travel? You know, this isn't just a few vacations they wanted to get out of their system, but

as a whole new frame of mind. Well, I think you know, anytime you have an existential threat to life on the planet, people probably respond with a little bit of like, I want to live, I want to go see the things I want to see. Uh. You know there are people, uh my age and older who are at a point where they're saying, you know, I only have so many trips left in my life, you know, so there's a lot to get out of there. And

I think COVID made us all reassess that. So I wouldn't chalk this up to you know, hybrid work or other things. I think it's really just, uh, people are realizing that experiences or what make life great and travel is where we get all that. So, you know, you and I have talked about it before. We all want to travel. Everybody wants to travel, and I think, Sir and Way, we haven't used up that desire yet. You know, in five years from now, has everyone gotten out of

their system? Maybe, but I don't think we've burned it off in you know, eight months or twelve months. Airbnb had a tough quarter at least if you look at it from a market's perspective. Unlike the positive reaction we're seeing from investor investors to your results. What do you think happening there? You know, I'm not exactly sure what's happening, but I think part of what we observed in what we've seen with Airbnb is, you know, they are much

broader company. They appeal to much more, you know, room rentals, parts of home rentals. We don't do that, um and I think the scale of that business is such that that is a market that may be seeing more weakness from the lower end of the market. We as a business or somewhat less exposed to that. In our verbo brands were whole home. We tend to be middle and upper market really the same in our main travel brands,

so we haven't seen those same cracks. But I think if you're exposed significantly to the broad global you know, lower end, you are probably going to be under somewhat more pressure. But you know, we think they'll do fine. FCS of course as a challenge globally as well. Again, we're heavily weighted towards North America, which is great since the dollar is strong, but if you're waited differently, that can have a bunch of different impacts on you. Well.

A d r s are still average daily rates, still above pre pandemic levels, but Airbnb, some of your competitors, expecting those to moderate. Then there could also be this change in the business mix. Are you expecting any softness going into next year? You know, we haven't seen it yet. Uh and uh. Again, the makeup of our business mixes are are somewhat different, but UM hotels are certainly certainly the big chains we're talking about holding a d R s Uh. You know, hotels so far have been willing

to be less full in favor of holding price. Uh. Does that last forever? Do some hotels change what they do? Hard to know. But again, while demands stays strong, which it is now, I don't think there's any you know, end in sight to prices being up. And they're not just up, they're considerably up since pre pandemic levels, and

that probably will hold. In the home rental business, it's a little more violatile because you have single owners and there's a little more price pressure sometimes on some of them. But certainly in the hotel industry, the airline industry, I think I think prices will still be high. So last quick question, Verbo, give us the picture of supply and demand given what you've seen, you know, going into next year. Yeah, well, demand has remained quite strong for us, and other than

the hurricane which you mentioned at the beginning. Uh, you know, we we've seen strength, you know, throughout COVID and since COVID has somewhat subsided. Uh, we're very bullish on next year. We've got you know, Verbo is going to become part of our our global loyalty plan or and key loyalty plan that's rolling out next year, and that's going to be a great opportunity for Verbo members to participate in our other brands and our other members Expedia, Hotels, etcetera,

to really participate in Verbo. So we see a lot of opportunity there, and the supply side, we think there's plenty of room to grow. We are being more aggressive in that space and we expect to add, you know, a bunch of supplies. So so we feel really good about the brand, good about its part in our family of brands, and certainly more opportunity for us as we consolidate those loyalty plans. Peter current CEO of Expedia and vice chair Peter are always good to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, cyber attacks continuing to surge an increasingly digital world. We're going to dive into some new data from Rubric about what companies should do to protect themselves. That's next. This is Bloomberg. Cyber tags are picking up this according a new data from the cloud data management and security company Rubric. I want to bring in CEO and co founder People Sinha

now for more on their new reports. So you found that of companies reported a breach, that is a staggering number. Walk that out for us a bit that is actually validates our thesis. We were suspecting that almost all of the organizations in the world has already been infiltrated, and what people reported was that percent of the companies had

once at least one cyber breach. And what is also interesting is that seventy percent of the organization said that they would pay for ransomware to get rid of this problem. That's how low the confidences. So how our companies responding to these threats? Are they ready? I don't think everyone is ready. Um, even though there is a partnership private and public Biden administration put together a zero trust framework. Companies are looking at it, they're spending money, they're getting prepared.

