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The Ford Pinto. New Coke. Google Glass. History is littered with products whose fatal flaw whether failures of safety, privacy, performance, or plain old desirabilityrepelled consumers and inflicted reputational damage to the companies bringing them to market. Its easy to imagine the difference if these problems had been detected early on. And too often, businesses neglect the chance to work with nonprofits, social enterprises, and other public interest groups to make product improvements after they enter the marketplace or, more ideally, upstream, before their products have entered the crucible of the customer. For companies and consumer groups alike, this is a major missed opportunity. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, partnering with public interest groups to bake an authentic pro-consumer perspective into elements like design, safety, sustainability, and functionality can provide a coveted advantage. It gives a product the chance to stand out from the crowd, already destined for glowing reviews because problems were nipped in the bud thanks to guidance and data from those focused on consumers interests. And for the nonprofits, working proactively with businesses to help ensure that products reflect consumers values from the outset means a better, safer marketplace for everyone. Zoom, in a nutshell Weve already seen the difference working together can make, especially if its early in a products introduction to consumers. Just look at Zoom. The videoconferencing platform, while launched as a tool for businesses, had not been introduced to a wide consumer audience before the COVID-19 pandemic made its services a global necessity. In early 2020as Zoom was poised to explode from 10 million monthly users to more than 300 million by AprilConsumer Reports (CR) testing experts went under the hood in our digital lab to assess it from a consumer well-being perspective. CR uncovered serious flaws. These included a protocol allowing the company to collect users videos, call transcripts, and chats and use them for targeted advertising, as well as features that allowed hosts to record meetings in secret and alert them when a participant clicked away from the screen. At the precipice of a moment when elementary school classrooms to therapy sessions would be conducted over Zoom, theres no telling what the fallout might have beenfor the company or its customershad these problems persisted. But CR reached out to the businessand the business reached back. Within days, Zoom had worked with CR to solve a wide array of problems, helping strengthen its case as a lifeline for users all over the world. Partnerships require new ways of thinking Now imagine what could be possible if such a partnership began even earlier in the process. This is the relationship CR has worked to build with businesses, providing companies our testing expertise and data about consumers needs and desires. Our advisory services have led to us providing feedback on prototypes, and with feedback implemented earlier in the product development lifecycle, weve seen immediate impact for consumers: improved comfort of leg support in vehicles; privacy policy changes for electronics; reduced fees for a basic checking account; an improved washing machine drying algorithm for one brand; improved safety of active driver assistance systems; and strengthened digital payments app scam warnings before users finalize transactions. These partnerships have proven productive, but they remain the exception to the rule. Building more of those cooperative, upstream relationships will require new thinking on both sides. Advocacy organizations must adopt an entrepreneurial spirit, leveraging their insights and expertise as a collaborator to companies theyre more accustomed to critiquing. Businesses must embrace these relationships as a central part of their research and development process, understanding that embedding pro-consumer values gives them a real edge in todays hyper-social marketplace. This cooperation is especially important in the modern digital era, when many consumers are making choices that reflect their principles and where products and services are growing increasingly complex. As the rise of AI-fueled products brings a new wave of threats and vulnerabilities in its wake, it is critical that businesses and public interest groups make an effort to forge strong relationships. By coming together early and often around their common interestthe consumerthey can improve products, craft strong industry standards, burnish the reputation of companies that act responsibly, and help maintain the health and integrity of the marketplace. Phil Radford is president and CEO of Consumer Reports.
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E-Commerce
Feeling like youve overdone it on the scrolling? Now you can take a break from TikTok to meditatewithout ever leaving the app. TikToks new in-app meditation feature, announced Thursday, was first tested earlier this year with a group of teen users and is now rolling out to everyone. Designed to improve sleep quality, the meditations activate during designated sleep hours and serve as a gentle nudge to put the phone down during a late-night scroll session. For users younger than 18, the feature is enabled by default. If teens are still on the app after 10 p.m., their For You feed will be interrupted by calming music and breathing exercises. If ignored, the prompt returns to remind them it’s time for bed. Adults who want a similar reminder can set their own bedtime in TikToks Screen Time settings. Although the meditation can be skipped, TikTok says 98% of teens who encountered it during testing chose to keep it on. Still, not everyone appreciated the intervention. I disabled it, ima scroll how long I want on my phone, one TikTok user commented. Why do they care how late we are on TikTok? another asked. To Instagram I go, added a third. @cbsmornings TikTok is launching a new feature to encourage users to stop scrolling late at night in the form of an in-app guided meditation session #tiktok #sleep #meditation original sound – CBS Mornings The update comes amid growing scrutiny of TikToks impact on youth mental health. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly half of U.S. teens say social media disrupts their sleep (45%) and hurts their productivity (40%). TikTok is also facing lawsuits that claim it prioritized profit over safety by downplaying the effects of its addictive algorithm. Previous attempts to limit screen time havent always worked. Court documents show teens were still spending an average of 107 minutes per day on the app, even when a 60-minute limit was in place. As part of the rollout, TikTok also announced a $2.3 million donation in ad credits from its Mental Health Education Fund to 31 organizations, including Crisis Text Line, Active Minds, and the Alliance for Eating Disorders.
