“In our studies, something like almost 40 percent of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram,” Prabhakar Raghavan, a Google senior vice president, said at a technology conference in July.

Google has incorporated images and videos into its search engine in recent years. Since 2019, some of its search results have featured TikTok videos. In 2020, Google released YouTube Shorts, which shares vertical videos less than a minute long, and started including its content in search results.

TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, declined to comment on its search function and products that may be in testing. It said it was “always thinking about new ways to add value to the community and enrich the TikTok experience.”

Doing a search on TikTok is often more interactive than typing in a query on Google. Instead of just slogging through walls of text, Gen Z-ers crowdsource recommendations from TikTok videos to pinpoint what they are looking for, watching video after video to cull the content. Then they verify the veracity of a suggestion based on comments posted in response to the videos.

This mode of searching is rooted in how young people are using TikTok not only to look for products and businesses, but also to ask questions about how to do things and find explanations for what things mean. With videos often less than 60 seconds long, TikTok returns what feels like more relevant answers, many said.

Alexandria Kinsey, 24, a communications and social media coordinator in Arlington, Va., uses TikTok for many search queries: recipes to cook, films to watch and nearby happy hours to try. She also turns to it for less typical questions, like looking up interviews with the actor Andrew Garfield and weird conspiracy theories.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/gen-z-tiktok-search-engine.html

Some who have worked with Mr. Chew said they were unclear about how well he understood the platform, which has continued growing. Some employees were brought in to teach Mr. Chew, who has 7,600 followers on his account, the latest TikTok trends to boost his presence, two people familiar with the plan said.

Mr. Chew has mostly been active around TikTok’s finances and operations, the people familiar with his activities said.

Last October, he shelved a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign for a TikTok NFT project involving the musical artists Lil Nas X and Bella Poarch. He reprimanded TikTok’s global head of marketing on a video call with Beijing-based leaders for ByteDance after some celebrities dropped out of the project, four people familiar with the meeting said. It showed that Mr. Chew answered to higher powers, they said.

Mr. Chew also ended a half-developed TikTok store off Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, three people familiar with the initiative said. TikTok briefly explored obtaining the naming rights of the Los Angeles stadium formerly known as the Staples Center, they said.

He has also overseen layoffs of American managers, two people familiar with the decisions said, while building up teams related to trust and safety. In its U.S. marketing, the app has shifted its emphasis from a brand that starts trends and conversations toward its utility as a place where people can go to learn.

In May, Mr. Chew flew to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, speaking with European regulators and ministers from Saudi Arabia to discuss digital strategy.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/tiktok-ceo-shou-zi-chew.html

There is one element of Erkut Sogut’s debut novel that, he admits, belongs squarely in the realm of fantasy. Soccer is not, he wants to emphasize, actually controlled by a cabal of superagents who will resort to anything — sabotage, match-fixing, kidnapping, murder — to keep the game and its riches in their vise.

Everything else, he maintains, is real. More than that, in fact: The plot of his book, “Deadline,” a thriller set against the backdrop of soccer’s transfer market, is drawn from firsthand experience. Sogut has spent 15 years as an agent, and he is best known for his longstanding association with Mesut Özil, the onetime Arsenal, Real Madrid and Germany playmaker. It is a world, he said, that does not demand a great deal of poetic license.

The portrait of the industry he paints is not a flattering one. His characters are, by and large, hucksters and vultures, charlatans and sharks, operating in a sport rife with corruption and addled with cronyism. It is, though, intrinsically familiar: Soccer has grown accustomed to the depiction of agents as puppet masters in sharp suits and designer sunglasses, wielding ultimate influence over the fates of players and teams.

That image, though, the one that suffuses Sogut’s novel, does not quite capture the reality of the industry as it stands now. The likes of Jorge Mendes — consigliere to Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho — may be cast as rainmakers possessed of sufficient clout to bend the whole market to their will, but they increasingly seem like the exception, rather than the rule. The world of agents is in convulsion, soccer’s latest battleground between new money and old hands.

Though FIFA’s controversial decision, in 2015, to deregulate the industry opened the doors to any family member or friend who wanted to sign up to represent a player — a move that turned a chaotic and irrevocably murky world into a “complete free-for-all,” as one agent put it — the most significant new entrants in recent years have not been cowboy operators hoping to make a quick buck but established corporations panning for new fortunes.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/sports/soccer/soccer-transfers-agents.html

In 2009, Ms. Engelbrecht created the nonprofit King Street Patriots, named after the site of the 1770 Boston Massacre, which fueled colonial tensions that would erupt again with the Tea Party uprising three years later. She also formed True the Vote. The idea behind the nonprofits was to promote “freedom, capitalism, American exceptionalism,” according to a tax filing, and to train poll watchers.

