Manchester United’s abject performance in the derby defeat to Manchester City left former players Roy Keane and Gary Neville offering a damning assessment of the current state of the club, with players and hierarchy alike coming in for criticism. However, manager Erik ten Hag largely appears in favour with the ex-Old Trafford stars, despite overseeing a start to the Premier League campaign which has tallied five defeats in ten matches, leaving the Red Devils eighth in the table and and 11 points behind leaders Tottenham Hotspur, past the quarter mark of the campaign. Keane offered the most immediate and radical propsed solution to the latest crisis at the club, suggesting that Bruno Fernandes should have the captaincy removed from him - despite only being officially appointed to the position in July after Harry Maguire was demoted from it. “The first thing I’d do, I would definitely take the captaincy off him, one hundred per cent. I know it’s a big decision but Fernandes is not captain material,” he said. “A talented player no doubt, but after watching him again today, we’ve discussed this before. “His whinging, moaning, throwing his arms up constantly - it’s really not acceptable. “When you make change you talk about boardroom level, but the manager can do this. The manager can hold his hands up and say I got it wrong - he’s the opposite to what I would want in a captain. “Man United have been built on great players and great characters. We haven’t seen that.” Keane also alluded to overspending and poor decisions in the transfer market. “We’re well aware United have to pay over the odds but it feels too much for some of them. They lack physicality, they’re like children out there. Too many who have come in for the fees involved haven’t done the business.” Neville, meanwhile, labelled it “unbelievable” that United still don’t have a sporting director - David Harrison is director of football operations and John Murtough is football director at the club. However, he also pointed to the impending propsed takeover or partial purchase of ownership shares by Jim Ratcliffe as a reason behind coaching staff not being able to perform as well as they otherwise might do and get the team playing to their maximium level. “It’s toxic, they all think they’re going to lose their jobs. That’s what’s happening and I believe the toxicity at this club eats alive every player and has done for years,” Neville said. Jamie Carragher, however, countered that “What [Ten Hag] is doing on the training pitch has got nothing to do with the club takeover,” but Neville reiterated that it wasn’t time to place the Dutch head coach under pressure by calling for change. “Of course there’s pressure, we’ve seen it before with [David] Moyes, [Jose] Mourinho, [Louis] Van Gaal. I think Ten Hag should continue, 100 per cent. Today wasn’t one of his best days in midfield [tactics] but the reality is the performances have been so poor for the last few months: battered by Brighton, lucky against Brentford and Copenhagen. “I can’t quite see a way out of it in performance levels but changing manager? That’s not where I am at. He’s hitting the same issues [Ole Gunnar] Solskjaer did: doing well in a cup, signing players to go to the next level and [falling off].” United are next in action in the Carabao Cup against Newcastle United, before a trip to Fulham and a vital Champions League away game to FC Copenhagen. Read More Erling Haaland shadow continues to loom over Manchester United’s misfiring forwards Diogo Dalot ensures Manchester United honour Sir Bobby Charlton with victory Nunez scores as Liverpool show support for Luis Diaz in win over Forest Nunez scores as Liverpool show support for Luis Diaz in win over Forest Erik ten Hag believes Manchester United are ‘on the up’ despite derby drubbing Joao Palhinha’s stunning strike snatches Fulham a point at Brighton

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Gareth Southgate admits Raheem Sterling was “not particularly happy” after being snubbed for an England recall. The 28-year-old is one of the national team’s most experienced players but has not added to his 82 caps since December’s World Cup quarter-final exit to France. Sterling missed England’s March meet-up through injury and a nagging hamstring issue led to what his camp described as a “mutual decision” to focus on recuperating his body after a rocky first season at Chelsea. But the forward did not receive the recall he hoped for after a strong start to the campaign, with Southgate overlooking him for September’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Ukraine and friendly in Scotland. “We were really pleased with the group (in June),” the England manager said. “To bring Raheem back in we have to leave someone else out and on the back of three games I didn’t think anybody in this group of attacking players warrants being left out. “It’s really good to see him start the season so well. He looks in good condition, he looks hungry. “He’s obviously an important player for us and has been an important player for us. “But we have in those attacking areas just behind the nine a lot of competition for places. “I think all of those players have started the season well and certainly the group that are with us has done really well for us in the in the recent games.” Put to the England boss that Sterling has missed three squads in a row, he said: “He was not available for the last two and of course that’s given other people the opportunity to play well and to establish themselves in the group. “It’s a difficult call and Raheem is not particularly happy about it, but I understand that because he’s an important player for us. “I’m convinced he’s going to have an excellent season with Chelsea, there’s no doubt about that.” Southgate made a point of calling Sterling about his decision as he was conscious that he has been “a really big player for us” and wanted to acknowledge how well he has been playing. “Raheem is always really respectful with how he responds and deals (with things),” the England boss said. “He will always say ‘look, I respect your decision’ but of