How Threads Became One of the Fastest Growing Apps Ever

In the day after it launched to the public, Meta’s new text-based app Threads saw an explosion of new users unmatched by any other company aiming to rival the struggling social media platform—or almost any app in the past decade.

Within two hours of its launch on Wednesday evening, 2 million people had already downloaded the app, widely seen as a copycat to Twitter. By Friday morning, sign-ups had surpassed 70 million, a figure CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was “way beyond our expectations.” The Verge reported that users had already posted more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes, based on internal company data.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The company’s early success has not been lost on Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk, who took to the platform to criticize the app on Thursday evening. Twitter’s legal team quickly threatened legal action over Threads, reportedly alleging in a letter that Meta had engaged in “unlawful misappropriation” of its trade secrets.

Who has joined threads?

According to data provided to TIME by Sensor Tower and data.ai, Threads was the most downloaded non-game app on a launch day in the past decade. As of July 6 it had amassed approximately 40 million worldwide downloads, according to Sensor Tower. While data.ai says Nintendo’s Mario Kart Tour was the fastest-ever growing app, Threads came in second and its launch outpaced those of popular apps like Pokemon GO and Call of Duty Mobile. Zuckerberg reported that Threads reached 30 million users in less than 24 hours. By comparison Instagram took 15 months to reach 30 million downloads, while TikTok reached the milestone in just under two years, according to data.ai. (ChatGPT’s app, released at the end of last year, is just shy of 18 million downloads, data.ai says.) But the early numbers are still dwarfed by the 368 million users who visit Twitter daily, according to the Business of Apps.

A major part of the platform’s appeal is the fact that for many, the communities they’ve built online are readily accessible—users are able to easily sign up through their existing Instagram accounts and transfer over their following from photo-based app. In addition, a large number of prominent accounts received early access to Threads to help populate the platform ahead of its launch. Early adopters included public figures like Bill Gates, Shakira and Oprah Winfrey, along with brands like Netflix.

The success of Threads

Meta already has a lot of the social media infrastructure in place and being a household name gives it a headstart. “It’s an advantage to be associated with a big brand,” Darrell West, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, told TIME previously. “Threads is not going to be a niche player.”

Threads is already having a nostalgic effect. Some users have compared the experience on the app to Twitter in its early days.

It remains to be seen if Thread’s success will continue, Kevin Driscoll, assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Department of Media Studies, told TIME. “Some of the problems that have come up with both Twitter and Facebook, and are kind of endemic to these highly centralized platforms, [are that] their main focus is growth and scale and early user acquisition, and so there isn’t as much talk about long term sustainability.”

The app is still lacking some key features, such as a search function, hashtags, and a following feed. The company received some pushback for a policy that would require users trying to delete their Threads account to also delete their Instagram profile. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, said in a Threads post that the company is working on fixing it.

Meta also faces a challenge rolling Threads out in European Union countries due to regulatory concerns. The region is a big market for Meta. Europe accounted for roughly 22% of Meta’s $28 billion in advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2023, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Twitter’s Response

Amid the app’s early success, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, did not shy away from taking swipes at Threads’ main competitor. In a post, Zuckerberg said Threads would be “focusing on kindness”, something he implied had been missing on Twitter. “That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently,” he said.

The new app has been billed by many as a “Twitter-killer”, a threat to X-Corp, the company Musk created and merged with Twitter earlier this year, that it has not been taking lightly. Just hours after Thread’s launch, X-Corp’s legal team sent a letter to Zuckerberg– expressing “serious concerns that Meta has engaged in systematic, will, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” Semafor reported on Thursday.

In response, a Meta spokesperson reportedly posted: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

In a series of Tweets Thursday night, Musk criticized the app, calling it a “closed source, algorithm-only system,” implying that could mean that the “manipulation of what information people see is essentially undetectable.” Replying to a Tweet about Meta’s social media dominance, he wrote that “Any social media monopoly is despair.”