Conservatives embraced Ms. Engelbrecht. Mr. Fund, who wrote for The Wall Street Journal, helped her obtain grants. Steve Bannon, then chief executive of the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News, and Andrew Breitbart, the publication’s founder, spoke at her conferences.

True the Vote’s volunteers scrutinized registration rolls, watched polling stations and wrote highly speculative reports. In 2010, a volunteer in San Diego reported seeing a bus offloading people at a polling station “who did not appear to be from this country.”

Civil rights groups described the activities as voter suppression. In 2010, Ms. Engelbrecht told supporters that Houston Votes, a nonprofit that registered voters in diverse communities of Harris County, Texas, was connected to the “New Black Panthers.” She showed a video of an unrelated New Black Panther member in Philadelphia who called for the extermination of white people. Houston Votes was subsequently investigated by state officials, and law enforcement raided its office.

“It was a lie and racist to the core,” said Fred Lewis, head of Houston Votes, who sued True the Vote for defamation. He said he had dropped the suit after reaching “an understanding” that True the Vote would stop making accusations. Ms. Engelbrecht said she didn’t recall such an agreement.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/technology/catherine-engelbrecht-voter-fraud-conspiracy-theories.html

Mr. Musk has claimed that he should be able to abandon the Twitter acquisition because the company downplayed the number of fraudulent accounts on the service. Mr. Zatko said in his complaint that Mr. Agrawal had misled Mr. Musk after the billionaire made his concerns known.

A spokesman for Mr. Musk’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment.

At the more than two-hour hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Grassley said Mr. Agrawal had “rejected this committee’s invitation by claiming that it would jeopardize Twitter’s ongoing litigation with Mr. Musk.”

“Many of the allegations directly implicate Mr. Agrawal, and he should be here to address them,” Mr. Grassley said.

Mr. Zatko, who reached a $7 million settlement with the company after he left, described Twitter executives as unconcerned about possible holes in security, especially when it could endanger the company’s bottom line. He said he had told one executive that he was “confident” there was a foreign agent inside the company.

“And their response was: ‘Well, since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more. Let’s keep growing the office,’” Mr. Zatko told lawmakers.

Prosecutors charged two former Twitter employees in 2019 with acting as agents of the government of Saudi Arabia, saying they had used their positions to gain access to information about critics of the Saudi government. A California jury convicted one of them on some of the charges last month; the other man left the country before authorities could arrest him.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/technology/twitter-whistle-blower-security-flaws.html

In June, Mr. Chapek abruptly fired Disney’s top television executive, to howls of disapproval from Hollywood. In August, the activist investor Dan Loeb pushed Mr. Chapek to consider a range of changes, including shaking up the board and spinning off ESPN. (On Sunday, Mr. Loeb backtracked on a spinoff, saying on Twitter that he had learned more about Disney’s “growth and innovation plans” for ESPN.)

All the while, some of Disney’s most dedicated theme park customers have been growing indignant over price increases they see as nickel and diming. Last month, Disney told investors that theme park profits would have been even higher if not for an “unfavorable attendance mix” at Disneyland, which annual pass holders took as an affront. T-shirts, mugs and stickers began selling online bearing the word “Unfavorables” in Disneyland’s signature calligraphy.

Hence the effort to use D23 Expo to polish Mr. Chapek’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad image.

Mr. Chapek’s attempt at a brand overhaul can be attributed, partly, to Kristina Schake, who joined Disney as chief communications officer in April. Ms. Schake, who previously helped recast public images for political figures, including Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, was attached to Mr. Chapek’s hip as he traversed the more than one million square feet of the D23 Expo. (She brought eight pairs of shoes.)

Ms. Schake convinced him to keep his beard after noticing that he had grown one on vacation. Detractors in Hollywood have snidely suggested that the outcropping makes Mr. Chapek resemble Thanos, the Marvel supervillain. But GQ magazine has given its blessing, with a headline on Friday saying that Mr. Chapek was “rocking the rare corporate power beard.”

D23 is a reference to 1923, the year Walt Disney arrived in Hollywood. The event is both awe-inspiring and terrifying to witness because it showcases how deeply the company’s products, mythmaking and characters are woven into the cultural fabric. One area is dedicated to Disney’s television operation, which has 300 television shows in production. Disney has a new residential housing business. It owns National Geographic. With resorts in Europe, China, Florida and California, the sun never sets on a Disney theme park.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/business/media/bob-chapek-disney-expo.html

Can a Network Show Actually Win Best Comedy?

