Meta Cutting Another 10,000 Jobs And Instituting Hiring Freeze

Still running on Dunkin’! Ben Affleck proved his lasting love for the coffee chain in a new commercial — despite being mistaken for BFF Matt Damon.

star Josh Lucas says «bring it on» to news of Matthew McConaughey's now-confirmed franchise spinoff. The once-rumored series was confirmed to by Paramount executive Chris McCarthy last week. «I'm always so fascinated to see what Taylor [Sheridan] is doing as he tells the story,» Lucas told ET's Will Marfuggi of the franchise's writer.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor About half of Americans are in favor of the U.S. government banning TikTok, the hugely popular video app owned by China-based internet giant ByteDance. Amid intensifying scrutiny of and antagonism toward TikTok, a newly released survey by Pew Research Center found that 50% of Americans support a U.S. government ban on the app, with 22% opposed and a sizable share (28%) unsure, according to a newly released survey conducted by Pew Research Center. Among those who actually use TikTok, just 19% support a ban. Given TikTok’s popularity among teens, it’s worth noting that Pew’s survey was fielded among U.S. adults (those 18 and older). Americans who are aware that TikTok is owned by the ByteDance are particularly likely to support banning it: About 60% of those surveyed who know TikTok’s parent company is based in China support the U.S. government banning the app, compared with 27% of those who are unaware of TikTok’s Chinese ties, according to the Pew survey.

A popular boxing and fitness concept from down under will has chosen Salford as the location for it's first club in the UK. UBX Boxing + Strength was co-founded by four time world champion boxer boxer Danny Green and fitness entrepreneur Tim West.

EXCLUSIVE: In competition, Amazon Studios is in final talks for the package The Pick Up, with Eddie Murphy eyeing to star and Tim Story attached to direct. John Davis and John Fox will produce through his Davis Entertainment banner. Murphy and Charisse Hewitt-Webster are also in talks to produce through Eddie Murphy Productions, and Story will also be producer.

Heidi Chung Note: This article is based on Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “2023 Media & Tech Trend Tracker,” available exclusively to subscribers. With the rate of growth in digital advertising declining, some market entrants big and small in the social media space are feeling the competitive threat of Meta now more than ever.  After registering as the most popular app download worldwide in 2022, TikTok maintained that title in the first quarter of 2023, racking up more than 186 million downloads, according to data.ai.  

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The big bads of the Marvel Cinematic Universe should be a breeze for the man that’s survived the Roy family for almost four seasons, as “Succession” star Matthew Macfadyen has been cast in “Deadpool 3,” Variety has confirmed. The Ryan Reynolds franchise will welcome Macfadyen, who plays the fan-favorite Tom Wambsgans on the HBO water-cooler smash, joining a new sequel that will also revive Hugh Jackman’s beloved X-Men character Wolverine. Shawn Levy returns as director, and Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick will pen the script. This will be the first “Deadpool” project made since the intellectual property went to Disney in its acquisition of 20th Century Fox. All creatives involved insist the film will retain its extreme violence and raunchy tone, as well a a hard R-rating.

Matt Damon told Variety‘s Marc Malkin Monday night that Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” runs a hefty three hours long. On the red carpet for “Air,” in which he co-stars, Damon also talked about Nolan’s upcoming historic drama in which he appears alongside Cillian Murphy. “It’s three hours. It’s fantastic,” Damon said, revealing that he’s seen “Oppenheimer.” “Cillian is phenomenal. He’s everything you would want him to be,” Damon told Malkin. “I think it’s almost three hours. It goes so fast, it’s great.” Directed by Ben Affleck, “Air” stars Damon as Sonny Velasco, who led Nike to pursue the endorsement of Michael Jordan and the creation of the Air Jordan basketball sneakers. “Air” opens April 5 and co-stars Affleck, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman and Chris Messina.

Girl gang! Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are proud girl parents to their three daughters.

Camila Alves and Matthew McConaughey's three children showed off their culinary skills.

Amazon is laying off another 9,000 workers as job cuts in the tech sector expand at a time of growing economic uncertainty. It follows cuts last fall and early this year.

memo to staff on Monday.The memo hinted that jobs would be cut mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising and Twitch.“Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” the memo said. “The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole.” The cuts in cloud computing, advertising, Twitch and human resourcing units follow a larger round of layoffs in Nov.

Details of how a £450m plan to transform a Manchester neighbourhood and create almost 2,000 jobs have been revealed.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is pink-slipping another 10,000 employees, coming on the heels of laying off 11,000 last fall. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s co-founder and CEO, announced the planned cuts in a memo to employees Tuesday as an “update on our Year of Efficiency.” The 10,000 layoffs represent 11.6% of the 86,482 full-time employees Meta reported as of the end of 2022. Zuckerberg said Meta also is instituting a hiring freeze, canceling about 5,000 open job positions. “Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Zuckerberg wrote in the memo (read it below).

A major musicians’ trade union has described proposed cuts to the BBC’s classical performing groups as “utterly devastating”.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, said it is considering launching a new Twitter-like social network. “We’re exploring a standalone, decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. The rep said the company had no additional info on the prospective social network to share. News site Moneycontrol first reported on the potential Meta service, which is code-named “P92.” The new Meta app would be based on — and interoperable with — the framework that powers Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that launched in 2016 and has seen a surge in popularity since Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October.

The U.S. economy continued to add a robust number of jobs in February, with gains of 311,000, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6%.

Bloomberg, will come on top of the 11,000 workers who lost their jobs in November, which were the first major layoffs at the social media company, whose history dates to 2004. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post at the time that the cuts were “some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history.”Bloomberg noted the new cuts will come on top of efforts to downsize its management.The new layoffs are being driven by financial targets and come at a time when many tech companies are in the midst of widespread retrenching following huge expansions during the pandemic.

A paedophile has escaped jail after being caught with more than 15,000 indecent images of children, some as young as five.

EXCLUSIVE: Westbrook Media exec Kelli Buchanan is joining Ryan Coogler’s Proximity Media as VP, Nonfiction.