But this problem is a huge. Ransomware is the single largest threat to our economy, and everybody is saying that, how do I keep my business going? What do I make sure do to make sure that we are not only preventing and detecting these attacks, but also create resiliency where in spite of an attack, I can keep going. So there's an ongoing war on Ukraine. You've got instability at Twitter, which is a major platform. You've got midterm elections coming up here in the United States. Are you

expecting the threats to ratch it up? And how do companies respond? Creds are definitely increasing geopolitical situation, you have uh Nason estate actors that are taking sides. You have again mid term coming up, that we have cyber warfare going on, I think, and in this situation, businesses have to really think that attacks will happen. There is no way to prevent it. How do they keep going in

spite of an attack? How do they create a resiliency plan, how do they make sure that they recover from it? And that's where companies are investing money and we are seeing in our own market where recovery ability to identify what part of the data was impacted, and how to get rid of a bad content and recover good content fast is what is everyone is focused on. Is public private engagement between for example, the Biden and administration and the private sector. Is that helping or do we need

to see more? We definitely need to see more here. But it is a great first step because what happens is that there is a natural hesitation and sharing data and setting information between companies because no wants to come across saying that, hey, you got attacked, we didn't have the right defenses. But when the government comes into the picture and creates a framework of information sharing, what kind of attack has happened, how do you recover from it?

What kind of preventive measures you take? That really helps companies get more confident, and confidence is what is required. I mean, our study also found that a third of the board have no confidence that their companies can recover from a cyber incident. Okay, Wow, staggering new data um Work, CEO and co founder of People Sindha People. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with us. Welcome back to Flomark Technology. I'm emily changing in San Francisco.

Let's get back to Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and what it means for the future of free speech and content moderation on the platform. My next guest has direct insight into this after meeting with Elon Musk a few days ago to talk about it for Sean Robinson is the president of the racial justice organization Color of Change, and he joins me now Rishan, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. So how did the meeting with Ellen go? Did it leave you hopeful or

with more concerns? Well, the meeting that we had on Tuesday actually was UM BOTHUM, a good opportunity for us to have a conversation, and and we walked out of the meeting UM really focusing on UM hopeful actually that his actions actually connected with the words in the meeting,

because he made three commitments in that meeting. UM commitments around election integrity, commitments around the re platforming and ensuring that will be a transparent process before anyone has been re platform that has been UM taken off for the egregious violation that anyone is the platform for, and then talking about sort of the content moderation council he'd have moving forward. He talked about agreeing with the sentiments and the concerns that those of us in the civil rights

community brought up during that meeting. And we left the meeting UM really wondering what would come next. And at one thirty in the morning the next day, UM he tweeted out UM tagging us in Matt tweet talking about the meeting and making those commitments more public, But over the last couple of days, we have seen him truly and systematically dismantle the very infrastructure that would make those

commitments actually real. So the firing of safety and trust um capacity inside of Twitter makes it impossible for him to actually deliver on the commitments and promises that he made in the meeting. So you know, the thing is not just about your words, it's about your actions, and actions are key here, and you are taking action by h highlighting that move in your tweet. You tweeted. Elon fired the entire team that identified the Twitter algorithm that

amplifies right wing voices over others. Not the first time we've seen staff, particularly black employees, punished for flagging how their companies products enable and amplify racism. Now, Musk today said there's been a massive drop in revenue given this pause from advertisers, even though according to him, nothing has changed about content moderation. Yet, what do you say to the folks who say, let's give Elon Musk sometime before we make these dramatic moves. Yeah, well that's what we get.

