Apple under fire after two Apple investors urged the company to step up and play a bigger role in managing smartphone overuse and addiction. David Benoit, Activism Reporter at The Wall Street Journal, was with us to discuss why Jana Partners has decided to push Apple to develop tools and research the effects of smartphone overuse by young people.
Benoit says the investors aren’t saying its necessarily Apple’s responsibility to monitor phone usage. Instead, he thinks they believe that Apple could play an important role in acknowledging that they aren’t sure what the impact of all this phone usage will be, but could score points by giving parents the option to monitor usage.
Activist investors typically focus on things like buybacks and acquisitions. Benoit says this move by Jana Partners to take a stance on corporate responsibility is very different. He thinks following Jana's advice could help protect Apple from potential backlash on teen iPhone usage. In addition, Benoit says goodwill could help drive future sales if consumers feel Apple made a phone that is safe for kids.
Sales of new homes jumped 14% in September to the fastest pace in six months as strong demand helped offset rising prices.
Last spring, as false claims about vaccine safety threatened to undermine the world's response to COVID-19, researchers at Facebook found they could reduce vaccine misinformation by tweaking how vaccine posts show up on users' newsfeeds.
Stocks held on to modest gains on Wall Street Tuesday, pushing the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average further into record heights.
A report in the New York Times published Sunday called 'Inside Amazon's Worst Human Resources Problem' details the company mishandling paid and unpaid leave for some of its workers for more than a year and a half, following an email sent to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from a new mother who works at a warehouse in Oklahoma, which then led to an internal investigation at Amazon. Seattle tech correspondent for the New York Times Karen Weise joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to talk about her report and what the Amazon investigation found.
Moderna says its low-dose COVID-19 vaccine is safe and appears to work in 6- to 11-year-olds.
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — and of the carefully crafted image it’s spent over a decade selling despite problems like misinformation, human trafficking, and pervasive extremist groups on its platform.
Microsoft says the same Russia-backed hackers responsible for the 2020 SolarWinds breach continue to attack the global supply chain and have been targeting cloud service resellers and others.
Hertz has announced that it will buy 100,000 electric vehicles from Tesla. It's one of the largest purchases of battery-powered cars in history and the latest evidence of increasing commitments to EV technology.
Wall Street notched some more record highs on Monday as a better-than-expected profit reporting season gets into higher gear.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