For now, Meta is riding a win that follows a string of high-profile scandals and missteps in recent years, including mass layoffs and criticism from activists and regulators over how the company failed to protect users from harms on its platforms and mishandled user data.

“This is as good of a start as we could have hoped for!” Zuckerberg posted on Threads. “Feels like the beginning of something special.”

source https://time.com/6292957/threads-fastest-growing-apps/

Teens Are Increasingly Underestimating Their Weight

By many measures, teen obesity is an international public health crisis, with data showing that 340 million adolescents worldwide are affected, a number that’s risen tenfold in the last half century. The largest study to date of how teenagers perceive their own weight—encompassing 40 countries and 16 years—suggests that the same teens are increasingly underestimating how much they weigh.

According to Anouk Geraets, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg and the study’s lead author, the findings, published July 5 in the journal Child and Adolescent Obesity, help explain why so many countries’ attempts to course correct the rise of teenage obesity “don’t have the right effect that they want to have.” Geraets argues that the data suggest health care experts may be overlooking the importance of discussing body perceptions in conversations with adolescents about their health and habits—and highlight why we need to reconsider how weight and health are measured.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Gareats’ team used World Health Organization data from longitudinal international school-based surveys, including 746,121 teens worldwide who had answered questions about weight perception between 2002 and 2018. “What’s very important is that the study has asked the same questions across the years,” says Geraets, allowing findings from each survey year to be compared directly.

Across all years and countries, teens underestimated their weight by about 13%. And that number is growing, with the global annual average of teen weight underestimation growing by some 33% between 2002 and 2018. On the other hand, the increase in underestimation was accompanied by a decrease in overestimation, mostly accounted for by changes in how girls reported experiencing their weight. Geraets believes both trends could be attributed to changing body ideals throughout the years included in the study. “In the ‘90s, there was this skinny body ideal, and we started in 2002,” when those standards were still fairly prevalent, she says. Teens in the 2010s “were maybe not comparing themselves to skinny models like [they were] the ‘00s.”

Read more: Teens Are Taking Wegovy for Weight Loss. But Doctors Have a Lot to Learn

Additionally, about 60% of teens were correct in their own assessment of their weight, a measurement that increased or remained consistent over time in all but 8 of the 41 included countries—a trend also driven largely by girls.

Geography seemed to play less of a role. Geraets’ team found that, although teens in countries with higher obesity rates were generally more likely to misjudge their weight, when teen obesity rates in a given country went up, it didn’t necessarily correlate to changes in overestimation or underestimation far outside the country’s average rates. It’s possible, then, that the changing ways teens view their bodies could be the result of global cultural changes. Increased smartphone ownership worldwide, for instance, means that teens on every continent are now able to spend time in the same corners of the internet.

In the U.S. especially, where teens have to process messages about diet culture and body size from all sides, understanding where weight perception can play a more helpful role would likely mean doing more research that uses Geraets’ findings as a jumping-off point. As obesity rates have grown, so too has the number of teens affected by eating disorders, which pose serious health risks at any weight. A recent study of more than 5,000 teenagers with obesity across 10 countries found that caregivers and doctors were often unaware of self-managed attempts at weight loss. This type of miscommunication can strip teens of the opportunity to receive appropriately tailored health care and leave them open to messages about obesity that over- or under-stress the implications it has for their long-term health.

Messaging focused on obesity alone can also deny teens a nuanced picture of their health beyond Body Mass Index (BMI), which remains both the metric used to determine weight status and a standard in research. And though it can be useful when processing large datasets, there’s a large margin of error when using BMI as an indicator of anything on an individual level. Geraets herself prefers waist circumference over BMI, which her study was limited too, as a predictor of cardiovascular health. “If you really want to have the best measures,” she says, “you should look much further than BMI.” For these reasons and more, teenagers should never be left to deal with their weight and body image on their own, suggests Geraets. “If you want to lose weight, if you want to gain weight, I think it’s important to do this in a responsible manner and contact a doctor,” she says.

source https://time.com/6292901/teens-weight-underestimating/

The World May Have Just Missed Its Chance To Seriously Tackle Shipping Emissions

The United Nations has long been a powerful force in the fight against climate change. But the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. agency assigned to regulate the cruise liners, container ships, and bulk cargo carriers that operate on the high seas beyond the authority of any one country, has been another story.

