Team

Meta will soon roll out Community Notes, a whitewashed version of Elon Musk’s fact-checking system

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In January, Meta announced the end of third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The tech giant is betting on a new, community-driven system called Community Notes that draws on X’s feature of the same name and uses the X’s open algorithm as its basis. Meta is rolling out the feature on March 18. Anyone who wants to write and rate community notes can sign up now. The rollout will be throttled and, initially, notes won’t appear publicly as Meta claims it needs time to feed the algorithm and ensure this system is working properly. The promise is enticing. A more scalable, less biased way to flag false or misleading content, driven by the wisdom of the crowd rather than the judgment of experts. But a closer look at the underlying assumptions and design choices raises questions about whether this new system can truly deliver on its promises. The concept, its UX implementation, and underlying technology surfaces challenges that, in my conversations with Meta’s designers, don’t seem to have any clear, categorical answer. It feels more like a work-in-progress and not a clear-cut answer to the shortcomings of third-party fact-checking.  Currently, Meta’s Community Notes are exclusively accessible on mobile devices within the Facebook, Instagram, and Threads apps. The mobile-first approach likely reflects the platform’s primary user base and usage patterns. Users who are eligible to contribute to Community Notes, after meeting specific criteria such as having a verified account and a history of platform engagement, can apply to be a contributor and add context to posts they believe contain misinformation (200,000 have already done so in the U.S., Meta tells me). Once in, they’ll find an option within the post’s menu to “Add a Community Note.” This triggers an overlay screen with a simple text editor that has a 500-character limit. The design also requires users to include a link, adding a layer of credibility to the note (although the link may not be a reliable source).

Minnesota food shelves worried as USDA cancels truckloads of food

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This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled almost half of food shelf orders from Minnesota farmers under the federal Commodity Credit Corporation. The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families has placed orders for 78 truckloads of food so far in 2025, including for eggs, milk, chicken and dried fruit. It was for distribution to its statewide network of food banks, shelves and meal programs.  However, according to an emailed statement from the department only 39 of these orders have been received so far. Five remaining pending orders have been purchased but not yet delivered.  In 2024, CCC accounted for about 30 percent of the food available from the Department of Children, Youth and Families, and distributed through the statewide network of food banks, food shelves and other food distribution programs.  The department’s statement says  this will significantly reduce the amount of food coming into its Minnesota programs between now and September. There hasn’t been word on any impact on the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, which accounts for about 70 percent of food available from the department and distributed through the statewide network.  The statement also says the department hasn’t heard from the USDA beyond the individual cancelled orders nor about potential future impacts to the food purchases. The Department of Children, Youth and Families has been receiving temporary discretionary food and funds through the CCC to support food banks and food distribution sites including food shelves. The current contract with food banks extends through December contingent on continued availability of CCC funds and food from the USDA.  Rachel Holmes, director of advocacy and community engagement at The Food Group, said the food system in Minnesota is strained. She added the food order cancellations by the USDA is “terrible timing” and that food shelves most likely will need to adjust their budgets for a 30 percent increase in food purchases. If they’re unable to do that, she said, they may need to make some “really tough decisions” by reducing operating hours or providing less food to households.  “Food banks will do everything in our power to be able to continue offering nutritious, culturally connected foods  for them,” Holmes said. “And we are facing some challenges, but we’re really in it together … it’s a really trying time and it’s really threatening to increase the number of food insecure Minnesotans and putting really massive pressure on our food system.”

Volvo Car Brings Back Samuelsson as CEO to Steer Turnaround

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March 30 (Reuters) – Volvo Cars (VOLCAR Rowan’s exit comes only about three years after his appointment in January 2022, which followed Volvo’s listing on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2021. “We are very pleased to welcome Hakan Samuelsson back as CEO,” Eric Li, Volvo Cars chairman of the board, said in the statement. Li said the company was facing fast-moving technological shifts, growing geopolitical challenges, and intensifying competition. “He brings a rare combination of industrial depth, strategic clarity, and proven leadership and Hakan has a broad knowledge of our group,” Li said.b.ST), opens new tab has reappointed Hakan Samuelsson, who served as CEO of the company from 2012 to 2022, as chief executive, after the group warned last month that it could be in for a challenging 2025. Samuelsson, 74, will succeed Jim Rowan, who will step down on March 31. Samuelsson will serve a two-year term while the group prepares to appoint a long-term successor, it said in a statement on Sunday. Last month, Volvo Cars, majority-owned by China’s Geely, warned that 2025 would be a tumultuous and competitive year during which it might struggle to match its 2024 sales performance and profitability. Geely Sweden, which manages the group’s investments in the European brands such as Polestar and Volvo Cars, declined to give further comment.

