Cheddar Senior Reporter Alex Heath joins Kristen Scholer and Baker Machado to discuss Mark Zuckerberg's latest New Year's resolution...to "fix Facebook." This is the least specific he's been about a New Year's resolution since he starting making them publicly in 2009.
Facebook has certainly faced backlash after being accused of spreading misleading information. Heath talks about what problems Zuckerberg will need to address in 2018 and some challenges ahead for the company.
Plus, how damaging is Intel's chip issue to Apple? Heath says Apple shouldn't be worried. It was already working towards eliminating the need for Intel chips, and this will just put the cherry on that decision. However, he says Intel needs to worry because chips are the core of its business.
According to a recent report from T-Mobile, spam call traffic doubled in 2021. The company says so far they have been able to block just 21 billion spam calls for their customers this year. Despite telecom giants blocking these calls, a number of customers continue to receive these spam calls, especially during the holiday season. Founder and President of Vertical Consultants Hugh Odom, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Venture capitalists and CEOs are clashing over the future of the internet. Web3 is the tech world's name for a decentralized, blockchain-based internet that runs on cryptocurrency. It was recently the topic of a tweet from Block CEO and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who wrote that Web3 will not actually be owned by users, and instead be controlled by rich venture capitalists. Dorsey later shared that he was blocked on Twitter by Marc Andreesen, co-founder of VC firm Andreesen Horowitz, which has invested billions of dollars into Web3 and crypto projects. Correspondent for DealBook from the New York Times, Ephrat Livni, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss what this could mean for the future of Web3.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.