Global shipping is responsible for about 3% of global emissions. But in the lead up to the Paris Agreement back in 2015, then-IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu told world diplomats that the sector should not be subject to any overall emissions limits. “Such measures would artificially limit the ability of shipping to meet the demand created by the world economy,” he said. After pressure to address emissions intensified, the group’s member states came out with a 2018 agreement that would aim to cut emissions by half by 2050, a significant step, but still far from the complete decarbonization that scientists say will be necessary within three decades to avert catastrophic climate change.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Now, at a follow up IMO meeting this month intended to revise shipping’s greenhouse gas strategy, international delegates have agreed to tighten the sector’s lax emissions goals, though not nearly as much as climate advocates say is needed. IMO members set a well-caveated goal to reach net-zero emissions “by or around, i.e. close to 2050, taking into account different national circumstances.”

Read more: The Ocean is the Next Frontier for the Carbon Removal Industry

Current IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim called the agreement struck in London today “monumental.” “It is not the end goal,” he added. “It is in many ways a starting point for the work that needs to intensify even more over the years and decades ahead of us.”

But many observers in the international climate community were furious over the outcome, saying the IMO has failed to bring future emissions from the world’s oceangoing vessels in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, particularly because their agreement lacks a firm 2050 deadline. The targets will be up for discussion again in five years, but many environmentalists say that by then it will be too late to change the sector’s emissions trajectory before 2050. Faïg Abbasov, Shipping programme director of European sustainability NGO Transport and Environment, called the deal a “wishy-washy compromise.” “Aside from FIFA, it’s hard to think of an international organization more useless than the IMO,” he said on Thursday, after a draft agreement was released.

Read more: We’re Gonna Need a Greener Boat

Still, the result could have been worse. Much of the IMO negotiations in recent weeks were carried out in small group sessions, which made it difficult for some national delegations to get their perspective heard. The body very nearly agreed to a weaker compromise, before a last day push by delegations from small island states like Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands, with support from developed nations like the U.K., succeeded in winning concessions from developing countries. Rising sea levels caused by climate change are threatening those small island nations’ existence, while developing countries like India and Brazil have historically been opposed to stronger shipping emissions requirements, out of fear that the limits could hurt their export-dependent economies.

One of the crucial points of contention in the negotiations were whether the new IMO greenhouse gas strategy would include interim 2030 and 2040 emissions targets in advance of a final 2050 goal. Climate advocates say that those near-term targets are essential to making sure the longer-term goals are actually achieved. They would also provide a clear market signal for international shipping companies to put more investment into green technologies, and production and distribution infrastructure for zero emission fuels.

The IMO agreement does include new shorter-term targets that would cut emissions by 20-30% by 2030 and 70-80% by 2040. But instead of actually being referred to as firm targets, the final agreement ambiguously refers to them as “indicative checkpoints.” They’re also lower than what the Pacific Island countries and their bloc of supporters were pushing for: 37% emissions reductions in the sector by 2030 and a 96% reduction by 2040. That level of ambition would have kept the sector on track to do its part in keeping global temperature rise at around 1.5°C. The upper bound of the targets the IMO did adopt, a 30% emission cut by 2030 and an 80% cut by 2040, were only put in place thanks to the last minute push by small island nations on July 6.

Some observers cited the change as a win. Others were less positive about the result. “In typical IMO fashion there was delay tactics in working groups while the real inaction happened behind closed doors where many [national delegations] were excluded until the final hour and in front of a near ultimatum,” said Lucy Gilliam, senior shipping policy officer at European environmental NGO Seas at Risk. “The Pacific [states] brought it back from the brink. But let’s be clear that this was not transparent, just, or equitable and it is reflected in the result reached.”

