Investment giant BlackRock is rebutting Republican politicians over its ESG investment policies, arguing that its critics are wrong on both the science and the cents. Axios: Private equity and other investment fund managers should pay close attention, because they could be next in the line of fire. Last month, 18 state attorneys general sent a letter to BlackRock, essentially arguing that its goal of moving toward a net-zero economy is in conflict with its fiduciary duty. Two states, Texas and West Virginia, also banned state entities from doing business with BlackRock, arguing (incorrectly) that the firm boycotts fossil fuel company investments.

Axios' Alayna Treene reports that the BlackRock blowback is part of a coordinated lobbying effort, writing: "The crusade against ESG investments is something many conservatives feel deeply about -- they view these companies as cultural enemies who are misusing investment funds to promote pro-climate policies... House Republicans plan to make an assault on ESG a central part of their legislative and investigative agenda if they take back the majority in November's midterms." BlackRock yesterday responded to the AG's letter, with a 10-page letter of its own. After again disputing the "boycott" accusations, the firm wrote: "We believe investors and companies that take a forward-looking position with respect to climate risk and its implications for the energy transition will generate better long-term financial outcomes." BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, and its CEO Larry Fink has been very outspoken about ESG initiatives (with declining emphasis as the acronym progresses). In other words, it's a juicy target.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A high-profile push by Congress to rein in the nation's biggest internet companies is at risk of failing with time running out to pass major legislation ahead of midterm elections. Alphabet's Google, Apple, Amazon.com and Meta and their trade groups have poured almost $95 million into lobbying since 2021 as they seek to derail the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which has advanced further than any US legislative effort to address the market power of some of the world's richest companies. After a nearly two-year battle, the bill is now at a critical juncture as the Senate returns this week for a final stretch before the November midterms. Backers of the measure swear they have the necessary votes, yet it's unclear if they do, and the Senate will be busy with other must-pass spending legislation.

Although clipping the wings of tech giants through antitrust reform had support from both Republicans and Democrats during this Congress, a likely GOP majority in the House next year is expected to focus on allegations that internet platforms squelch conservative viewpoints. That's why tech lobbyists have been trying to run out the clock. Leading Republicans like California's Kevin McCarthy, who is on track to become Speaker under a GOP majority, have publicly opposed the antitrust push. The legislation's sponsors can see the window narrowing. Antitrust advocates were expecting a vote before Congress adjourned for four weeks in August. But Schumer told donors in July that it didn't have enough votes to pass.

The bill has 13 co-sponsors in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass and be sent to the House. Supporters like Yelp's head of public policy Luther Lowe, a longtime Google critic, argue that enough undecided lawmakers would vote for the measure if it came to the floor. A Schumer spokesperson said he's working with the bill's sponsors to find the necessary votes and he still plans to bring it to the floor. The bill was approved by both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on strong bipartisan votes. Several amendments have addressed concerns about privacy and security issues. What hasn't killed the bill "has made it stronger," said Yelp's Lowe. The measure seeks to restrict the companies from favoring their own products, so that competitors who depend on these platforms to reach consumers wouldn't be at a disadvantage. That could impact the design of Google Maps, the display of Apple Music on an iPhone or the prominence of Amazon Basics on the company's e-commerce site. "I don't see it going to the floor," said Michael Petricone, senior vice president of government affairs at the Consumer Technology Association, a trade group that counts Amazon, Google and Facebook among its members. "With an election coming up, I expect senators to come back and focus on issues that are popular with voters. Tech regulation is not one of those issues."

The US Federal Election Commission approved a Google plan to let campaign emails bypass Gmail spam filters. From a report: The FEC's advisory opinion adopted in a 4-1 vote said Gmail's pilot program is permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations "and would not result in the making of a prohibited in-kind contribution." The FEC said Google's approved plan is for "a pilot program to test new Gmail design features at no cost on a nonpartisan basis to authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership PACs." On July 1, Google asked the FEC for the green light to implement the pilot after Republicans accused the company of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms. Republicans reportedly could have avoided some of their Gmail spam problems by using the proper email configuration. At a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer, "the most forceful rebuke" was said to come "from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes," The Washington Post reported in late July. "The reason, it was later determined, was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked as spam, according to people briefed on the discussions."

The Senate on Wednesday passed an expansive $280 billion bill aimed at building up America's manufacturing and technological edge to counter China, embracing in an overwhelming bipartisan vote the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades. From a report: The legislation reflected a remarkable and rare consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress in favor of forging a long-term strategy to address the nation's intensifying geopolitical rivalry with Beijing, centered around investing federal money into cutting-edge technologies and innovations to bolster the nation's industrial, technological and military strength.