The White Lotus Is the First Great Post-‘Woke’ Piece of Art

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ike White is not just the writer of The White Lotus. He is also its creator, director, and executive producer, and I’m surprised that he doesn’t do the catering and animal-handling, too. This unusual level of control makes The White Lotus the polar opposite of, say, the Marvel films, which feel like they’re written by one committee, edited by another, and marketed by a third. And what has White done with his unusual level of creative control? He has made the first great work of art in the post-“woke” era. He treats his characters as individuals, rather than stand-ins for their identity groups—and he insists on plot points that would unnerve a sensitivity reader. The White Lotus repudiates the “peak woke” era of the late 2010s, which yielded safe, self-congratulatory, and didactic art, obsessed with identity and language, that taught pat moral lessons in an eat-your-greens tone. Instead, White has made a point of discovering our last remaining taboos—kink, scatology, marrying for money, male nudity deployed so frequently in moments of high tension that culture scholars call it the “melodramatic penis”—and then putting them all on-screen, with a luxury hotel or a superyacht as the backdrop. If you’ve watched Episode 6 of the latest season, set in Thailand, cross Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son’s character has a drug-fueled threesome involving his brother off your bingo card.

Dow futures drop as report says White House mulls global tariff of up to 20% on nearly all trading partners

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Investors are buckling up for a potentially bumpy ride as a critical week for markets and the economy kicks off, with reports indicating President Donald Trump’s trade war could soon get even more intense. Dow futures were down 170 points, or 0.41%, while S&P 500 futures fell 0.77% and Nasdaq futures sank 1.4%. That follows Friday’s selloff that saw the broad market index sink 2%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond slipped 5.9% basis points to 4.196%. Tariff news dominated the weekend and indicated more escalation is ahead. On Sunday, sources told the Wall Street Journal that Trump has pushed his advisers to get more aggressive on tariffs, including higher rates on a wider set of nations. One option under consideration in recent days is a global tariff of up to 20% that hits nearly all US trading partners, reviving an idea Trump floated on the campaign trail. A 20% rate would further up the ante. Fitch Ratings earlier estimated that if Trump carried out all his previously announced plans, the effective US tariff rate could hit 18% on average—the highest level in 90 years.  Reciprocal tariffs, where the US matches duties or trade barriers from other countries, are still an option too, according to the Journal, but one source that said Trump wants a “big and simple” policy. That suggests the eventual tariff policy will be broader than Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s “dirty 15” plan to set tariffs on the 15% of countries that the administration considers the worst trading partners. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Similarly, the Washington Post reported on Saturday that Trump is considering a single universal tariff as part of an effort to fundamentally transform the US economy. That means most imports would face the same rate no matter which country they are from, the report said, adding that Trump views a single duty as less likely to be watered down by exemptions. Intense discussions are ongoing ahead of Wednesday, which Trump has billed as “Liberation Day,” when his next batch of tariffs will be unveiled.

Trump ‘very angry’ at Putin’s remarks on Zelensky

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President Trump said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” at remarks Russian President Vladimir Putin made Friday about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, suggesting he is not a legitimate leader. The president threatened to slap a new tariff on Russia if it is at fault for stalling an end “to bloodshed.” “If I feel, if we’re in the midst of a negotiation, you could say that I was very angry, pissed off, when Putin said yesterday that — you know, when Putin started getting into Zelensky’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location, you understand?” Trump told NBC News’s Kristen Welker during a phone interview on Sunday. The Russian president said Friday that his Ukrainian counterpart does not have the legitimacy required for a peace deal signature and suggested an interim government is needed, The Associated Press reported. Ukraine’s 2024 presidential elections were postponed due to martial law amid the war with Russia. Putin said any agreement signed on to by Ukraine’s government could receive pushback. “Under the auspices of the United Nations, with the United States, even with European countries, and, of course, with our partners and friends, we could discuss the possibility of introduction of temporary governance in Ukraine,” he said Friday, according to the AP, later saying that “democratic elections, to bring to power a viable government that enjoys the trust of the people, and then begin negotiations with them on a peace treaty” would be able to happen via the temporary governance.