Read more: The Cruise Industry Is On a Course For Climate Disaster

The current agreement will cause shipping to overshoot its carbon budget to keep global temperatures under 1.5°C by 2032, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. If the sector hits the 2030 and 2040 targets set in the agreement, and actually fully decarbonizes by 2050, it can still stay on track to keep global temperature rise below 2°C.

Much depends on what actual enforcement measures the IMO agrees to, and how strongly they are enforced. Some options include mandates to use lower emission fuels, emissions cap and trade systems, or direct taxes on carbon emissions. The details are set to be hammered out over the course of the next year, with implementation happening around 2026 or 2027. Climate advocates say the last minute IMO push by small island nations helped give them a leg up in those negotiations, since the stronger high-end targets could keep more stringent emission reduction policies on the table. “They were heroes this week,” says Delaine McCullough, shipping emissions campaign manager at Ocean Conservancy. “There’s no other way to describe them.”

Still, the ambiguous language around the targets has left plenty of room for negotiators to sidestep strong emission policies. Individual nations could take matters into their own hands, implementing stricter emissions rules for shipping companies trying to use their ports. The E.U. for instance, adopted a policy last year that would force shippers to pay for emissions. Some environmentalists, however, say that it would be better if the IMO were implementing such financial schemes, as the international body would be able to direct funds generated by carbon levies toward poorer nations that need the most help in adapting to climate change.

“There’ll be a big debate over where those revenues are distributed, and that’s where the question of an equitable and just transition will play out,” says McCullough. “It seems like [this week’s agreement] is the end, but it actually isn’t. It’s the starting gun.”

source https://time.com/6292927/imo-global-shipping-emissions-climate-deal/

Why You Really Need to Change Your Air Conditioners Filter

Given that the average person in the U.S. spends 90% of their time inside, indoor air quality can have a significant impact on overall health and well-being. But many people overlook one common contributor to indoor air quality: air conditioning, which the vast majority of U.S. homes use in some form.

Air conditioners can enhance air quality by regulating temperature, reducing humidity levels, and improving filtration. On the flip side, a dirty system can degrade air quality.

Studies have shown that bacteria and other pathogens can accumulate in air conditioning units, potentially sickening people exposed to them. Legionnaires’ disease, a form of pneumonia, can be spread by air-cooling systems contaminated by bacteria, and dirty AC can also lead to hypersensitivity pneumonitis, an allergic reaction to irritants like bacteria and fungi that leads to lung inflammation. A 2023 study compared healthy adults in India who spent at least six hours per day in air conditioning with those who spent equivalent time in naturally ventilated buildings and found that those in air-conditioned environments had more health issues, including respiratory symptoms, headaches, and lethargy—possibly because of contaminants accumulating in these buildings, among other factors.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Here’s how to avoid AC-related health risks and improve the quality of the air you breathe.

Upgrade your filter

An air-conditioning filter should be labeled with a minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV), which rates its ability to trap particles in the air, ranging from dust and pet dander to smog and mold. The higher the MERV value, the more the filter catches. If they’re compatible with your air-conditioning system, look for a filter labeled MERV 11 or MERV 13, suggests William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

If your system doesn’t work with these filters—window units, in particular, tend to have lower-quality filters—you may want to purchase a separate HEPA filter to help improve your air quality, says Jeffrey Siegel, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto who researches ventilation and indoor air quality.

And use it well

More important than which filter you buy is how you use it, Siegel says. Priority number one: replacing or cleaning it regularly. If you put it off for too long, mold and other contaminants can accumulate in your AC system and circulate throughout your home, potentially triggering allergies and other respiratory issues, says Dr. Anthony Gerber, a pulmonologist at National Jewish Health in Colorado.

Exactly how often you need to swap your filter varies depending on the manufacturer’s instructions, how often you use your AC, and the quality of your home’s air. But, as a rule of thumb, you should clean or replace your filter every month or two during seasons of peak use, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. This not only prevents contamination but also helps the system run better. If you have a reusable filter, manufacturers typically recommend vacuuming it, washing it with water and a gentle detergent, and letting it dry fully before reinserting it.