It passed on a lopsided bipartisan vote of 64 to 33, with 17 Republicans voting in support. The margin illustrated how commercial and military competition with Beijing -- as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs -- has dramatically shifted longstanding party orthodoxies, generating agreement among Republicans who once had eschewed government intervention in the markets and Democrats who had resisted showering big companies with federal largess. "No country's government -- even a strong country like ours -- can afford to sit on the sidelines," Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader who helped to spearhead the measure, said in an interview. "I think it's a sea change that will stay."

A long-awaited bill in the U.S. Congress proposes $79 billion (over 10 years) to boost U.S. semiconductor production, reports the Associated Press, "mostly as a result of new grants and tax breaks that would subsidize the cost that computer chip manufacturers incur when building or expanding chip plants in the United States."

But opposing the bill are 31 Republican senators — and democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders: Supporters say that countries all over the world are spending billons of dollars to lure chipmakers. The U.S. must do the same or risk losing a secure supply of the semiconductors that power the nation's automobiles, computers, appliances and some of the military's most advanced weapons systems. Sanders (Independent — Vermont), and a wide range of conservative lawmakers, think tanks and media outlets have a different take. To them, it's "corporate welfare...."

"Not too many people that I can recall — I have been all over this country — say: 'Bernie, you go back there and you get the job done, and you give enormously profitable corporations, which pay outrageous compensation packages to their CEOs, billions and billions of dollars in corporate welfare,'" Sanders said.

Senator Mitt Romney (Republican — Utah), is among the likely Republican supporters. Asked about the Sanders' argument against the bill, Romney said that when other countries subsidize the manufacturing of high technology chips, the U.S. must join the club. "If you don't play like they play, then you are not going to be manufacturing high technology chips, and they are essential for our national defense as well as our economy," Romney said....

"My fear is that more and more companies will locate their manufacturing facilities in other countries and that we will be increasingly vulnerable," said Senator Susan Collin (Republican — Maine).
The bill's supporters remain confident it will pass the U.S. Senate, but then "the window for passing the bill through the House is narrow if progressives join with Sanders and if most Republicans line up in opposition based on fiscal concerns.

"The White House says the bill needs to pass by the end of the month because companies are making decisions now about where to build."

Gallup: Americans' confidence in two facets of the news media -- newspapers and television news -- has fallen to all-time low points. Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news. Both readings are down five percentage points since last year. Gallup has tracked Americans' confidence in newspapers since 1973 and television news since 1993 as part of its annual polling about major U.S. institutions. The latest readings are from a June 1-20 poll that saw declines in confidence ratings for 11 of the 16 institutions measured and no improvements for any. Television news and newspapers rank nearly at the bottom of that list of institutions, with only Congress garnering less confidence from the public than TV news. While these two news institutions have never earned high confidence ratings, they have fallen in the rankings in recent years.

A majority of Americans have expressed confidence in newspapers only once -- in 1979, when 51% did. But there is a wide margin between that and the second-highest readings of 39% in 1973 and 1990. The trend average for newspapers is 30%, well above the latest reading of 16%, which is the first time the measure has fallen below 20%. The percentage of Americans who say they have "very little" or volunteer that they have no confidence is currently the highest on record, at 46%. Confidence in television news has never been higher than its initial 46% reading in 1993 and has averaged 27%, considerably higher than the current 11%. This is the fourth consecutive year that confidence in TV news is below 20%. And for just the second time in the trend, a majority of Americans, 53%, now say they have very little or no confidence at all in TV news. Republicans' (5%) and independents' (12%) confidence in newspapers is the lowest on record for these party groups, while Democrats' (35%) has been lower in the past. Democrats' confidence in newspapers rose to the 42% to 46% range during the Donald Trump administration but fell when President Joe Biden took office.

Several U.S. semiconductor firms are deliberating whether to oppose a package of chip industry subsidies if the final language of the legislation awaiting a vote in the Senate disproportionately benefits manufacturers like Intel, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. From the report: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has told lawmakers that a vote could come as early as Tuesday on a slimmed-down set of bills to bolster the U.S. computer chip industry, after Democratic lawmakers cleaved them from a larger, more contentious bill. The bills are aimed at making the U.S. more competitive against a rising China, whose chip industry has grown rapidly over the last five years to account for almost 10% of global sales. The measures include $52 billion in subsidies and an investment tax credit to boost U.S. manufacturing. The bills have bipartisan support, though Republicans may vote against the chip measures unless Democrats give up plans to try to push through unrelated spending bills that Republicans oppose. But a rift is emerging within the chip industry itself, with some players concerned the final language of the legislation could provide disproportionate support to manufacturers like Intel while doing little to support other chip makers like Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm and Nvidia.

