Fact Sheet: Zuckerberg Politics, Musk Severance, Paramount Layoffs, Visa Antitrust

What does a Hollywood guy have to do with the company behind the generative AI model called Stable Diffusion? If you've seen a demo of the stuff, the question practically answers itself.

Cameron joins a board that includes Napster co-founder Sean Parker and Greycroft co-founder Dana Settle. Just don't talk to him, Sean: he's wired. —Andrew Nusca

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There's something about Mark (and his politics)

David Paul Morris-Bloomberg/Getty Images

A bold new hairstyle, a gold chain and a fresh wardrobe are the standout features of Mark Zuckerberg's latest makeover.

But it turns out that Sir Zuck's transformation also extends to his political beliefs.

Once a vocal supporter of progressive causes, the billionaire Facebook founder is now “done with politics.” according to a New York Times report. Like a disillusioned dreamer in a novel about loss of innocence, Zuck is apparently resentful of Washington because he believes lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are anti-technology.

Additionally, the right-wing backlash against some of his philanthropic efforts, such as voting booth safety during the pandemic, has led Meta's CEO to retract anything that could be remotely viewed as partisan.

For what it's worth, Zuckerberg has made political donations to officials from both parties. (In 2014, for example, he donated $2,600 each to Republican John Boehner and Democrat Nancy Pelosi.) His individual donations this decade have mostly gone to PACs, although he has spent them Hundreds of millions for election administration.

Zuckerberg's political retreat stands in striking contrast to the increasing ones Open political activism and outspokenness from other tech personalities like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen. But then again, perhaps it's not so much a retreat as a recalibration.

Than that Just Report notes Zuck spoke to Donald Trump on the phone twice this summer. And sources told the newspaper that his main political philosophy is essentially free market and anti-regulation libertarianism.

Who knows, maybe Zuckerberg will even run for president one day. It wouldn't be the first time A tech-savvy media mogul occupied the Oval Office. —Alexei Oreskovic

Ex-Twitter employee: 1, Elon Musk: 0

Grok this: According to a memo, a former Twitter employee won a legal battle with Elon Musk over severance pay shared with Bloomberg.

The worker, who was fired after Musk bought the social media service for $44 billion in 2022, was awarded his entire severance package in arbitration.

The win is a hopeful sign for 2,000 more laid-off employees who are applying similar arbitration claims against the service, now known as X.

As it turns out, Musk's X has allegedly left a long trail of unpaid bills behind. LandlordA Private jet serviceAnd former Twitter executives have all sued the company at some point.

However, the company won a key legal battle in July. A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that claimed X owed 6,000 laid-off employees more than $500 million in severance pay.

One thing is certain: Musk is a godsend for lawyers. –Jenn Brice

Visa sued over alleged debit monopoly

The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against visas because it is, well, a little to wherever consumers want to be.

The lawsuit accuses Visa — whose payments network processes more than 60% of debit transactions in the U.S. — of exclusionary agreements with merchants and banks that penalize Visa customers who conduct debit transactions across different networks.

According to the DOJ, Visa is allegedly “blocking debit volumes, isolating itself from the competition, and stifling smaller, lower-cost rivals.” It is also allegedly partnering with viable competitors in order to ultimately achieve higher fees than would otherwise be the case. Adorable!

We'll see where this goes. Visa has not yet commented on the lawsuit, although the FTC has forced its competitor MasterCard to abandon similar practices last year.

In any case: a successful lawsuit could open the market to younger payment companies such as PayPal, Square and Stripe. And make traders much happier. -A

Now streaming: More layoffs at Paramount

It's never a good thing if your discharge plan includes a “phase two.”

The three co-CEOs of Paramount Global – the company formerly known as Viacom and CBS and, most clumsily, ViacomCBS – revealed a new wave of cuts On Tuesday, they announced they would give the company 90% of its planned $500 million in reductions. (Comforting!)

Paramount's growth has stalled as it grapples with the secular decline of conventional television and the high-risk operations of its majority shareholder, Redstone-led National Amusements.

The second part of this is clarified: Skydance Media, led by Ellison, is waiting for its acquiring deal close sometime in the first half of next year.

But the first? Still trouble, and Paramount is hardly alone. (Just ask Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery how they're doing.) The parent company of MTV and Comedy Central didn't reveal where it made cuts, but laid out a three-step, profit-generating plan for this summer that started last month.

As Logan Roy once said: Life? Just “a number on a piece of paper…a fight.” for a knife in the mud.” -A

The music stops on TikTok

Rest in peace, TikTok Music – we barely knew you.

TikTok parent ByteDance announced on Tuesday that the service will be closed on November 28th.

ByteDance launched the music streamer a little over a year ago as the successor to a service called Resso. At the time, some believed TikTok Music could prove to be “the first real challenger to Spotify’s global dominance.” (With apologies to Apple and Amazon.)

But it wasn't meant to be.

The app has only been released in Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Singapore. Thanks to both, greater availability was unlikely Anti-TikTok political sentiment And discordant relationships between ByteDance and major labels. (Some Spotify knows it all too well.)

TikTok itself will certainly continue to be a place where some new artists catch fire, but otherwise the show won't go on. –David Meyer

More data

—US House of Representatives approves licensing exemption for domestic chipmakers. Something something global competitiveness.

—Google's Gemini can be seen everywhere you look. Gmail! Documents! Drive! Strap your loins.

—AI is coming to a Spotify playlist near you. I can't wait to give him the prompt: “Sadful love songs about the age of intelligence.”

—Vinod Khosla has something to say about AI. Apparently artificial interns for everyone?

—MKBHD's new app is criticized as a “money grab.” The most popular reviewer on the internet is being reviewed, and it's not nice. -A

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