Regardless of which filter you buy, make sure it fits well, Siegel says. “Air will take the easiest path,” he says, so if there are gaps around your filter, air will simply bypass it. If you have central air conditioning, you can likely have an upgraded filter slot installed relatively inexpensively to improve the fit, Siegel says.

Run your fan more

With central air conditioning, the fan comes on when the system is actively working to lower the interior temperature by circulating cool air. That’s about 20% of the time for most residential systems, Siegel’s research has shown. Air only goes through the filter when the fan is on—so if your system allows, Siegel suggests setting the fan to run for around 20 minutes every hour (about 33% of the time) to improve filtration, especially during seasons when there’s lots of pollen or other irritants in the air.

Many window units also have fan settings, but Siegel says extra run time won’t bring meaningful health benefits, since the filters used in window AC systems typically don’t remove most particles from indoor air.

Bring outdoor air in

Most industrial HVAC systems periodically bring in outdoor air to improve ventilation. That’s important, as inadequate ventilation is thought to contribute to “sick building syndrome,” a phenomenon whereby people feel unwell—experiencing symptoms like headaches, coughing, fatigue, and nausea—while inside, even if there’s no obvious cause for those symptoms.

By contrast, most residential air-conditioning units don’t mechanically bring in fresh outdoor air, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, though some models have a vent that can be left open for fresh-air intake. If yours doesn’t, you can simply turn off your system for a few hours a day and open the windows to get air flowing, Bahnfleth says. (That’s assuming the outdoor air quality is good; if not, you’re better off keeping your windows closed.)

Maintain your system regularly

“It’s the most boring thing in the world, but air-conditioner maintenance is really important,” Siegel says. HVAC technicians can make sure your system is working properly and that hard-to-reach parts are clean and free of potentially harmful build-up.

source https://time.com/6292834/air-conditioner-filter-health-tips/

The Kardashians Continue to Blend Business and FamilyBut the Cracks Are Showing

Throughout the 16 years that the Kardashian and Jenner family has appeared on our television screens—first on E!’s Keeping Up With the Kardashians and now on Hulu’s The Kardashians—the overarching message they’ve put forth has always been that family comes first. But viewers have long caught on to their equally (if not more) important priority: growing their business empire. While the original show launched in 2007 as a showcase for a “modern Brady Bunch,” it also served as a fledgling platform for the Kardashian sisters’ clothing boutiques and small-potatoes endorsement deals. Now, momager Kris Jenner and her children boast not only multiple reality series, but also several fashion, beauty, wellness, and alcohol brands.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The Kardashian and Jenners have always been their own biggest assets as entrepreneurs: they have long offered up their private lives for public consumption, gaining in return a loyal following—and a massive customer base. But there’s a cost to blending business opportunities and personal relationships, and it may never have been more apparent than it is in the current season of The Kardashians.

The conflict at the center of season 3 is one between Kim and Kourtney Kardashian. Their fight may seem trite: Kim creative directed a Dolce & Gabbana runway show that drew from the fashion house’s ’90s archives, and this felt like a violation to Kourtney because less than a year earlier she collaborated on her wedding with D&G, outfitting her family in many looks pulled from the same archive. In Kourtney’s estimation, Kim heartlessly capitalized on her wedding for a business deal; in Kim’s view, Kourtney’s concerns were petty and she overlooked the personal and financial value of the opportunity for a sister whose career she should support.

---

More from TIME

[video id=
KOaVrxCW autostart="viewable"]

---

Read More:The Kardashians Is One Big Marketing Opportunity for the Family’s Brands

Season 3 of The Kardashians, which premiered on May 25, has been building toward a confrontation between the two sisters. Each has vented to other members of the family, but they had yet to speak to one another directly about the conflict—until episode 7, which dropped on July 6. In a brief, charged scene, Kim visited Kourtney to talk things out. Their stilted yet emotional conversation made clear that beneath their squabble surrounding Dolce & Gabbana is a deeper issue, one that speaks to the consequences of blending work and family—and one that can’t be resolved with a weak apology.

