Switzerland is the first country to launch a large scale pilot for a COVID-19 contact tracing app, SwissCovid, using Apple's and Google's APIs — Switzerland is now piloting a COVID-19 contact tracing app that uses the Apple-Google framework. According to the Swiss university EPFL …
The news: Twitter added a fact checking label to two tweets from US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account on Tuesday. The tweets from @realDonaldTrump (the president’s popular personal account that also serves as his main social media presence) claimed that mail-in voting would be “substantially fraudulent” and lead to a “Rigged Election.” It is the first time that Twitter has labeled tweets from his account in this way.
What Twitter did: Twitter introduced new warning labels and fact checking messages earlier this month for tweets containing false or misleading information, including from world leaders. The labels on Trump’s tweets encourage users to “get the facts about mail-in ballots” and link to a Twitter-curated summary of the false claims and what third-party fact-checkers have to say about it. Since announcing the policy, Twitter has mainly applied these labels to tweets containing potentially harmful misinformation about covid-19.
Why it took so long: Twitter has been reluctant to enforce its own rules against Trump’s tweets in the past. Although Trump has tweeted and retweeted many seemingly rule-breaking, a few loopholes protected him, including exceptions for tweets from government entities and considerations for the “newsworthiness” of an otherwise rule-breaking tweet. Last year, Twitter announced that, in rare cases, it would limit the reach of tweets from large accounts held by government officials that were in violation of its rules. The covid-19 “infodemic” has forced most social media platforms to change how they enforce their rules as potentially dangerous misinformation about the pandemic spreads.
What about Trump’s other misleading tweets? Over the past several days, the president has tweeted several other things that appeared to violate Twitter’s policies. Last Wednesday, Trump falsely tweeted that Nevada was sending out “illegal” vote-by-mail ballots, and promised to “hold up” funding to Nevada and Michigan if they pursued mail ballots for the presidential elections. Those tweets, according to Twitter at the time, did not violate their policies against election misinformation because they didn’t directly try to dissuade people from voting. The platform’s election integrity policies prohibit using Twitter for “the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.”
Twitter also declined to take action against some of Trump’s tweets promoting a false conspiracy theory suggesting that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was, while serving in congress, responsible for the death of an intern in 2001. In fact, investigators found no evidence of foul play, and there is no mystery surrounding the cause of death. The widow of the staffer wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week asking him to remove the tweets. After the letter was published in the New York Times on Tuesday, Twitter released a statement saying that they were “deeply sorry about the pain these statements” caused, and that they were “working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”
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Chinese food delivery service Meituan Dianping beats estimates with sales of $2.4B, net loss of $221M; Meituan stock rose 9.7%, taking its market cap to $100B+ — - CEO Wang Xing warns of persistent pressure over 2020 — Hotel and travel services hit by virus fears, travel curbs
Meituan’s shares hit a record high on Tuesday, bringing its valuation to over $100 billion.
The Hong Kong-listed giant, which focuses on food delivery with smaller segments in travel and transportation, is the third Chinese firm to reach the landmark valuation. Tencent and Alibaba respectively topped the number back in 2013 and 2014.
Tencent-backed Meituan saw shares rally to HK$138 ($17.8) on Tuesday after it earmarked a smaller-than-projected decrease in revenue during Q1 and a net loss of 1.58 billion yuan ($220 million) after three consecutive profitable quarters.
While nationwide lockdowns might have increased the need for food delivery, Chinese consumers have been tightening their belt amid a worsening economy triggered by COVID-19. Overall food delivery transactions slid as a result. Meituan also had to pay incentives to delivery riders who work during the pandemic and subsidies to merchants to keep their heads above the water.
There’s one silver lining: While Meituan’s daily average number of transactions dropped by 18.2% to 15.1 million, the average value per order jumped by 14.4% as delivered meals, which were conventionally seen as a habit for office workers, became normalized among families that stayed at home. In the first quarter, a large number of premium restaurants joined Meituan’s food delivery services, and they could continue to attract bigger ticket purchases in the post-pandemic era.
All in all, though, Meituan executives warned of the uncertainties brought by COVID-19. “Moving on to the remaining of 2020, we expect that factors including the ongoing pandemic precautions, consumers’ insufficient confidence in offline consumption activities and the risk of merchants’ closure would continue to have a potential impact on our business performance.”
Bloomberg : Sources: amid the Iran war, Asian bankers say rising power prices and energy security are becoming a bigger consideration in ...
