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It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Steve's explanation of what happens in monopolistic companies is now coming true for Apple itself.
How many "product people" are in charge at Apple these days?
Because the execution on their products have declined a bit... and the culture of innovation, design and user-focused invention as a whole has essentially stopped.
#Apple #Tech #Monopoly #Business
https://chaos.social/@obrhoff/112369907442905273
If you're looking for an explanation of what's happening at Google with the current layoffs, just watch this video. Steve Jobs' reflections about what happened at Apple provide the best explanation. It's something you'll encounter in all corporate companies.
#google #stevejobs #layoffs #entshittification
A #Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly.
#Cigna Threatened to Fire Her.
==
Cigna tracks every minute that its staff #doctors spend deciding whether to pay for #HealthCare.
Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers,” Day said.
#Health #Insurance #News #Business
Cigna Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly, Says Former Cigna Medical Director
Cigna tracks every minute that its staff doctors spend deciding whether to pay for health care. Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers,” Day said.ProPublica
Vivendi Posts 5.4 Percent Revenue Gain, Eyes Split Into Four Due to Stock’s “Conglomerate Discount”
#Business #BusinessNews #CanalPlus #International #StudioCanal #Vivendi
Vivendi Q1 Revenue Growth, Eyes Split Into Four Stocks
The French media and telecom company, led by CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine, reports first-quarter growth at Lagardere, Canal+ and Havas.Georg Szalai (The Hollywood Reporter)
First Nations woman one of seven global winners of prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activism
Murrawah Johnson recognised for role in landmark legal case to block coalmine backed by Clive PalmerGraham Readfearn (The Guardian)
In October 2021, Trump launched Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and TruthSocial, along with an ambitious plan to build a media empire that he claimed would compete with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and Netflix. To do this, he would need to raise some serious cash. Enter Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a shell company to raise money and identify a merger target to take it public.
Fast forward to October 2023. Digital World is collapsing, and it’s taking Abu Dhabi-based ARC Global Capital LLC and other investors down with it. After Digital World initially raised $1 billion in private investments to merge with TMTG, it is now returning $533 million back to investors.
Shares of Digital World dropped to $15.54 on the news from a peak of $97 in March 2022. Digital World’s 2022 Annual Report, published April 26, 2023, reveals that ARC Global Capital owned 3.8% of Digital’s Class A common stock and 76.4% of Class B common stock, amounting to 14.8% of the SPAC’s total shares outstanding.
According to ARC Global’s website, “Since its inception, ARC Global Investment Capital LLC has invested in transactions totaling in excess of $2bn in combined enterprise value achieving top quartile returns and no losses to date.” That’s probably gonna need an edit pretty soon.
Digital World still owes its independent accounting firm, Marcum LLP, $361,660 in fees incurred during 2021 and 2022.
Perhaps that’s why Marcum stated in its audit of Digital World’s finances that “the company cash and working capital as of December 31, 2022 are not sufficient to complete its planned activities for a reasonable period of time.” As of December 31, 2022, Digital World has accumulated a total stockholders’ deficit of almost $31 million.
Digital World originally set a deadline of September 2022 to merge with TMTG. However, the US Securities and Exchange Commission threw a wrench in those plans. Turns out, when you form a SPAC, you’re not supposed to have a predetermined acquisition target; the SPAC is supposed to seek potential acquisition targets rather than identify a target beforehand, as Digital World did. This, and many other legal missteps doomed the SPAC to multiple regulatory investigations.
The SEC settled its case in July 2023, ruling that Digital World violated the antifraud provisions of federal securities laws, and assessed an $18 million penalty.
Curiously, just before TMTG received subpoenas from the SEC and a New York grand jury, Trump resigned as board chairman, and Donald Trump Jr., and former Trump administration official Kash Patel resigned from TMTG’s board. Trump still owns 90% of TMTG.
In 2022, the Southern District of New York investigated TMTG for money laundering, after finding it received a $8 million in loans: $2 million from Paxum Bank, based in Dominica and chartered under the Offshore Banking Act No. 8 of 1996. Paxum is partially owned by a former Russian government official who now runs a maritime agency under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation. The other $6 million came from “ES Family Trust” which shared a director with Paxum.
Investors are now backing away, leaving Digital World with only $293 million – an amount that would be transferred to TMTG if the deal ever closes. That amount could dwindle as the potential for investors to request further redemptions remains.
Losers include not only Trump, who won’t be realizing his dream to build a media juggernaut, but also early investors, such as Georgia congressional representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who invested between $15,001 and $50,000 in Digital World at $94.20 in 2022. Her losses based on current stock valuation of $15.54 amount to -84%. Hope it was worth it, Marge.
Count Devin Nunes among the losers as well. Devin Nunes (remember him?) vacated his congressional seat in favor of clinging to Trump’s disintegrating coattails as TMTG CEO. Nunes, despite representing California for nearly 20 years in Congress, is best known for losing his defamation lawsuit against a satirical Twitter account named Devin Nunes’ Cow. He can now add failed social media company CEO to his resume.
TruthSocial, Trump’s “Twitter alternative” social media platform has managed to garner only about 2 million monthly active users. For comparison, X (formerly known as Twitter) has about 245 million daily active users. Facebook has about 3 billion monthly active users. Even Mastodon and its larger group of interoperable servers known as “The Fediverse,” which is owned by no single individual or company, has 10.7 million registered users of which 1.5 million are daily active users.
So, it is safe to say that Truth Social and its parent TMTG can join a long list of Trump’s other business failures.
#Trump #SPAC #DigitalWorld #TMTG #Finance #SocialMedia #USPol #USPolitics #News #Bankruptcy #Business #Investing #MarjorieTaylorGreene #DevinNunes
"The truth is that the ability to build Facebook-like services is relatively common. What was rare was the moral recklessness necessary to go through with it..." 👉 https://mastodon.social/@gyokusai/112301065732034869
I'd only add that in addition to showing certain people certain things to get them to act a certain way, these systems also afford the ability to manage what *not* to show those people - basically, keeping their bubble tidy.
#SurveillanceCapitalism #tech #SocialMedia #business #privacy @pluralistic
And while we’re at it, here’s @pluralistic's “Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags” again, probably the best essay on Zuck’s Evil Empire ever written:“No one would pay very much for this oil, but there were a lot of oily rags, and provided no one asked him to pay for the inevitable horrific fires that would result from filling the world’s garages with oily rags, he could turn a tidy profit.”
https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/
Cory Doctorow: Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags
For 20 years, privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about commercial online surveillance, the way that companies gather deep dossiers on us to help marketers target us with ads. This pitch…Locus Online
