Image of the week: Health of the nation
Very much capturing the mood here among the sane and the decent in Washington, independent senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren look glum because they have the misfortune to be attending a US senate finance committee meeting on Donald Trump’s nomination of anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy jnr as health secretary.
Kennedy is such a wild conspiracist that even Trumpist news title, the New York Post, thinks he has “too much wackiness” in him to be in charge of the health of the American public, but his clearing of this first hurdle in his confirmation bid on Tuesday was, as is the way of things these days, swiftly drowned out by even louder alarm bells.
At the time of writing, these included Trump’s blithely announced “Riviera of the Middle East” ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, Trump and Elon Musk’s attempt to dismantle the US Agency for International Development, and various other manoeuvres by the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to compromise, commandeer or shut down US federal agencies and funds.
Warren was among the speakers as groups protested against Doge outside the treasury department in Washington, while Hillary Clinton implored her social media followers to support anti-Trump progressive organisation Indivisible. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, for his part, unveiled a 10-part plan to counter the Trump agenda, while elsewhere Democrats have sent some strongly worded letters.
In numbers: Diageo’s scrapped guidance
5-7%
Organic annual sales growth that Diageo – the drinks group behind Guinness, Johnnie Walker whisky and Smirnoff vodka – had been targeting over the medium term. Alas, the outlook has now turned cloudy.
39
Months since this target was set by former Diageo chief executive, the late Ivan Menezes. But the threat of US tariffs “adds further complexity in our ability to provide updated forward guidance”, current boss Debra Crew said.
45%
Percentage of Diageo’s US sales that are imported from Mexico and Canada, meaning if any tariffs are imposed by Donald Trump, it would be less than ideal.
Getting to know: Virgin Money’s AI chatbot
Fintech commentator and Virgin Money customer David Birch had a simple question for the bank’s chatbot a couple of weeks ago: “I have two ISAs [Individual Savings Accounts] with Virgin Money, how do I merge them?” But the bank’s virtual assistant was not in the mood. “Please don’t use words like that. I won’t be able to continue our chat if you use this language,” it responded. It then followed this up with the somewhat passive-aggressive “why don’t we try again”.
Could it possibly be the word “virgin” that it deemed inappropriate?
Virgin Money duly apologised in a statement on LinkedIn, where Birch had posted the conversation, and insisted there was “more at work than just single word exception”. This specific chatbot, soon removed, was “one that had been scheduled for improvements”. The emphasis in AI really is on the “A”, isn’t it?
The list: Meta’s familiar features
Social media giant Meta has not been shy over the years when it comes to, ahem, taking inspiration from rivals. Indeed, there was a fresh reminder this week that no one pays homage to competitors quite like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
1. Custom feeds: BlueSky, which has been mopping up disaffected X and Meta users, is the latest to receive the compliment of imitation, with Zuckerberg this week announcing that Meta’s Threads app is doubling down on its new BlueSky-inspired feature, custom feeds.
2. Stories: Snapchat, home of “snaps” that disappear after 24 hours, was the first challenger social media platform to win younger users off Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg responded by introducing a similar (and popular) 24-hour post option called Stories.
3. Reels: In 2020, with TikTok in the ascendancy, Instagram added a clone short-form video feature called Reels. As in the early days of TikTok, Reels initially had a – merciful – maximum length of 15 seconds.
Are we at the beginning of Donald Trump’s global trade war?
4. Threads: In 2023, Elon Musk threatened Meta with legal action, arguing that its entire Threads app was a Twitter copycat. Meta, Musk’s company claimed, had “engaged in systematic, wilful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets”.
5. Community Notes: As part of his courtship of Donald Trump, Zuckerberg openly declared his admiration for Community Notes, a Twitter feature that predates Musk’s acquisition of the platform, since renamed X, and ditched fact-checking on his US apps for the system. “I’m not afraid to admit when someone does something that’s better than us,” claimed Zuckerberg. Well, not this time.
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