Bipartisan legislation to establish broad privacy rights for consumers won approval from a House subcommittee on Thursday, adding to its momentum. From a report: Lawmakers approved the bill, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, on a voice vote with no dissent. It now moves to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for a vote. The bill still faces a long and potentially difficult path, particularly in the Senate. Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), the committee chairman and a sponsor of the bill, termed it "a massive step forward."

"Every American knows it is long past time for Congress to protect their data privacy and security," he said. "The modern world demands it." Republicans also praised the legislation, while suggesting more changes might be needed. "This bill protects all Americans, regardless of ZIP Code, and provides certainty for businesses so they clearly understand their obligations," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), the committee's top Republican. She said the legislation also would strengthen national security by requiring companies such as TikTok -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance -- to specify when they are transferring and storing consumers' data in countries such as China.

Belief in God among Americans dipped to a new low, Gallup's latest poll shows. While the majority of adults in the U.S. believe in God, belief has dropped to 81% -- the lowest ever recorded by Gallup -- and is down from 87% in 2017. From a report: Between 1944 and 2011, more than 90% of Americans believed in God, Gallup reported. Younger, liberal Americans are the least likely to believe in God, according to Gallup's May 2-22 values and beliefs poll results released Friday. Political conservatives and married adults had little change when comparing 2022 data to an average of polls from 2013 to 2017. The groups with the largest declines are liberals (62% of whom believe in God), young adults (68%) and Democrats (72%), while belief in God is highest among conservatives (94%) and Republicans (92%). The poll also found that slightly more than half of conservatives and Republicans say they believe God hears prayers and can intervene, as well as 32% of Democrats, 25% of liberals and 30% of young adults.

The Biden administration has charged the Federal Communications Commission with prohibiting digital discrimination -- but without a third Democratic commissioner to break the agency's partisan deadlock, those plans are in trouble. From a report: One of President Biden's key domestic priorities, improving internet access and affordability, can't advance unless the Senate confirms his FCC nominee. The Federal Communications Commission has been deadlocked at 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans since Biden took office, and his nominee for the third seat, Gigi Sohn, has been awaiting a Senate vote for months amid Republican opposition. The agency is required by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to craft rules preventing digital discrimination on broadband access.

The rules would prohibit internet service providers such as Comcast or Verizon from deployment discrimination based on the income level or predominant race or ethnicity of the people living in an area. A 2020 study of internet access in Oakland, Calif., found that areas that were redlined by banks in the past -- denied loans or investment -- now have less ISP competition and fiber-based services than their wealthier counterparts. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel launched an inquiry in March, with support from the agency's Republicans, on how to create rules preventing digital discrimination and facilitating equal access to high-speed internet. A major question is how the agency will interpret a part of the law that says the rules should take into account issues of "technical and economic feasibility."

Department of Homeland Security said it will pause on the agency's weeks-old Disinformation Governance Board. From a report: The board -- which had stated it's intended goal was to "coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security." -- was widely criticized by Republicans and right-wing media outlets. A DHS spokesperson said in a statement to Axios that the board was "grossly and intentionally mischaracterized: it was never about censorship or policing speech in any manner. It was designed to ensure we fulfill our mission to protect the homeland, while protecting core Constitutional rights. However, false attacks have become a significant distraction from the Department's vitally important work to combat disinformation that threatens the safety and security of the American people." DHS tasked the Homeland Security Advisory Council to conduct a "thorough review and assessment" of the board's ability to deal with disinformation "while protecting free speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy."

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell acknowledged in an interview with Marketplace on Thursday that the central bank could have moved faster to raise interest rates and cut inflation, as the central bank comes under increasing scrutiny over whether it waited too long to act on prices. From a report: "If you had perfect hindsight you'd go back, and it probably would have been better for us to have raised rates a little sooner," Powell said in an interview released Thursday with Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal. "I'm not sure how much difference it would have made, but we have to make decisions in real time, based on what we know then, and we did the best we could."