We met with Elon Musk, and Elon Musk came out um and made promises publicly and men UM right after those promises, almost before the eight was dried on their promises, he began to dismantle the very infrastruction that keep those promises in place. Look, I want to be clear. Elon Musk actually also met with advertisers. He met with coalitions of folks working in advertising, and in the conversations UM

he made promises to them. He talked to them about how content moderation was incredibly important and how he valued content moderation. And then he went and he let go of seventy of the staff that works on content moderation. So the advertisers that are leaving are leaving because they are concerned that their brands are gonna be next to a product that the CEO in charge of it can't be trusted, can't be trusted to deliver on their promises, act acts in deeply erratic ways, and we'll put their

brands in harm's way. And so, as someone who's done this work for a long time, has worked to hold corporations accountable, to help them meet their actions with their words, and to hold them accountable to that UM, I have never seen so many advertisers not have to be convinced not have to be pushed hard around UM the sort of decisions that they are making right now, and quite frankly, Um Elon Musk Um did have an opportunity when he came in here UM to um actually move things forward.

Twitter was not a perfect company, Titter was not Twitter was not doing everything well before Elon musk took over. But what he has done is actually dismantled the type of infrastructure that actually had to be increased in order for the company to sort of live up to any type of commitment to deal with the misinformation, the disinformation, the amplification of hate and incitement of violence that has become part of these platforms, UM currents, UM sort of

engagement and its legacy. Risad. The reason that this is so important is because people of color, people in marginalized communities, women face a disproportionate amount of harassment and hate online. Can you explain why this matters, why this matters for people who use Twitter, how he restructures and reframes the site. Well, yeah, I mean, essentially what we're dealing with right now is not just Twitter, but all the technology companies are essentially

self regulated companies and self regulated companies are unregulated company. Now, if we think about other industries, right, the our seatbelts are not necessarily safe in our cars are not necessarily safe because of the benevolence of the auto industry alone. They are safe because there's infrastructure, accountability standards UM. And so when you think about sort of the ways in which the business models work of social media platforms, what

gets amplified UM. What UM is sort of the incentive structure of of what drives profits, how advertising is placed up against certain types of content and not other type of content, and how that type of content then gets prioritized. You watch a set a certain section of choices that are made that are far beyond freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom to be

amplified freedom of reach. And so to the extent that UM when you see that companies are making these type of choices, and then you look at the overwhelming body of research that shows UM just you know, you can look at a University of recent University of Cambridge study that actually looks at who's getting more reach and who's not getting more reach. If you see look at even the safety and trust teams inside of Twitter that we're

pushing for more visibility and transparency around the algorithms. Those people who have now been UM let go. We know that UM the impact is clear that consequences for the communities can be life or death in terms of how how people are targeted, how people are exploited, how people are put in harm's way, and when you have an unaccountable billionaire running this company that feels he doesn't have to listen to anyone. The best that we have is the type of activism that holds those that seek to

enable this platform, enable this leader accountable. And that's what we have to do. We have to speak truth to power. We have to hold folks accountable, and we also have to invite those who have a stake in this, even if they don't see themselves as activists who believe in democracy, who believe in fairness, to actually speak up and put their hand on the scale as well. Now, last question, the reason, you know, the timing is critical. We're heading into a mid term election in just a few days.

You know, talk to us about the importance of that given you know, we're about to talk about a story about mid term candidates amplifying misinformation, getting the most engagement. Now, well, that's and that's not an accident. Right. The what we're seeing in terms of missing disinformation is not UM a car accidenty right, It's not just something that happens. It's manufactured.

And when the tech platforms choose growth in profit over safety, integrity and security, they create an incentive structure where people believe that they're gonna benefit from it and that there will be rewards for it and there will not be

consequences for it. And so when I think about even some of the changes that have been announced more recently, right, the eight dollars per um per month, which can seem almost fair on its face that um Elon Musk is charging for verification, Well, if you're not going to verify the identity, which he has not committed to, although he did talk about verification of identity on the call that

we had on Tuesday. But all of the information coming out now is that they will not have time to develop a verification UM system before they roll it out. They can have folks claiming to be verified UM and then renaming themselves CNN or Bloomberg renaming their names UM under UM. The ausipicies of the Georgia's Secretary of State and then making claims about the election under a very high verified blue check because verification can be bought now

and not actually have some set level of accountability. We watched after Elon Musk brought Twitter, the rise in the use of the inn word because his followers believed that they could now say that they could now move hateful language on the platform because he would support it. We have seen the increase of Q ANDN language in terms on the platforms since he decided he was gonna buy