TikTok ad revenue could top $32B — if it doesn’t lose its biggest market

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Meta stands to be the big winner in the event of a TikTok ban. Dive Brief: Dive Insight: Despite the sell-off deadline of April 6 fast approaching, there is still a major sense of uncertainty for marketers as TikTok hasn’t negotiated with potential buyers. However, President Donald Trump indicated he will most likely provide an extension for TikTok if a deal is not reached by then. Additionally, the administration has indicated it is in talks with four groups about the potential sale. TikTok stands to lose billions of dollars in ad revenue if a U.S. ban is enacted, according to a WARC report. The money would likely trickle down into American companies, such as Google and Meta. If TikTok does go dark permanently in the U.S., Meta is predicted to absorb 55% of its ad spend. Platforms with short-form video options, such as YouTube and Instagram, stand to benefit the most. While the U.S. remains the largest market for the app, the country’s share of total ad revenue for the platform has steadily declined over the past five years. By 2026, the U.S. is predicted to make up 34% of TikTok’s ad revenue, down from 43.3% in 2022. However, if a ban is avoided the app is predicted to earn $13.4 billion in ad revenue from the U.S. in 2026. TikTok is the fifth most popular app globally, jumping to the second most popular app when just considering women between the ages of 16 and 24. Its ad reach is predicted to be 1.59 billion users, with users globally averaging 35 hours a month on the app. U.S. users spend an average 44 hours per month on the app, exceeding the global average. This far exceeds the monthly usage of other platforms and is more than double the average usage of Instagram. Courtesy MarketingDive

Estée Lauder Partners With Adobe for AI-Driven Marketing

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Adobe announced a partnership with The Estée Lauder Companies where the company is adopting Adobe Firefly and redefining its process of launching digital marketing campaigns through generative AI. As the parent company to iconic brands such as Clinique, Estée Lauder, Jo Malone London, La Mer, and M•A•C Cosmetics, ELC connects with consumers across roughly 150 countries and territories. With a strong focus on innovation and speed to market, ELC is investing in digital advertising to engage its diverse and unique consumer base. By integrating Firefly across existing Adobe Creative Cloud workflows, ELC will drive efficiency, accelerate campaign execution and empower creative teams to recapture time—and focus on ideating and creating new artistic concepts. Across digital channels, different formats (text, image, shopping, app promotion) and sizes for marketing campaigns contribute to hundreds of thousands of assets needed every year. Teams are burdened with repetitive tasks that take time away from driving new design concepts and connecting with different audiences. This partnership underscores ELC’s newly unveiled Beauty Reimagined, a bold strategic vision aimed at establishing ELC as the best consumer-centric prestige beauty company in the world. A key focus of this plan includes driving transformative innovation to accelerate speed-to-market, as well as boosting consumer-facing investments to accelerate new customer acquisition. By harnessing Adobe’s Firefly capabilities to streamline content production, ELC reinforces its commitment to this vision—ensuring impactful, consumer-driven engagement at scale. Through leveraging Adobe Firefly Services—a collection of creative and generative APIs—ELC can reimagine content production as additional campaigns are required to engage consumers who are more digital than ever. In fact, survey stats show nearly two-third of marketers* believe the demand for content will quintuple between 2024 and 2026. With features such as Generative Expand seamlessly integrated into existing workflows, images can be intelligently resized and optimized for various formats. Teams can quickly deliver assets with text and imagery intuitively placed, ready for distribution across digital marketing channels. “Maintaining mindshare on digital channels such as social media is important in the competitive beauty industry, but oftentimes the content requirements for each platform stresses our ability to deliver new campaigns,” said Justin Edwards, Vice President, Global Digital Creative and Brand Image, M•A•C Cosmetics. “The M•A•C Cosmetics team was the first to explore the potential of generative AI for the company through Adobe Firefly Services, and we believe it will remove hurdles that currently prevent our designers from focusing on their craft.” “Adobe Firefly Services APIs surface decades of Adobe innovation across our foundational AI models and applications such as Photoshop and InDesign, to assist with daily tasks that are crucial but can often be repetitive and time-intensive,” said Varun Parmar, general manager, Adobe GenStudio and Firefly for Enterprise. “The Estée Lauder Companies have shown an incredibly compelling and practical application of generative AI, which allows design teams to focus more time on their craft and ideating eye catching creative for its portfolio of nearly 25 brands.” As part of its new content production workflow, ELC also needed to modernize its digital asset management (DAM) system. The DAM houses the company’s entire library of images, logos, patterns and more—assets that anchor the creation of digital content. ELC is now leveraging Adobe Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service to enhance their DAM and drive greater operational efficiency. This creates an architecture where assets can be uploaded with greater speed, along with enhanced search capabilities for teams to quickly locate assets and gain actionable insights on usage and performance. It further shortens the time it takes to build and deliver assets for digital campaigns. “At The Estée Lauder Companies, we need to keep pace with a changing environment where an increasingly large share of transactions is happening through digital channels such as mobile devices,” said Yuri Ezhkov, Vice President, Creative Center of Excellence, The Estée Lauder Companies. “We have a trusted partner in Adobe to provide generative AI technologies that are safe for commercial use, with tools that enable our design teams to operate more nimbly and be free to focus on ideating.”