Powell's comments mark a sharper sentiment of regret than his past remarks when it comes to whether the Fed should have stepped in sooner. The Fed has faced criticism, primarily from Republicans and some prominent economists, such as Lawrence H. Summers, for delaying interest rate hikes and ending stimulus-era financial supports, which work together to cool off the economy and bring inflation down. Powell, who was confirmed by the Senate for a second term as Fed chair earlier Thursday, lost a handful of votes from lawmakers who said their constituents were suffering too much from high prices on his watch. For much of the last year, the Fed stuck to its message that rising inflation would be "transitory," or temporary, and more limited to pockets of the economy hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns and supply chain disruptions. At WSJ conference on Tuesday, Powell emphasized his resolve to get inflation down, saying he won't hesitate to back interest rate increases until prices start falling back toward a healthy level. "We'll go to that point. There won't be any hesitation about that," he added.

Earlier today, Twitter announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Elon Musk for approximately $44 billion. The announcement led to speculation that former President Donald Trump may return to the social media platform after being permanently banned in January 2021 for his role in the January 6th insurrection. However, according to TechCrunch, "it looks like he's not interested and is instead planning to formally join his own Truth Social platform over the next seven days." From the report: "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth," Trump told Fox News. "I hope Elon buys Twitter because he'll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth. The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter." [...] Trump's comments from today come as shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp, which announced a deal in October to acquire Trump Media & Technology Group, fell 9.5% as Twitter officially announced its deal with Musk. It's possible that Truth's shaky start could cause Trump to change his mind about rejoining Twitter down the road.

Trump's media group released its Truth Social iOS app in February, but the app remained unavailable to users for quite some time. Truth is being marketed as an alternative to social media giants like Twitter and Facebook. If Trump does end up posting on Truth regularly this week, it will mark the former president's return to social media following his ban from numerous platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. So far, he's only posted on Truth once.

As for Twitter, Musk says that "free speech" is key to Twitter's future. Twitter says the transaction, which was unanimously approved by the board, will likely close this year following shareholder and regulatory approval and "the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions."

A group of 18 House Republicans is asking Twitter's board to preserve all records related to Elon Musk's offer to buy the company, setting up a potential congressional probe should the party win back the majority this fall. CNBC: In letters shared exclusively with CNBC, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee asked Twitter Board Chairman Bret Taylor and other members of the board to preserve any messages from official or personal accounts, including through encryption software, that relate to Twitter's consideration of Musk's offer.

"As Congress continues to examine Big Tech and how to best protect Americans' free speech rights, this letter serves as a formal request that you preserve all records and materials relating to Musk's offer to purchase Twitter, including Twitter's consideration and response to this offer, and Twitter's evaluation of its shareholder interests with respect to Musk's offer," said the letter, led by Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

"You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that is or may be potentially responsive to this congressional inquiry," the letter continued. The request signals that should Republicans take back the majority in the House in the 2022 midterm elections, they may launch an investigation into Twitter, especially if the company declines to take the offer from Musk.

A federal appeals court has denied a request for a rehearing on its January decision that upholds California's net neutrality law. From a report: The 2018 law, widely considered the strongest in the US, was signed into law a year after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the Open Internet Order. That order had established stringent net neutrality rules that prohibited internet service providers from throttling or blocking legal websites and apps, and banned ISPs from prioritizing paid content. California's law, which finally took effect last year, also prohibits throttling and speed lanes. Wireless trade associations including the NCTA, the CTIA, and ISPs including Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T sued to block California's law from taking effect, saying the FCC decision should preempt the state law. But that challenge was rejected by a district court judge.

The Ninth Circuit voted 3-0 in January to uphold the lower court ruling, saying the FCC "no longer has the authority" to regulate broadband internet services because the agency reclassified them as "information services, instead of telecommunications services. The FCC therefore cannot preempt the state action." FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel praised the decision on Twitter, reiterating her position that she wants to see net neutrality become "the law on the land" again. The FCC can't currently reinstate net neutrality at the federal level however since the panel lacks a majority and the two Democrats and two Republicans remain deadlocked on the issue. President Biden's FCC nominee Gigi Sohn is still awaiting a confirmation vote in the Senate.

As Washington attempts to get its arms around the rapidly growing cryptocurrency industry, policy makers in the Biden administration and on Capitol Hill have identified stablecoins as an initial target for tighter regulation. From a report: Often billed as one-to-one representations of a currency like the dollar, stablecoins have recently exploded in popularity as investors use them for trading other cryptocurrencies. There are dozens of stablecoins, though a handful pegged to the dollar account for most of the market value, which grew roughly 500% in the 12 months ending in October, according to a report from the Biden administration.