course he wants to get back in the group. And I wouldn’t expect that to be any other way.” A statement from the player’s camp reinforced that Southgate’s “decision has been respected”, adding that “Raheem will continue to focus on his domestic form”. The forward has started Chelsea’s first three Premier League matches of the season, scoring twice and providing an assist in Friday’s 3-0 win against Luton. While Sterling was overlooked, Southgate kept the faith with England vice-captain Jordan Henderson despite his controversial move to Saudi Arabian club Al-Ettifaq. There was also a place for former Manchester United captain Harry Maguire and Manchester City midfielder Kalvin Phillips, despite neither having played a minute of club football this term. Southgate highlighted that “I haven’t always said we just pick on form because clearly that hasn’t been the case in a number of positions”. England’s absentee-hit central defence and lack of single pivot midfield options help explain the involvement of Maguire and Phillips, but they are not guaranteed to keep their places if club issues remain. “I think with Harry, the injuries to (Raphael) Varane and (Luke) Shaw probably mean that there is unlikely to be any change there in terms of a change of clubs,” Southgate said ahead of Friday’s transfer deadline. “So, no, I can’t sit here and say it’s an ideal situation with either. “With the centre-backs, we have got a chance for others to come in (due to absences) and there are others playing in the role. “In midfield it’s more of a concern because of the specifics of the position. “I know I’ve talked about the low numbers of English players playing and people say: ‘What are you moaning about? You’ve got a great squad to pick from’. “But it’s the positional specifics. There is a lack of depth in certain areas – left-back is one and midfield pivot is definitely another.” Southgate largely stuck with the tried and tested for September’s double-header, but there was a place for uncapped Chelsea defender Levi Colwill and, more surprisingly, Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah. “Two young players who are doing very well, who have done well with our junior teams,” Southgate said. “Levi, of course, had some time with us in the summer anyway. “Eddie is coming in because it’s an area where we’d like to have a look at him. “He’s a young player with a really good pedigree, very good finisher and it’s good for him to have some time with us. “I think he’s record goalscorer with the Under-21s as well. “He’s not had the chance to work with us up to this point but he’s a player that we’re really interested in.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live LGBT+ England fans may shun Jordan Henderson for ‘turning his back’ on them Aston Villa ease into Conference League group stage with win over Hibernian Andy Murray admits grand slam chances may never improve after US Open defeat

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ROME--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 5, 2023--

From fuelling genocide in Myanmar, kowtowing to authoritarian regimes and causing an epidemic of depression among teenagers, Noam Bardin has watched aghast as the platforms that promised to bring people closer together tore at the connective tissue of society. “Social media has become the worst of us”, the serial tech entrepreneur tells The Independent in an interview. “That’s by design. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” So he decided to build his own, Post, with a vision to reinvent the relationship between social media, its users and news publishers. Post launched in the App Store on 15 June, one of a number of start-ups vying to usurp Twitter as it lurches through a series of crises. Post’s soft launch When Twitter imploded last October during Elon Musk’s tortuous $44bn takeover, a flood of high-profile users announced they were ditching the site. Mr Bardin spotted an opportunity, and decided to rush Post into beta testing. He soon had more than 350,000 people on a waiting list, and initially allowed around 65,000 users onto the site. Mr Bardin said the decision to launch and capitalise on the chaos at Twitter may have been premature, but it allowed him to iron out flaws and convince news outlets that the app’s profit-sharing model could work. “Once we came out, suddenly, publishers were willing to come on board.” Mr Musk’s ownership has been plagued by a series of erratic decisions, including firing content moderators, promoting conspiracy theorists, declaring war on what he calls the “woke mind virus”, and using it as a tool to boost his own profile. The billionaire may not have been the cause of all of Twitter’s woes, but he certainly hasn’t helped, says Mr Bardin. “Twitter was a sick company before. It didn’t have a good business model. It couldn’t afford what it was doing. It didn’t provide value for the creators, and the toxicity was off the charts, right? “All these are kind of assuming that Twitter was an amazing, healthy company before Elon Musk came? Elon Musk obviously did his bit to destroy it.” Mr Musk’s belief that he could run a social media company was typical of the attitude among Silicon Valley venture capitalists, he said. “Silicon Valley is full of really, really smart people who have accomplished tremendous things. And because of that, they assume they can do anything and accomplish anything,” Mr Bardin said. “They like to talk about diversity, and they have diversity of people in terms of their backgrounds, skin colour and race, but everyone has exactly the same engineering MBA from Stanford or somewhere else.” Mr Bardin says he didn’t believe Twitter would ever disappear entirely, but that its profits and trustworthiness will continue to crater as users grow tired of Mr Musk’s antics. Post will inevitably draw comparisons to Twitter, but Mr Bardin sees it more like TikTok, a disruptor that exists alongside and improves an existing idea. ‘Ultimate product person’ Mr Bardin, 52, became a billionaire overnight when he sold his crowdsourced navigation app Waze to Google in 2013, After seven years