Business and Technology
EU December Inflation Down
The eurozone's annual inflation rate fell for a second month in a row, to 9.2 percent in December, driven by easing energy prices, official data showed Friday, bringing some relief to Europe in the new year.
Boosted by the slowdown in the rate of energy cost rises, inflation fell last month from 10.1 percent in November, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.
It is the first time the rate is in single digits since September.
Consumer prices had reached a record 10.6 percent in October, caused by sky-high energy prices buffeted by Russia's war in Ukraine. That is five times higher than the European Central Bank's target.
Analysts had expected the inflation rate in the single currency area to drop again but the fall was larger than predicted by Bloomberg and FactSet, which foresaw 9.5 percent and 9.7 percent respectively.
Energy costs rose 25.7 percent in December compared to 34.9 percent a month earlier. Food and drink costs also rose.
"All told, the early 2023 data releases confirm that the more apocalyptic scenarios envisaged a few months ago will be averted," Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics said in a note.
The figures were unlikely to convince the ECB to stop raising interest rates, analysts warned, since the rate of core inflation, which excludes energy and food prices, actually rose in December.
"The eurozone economy is at best stagnating, and persistent core inflation means the ECB will feel duty-bound to press on with its tightening cycle for a while yet," Kenningham said.
- More rate raises -
"It is likely that the peak in inflation is behind us now, but far more relevant for the economy and policymakers is whether inflation will structurally trend back to two percent from here on," said Bert Colijn, senior eurozone economist at the ING bank.
Colijn noted that core inflation was "still adjusting with a lag" which the ECB had taken "a very hawkish stance towards... and has indicated that it will hike through a mild recession to bring inflation structurally down to two percent".
ECB chief Christine Lagarde last month promised to tame rampant inflation and warned the eurozone to brace for more rate hikes in 2023.
"We are raising interest rates and we will raise them further, at a steady pace, until they are at a level which ensures a timely return of inflation to our two-percent medium-term target," Lagarde said in a message on December 23.
Among the 20 countries that use the euro, including Croatia which joined this month, Spain has the lowest inflation rate, reaching 5.6 percent in December, Eurostat said.
France and Germany this week reported falls in consumer prices in December, further raising hopes that Europe may be past the peak of inflation.
Across the Atlantic, officials from the US Federal Reserve also indicated there would be more rate hikes this year to keep prices under control.
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Meta Closes Monitoring Tool for Disinformation, Fact-Checking
WASHINGTON—A digital tool considered vital in tracking viral falsehoods, CrowdTangle will be decommissioned by Facebook owner Meta in a major election year, a move researchers fear will disrupt efforts to detect an expected firehose of political misinformation.
The tech giant says CrowdTangle will be unavailable after August 14, less than three months before the US election. The Palo Alto company plans to replace it with a new tool that researchers say lacks the same functionality, and which news organizations will largely not have access to.
For years, CrowdTangle has been a game-changer, offering researchers and journalists crucial real-time transparency into the spread of conspiracy theories and hate speech on influential Meta-owned platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Killing off the monitoring tool, a move experts say is in line with a tech industry trend of rolling back transparency and security measures, is a major blow as dozens of countries hold elections this year -- a period when bad actors typically spread false narratives more than ever.
"In a year where almost half of the global population is expected to vote in elections, cutting off access to CrowdTangle will severely limit independent oversight of harms," Melanie Smith, director of research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told AFP.
"It represents a grave step backwards for social media platform transparency."
Meta is set to replace CrowdTangle with a new Content Library, a technology still under development.
It's a tool that some in the tech industry, including former CrowdTangle chief executive Brandon Silverman, said is currently not an effective replacement, especially in elections likely to see a proliferation of AI-enabled falsehoods.
"It's an entire new muscle" that Meta is yet to build to protect the integrity of elections, Silverman told AFP, calling for "openness and transparency."
'Direct threat'
In recent election cycles, researchers say CrowdTangle alerted them to harmful activities including foreign interference, online harassment and incitements to violence.
By its own admission, Meta — which bought CrowdTangle in 2016 — said that in 2019 elections in Louisiana, the tool helped state officials identify misinformation, such as inaccurate poll hours that had been posted online.
In the 2020 presidential vote, the company offered the tool to US election officials across all states to help them "quickly identify misinformation, voter interference and suppression."
The tool also made dashboards available to the public to track what major candidates were posting on their official and campaign pages.
Lamenting the risk of losing these functions forever, global nonprofit Mozilla Foundation demanded in an open letter to Meta that CrowdTangle be retained at least until January 2025.
"Abandoning CrowdTangle while the Content Library lacks so much of CrowdTangle's core functionality undermines the fundamental principle of transparency," said the letter signed by dozens of tech watchdogs and researchers.
The new tool lacks CrowdTangle features including robust search flexibility and decommissioning it would be a "direct threat" to the integrity of elections, it added.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the letter's claims are "just wrong," insisting the Content Library will contain "more comprehensive data than CrowdTangle" and be made available to academics and non-profit election integrity experts.
'Lot of concerns'
Meta, which has been moving away from news across its platforms, will not make the new tool accessible to for-profit media.
Journalists have used CrowdTangle in the past to investigate public health crises as well as human rights abuses and natural disasters.
Meta's decision to cut off journalists comes after many used CrowdTangle to report unflattering stories, including its flailing moderation efforts and how its gaming app was overrun with pirated content.
CrowdTangle has been a crucial source of data that helped "hold Meta accountable for enforcing its policies," Tim Harper, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told AFP.
Organizations that debunk misinformation as part of Meta's third-party fact-checking program, including AFP, will have access to the Content Library.
But other researchers and nonprofits will have to apply for access or look for expensive alternatives. Two researchers told AFP under condition of anonymity that in one-on-one meetings with Meta officials, they demanded firm commitments from company officials.
"While most fact-checkers already working with Meta will have access to the new tool, it's not super clear if many independent researchers — already worried about losing CrowdTangle's functionality — will," Carlos Hernandez-Echevarria, head of the Spanish nonprofit Maldita, told AFP.
"It has generated a lot of concerns."
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