Both Democrats and Republicans want to create new safeguards to help ensure that one stablecoin is quickly redeemable for one dollar, while at the same time warding off broader risk to financial markets. But despite bipartisan agreement about the need for new federal action on stablecoins, policy makers remain at odds about how and when to take it. The Biden administration is asking lawmakers to pass legislation that would treat stablecoin issuers like banks, a step that Republicans and some Democrats oppose in favor of a lighter statutory touch. Other Democrats are skeptical of compromising with Republicans on the issue at all, instead pushing the Biden administration to take more aggressive steps itself. How -- and if -- Congress resolves the debate over the roughly $185 billion stablecoin market is an early test of whether Washington will ultimately write new laws or wield existing frameworks to regulate the broader $2 trillion cryptocurrency industry.

The newest member of Twitter's board of directors just tweeted "Is Twitter dying?"

That would be Elon Musk — who'd preceded the question with a list of Twitter's ten most-followed accounts, noting that most of them "tweet rarely and post very little content." And in follow-up tweets, Musk pointed out that Taylor Swift hasn't posted anything in three months, while Justin Bieber "only posted once this entire year."

When someone posted a bar graph showing that Twitter's user count continued to grow, Musk posted a reply which he's since pinned to the top of his own Twitter feed.

"Now subtract crypto scam accounts that twitter constantly shows as 'real' people in everyone's feed"

This isn't the first time Elon Musk has posted something interesting on Twitter, reports AFP: On Thursday, Musk tweeted a photo of himself smoking marijuana on a Joe Rogan podcast in 2018, with the caption, "Twitter's next board meeting is gonna be lit."
About an hour ago Musk also shared a graph from YouGov (a British market research and data analytics firm) showing that Democrats and Republicans have starkly different levels of trust in major news sources. On the chart Republicans show an average "trustworthiness" rating above 50% for just two of the 22 news outlets: Fox News and the Weather Channel.

Above the chart Musk added the words, "Truth is the first casualty."

Two minutes later he followed that tweet with an equally cryptic remark.

"69.420% of statistics are false."

Slashdot reader McGruber shares a scathing column from New York magazine arguing that "There has never been a self-immolation quite like Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's social-media company has lost more than half a trillion dollars in market value since its August peak — about half of that vaporized in a single day, the biggest drop ever — as it starts to weaken from the constant siege of competitors and dissenters without and within.

"The fallout is so bad that Meta, once the sixth-largest company in the world by market capitalization, has fallen out of the top ten, replaced by two computer-chip makers, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, and the Chinese e-commerce company Tencent..."

They're calling it "an ignominious fall from a rarefied group of world-dominating companies." Facebook's once unbeatable ad-tracking system — the engine that made it a more than $1 trillion company — has effectively been neutralized by the likes of Apple, which allows users to block the company's trackers. (Google is set to start phasing in similar protections to its users over the next two years.) Facebook's user base has started to shrink after revelations by whistleblowers and leaks that showed how harmful social media could be to teen users, who are flocking to less toxic competitors like TikTok anyway. And Zuckerberg — clearly bored with the company he founded 18 years ago — has shifted his vision into an immersive version of the internet, complete with headsets and digital avatars, that he calls the metaverse, an ambition that sets up Facebook's competition not with another Silicon Valley company but with reality itself....

Apple and Google have decided they're going to allow their users to disable code that tracks people across the internet, which happens to be good for their business model. According to The Wall Street Journal, the fallout has been so severe that advertisers are shifting their entire ad budgets to Google since Facebook is no longer profitable.
The article's final point is that in the middle of all this, Zuckerberg has committed the company to a "metaverse" future — even though Wall Street investors seem almost unanimously unconvinced.

"Clearly, Zuckerberg has plenty of money to burn on his ambitions, but what's less clear is if he'll be able to bring back the armies of people who once believed in his ability to conquer the world."