it back in April. Um over fifty of the counts from mid October to now have UM that have been amplifying Q and on um uh words and Q and on phrases have have come on since Elon Musk announced that he was gonna buy this buy this company. And so we have watchful sort of the people around him, the people who are fans of his, the people who

are supporting him, act out in ways. And then we've watched Elon Musk validate that even his own behavior on this platform, from amplifying an anti gay conspiracy theory against Nancy Pelosi's husband to other things that he has tweeted out since he has bought this company makes us all have the question is he truly serious about leading this

company and and and a color Change. We have dealt deeply with tech CEOs and signals across the board, and I've never seen someone respond this way, So everyone should be concerned. All right. Uh, to be fair, he did delete that tweet, but you're right did come out in the first place. Rashad Robinson, thanks for talking to us about why this matters so much, President of Color of Change,

Thank you for stopping by for today's crypto report. We're focusing on the web fundraising landscape of the top blockchain venture capitalists. Bloom Shinali Bossik is in New York sale. Thank you so much, Emily. I'm joined now by poly Chain Capital general partner Naraj Pant. Polly Chain was created in two dozen sixteen by Olaf Carson. We the third

employee at coin base. You know, Nag, Thank you so much for your time, because you are seeing that you know, little rally here and not just Bitcoin, You're seeing it in a lot of alt coins. And I'd love your perspective here in terms of how long that really holds at a time that's been so volatile and whether that even matters. Yeah, thank you Shinali. UM. I think the big thing that we're focused on, you know, seeing sort of how the markets have changed, is UM looking for

progress with with user adoption. I think our interest is seeing the cryptocurrency space expand even more than it has today, and we're excited to look at new UM, any new traction, any new adoption, and so we hope that that kind of takes place over the next couple of years as we're investing into new companies. I'm kind of curious as so what types of new investments you're willing to make

at this phase. Are there things you would avoid? Kind of given the changes you're seeing in the market at large. UM our strategy has remained relatively similar UM through both bull and bear markets. UM. We've been around since and have seen a number of different cycles, and what's important to us is investing and hopefully generational companies and protocols that I know we think can stand the test of time. UM. We invest sort of across the space everywhere, from consumer

to infrastructure. UM. We think especially now, there's a lot of exciting opportunities for infrastructure given the sort of slow down in the markets. UM, we think this is a good time for developers to come in and prepare for the next wave of usage and adoption such that we can really let a lot of people use usecryptocurrencies. I'm kind of curious here in terms of what you see in terms of jobs and investing in new people in

different spaces in this industry. You know, it was just a couple of days ago that we've reported that Galaxy Digital would be cutting a significant amount of its workforce. Do you think that the industry still faces a lot more pain when it comes to the workforce. UM. I think we're lucky in that One important exciting trend about a lot of crypto companies is that they don't require

as many employees to run. I think where we see a lot of large Web two companies UM struggle is that they often overhire and hire a lot more than they need to run the service. I think a great part of the Web three space is that many of these protocols and companies are are run on Ethereum or run on another large protocol and allows these teams to operate a lot more leanly and and just with less

people overall. UM. So, while we still want to be cautious in our approach and advising all our portfolio companies not to be too um braws and about hiring and spending UM. We do think that this is a great sort of structural change in the way that Web three companies are relative to to sort of Web two companies. I'm glad you brought up Ethereum in that answer, because I'm curious about what you think about Ethereum post emerge and what does it mean in terms of its competition

when it comes to Bitcoin. We're seeing a lot of exciting development happened on the on the Ethereum blockchain, both from Ethereum itself, seeing the new East to Merge happened successfully, seeing developers continuing to build applications, continuing to see a lot of demand for everything from defied and f T s UM and even transactions. And we're seeing a lot

of interesting opportunities being built around ethereum um. This includes things like um what are called Layer two's roll ups that allow you to scale transaction capacity even further UM, seeing new privacy applications being built and and overall also seeing a lot of traction from traditional companies hoping to tap into the web through market and Ethereum and it's sort of related projects is the way for these companies

