--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita here. Every so often, we're going to recommend a show that we think is worth you checking out. This week, it's The Outlaw Ocean, an immersive true crime podcast from the LA Times and CBC podcasts. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ian Urbina uncovers the lawlessness and exploitation that takes place on the high seas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If they got within 800 meters of you, that is when we would fire warning shots. Most of the time, that's when the pirates do leave. Listen and subscribe at theoutlawocean.com slash podcast or on Apple Podcasts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, November 4th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, why slavery will be on the ballot in several states. how Haiti is on the brink of collapse, and the story behind some not-so-temporary tattoos.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, mass layoffs are happening at Twitter today, in one of the biggest moves Elon Musk has made since buying the company. There are expectations that around half of employees will lose their jobs. They're being notified by email.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think stressful is a really good word to explain what it's like to work at Twitter right now. There are employees there who are literally sleeping on the floor of the office trying to get projects that Musk has tasked them in, sometimes with a one-week deadline or else they're fired.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We spoke to Alex Heath at The Verge about the tense atmosphere at Twitter recently. It's probably the most dramatic cultural reset of any company that I've ever reported on.
--:-- Alex Heath: The layoffs of rank and file workers come after Musk got rid of many top executives. When Musk came in, the first thing he did was fire the CEO, the CFO, the head of legal and policy, and then a bunch of other executives under them quickly left as well. And I think what that's trying to signal is that, you know, this is a new day for Twitter. It's the Elon Musk company.
--:-- Alex Heath: Twitter gets a lot of media attention, but relatively few people actually use it. It's tiny compared to platforms like Facebook and Instagram and it long struggled as a business Musk takeover added to the company problems. It took on a billion in debt to finance this deal. That means it's now on the hook for about $1 billion in yearly interest payments.
--:-- Alex Heath: In Twitter's last quarterly earnings report, it posted a loss of $344 million. Musk, the way he's doing this deal, he really needs to pay back his lenders, and he needs Twitter to make money. Musk wants to make money by charging users for verifying their accounts and other premium services. But many users and analysts are super skeptical.
--:-- Alex Heath: And the reality is roughly 90% of Twitter's revenue comes from advertisers. And that's a big question mark. Ad spending declined over the summer. And multiple agencies have told their clients to pause Twitter advertising as a result of the shakeup. And it's not clear whether Musk can get enough of a handle on hate speech to make companies comfortable running ads there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's got to keep advertisers happy. And guess what? Advertisers don't want to be next to hateful content, misinformation and the like. All these challenges for Twitter to take on, now with far fewer employees to make it happen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Next week, in five states, slavery will be on the ballot. Voters in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Vermont, and Oregon will decide whether slavery should no longer be an acceptable punishment for crime.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Advocates for prison reform say this could be an important step toward changing the rules around pay for prison labor. First, let me just back up and explain why this is even showing up on ballots. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment banned slavery except as a punishment for crime. Many states have similar language in their state constitutions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now voters in these five states will get to weigh in on new language that abolishes slavery fully. Prison reform advocates say the exception in the 13th Amendment paved the way for people who are incarcerated to be exploited for labor. The ACLU estimates that around 800,000 incarcerated people work, producing around $11 billion a year in goods and services.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The average maximum wage is 52 cents an hour. Some work pays nothing. NPR spoke to a man named Troy Ramsey who was incarcerated for more than two decades. He now volunteering with a campaign in Oregon to change the Constitution there.
--:-- Troy Ramsey: He says existing wording about slavery dehumanizes people in prison. A lot of officers and stuff use that language against you while you're in there, you know, that they're allowed to treat you the inhumane way that they treat you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are some who've pushed back on these proposals. The Oregon State Sheriff's Association says it doesn't condone slavery, but the measure as it's written could force it to suspend work programs, which would increase costs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Supporters say changing the Constitution wouldn't automatically force prisons to pay more for labor, but they do hope it starts a conversation that moves the system in that direction.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Haiti is in crisis. Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced by gang violence. Cholera is spreading, and politicians have been assassinated. There was even an attempted kidnapping of air traffic controllers, leading to new concerns about safety in the skies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Miami Herald's Jacqueline Charles has covered Haiti for a long time. Now, she says, it's on the verge of collapse.
--:-- Jacqueline Charles: When you look at this country and you look at what's happening, it isn't just one crisis, but it's multiple crises that are all happening on top of, of course, political paralysis that the country has been dealing with for quite some time.
--:-- Jacqueline Charles: It's been over a year since Haiti's president was killed while in office. Since then, gangs have become more powerful. They have been behind kidnappings. They've been behind an increase in criminality in the country. People are virtually prisoners in their houses.
--:-- Jacqueline Charles: You just don't know when you step out your door if you're going to make it back home alive. In just the past few months, gangs have blocked the country's seaports and roads. All of this has jammed up critical infrastructure, leaving people without safe drinking water and driving the deadly cholera outbreak.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There has been talk of international troops coming in to help stabilize the situation but Charles says the country is divided over possible foreign intervention and overall they're deeply pessimistic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So you know the interesting thing about this country is that when you think that things can get any worse you know it does. And people are asking themselves is this rock bottom. And we just really don't know.
--:-- Shamita Basu: How much thought have you ever put into a temporary tattoo? You know, the peel and stick kind. I can confidently say I've never really hesitated to slap on a fake tattoo. They're fun. They're harmless.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But if you told me after the fact that I'd have to live with it, possibly for a very long time, let's just say I would not be very happy. Well, for a few people who got a special kind of temporary tattoo, they're finding out it's not exactly fading away as promised.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The San Francisco Chronicle has this story of a startup company called Ephemeral. It offers a more high-tech version of a stick-on tattoo, one that looks permanent but uses a special ink that's supposed to fade away after 9 to 15 months.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the Chronicle spoke to multiple customers who are having a different experience. For them, the ink is still very visible, well beyond 15 months. Now, the company says the range is an estimate. And consent forms given to customers warn that the tattoos may last longer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The people The Chronicle talked to seemed not so much furious, just frustrated. But they're not exactly feeling the company's slogan, which is regret nothing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As one woman who's going on 17 months with a cat tattoo puts it, if I had known I would still have this on my leg, I wouldn't have done it in the first place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, including coverage of a big story in sports, the Brooklyn Nets suspension of Kyrie Irving.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this weekend on Apple News in Conversation, you can hear the final episode of our special midterm series. My colleague Gideon Resnick spoke with a panel of election watchers, including Erin Haynes, the editor-at-large at the 19th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think there are certainly a lot of voters of all stripes, Democrat, Republican, Independent, who say that they are concerned about the direction of the country. They think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's your weekend. Listen, enjoy it, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