On the one hand, it seems inevitable that “Ted Lasso,” the feel good Apple TV+ sports comedy, will repeat for outstanding comedy. After all, when Emmy voters find a show they like, they usually stick with it. (John Oliver’s HBO show has won the best talk show category six years in a row.)

However, as with the drama race, there are a pair of viable upset candidates: “Only Murders in the Building,” the Hulu comedy about a murder mystery in a swanky Manhattan apartment building, and “Abbott Elementary,” the big-hearted ABC comedy about a group of elementary school teachers. The second season of “Only Murders” streamed during the Emmy voting period, keeping it fresh in the minds of Emmy voters.

The Television Critics Association sent a loud statement last month when it named “Abbott Elementary” its program of the year, with the show besting formidable contenders like “Succession” and “The White Lotus.” And then “Abbott” took the best casting award for a comedy last weekend at the Creative Arts Emmys. That’s a promising sign — the best casting winner has taken the best comedy award for seven consecutive years.

If “Abbott Elementary” does win, it would snap a long dry spell for the broadcast networks. The last network show to win best comedy was “Modern Family” eight years ago. And if Quinta Brunson, a creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” beats out last year’s winner, Jean Smart (“Hacks”), for best actress in a comedy, it would make her the first network star to take the category since Melissa McCarthy won it in 2011 for the CBS half-hour “Mike Molly.” Brunson would also be the first Black woman to capture the award since Isabel Sanford (“The Jeffersons”) won in 1981.

‘The White Lotus’ Faces Off Against ‘Dopesick’ in Best Limited Series

Last year, Emmy producers made official what everyone already knew: The best limited series is now right up there with best drama as the most prestigious award in television. At the ceremony last year, the limited series award was the final category presented, breaking from the usual tradition of handing out the last statuettes to best drama.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/arts/television/emmys-2022-how-to-watch.html

Narcotics were what took Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison — all at the age of 27. When Elvis goes, it’s “our equivalent of a five-alarm fire,” Wenner writes, four days before deadline, after a move to New York offices in 1977. The murder of John Lennon, a Wenner favorite, is what finishes his ’60s idealism, and he continues to bathe the Beatle in white light here, glossing over the harm to their friendship caused by his publishing the acidic interview “Lennon Remembers” in book form, and the magazine’s partisan mistreatment of Paul McCartney’s brilliant early solo efforts.

“Like a Rolling Stone” does gather moss, it turns out: celebrities in damp clumps — from when Jann, born Jan in January 1946 and a real handful, is treated by Dr. Benjamin Spock, to “the black-tie family picnic” of his induction into the Rock Roll Hall of Fame he helped erect.

His father was a baby formula magnate; his mother helped with the business but was also a novelist and free spirit whom he compares to Auntie Mame; and the newspaper young Wenner ran at boarding school had a gossip column. A career headline spinner who hired and fired with gusto, he writes here in crisp sentences more descriptive than introspective, giving résumés for even minor characters.

“The apple cart was balanced,” he shrugs of the double life he long led — till Nye’s declaration of love, and the times a-changin’, tips it over.

Though his journalists regularly championed the downtrodden, Wenner proudly recounts a life of unbridled hedonism, and seems disinclined to reconcile any contradiction. His staffers aggressively cover climate change while he revels in his Gulfstream (“My first flight was alone, sitting by myself above the clouds listening to ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’”). At the 60th-birthday party he throws at Le Bernardin, the fancy Manhattan fish restaurant, Bruce Springsteen gets up and sings of the honoree that “Champagne, pot cookies and a Percocet/Keep him humming like a Sabre jet.” A private chef makes pasta sauce for the Wenner entourage at Burning Man. Wenner and Bono wave to each other from their Central Park West terraces, and join McCartney for a midnight supper by the “silvery ocean.” (“Stars — they’re just like us!,” per another former Wenner property, Us Weekly.)

Were there better ways for Johnny Depp to spend a million dollars than shooting the longtime Rolling Stone fixture Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon the height of the Statue of Liberty, as Wenner watched approvingly? Surely.