to do that. So we're overall very happy and excited about developer adoption and continue to track it very closely on on Ethereum. Earlier this year we did see a wave of companies that got into liquidity issues or had to pause withdrawals. You had exposure to at least one of them, right coin flex. What was there to be learned from all of that this year? I think, Uh, these are good lessons to learn for the for the

space overall. I think, UM, they teach these companies risk management, and I think in some ways the failures we saw in the space, we're not because as a web three protocols and the smart contracts didn't work or anything like that, but they were a failure of the meat space agreements, you know, the real world legal contracts attesting to a u M or attesting to UM proof of funds or anything like that. In a number of cases UM, that

was what really failed UM. And so in some ways it's highlighting systemic risks that exists not only in the in the crypto financial space, but in the broader financial industry as a whole, So I think it overalls strengthenings both defy but also the crypto and financial space as a whole. That's probably chained Capital's partner near agepan Take. Thank you so much for your time. Back to you

in San franciscanly Shinios, thank you so much. Coming up, as the mid terms are fast approaching, what's the impact of misinformation still running on checked online, like the falsehood that Donald Trump won election? Our social media companies doing about it. We're going to talk about that next, all right, don't want to continue our conversation now about the mid terms and content moderation, and not just on Twitter, We're

also talking about Facebook and YouTube and other platforms. After Bloomberg analyzed hundreds of candidates social media posts and found rampant misinformation, Bloomberg's Jack Gillum poured through it all and joins us now for more on his research, Jack, what did you find about candidates amplifying misinformation, specifically the big lie?

How many of them are actually doing this? So emily, we took a look at all of the republic and candidates running for not just Congress but Secretary of State, which oversees the vote count governor's attorneys general in all the states across the country, and we found a hundred and sixty candidates have been pushing what use called the big live this is this you know, false theory or this this this conspiracy theory and theory almost that Donald

Trump won the election, that Joe Biden is a diligiti and president um. And So what we did is we wanted to look at how these candidates running for office, some of whom very well might went on Tuesday night, actually pushed the meshes on platforms, especially now that Twitter has a new owner, Facebook might not be labeling all these ads, and we wanted to get a closer look at what was really happening. So how did the companies respond when you went to them with this? So Twitter

did not respond for comment. UM. We're not sure if that's because the communications team either some folks were laid off in the massive wayoffs has been happening in the last day. UM. Facebook essentially said, look, we deal with the you know, in their view, I guess the larger issues preventing people from voting, violence, those sorts of things, and that they run ads really encouraging people to vote for and to say that, look, there's really not election misinformation.

This is the real deal. Um. But I think the real questions you're going forward is why a lot of these ads weren't flagged. And we did, in fact find one ad by carry Lake, the Republican nominate for governor of Arizona, where one of her false election claims was actually flagged by Facebook, but the majority, in fact, almost all the other ones we found were not. So just three days to go before the election, how are you expecting potential, you know, amplification of this to ramp up

before November eight? I mean, it's no secret that social media is an important avenue that hundreds of millions of Americans used. It's no secret also by that extent that Russia, you know, really tried to hijack that in seen ahead of that election. Um. I think this is going to be an interesting thing to watch, is that we have a new ownership at Twitter and what they're going to do in terms of content moderation. We have Facebook that has not labeled a lot of these ads that are

clear pieces of misinformation about election. I think it's going to be a real interesting picture of how that misinformation might play out in terms of votes, by the way, not just being cast on Tuesday, but in the states like Arizona with mail and balloting and early voting are going on right now. So you know, what are you expecting to happen next here, especially as you know these

elections are happening the ad industry and turmoil. These companies, whether it's because of Elon Mosk or you know, a broader economic slowdown, are kind of scrambling for revenue. I think I think that's a good question, Emily. I think what we're going to happen here is that you have these companies that are going to have to grapple with

a serious issue of misinformation. It's one that has taken hold in the Republican Party that we found in this analysis again, so we'll just see what's going to happen to come Tuesday. Jack Gillub, thank you so much for your reporting. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily changing in San Francisco. Have a wonderful weekend everyone. Brendan Carr will join us next week. This is Bloomberg