as a vice president of product at Google, Mr Bardin quit suddenly in 2021. In a blistering farewell post, he wrote that the company mollycoddled its “entitled” employees who were more concerned with personal fulfillment and their 11am yoga classes than the products they worked on. Post was initially entirely self-funded by Mr Bardin. When he unveiled the app in November, he announced that Silicon Valley venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, which manages $35bn in assets, had come on board. Post’s only other investor is Scott Galloway, the author, podcast host and professor of marketing at New York University, who has said he invested “substantial personal capital” in the project. The partnership came about after the pair hit it off when Professor Galloway had the entrepreneur as a guest on his podcast. Professor Galloway, an outspoken critic of tech titans including Mr Musk, told The Independent in an email that he was convinced to invest in Post after hearing Mr Bardin’s vision to reimagine social media as a force for good. “From the outset, Post has been committed to healthier online conversation,” Professor Galloway said. “Elon’s mission, as evidenced by his relentless s***posting and public disdain for our elected leaders, appears to be the opposite.” Professor Galloway described his partner as “the ultimate product person”, a necessity going up against behemoths that invest billions in “keeping eyeballs glued to the screen”. “However, there’s another side to running a business in social, which Noam understands deeply — and that’s mission. “Specifically, what value are you providing to enhance societal discourse such that we can engage in truthful and respectful debate? Most social media companies are sorely lacking in this area, because the ad-based model forces their algorithms to value clicks and engagement over good-faith contributions to public discourse.” Professor Galloway said Mr Bardin was a “rare innovator who hasn’t made the mistake of believing his own press”. “He puts the product and the consumer before his own vanity, and that’s rare in tech these days. We need more leaders like that.” Mr Galloway’s Pivot podcast co-host Kara Swisher is also an adviser on the start-up, helping Mr Bardin connect with publishers. It’s the first time that Ms Swisher, a powerful figure in tech journalism for decades, agreed to help out an entrepreneur, such is her belief in the product. How Post works Post allows users to toggle between three feeds: following, explore and news. Users can follow individuals and topics they are interested in, create their own posts, like and repost other content. When users click on an article, it displays within their feed, rather than taking them through to a news site. For that, users are charged a micropayment of a few cents from their digital wallet, which goes directly to the publisher. More than 30 news organisations, including The Independent, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters and ProPublica, have already signed on as publishing partners. Mr Bardin explains that Post is pioneering a new business model that allows users to find and pay for reliable news. Since the dawn of the internet, media companies have missed “every opportunity” to carve out a slice of profits for themselves, he says. “They’ve been screwed by every tech platform.” He believes that the central idea to fixing social media is rebooting the relationship with news publishers. On Post, publishers can set the price of their content — usually a few cents per article. “We hope that we’ll have the critical mass on our platform that will give that breaking news from everywhere,” Mr Bardin says. “But we think that includes premium publishing, and newsletter writers and experts and creators. There’s a whole slew of new entities who are creating newsworthy content and want to be able to host it all.” A network of journalists, influencers and newsletter publishers including Dan Rather, George Takei and Robert Reich were early adopters of the platform. While keen to reimagine what social media can look like, Mr Bardin says his larger goal is to create a better informed society through promoting reliable information. He sees the rise of authoritarianism in his home country of Israel, Hungary, Poland and the United States as an existential threat similar to the climate crisis. “Americans like to think that Trump is a unique phenomenon. He’s not, he’s part of this wide agenda of authoritarians. And authoritarian regimes have never delivered the goods over time,” he says. “Putting aside global warming, which is the hardware problem, to me authoritarianism is the software problem.” Professor Galloway agreed that the social media giants had failed in their obligations not to “mess up” democracy. “In many cases, they intentionally look the other way and play dumb such that they don’t have to do the hard work of actually dealing with these issues.” Mr Bardin tells The Independent that he would never have caved to Turkish president Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan’s request to censor opposition parties ahead of recent elections. He expects to “have a problem” in India, where the party of prime minister Narendra Modi has made similar requests targeting political opponents, and accepts that Post will likely never be able to operate in China or Russia. “I find it very disheartening when I see so many American companies basically getting on their knees and removing any kind of moral in Western liberal value to try and operate in these countries. You have to be able to stand for something and if it means you lose a market, you lose a market. “Part of the problem is, the Second World War was a long time ago. So we forgot what the world used to be like. And so we’re allowing ourselves now to go down these paths that we know are terrible. “There are a million reasons for this, not just social media, but social media is one of them and it’s the place where I think I can make an impact,” he said. “I’m 52, this is my last company, and this is something I want to do for the next few decades. It’s something