Salesforce to Invest USD $1 Billion in Singapore Over 5 Years

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Salesforce pledges to invest in Agentforce, customer success, and workforce development Salesforce launches more services on Hyperforce, allowing customers to securely deploy a deeply unified platform with Agentforce, Data Cloud and Customer 360 Applications, adhering to local data residency Singapore Airlines and Salesforce collaborate on AI-powered customer service applications Salesforce, the world’s #1 AI CRM*, announced plans to invest USD $1 billion in Singapore over the next five years, affirming a strong commitment to accelerate the nation’s digital transformation and Agentforce adoption. Singapore is an important growth market for Salesforce as businesses increasingly embrace Agentforce to unlock new opportunities. This investment underscores Salesforce’s support for Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 and the nation’s vision as a driver of global AI innovation. Spurred by a USD $6 trillion digital labor market, thousands of customers around the world are investing in Agentforce, Salesforce’s digital labor platform, to build and deploy agents that can reason, decide, act, and drive meaningful outcomes 24/7. Singapore has been dealing with a slowing growth rate of the labor force, contributed by an aging population and declining birth rates. Agentforce delivers Singapore an opportunity to rapidly expand its labor force in many key service and public sector roles. This investment will help support Singapore enterprises as they build limitless digital workforces, bringing humans together with trusted autonomous Agentforce agents to unlock new levels of productivity, innovation, and growth. As Agentforce adoption accelerates, it has the potential to drive significant impact across Singapore’s industries, startups, and the public sector. Mr Jermaine Loy, Managing Director of the Singapore Economic Development Board said: “Singapore welcomes Salesforce’s investment, which will boost our ongoing efforts to build a vibrant hub for AI innovation and adoption across our economy. Salesforce’s initiatives in AI research and workforce development will strengthen our ecosystem by catalysing innovation for key industries and corporates based in Singapore.” “We are in an incredible new era of digital labor where every business will be transformed by autonomous agents that augment the work of humans, revolutionizing productivity and enabling every company to scale without limits,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. “Singapore is at the forefront of this shift, and as the world’s largest provider of digital labor through our Agentforce platform, Salesforce is thrilled to expand our work with the business community and our longtime partners in the region to drive innovation, productivity and growth.” Driving global Agentforce innovation from Singapore Salesforce has been investing in Singapore for nearly two decades and has established a thriving customer base and partner ecosystem in the region. Customers of all sizes, including industry leaders like Singapore Airlines, Grab, M1, FairPrice Group, Ocean Network Express and PRISM+ are using Salesforce AI technologies to drive efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and unlock new revenue streams. Singapore plays a crucial role in driving Agentforce innovation for Salesforce. In 2019, Salesforce expanded its AI Research team internationally, choosing Singapore as its first overseas AI Research hub location. Since then, the hub has significantly contributed to the global development of AI for the industry. This includes development of industry leading models such as multimodal language-vision foundation models (BLIP), and time-series foundation models (Moirai). The AI Research hub has contributed to product innovations such as AIOps Agents that help Salesforce achieve highest levels of site availability and in-house code LLMs for helping customers optimize their code for performance. Their work has resulted in over 100 research papers and patents being published. This continued investment will not only drive Agentforce innovation through the research hub but also support Salesforce’s expanding customer base in the region. In fact, Singapore Airlines and Salesforce announced that the Airline is incorporating Agentforce, Einstein in Service Cloud, and Data Cloud into its customer case management system, enabling it to deliver more consistent and personalized service to its customers. The two companies also plan to co-develop AI solutions for airlines at the Salesforce AI Research hub in Singapore, aiming to provide greater value and additional benefits to the industry. Bringing local data residency for Agentforce to Singapore Salesforce is expanding its services on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s trusted next-generation platform architecture, in Singapore to provide data residency for Data Cloud, Agentforce, and Unified Marketing Applications (UMA) by next month. This will empower Singapore businesses to capitalize on Salesforce’s Agentforce and data offerings while adhering to local data residency regulations, an imperative for regional and global organisations in regulated industries such as the government, financial services or telecommunications. This helps align with data privacy regulations, enhancing data security and fostering trust among customers and stakeholders by demonstrating a commitment to compliance. Salesforce first introduced Hyperforce in Singapore in 2021. Building an Agentforce-ready workforce Salesforce is refreshing its Singapore office with a new space to enable customers to transform their workforce with digital labour. The space will include Agentforce activations space and a demo pod to provide hands-on experience building and deploying trusted, autonomous AI agents through Agentforce. The new space will also be used for upskilling initiatives for the ecosystem of partners and the community. Salesforce remains committed to investing in workforce development by upskilling in Agentforce, ensuring the workforce is equipped for the jobs of the future. The company is partnering with Institutes of Higher Learning such as Singapore Management University, Institute of Technical Education, and Ngee Ann Polytechnic to equip students with in-demand CRM and AI skills through training and certifications, as well as connection to opportunities for employment in the Salesforce ecosystem. Leveraging Trailhead, Salesforce’s free training platform, these initiatives equip individuals with the skills essential for thriving careers in the digital economy. Salesforce commitment to giving back An important part of Salesforce’s culture is the belief that business is the greatest platform for change, reflected in the company’s 1-1-1 model of corporate philanthropy, which dedicates 1% of the company’s equity, 1% of its employees’ time and 1% of its products to giving back. Over the last two decades, Salesforce Singapore and its employees have spent over 190,000 hours volunteering in their communities and giving over … Read more

