![]() It wanted to position itself as a financial powerhouse while retaining the freewheeling spirit and lighter touch regulation of a technology company. "Firstly, the firm had an identity crisis. "Arguably Ant’s undoing revolved around three issues," says the head of a Hong Kong financial communications firm, speaking on condition of anonymity. In December, China launched an antitrust investigation into Alibaba, before ordering Ant to overhaul its financial business and "return to its payment origins." And Ma's woes didn't stop there – the high-profile billionaire was not seen in public for two months in the aftermath of the crisis. The moves stunned an investment community that had put in bids worth a record $3 trillion. Three days before what would have been the world's largest stock market debut, Chinese regulators abruptly suspended Ant Group's Shanghai IPO, with the company forced to pull its listing in Hong Kong on the same day. Under new online lending rules, furthermore, officials said there were "major issues" with the purported $37bn listing of Ma's Chinese fintech giant Ant Group. It did not take long for China's regulators to strike back, demonstrating a fleetness of action that-ironically-belied Ma's damning depiction. ![]() Ma criticized global banking rules, comparing Chinese regulators to an "old people's club" who stifle healthy innovation in the country. When flamboyant Alibaba founder Jack Ma addressed a Shanghai conference last October, it is unlikely he could have predicted the maelstrom that his comments would unleash. What they can’t do is keep crossing their fingers that they won’t become the next victim.” - PH Organizations that do not have the bandwidth or resources to implement and support a monitoring and response effort should engage outside experts for support. It is critical that companies have a response plan and capability in place and ready to go that includes communications, legal, and security elements for when they inevitably become a target. “Coordinated information operations are not just a political concern that comes around every four years. QAnon pages, groups, forums, and accounts are already expanding their list of commercial sector suspects and have already targeted the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and Target, among others…. ![]() Said Cindy Otis, a disinformation expert and former CIA officer, writing for Barons: “If other companies are breathing a sigh of relief right now that they have avoided the QAnon behemoth this time, they shouldn’t be. QAnon-the right-wing pedophilia cult that had previously targeted the Clintons and Washington pizza restaurants- seized on the apparent similarity between the product names and the names of missing children, prompting tens of thousands of posts on social media.įortunately for Wayfair, it had an effective early warning system in place, and was able to debunk the rumors before they attracted more mainstream attention. ![]() Tens of thousands of social media users pieced those observations together with cell phone screenshots, red circles and lots of question marks to accuse Wayfair of selling and shipping children to pedophiles. The story emerged after Wayfair listed several cabinets and other items, many of them costing thousands of dollars, that had names that purportedly matched reports of missing children from around the country: Neriah, Samiyah and Yeritza. So it’s no surprise when companies find themselves targeted by fake news that spreads alarmingly quickly on social media-although the difficulty of anticipating and defusing such crises was evident when online furniture retailer Wayfair became the subject of rumors that it was involved in child sex trafficking. There’s nothing new about phony conspiracy theories creating problems for brands: back in the 70s, there were rumors that the Bubble Yum brand of bubblegum contained spiders’ eggs around the same time, people accused McDonald’s of using worms to make its burgers and in the 1980s, there were reports that people believed Procter & Gamble’s logo was a secret sign that the company worshipped Satan. In 2017, after the election of Donald Trump, we warned that “fake news” was becoming an existential threat to the public relations industry, and that the same forces-delegitimization of mainstream media sources, accompanied by the weaponization of disinformation-that helped get the president elected could be used against corporations. Wayfair falls foul of child trafficking conspiracy Part Two: TikTok, Volkswagen, Ebay, Wells Fargo, Amazon and Sherwin-Williamsġ4. Part One: 'Election fraud', AstraZeneca, 5G, Rio Tinto, Huawei, McKinsey and Tyson Foods
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