I think is super important.” Content moderation Mr Bardin sees Post’s content moderation being driven by the community, with good behaviour being rewarded, while trolls will be aggressively suspended and removed. The more you play by the rules, the more reach your content will receive. “And the more we’re gonna trust you on the platform, while being very aggressive on removing and suspending people that are just there to troll others.” He cites the genocide of Rohingya Muslims by the military dictatorship in Myanmar in 2016 and 2017 as a prime example of how big tech has failed. Facebook, the primary source of news in the country, allowed anti-Islamic hate speech to spread unchecked, which a United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission found played a “determining role” in the massacre, rape and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. “There’s no way that the moderator sitting in a call center in the Philippines will understand the Buddhist verse Muslim animosity in Myanmar. You can’t expect them to ever reach that level of understanding, but everyone in Myanmar understands it,” he said. Building a community to self-police bad behaviour and set its own standards would be key to Post’s success, he added. “We’re the platform for the 85 per cent of people who are not crazy, who want to get their news, get some opinions and say something, but don’t want to be called a fascist or communist.” Read More Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg: Who would win a fight between tech titans? Inside the final days of Twitter 1.0: How Elon Musk razed us to the ground RFK Jr compares Elon Musk to American revolutionaries during conspiracy-driven Twitter event Four people were just locked inside a fake Mars habitat for a year-long study Apple releases urgent update to iPhone and iPad users Twitter hacker who took over Musk, Obama, Biden accounts gets prison sentence

Lewis Hamilton finished only 12th in opening practice for the Spanish Grand Prix. As Max Verstappen predictably set the pace for Red Bull at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya, Hamilton ended the one-hour running 1.2 seconds behind the Dutchman. Sergio Perez finished second, seven tenths adrift of his Red Bull team-mate, with Esteban Ocon, fresh from his podium at last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, third for Alpine. Home favourite Fernando Alonso was sixth. Mercedes spent the first running of the weekend rooted to the bottom of the time sheets before late laps from George Russell, who finished two places and one tenth ahead of his team-mate, and Hamilton hauled them up the order. Hamilton admitted here on Thursday that Mercedes’ much-anticipated upgrade, which made its debut in Monaco a week ago, had not provided the magic fix he was hoping for. And on his new machine’s second outing, at a track where the Silver Arrows said they would obtain a greater understanding of their upgrades, the evidence suggests they are no closer to competing with the grid’s all-conquering team, or indeed, leapfrogging rivals Aston Martin and Ferrari. Verstappen has been in a class of one for much of the past 18 months and his dominance continued on Friday. He was the only man to break the 75-second barrier, a day after he made the ominous prediction that Red Bull could win all 16 remaining races. Nyck de Vries has endured a trying start to his Formula One career but the AlphaTauri driver finished fourth in first practice, a spot clear of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, with Alonso, the 41-year-old Spaniard, the only other driver to finish within a second of Verstappen. British driver Lando Norris was 11th for McLaren, six places ahead of Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren. Second practice, which could be disrupted by rain, is due to start at 5pm local time (4pm BST). Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Fernando Alonso: Hamilton can win eighth title but Verstappen can break records Fernando Alonso: Aston Martin ‘will not give up’ in push for F1 triumph Concerns Monaco GP could be ‘left behind’ as Max Verstappen wins ‘boring race’

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A new "toxic" trend is taking over TikTok that involves people comparing their body measurements to Bella Hadid – and some users are concerned. While social media can sometimes be a force for good, other corners of the internet have received several side eyes for their damaging messages. A quick TikTok search into 'Bella Hadid measurements' will reveal hundreds of videos of people sharing their measurements. As we know, Hadid is a supermodel and the comparisons haven't sat easily with many users, as it perpetuates unrealistic beauty standards. "When Bella Hadid’s measurements are 34-24-32 and mine are 31-22-33," one person wrote in a viral clip that's racked up almost half a million likes. The TikToker went on to call the measurements a "big flex in my life." Another person wrote: "POV I have the same measurements as Bella Hadid, nothing can hurt my feelings, I don't care". Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter While the clips are seemingly intended to be lighthearted, many more TikTokers have hit back at its "toxic" roots – especially given TikTok is predominantly a Gen-Z app. Creator Felix (@fmjat) raised the concern, asking viewers: "Aren’t these Bella Hadid measurements low-key a step back backward and hypocritical?" @fmjat bare in mind these are the same gurlies saying all bodys r beautiful ?? #bellahadid #bodypositivity #models #modelcommunity #bodyimage His clip was met with people who agreed on the matter, with one writing: "Like.. the trend is so bad for impressionable teens/ppl on this app with eating disorders." Another user simply put it: "The fixation on bodies is tiring." Meanwhile, a third person chimed in: "Can we all say the things we like ab our bodies and accept the fact that we’re all gonna see things we don’t relate to without freaking out." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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