HuluKourtney Kardashian sees her wedding dress for the first time in Milan.

Kim and Kourtney have a long history of conflict

As the two eldest sisters, Kim and Kourtney have long butted heads, and over time their priorities have steadily diverged. Kim, long considered the main character of the reality show, has chased fashion editorials and high-profile collaborations, created multiple fashion and beauty businesses, and generally thrived in the spotlight. Kourtney has increasingly focused on motherhood and her romantic relationship, and strived to foster an identity and a life away from the cameras. After Kourtney took a step back from filming in later seasons of Keeping Up, rumors circulated among fans that one of the reasons the show ended was because Kourtney refused to participate.

In recent years, their conflicts have frequently been related to their family’s attitude toward business and particularly Kim’s perspective on work and the importance of every sister contributing to the family empire. Kim, who prides herself on her work ethic and being an entrepreneur (and who also infamously advised women to “get your f-cking ass up and work”) has in the past diminished Kourtney’s feelings by saying that she was “not special” for continuing to work while pregnant. Meanwhile Kourtney, a strong proponent of “boundaries,” has picked fights with Kim over “triggering” her and not respecting her work-life balance. Memorably, the two had a physical fight in season 18 of Keeping Up after Kim alleged that she works harder than Kourtney does.

In the recent Kardashians confrontation, Kourtney reiterated to Kim that she is less concerned with the family’s business ventures than she is with protecting her boundaries and the life she has built for herself with her husband Travis Barker and their blended family. “There’s something about being content and happy with what you have and not feeling like you need more,” she said.

The trouble with mixing business and family affairs

Though the specifics of Kim and Kourtney’s Dolce & Gabbana fight are far from relatable, the underlying themes are some that can impact families of all backgrounds. Sociologist Dalton Conley, the author of The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look at How Family and Society Determine Who We Become, sees their conflict through the lens of economics—a common source of tension within families.

“Economics is a big reason for sibling conflicts, even in families where they’re not famous, trading off the family name, or having a family business,” Conley says, noting that American economic inequality is commonly experienced within families: adult siblings can be of vastly different socioeconomic status from one another, and the lifestyle differences and contrasting priorities that result can foster conflict.

Read More: How Sibling Rivalry Can Help You Succeed

Conley says this dynamic came into play historically as a result of industrialization. Before that time, family businesses were more common, and entire households and extended families often functioned as one economic unit. The separation between people’s financial and personal lives was less clearly defined than it is for most today.

Conley draws a connection between the Kardashians and fictional families whose business dealings cross into their personal relationships. “From King Lear and Shakespeare all the way to Succession, the drama is because in the ideal, modern capitalism, family is totally separate from business,” Conley says. Tensions arise when these realms mix, because the way parents and children, siblings, and other family members interact with each other is generally meant to be different from how employers, employees, and colleagues do. “There are very different norms of behavior and expectations of altruism and unconditional love,” he says.

Clashing values

HuluKim Kardashian meets with Domenico Dolce

The Kardashians and Jenners have made work a major focus of their family dynamics, particularly as their fame—and economic prospects—have grown. In early seasons of the show, before Jenner and her daughters attained A-list status, they banded together as outsiders aspiring to ascend to elite circles. MJ Corey, a writer and researcher who theorizes about the Kardashians on social media under the handle @kardashian_kolloquium, says that the united family narrative put forth by the Kardashians and Jenners has usually benefitted them.

“From telling us how their family has overcome lots of personal challenges before fame, like losing their father suddenly to global fame and all of its pressures, they sell an image of a family that is prepared for whatever comes their way,” Corey says, nodding to the importance with which “family values” have been treated throughout the history of American media. “When it comes to actual conflicts, like with the business—which appears to be as important to them as family—the family image has only helped them.”