"The mystery of how cryptocurrency miners are paying for their energy-intensive mining operations in rural areas has been solved," writes Slashdot reader fermion. "Instead of paying up to 40% in taxes, the miners build mining operations in 'opportunity zones.' There are few requirements to show these produce jobs or any income." The HuffPost reports: [Some cryptocurrency traders] are attempting to take advantage of a controversial tax incentive in Republicans' 2017 major tax legislation -- specifically, by investing in "opportunity zones," which were sold as a plan to buoy the poorest American neighborhoods but have evolved into a way for wealthy investors to funnel billions in untaxed profits into virtually any venture they choose. The law allowed companies and investors to delay and reduce their capital gains taxes after they sell a financial asset like stock, so long as they invest the money in a new project located in one of thousands of struggling American neighborhoods designated as opportunity zones. If the investment lasts for more than 10 years, the profits from the new business are completely tax-free. Investors face few requirements to prove that their projects will create jobs or housing for a community's existing residents, and scores of them have taken advantage of opportunity zones to erect high-end hotels and luxury real estate in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Crypto investors -- whose profits are subject to the capital gains tax of nearly 40% -- are making their own run at using opportunity zones by investing in energy-intensive crypto mining operations in rural places around the country. "It's a perfect fit," said Blake Christian, a Utah accountant who specializes in opportunity zones and has a newfound clientele of crypto investors. "They've just had this big windfall and invariably they're looking for a way to save some money because they're about to get drilled on short term capital gains taxes. And they want to keep rolling the dice" by staying invested in the crypto market. Fifteen or 20 clients of Christian's clients, who have made money in the low seven-figures mining or trading cryptocurrency, have set up warehouses in opportunity zones full of powerful computers that solve equations in order to "mine" cryptocurrency and lease the computing power to other customers. The ideal location for a crypto mine is close to plentiful, cheap electrical power -- of which many rural opportunity zones have plenty. One of Christian's clients is setting one up next to a Texas oil field that has promised bargain-basement rates on natural gas. Another client's startup has a similar arrangement with a solar power provider.

Tom Frazier's company, Redivider Blockchain, is raising money to manufacture prefabricated, moveable data centers that can be plunked down anywhere in the country; he sees opportunity zone status not as a black mark but as a political opportunity. He argues that by setting up shop in opportunity zones, crypto businesses could generate crucial goodwill around an industry and technology still facing widespread derision and skepticism. "We're creating jobs where Americans need them," he told HuffPost in a recent interview. Frazier said opportunity zones have gotten a reputation as a boondoggle because the vast majority of investments have involved glitzy, one-off real estate projects. Data center businesses could support tech and manufacturing jobs at locations all over the country, he said. [...] Critics say there's nothing wrong with ambitious business -- just that they don't require giant federal tax breaks. "Why are we taking forgone taxpayer revenue and subsidizing this, of all the things we want to spend our nation's money on?" said Brett Theodos, an Urban Institute senior fellow and skeptic of opportunity zones. "Is crypto mining a bad thing? Maybe yes if you're the environment, maybe not for an individual community. But is it something we need to be subsidizing, as the federal government, in order to produce? I'm not clear why we'd want to do that."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Twitter has on various occasions been accused of political bias, with politicians or commentators alleging Twitter's algorithm amplifies their opponents' voices, or silences their own. In this climate, Twitter commissioned a study to understand whether their algorithm may be biased towards a certain political ideology. While Twitter publicized the findings of the research in 2021, the study has now been published in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS.

The study looked at a sample of 4% of all Twitter users who had been exposed to the algorithm (46,470,596 unique users). It also included a control group of 11,617,373 users who had never received any automatically recommended tweets in their feeds. This wasn't a manual study, whereby, say, the researchers recruited volunteers and asked them questions about their experiences. It wouldn't have been possible to study such a large number of users that way. Instead, a computer model allowed the researchers to generate their findings. [...] The researchers found that in six out of the seven countries (Germany was the exception), the algorithm significantly favored the amplification of tweets from politically right-leaning sources. Overall, the amplification trend wasn't significant among individual politicians from specific parties, but was when they were taken together as a group. The starkest contrasts were seen in Canada (the Liberals' tweets were amplified 43%, versus those of the Conservatives at 167%) and the UK (Labour's tweets were amplified 112%, while the Conservatives' were amplified at 176%).

In acknowledgement of the fact that tweets from elected officials represent only a small portion of political content on Twitter, the researchers also looked at whether the algorithm disproportionately amplifies news content from any particular point on the ideological spectrum. To this end, they measured the algorithmic amplification of 6.2 million political news articles shared in the US. To determine the political leaning of the news source, they used two independently curated media bias-rating datasets. Similar to the results in the first part of the study, the authors found that content from right-wing media outlets is amplified more than that from outlets at other points on the ideological spectrum. This part of the study also found far-left-leaning and far-right-leaning outlets were not significantly amplified compared with politically moderate outlets. The authors of the study point out that the algorithms "might be influenced by the way different political groups operate," notes The Conversation. "So for example, some political groups might be deploying better tactics and strategies to amplify their content on Twitter."