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E-Commerce
Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are moldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programs, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and two sources from other aid organizations. Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed, or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said. The warehouses, which are run by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tons of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said. An undated inventory list for the warehouseswhich are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and Houstonstated that they contained more than 66,000 tons of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil, and fortified grains. Those supplies are valued at over $98 million, according to the document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a U.S. government source as up to date. That food could feed over a million people for three months, or the entire population of Gaza for a month and a half, according to a Reuters analysis using figures from the World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian agency. The U.N. body says that one ton of foodtypically including cereals, pulses, and oilcan meet the daily need of approximately 1,660 people. The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by President Donald Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people toward famine, undoing decades of progress. According to the World Food Programme, 343 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9 million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine. Most of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali. A spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees USAID, said in response to detailed questions about the food stocks that it was working to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of aid programs and their transfer by July as part of the USAID decommissioning process. “USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID pre-positioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates,” the spokesperson said. Some food likely to be destroyed Although the Trump administration has issued waivers for some humanitarian programsincluding in Gaza and Sudanthe cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers, and contractors has left food stocks stuck in the four warehouses, the sources said. A proposal to hand the stocks to aid organizations that can distribute them is on hold, according to the U.S. source and two former USAID sources briefed on the proposal. The plan is awaiting approval from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, the two former USAID sources said. The office is headed by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former operative of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, who is now overseeing the decommissioning of USAID. The Office of Foreign Assistance, DOGE, and Lewin himself did not respond to requests for comment. Nearly 500 tons of high-energy biscuits stored at a USAID warehouse in Dubai are due to expire in July, according to a former USAID official and an aid official familiar with the inventories. The biscuits could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month, according to Reuters calculations. The biscuits are now likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year, only around 20 tons of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage. Some of those stocks were previously intended for Gaza and famine-stricken Sudan, the former official said. The State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions on how much of the food aid in storage was close to expiry and whether this would be destroyed. USAID plans to fire almost all of its staff in two rounds on July 1 and Sept. 2, as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July. Children dying The United States is the world’s largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38% of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed $61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data. U.S. food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based paste. Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a U.S.-based manufacturer of Plumpy’Nut, said termination of transportation contracts by USAID had created a massive backlog that had forced the firm to hire an additional warehouse to store its own production. The resulting stockpile of 5,000 tons, worth $13 million, could feed more than 484,000 children, she said. Salem said that email exchanges with Lewin have left her “hopeful” that a way will be found soon to get her product to the desperate children who need it. The UN children’s agency UNICEF warned in late March that RUTF stocks were running short in 17 countries due to funding cuts, potentially forcing 2.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to go without these crucial supplies for the rest of the year. The four USAID warehouses contain the majority of the agency’s pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places like Sudan, where 25 million peoplehalf the country’s populationface acute hunger. Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the U.S., said it was scaling back its programs following the cuts. She said the impact of global shortages of therapeutic foods due to the disruption to U.S. aid flows is difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programs no longer operate. “What we do know, though, is that if a child is in an inpatient stabilization center and they’re no longer able to access treatment, more than 60% of those children are at risk of dying very quickly,” she said. Action Against Hunger, a nonprofit that relied on the United States for over 30% of its global budget, said last month that the U.S. cuts had already led to the deaths of at least six children at its programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after it was forced to suspend admissions. Cuts causing chaos The Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which coordinates the U.S. government’s aid efforts overseas, was plunged into caos by the Trump administration’s cutbacks, the five sources said. The bureau’s staff were among thousands of USAID employees put on administrative leave pending their terminations. While some staff were brought back to work until their severance dates, aid administration has not recovered. Three sources told Reuters that the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in the South African port city of Durban had been canceled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently. Two former USAID officials said that the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the State Department that has yet to be formed. The State Department did not comment. A spokesperson for the World Food Programme, which relies heavily on U.S. funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks. Asked if it was engaged in discussions to release them, the spokesperson said: “We greatly appreciate the support from all our donors, including the U.S., and we will continue to work with partners to advocate for the needs of the most vulnerable in urgent need of life-saving assistance”. Jessica Donati, Emma Farge, Ammu Kannampilly, and Jonathan Landay, Reuters. Writing by Ammu Kannampilly.
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E-Commerce
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