Read More: Keeping Up Is Ending. But the Kardashians’ Exploitation of Black Women’s Aesthetics Continues

But that image has begun to warp. And Kim and Kourtney’s clashing perspectives on the Dolce & Gabbana drama—Kim’s focus on the importance of the opportunity for her personal brand and business, juxtaposed with Kourtney’s insistence that her feelings should be worth more than a paycheck—is a meaningful example. Kim is all about her role in the spotlight. Kourtney is all about her private life. And when the growth of the family business requires active participation and sacrifices from all members, these differences spell a problem. While Kim offered a (seemingly reluctant) apology to Kourtney in the episode 7 confrontation, the sisters did not seem to find a way to see eye to eye—the likelihood that similar conflicts will arise seems high. In the end it was Kourtney who offered the most potent line in the scene, one that will linger over the family as it continues down this path: “You chose money over me.”

source https://time.com/6292300/kim-kourtney-dolce-fight-the-kardashians/

U.S. Added 209000 Jobs in June in Sign of Economys Resilience

(WASHINGTON) — America’s employers pulled back on hiring but still delivered another month of solid gains in June, adding 209,000 jobs, a sign that the economy’s resilience is confounding the Federal Reserve’s drive to slow growth and inflation.

The latest evidence of economic strength makes it all but certain that the Fed will resume its interest rate hikes later this month after having ended a streak of 10 rate increases intended to slow inflation.

The June hiring figure reported by the government Friday is the smallest in 2 1/2 years. But it still points to a durable labor market that has produced a historically high number of advertised openings. The unemployment rate fell from 3.7% to 3.6%, near a five-decade low.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Most of the details in the report underscored the job market’s durability. The length of the average work week edged up, a sign that customer demand is strong enough to keep employees busy. And wage growth accelerated: Hourly pay is up 4.4% from a year ago. Wages are now growing faster than year-over-year inflation, which amounted to 4% in May.

The wage data will likely raise concerns at the Fed, which is worried that faster pay gains will perpetuate inflation by leading companies to raise prices to offset their higher labor costs. The Fed wants to see hiring and wage increases slow before halting its rate hikes.

Read More: How 10-Day Semiconductor Training Programs Could Blunt a Possible Worker Shortage

The economy is beset by high interest rates, elevated inflation and nagging worries about a possible recession resulting from the Fed’s ever-higher interest rates. Yet many industries keep adding jobs to keep up with consumer spending and restore their workforces to pre-pandemic levels.

The solid pace of hiring and rising wages have enabled consumers to keep spending on services, from traveling to dining out to attending entertainment events. While economists have repeatedly forecast a recession for later this year or next year, a downturn is unlikely as long as companies keep steadily filling jobs.

The Fed has jacked up its key interest rate by a sizable 5 percentage points — the fastest pace of rate hikes in four decades. Those increases have made mortgages, auto loans and other forms of borrowing significantly more expensive.

Some Fed officials have said they are looking for signs of what they describe as better balance in the job market, by which they mean the supply and demand for workers would become more equal. After the economy emerged from the pandemic, the number of available jobs surged above 10 million — the highest level on record.

The burgeoning demand for labor coincided with millions of Americans dropping out of the workforce to retire, avoid COVID, care for relatives or prepare for new careers. With companies struggling to fill openings, many offered sharply higher pay and better benefits to attract or keep employees.

There has been some progress toward a better alignment of supply and demand: More people have started looking for work in recent months, and most of them have found jobs. As the supply of workers has improved, businesses have said they’re seeing more people apply for open positions. The number of job openings dropped in May, a sign that demand for workers is gradually cooling, though it remains above pre-pandemic levels.

In a sign of a potential slowdown in the job market, fewer Americans are quitting their jobs to seek new positions. Quits had soared after the pandemic. Millions of Americans had sought more meaningful or better-paying jobs, stoking the pressure on companies to raise pay to keep their employees. In May, about 4 million Americans left their jobs, up from April’s figure but below a peak of 4.5 million reached last year.

