The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-15)

THE WEEK

As of Friday at 5 p.m. ○

DOW 32,196.66

702.71, 2.1% ○

NASDAQ 11,805.00

339.67, 2.8% ○

S&P 500 4,023.89

99.45, 2.4% ○

GOLD $1,808.20

$74.60, 4.0% ○

CRUDE OIL $110.49

$0.72, 0.7% ○

10-YEAR TREASURY YIELD 2.92%

6 .5% change

CURRENCIES

$1=129.29 Y EN, 0.96 EUROS

ECONOMY

My granddaughter could

still face discrimination for

her natural hair. G5

BUSINESS

After the pandemic

recession, a boom for

Black businesses. G5

COLOR OF MONEY

With rents surging, don’t

hate on young adults who

move back home. G2

KLMNO

BusineSS

SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022. SECTION G AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM

When my son was born last year, friends from all over wanted to

share in my joy. So I decided to post a photo of him every day on

Instagram. Within weeks, Instagram began showing images of

babies with severe and uncommon health conditions, preying

on my new-parent vulnerability to the suffering of children.

My baby album was becoming a nightmare machine. ¶ This

was not a bug, I have learned. This is how the software driving

Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and lots of other apps

has been designed to work. Their algorithms optimize for

eliciting a reaction from us, ignoring the fact that often the

shortest path to a click is fear, anger or sadness. ¶ For all its

wonder and convenience, technology too often fails us. Lately,

I’ve been exploring ideas about how we can make it better.

High on my list of demands: We the users need transparency

about how algorithms work — and the ability to press reset

when they’re not serving us. ¶ I learned this firsthand by going

on a hunt to unravel how my baby’s Instagram account got

taken over by fear. ¶ More than a billion people spend time on

Instagram in part because they enjoy it. I made my son a

private Instagram account, and posted nothing but photos

and videos of him smiling and snuggling. I followed the

accounts of a handful of other babies from friends also longing

to connect when covid-19 kept us apart.

SEE FOWLER ON G3

How Instagram feeds your fear

I posted photos of my smiling baby. What it reflected back to me was disturbing.

Geoffrey

A. Fowler

SEAN LOOSE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

BY ELIZABETH DWOSKIN,

CAT ZAKRZEWSKI,

WILL OREMUS

AND JOSEPH MENN

Vijaya Gadde came reluctantly to the

decision that cemented her reputation on

the right as Twitter’s “chief censor.” For

years, the company’s top lawyer had re-

sisted calls to boot President Donald

Trump from his favorite social media plat-

form.

Even after a violent pro-Trump mob

stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,

Gadde explained during an emotional vir-

tual company town hall two days later that

Trump hadn’t broken enough of Twitter’s

rules against glorification of violence to

merit a permanent ban of his account.

Three hours later, after her team pro-

duced evidence that Trump’s latest tweets

had sparked calls to violence on other

sites, Gadde relented, according to two

people familiar with the matter who spoke

on the condition of anonymity to describe

internal discussions. She reached then-

CEO Jack Dorsey in French Polynesia, and

they agreed to lower the boom.

“After close review of recent Tweets

from the @realDonaldTrump account ...

we have permanently suspended the ac-

count due to the risk of further incitement

of violence,” the company announced in a

blog post.

The ban on Trump, which continues to

this day, is the most prominent example of

the deeply polarizing decisions that have

led conservatives to accuse Twitter of po-

litical censorship. As billionaire Elon

Musk, a self-declared free-speech absolut-

ist, seeks to acquire the social network,

these decisions — and Gadde herself — are

coming under fresh scrutiny.

Critics have derided her as Twitter’s

“top censorship advocate,” a barb ampli-

fied by Musk, who tweeted a meme with a

photo of Gadde that cast her as an icon of

SEE TWITTER ON G4

A targeted Twitter l awyer

c arries w eight of free speech

JULIE JOURDAN

BY SOO YOUN

After buying stock in Rivian — the

electric vehicle maker that promised a

hotly anticipated SUV or truck version of a

Tesla — at $72 a share, San Francisco tech

program manager Carter Gibson wasn’t

thrilled when the price dropped to an

all-time low of $19.25 this past week.

A Wall Street darling, backed by Ford

and Amazon, the latter of which placed an

order for 100,000 electric delivery trucks,

Rivian Automotive Inc. had the biggest

IPO of 2021. The company was valued at

more than General Motors and Ford, with

shares offered at $78 before climbing to a

high of $179.47 — and then crashing back

to earth.

“That doesn’t feel awesome,” Gibson

admitted. But as one of the rare owners of

Rivian’s maiden product, the R1T Launch

Edition with a starting price of $79,500,

his enthusiasm for the five-seat pickup

truck he’s been driving for nearly a month

— his first EV — has soothed his anxiety

about his stock portfolio.

“The truck itself is better than it has any

right to be. The build quality is head and

shoulders above similarly priced (or more

expensive) EVs,” he said.

After the company’s sparkling debut,

the stock market has taken a dim view of

Rivian’s prospects — and supply chain

disruptions have slashed its production

estimates. In addition, in a letter to the

National Highway Traffic Safety Adminis-

tration, the company said it’s recalling 502

of its RT1 trucks, or about 10 percent of its

total production to date, for a defect in the

deployment of its air bag that could injure

a child in a car crash.

But in an earnings call on Wednesday,

Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe said the start-up

EV truck maker is confident it can over-

come production hurdles and put the

worst of its problems in the rear view

mirror. Rivian reported 90,000 preorders

SEE RIVIAN ON G2

Touted as the next Tesla,

Rivian is on a b umpy ride