“Like a Rolling Stone” is entertaining in spades but only sporadically revealing of the uneven ground beneath Wenner’s feet. Long sections of the book read like a private-flight manifest or gala concert set list. You, the common reader, are getting only a partial-access pass.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/books/jann-wenner-like-a-rolling-stone-memoir.html

Narcotics were what took Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison — all at the age of 27. When Elvis goes, it’s “our equivalent of a five-alarm fire,” Wenner writes, four days before deadline, after a move to New York offices in 1977. The murder of John Lennon, a Wenner favorite, is what finishes his ’60s idealism, and he continues to bathe the Beatle in white light here, glossing over the harm to their friendship caused by his publishing the acidic interview “Lennon Remembers” in book form, and the magazine’s partisan mistreatment of Paul McCartney’s brilliant early solo efforts.

“Like a Rolling Stone” does gather moss, it turns out: celebrities in damp clumps — from when Jann, born Jan in January 1946 and a real handful, is treated by Dr. Benjamin Spock, to “the black-tie family picnic” of his induction into the Rock Roll Hall of Fame he helped erect.

His father was a baby formula magnate; his mother helped with the business but was also a novelist and free spirit whom he compares to Auntie Mame; and the newspaper young Wenner ran at boarding school had a gossip column. A career headline spinner who hired and fired with gusto, he writes here in crisp sentences more descriptive than introspective, giving résumés for even minor characters.

“The apple cart was balanced,” he shrugs of the double life he long led — till Nye’s declaration of love, and the times a-changin’, tips it over.

Though his journalists regularly championed the downtrodden, Wenner proudly recounts a life of unbridled hedonism, and seems disinclined to reconcile any contradiction. His staffers aggressively cover climate change while he revels in his Gulfstream (“My first flight was alone, sitting by myself above the clouds listening to ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’”). At the 60th-birthday party he throws at Le Bernardin, the fancy Manhattan fish restaurant, Bruce Springsteen gets up and sings of the honoree that “Champagne, pot cookies and a Percocet/Keep him humming like a Sabre jet.” A private chef makes pasta sauce for the Wenner entourage at Burning Man. Wenner and Bono wave to each other from their Central Park West terraces, and join McCartney for a midnight supper by the “silvery ocean.” (“Stars — they’re just like us!,” per another former Wenner property, Us Weekly.)

Were there better ways for Johnny Depp to spend a million dollars than shooting the longtime Rolling Stone fixture Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon the height of the Statue of Liberty, as Wenner watched approvingly? Surely.

“Like a Rolling Stone” is entertaining in spades but only sporadically revealing of the uneven ground beneath Wenner’s feet. Long sections of the book read like a private-flight manifest or gala concert set list. You, the common reader, are getting only a partial-access pass.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/books/jann-wenner-like-a-rolling-stone-memoir.html

“David would be very impressed with this film,” he added.

What Morgen didn’t realize was how much making the film would change him, especially after he had a debilitating heart attack, at 47. He flatlined and was in a coma for a week, he said in a phone interview. He emerged with a mind-set that shaped his approach to the story and refocused his own life, as a married father of three. Perversely, the driven Bowie helped Morgen, now 53, a fellow workaholic, find equilibrium.

And he needed it, when he was editing, entirely solo, during the first peak of Covid (his health scare made him extra-cautious). “I was sitting alone in this building, making a film about an artist whose stock in trade is isolation, and how to channel it creatively,” he said. “So I felt that he was consistently describing the world that I was inhabiting.”

Early on, he had visited Visconti in his New York studio. “We were in the room where he recorded David doing ‘Blackstar,’” the album Bowie released two days before his death, Morgen said. “It was quite intense.” Visconti played him “Cygnet Committee,” a prog-y folk-rock track off Bowie’s second album, stripping out vocals. The song, written when Bowie was around 22, ends with a repeated lyric: “I want to live.”

“David was crying throughout the performance,” Morgen said.

That sort of emotion — ravenous and vulnerable — set the tone for the film. “Moonage Daydream” was five years in the making. It took Morgen and his team over a year just to transfer hours of concert and performance footage, images of Bowie’s paintings and other content from the Bowie estate, along with additional footage acquired by Morgen’s archivist, and about two years to watch it all.

But the movie is hardly completist. There are no interviews with anyone else, and no mention of, for example, Iggy Pop, whom Bowie holed up with in Berlin during one of his most creatively fertile periods, or Nile Rodgers, who helped him reinvent his career as a pop artist in the ’80s. The sexual voraciousness and drug addiction that usually feature heavily in Bowie’s story are referenced only with montages and jumpy interview clips. (“Do I need to spell it out? It seems kind of blatant to me,” Morgen said of one where Bowie appears sweating and grinning maniacally.) Though the movie dips into his childhood and family, it glosses over his personal life until his marriage to Iman, the model and entrepreneur.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/movies/david-bowie-documentary-moonage-daydream.html