Still, other recent reports suggest that the economy has continued to expand and that demand for workers remains high. On Thursday, a survey of service providers — including banks, restaurants and shipping companies — found that the sector expanded at a healthy clip in June and that services companies accelerated their hiring compared with May.

source https://time.com/6292820/us-jobs-june-economy/

Why Twitter Rival Threads Isnt Available in the E.U.

After months of chaos under its new owner, Twitter is facing its most heavyweight competitor yet in Threads, Meta’s text-based conversation platform, which launched in 100 countries Wednesday. The app has attracted 30 million users in less than a day, with celebrities and media platforms alike signing up, but its release in Europe has been delayed amid data privacy concerns.

Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg billed the app as a “friendly” rival to Twitter, which has deterred some users since it was purchased by Elon Musk for $44 billion in October. “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his debut post on the platform. He also offered up his first tweet since January 2012, making a jibe at Twitter by using a popular Spiderman meme that appears to acknowledge that apps have a similar interface.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Read More: How Meta’s New Platform Threads Compares to Twitter

Users on the social media app can share posts of up to 500 characters, as well as links and multimedia. Much like Twitter, it has ‘like’ and ‘comment’ functions but no direct messages can be sent. Threads is linked to Instagram, Meta’s photo-sharing app with over 2 billion users, and allows users to sign up using their Instagram usernames and networks.

Responding to a post asking if the app is likely to supersede Twitter, Zuckerberg wrote: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Musk also engaged with a tweet about Instagram on Thursday, writing: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” Threads’ release comes as Musk has relaxed Twitter moderation efforts and lost 50% of its annual advertising revenue. Twitter has also pivoted to an $8 per month premium service for features that were once free on the platform, leaving many users hungry for an alternative like Threads.

But despite the obvious appetite for the new app, privacy concerns have prevented Meta from rolling the app out in many European countries.

Why isn’t Threads available in the European Union?

The release of Threads in the European Union was postponed amid regulatory uncertainty about how the app will use personal data. This is because of the E.U.’s Digital Markets Act, which includes provisions for sharing user data across multiple platforms. Meta must await approval from the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, before it can launch Threads in E.U. countries.

According to the app’s own data privacy disclosure, Threads can collect information about a user’s health, finance, contacts, search history, location, and other sensitive information via their digital activity. The app can also forward data to third parties about a user’s sexual orientation, religious and political beliefs, race and ethnicity, body, and employment status.

Read More: What to Know About Spill: The Black-Owned Twitter Alternative

Once a user has committed to a Threads account it can’t be deleted o without the user also losing the associated Instagram account. Users wishing to keep their Instagram account will only be able to deactivate their Threads page.

According to Ireland’s Independent newspaper, a spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that the watchdog had been in contact with Meta about Threads and that the platform wouldn’t be rolled out in the E.U. “at this point.”

Meta’s recent history with E.U. regulators

Two recent rulings have highlighted data and privacy concerns about Meta’s operations in the E.U. On Tuesday, Luxembourg’s Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that a German watchdog may investigate privacy breaches in which user consent was not acquired before the company used personal data to target adverts to users.

Additionally, in May, Ireland’s DPC, which regulates Meta across the E.U., ordered Facebook to stop the transfer of data from within E.U. to the U.S. and fined the tech giant a record 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for breaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws. Meta said it would appeal the decision and claimed it had been “singled out” by the DPC despite many other businesses using similar data migration processes.

“We are therefore disappointed to have been singled out when using the same legal mechanism as thousands of other companies looking to provide services in Europe,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, and Jennifer Newstead, the company’s chief legal officer, in a statement on May 22.

The statement added: “This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and US.”

In 2018, before it rebranded to Meta, Facebook made headlines when a whistleblower revealed that the company had allowed British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to access the personal data of up to 87 million users and which was used to build psychological profiles of voters. Last year Meta agreed to pay out $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit relating to Cambridge Analytica and other third parties.

source https://time.com/6292586/privacy-concerns-threads-meta/