Dassault Systèmes and RWTH Aachen Partner for Workforce Skills

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Dassault Systèmes announced its 10-year collaboration with the Chair and Institute for Machine Elements & Systems Engineering (MSE) at the RWTH Aachen University, one of Europe’s best engineering universities, to boost the engineering and industrial product development skills of Germany’s future workforce. “The transformation to an AI-supported, seamless digital product development process requires engineers who are trained on MBSE methods and tools. Therefore, we decided to use the tool chain of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform” MSE will integrate Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud into RWTH Aachen University’s mechanical engineering curricula for up to 13,000 mechanical engineering students, making the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with model-based systems engineering (MBSE) the core technology of its education programs. MSE and partnering chairs can train students and junior engineers in MBSE, integrating the latest virtual twin applications. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform connects modeling with physical and AI-based simulation, and creates traceability of system parameters in one collaborative environment. Students gain practice-oriented learning that can be applied to jobs across all industrial sectors, facilitating their entry into the professional world and eliminating the need for long training processes. Besides education, joint research activities of MSE and Dassault Systèmes are fostered to enhance model-based systems engineering methods and processes. New technologies, resulting out of research, are transferred to industry by the Center for Systems Engineering (CSE). CSE is an interdisciplinary hub on the RWTH Aachen Campus dedicated to strengthening collaboration between academia and industry to advance engineering practices. “The transformation to an AI-supported, seamless digital product development process requires engineers who are trained on MBSE methods and tools. Therefore, we decided to use the tool chain of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform,” said Professor Georg Jacobs, Director of the Institute for Machine Elements and Systems Engineering (MSE), RWTH Aachen University. “Our partnership with Dassault Systèmes is the greatest of that kind for a major technical university and will strengthen the ability of industry to innovate in the years to come.” MBSE has emerged as a key enabler in the efficient development of autonomous vehicles, aircraft, medical devices and other solutions combining mechanical, electronic and software systems. Employees having advanced modeling and simulation skills in this domain are highly sought after by companies in regulated and competitive markets as they adopt the principles of experience and circularity in complex product development. “Mastering systems engineering is an imperative for industrial innovation in the Generative Economy. By training future engineering professionals with the right skills, our partnership with MSE and CSE at RTWH Aachen University will help bridge the skills gap, boost student employability, and accelerate industrial transformation in Germany. This is the power of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and the cloud in action,” said Valérie Ferret, Vice President, 3DEXPERIENCE Edu, Dassault Systèmes. The collaboration was announced in Aachen during CWD & DSEC 2025, an event focused on drivetrain technology, systems engineering and wind power drives.