Facebook Suspends Former US President Trump's Account for Two Years

Donald Trump smiles during a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida, September 19, 2016. (Reuters)
Donald Trump smiles during a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida, September 19, 2016. (Reuters)
TT
20

Facebook Suspends Former US President Trump's Account for Two Years

Donald Trump smiles during a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida, September 19, 2016. (Reuters)
Donald Trump smiles during a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida, September 19, 2016. (Reuters)

Facebook Inc on Friday suspended former US President Donald Trump from its platform until at least January 2023 in a decision that has been watched closely for signals on how the company will treat rule-breaking world leaders in the future.

The social media giant's independent oversight board in May upheld its block on Trump, which was enforced in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol over concerns that his posts were inciting violence.

However, the board ruled it was wrong to make the ban indefinite and gave it six months to determine a "proportionate response."

Trump's suspension was effective from the initial date in January and will only be reinstated if conditions permit, Facebook said in a blog post.

"Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump's suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols," Facebook said.

The decision came on the same day as Europe and Britain launched formal antitrust investigations into whether Facebook misuses its vast trove of customer data.

Social media companies have grappled in recent years with how to handle world leaders and politicians that violate their guidelines.

Facebook has come under fire from those who think it should abandon its hands-off approach to political speech. But it has also been criticized by those, including Republican lawmakers and some free-expression advocates, who saw the Trump ban as a disturbing act of censorship.

Trump's suspension was the first time Facebook had blocked a current president, prime minister or head of state.



Microsoft Creates Chip It Says Shows Quantum Computers Are ‘Years, Not Decades’ Away

Microsoft's Majorana 1 quantum computing chip is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on February 19, 2025. (Courtesy of Microsoft/Handout via Reuters)
Microsoft's Majorana 1 quantum computing chip is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on February 19, 2025. (Courtesy of Microsoft/Handout via Reuters)
TT
20

Microsoft Creates Chip It Says Shows Quantum Computers Are ‘Years, Not Decades’ Away

Microsoft's Majorana 1 quantum computing chip is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on February 19, 2025. (Courtesy of Microsoft/Handout via Reuters)
Microsoft's Majorana 1 quantum computing chip is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on February 19, 2025. (Courtesy of Microsoft/Handout via Reuters)

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is "years, not decades" away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed.

Quantum computing holds the promise of carrying out calculations that would take today's systems millions of years and could unlock discoveries in medicine, chemistry and many other fields where near-infinite seas of possible combinations of molecules confound classical computers.

Quantum computers also hold the danger of upending today's cybersecurity systems, where most encryption relies on the assumption that it would take too long to brute force gain access.

The biggest challenge of quantum computers is that a fundamental building block called a qubit, which is similar to a bit in classical computing, is incredibly fast but also extremely difficult to control and prone to errors.

Microsoft said the Majorana 1 chip it has developed is less prone to those errors than rivals and provided as evidence a scientific paper set to be published in academic journal Nature.

When useful quantum computers will arrive has become a topic of debate in the upper echelons of the tech industry. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last month that the technology was two decades away from overtaking his company's chips, the workhorses of artificial intelligence, reflecting broad skepticism.

Those remarks prompted Google, which last year showed off its own new quantum chip, to say that commercial quantum computing applications are only five years away. IBM has said large-scale quantum computers will be online by 2033.

Microsoft's Majorana 1 has been in the works for nearly two decades and relies on a subatomic particle called the Majorana fermion whose existence was first theorized in the 1930s. That particle has properties that make it less prone to the errors that plague quantum computers, but it has been hard for physicists to find and control.

Microsoft said it created the Majorana 1 chip with indium arsenide and aluminum. The device uses a superconducting nanowire to observe the particles and can be controlled with standard computing equipment.

The chip Microsoft revealed Wednesday has far fewer qubits than rival chips from Google and IBM, but Microsoft believes that far fewer of its Majorana-based qubits will be needed to make useful computers because the error rates are lower.

Microsoft did not give a timeline for when the chip would be scaled up to create quantum computers that can outstrip today's machines, but the company said in a blog post that point was "years, not decades" away.

Jason Zander, the Microsoft executive vice president who oversees the company's long-term strategic bets, described Majorana 1 as a "high risk, high reward" strategy.

The chip was fabricated at Microsoft labs in Washington state and Denmark.

"The hardest part has been solving the physics. There is no textbook for this, and we had to invent it," Zander said in an interview with Reuters. "We literally have invented the ability to go create this thing, atom by atom, layer by layer."

Philip Kim, a professor of physics at Harvard University who was not involved in Microsoft's research, said that Majorana fermions have been a hot topic among physicists for decades and called Microsoft's work an "exciting development" that put the company at the forefront of quantum research.

He also said that Microsoft's use of a hybrid between traditional semiconductors and exotic superconductors appeared to be a good route toward chips that can be scaled up into more powerful chips.

"Although there's no demonstration (of this scaling up) yet, what they are doing is really successful," Kim said.