• Donald Trump said that Mark Zuckerberg may have taken notice of his threats.
• The president-elect previously threatened to jail the Meta CEO for life.
• Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for changing how it moderates political content on its three major social media platforms.

Trump, who previously threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison, said his comments might have led to the announcement.

"Probably," Trump said when asked if Zuckerberg is "directly responding to the threats you've made to him in the past."

Zuckerberg and Trump once had a frosty relationship, but both sides appear to be warming up.

"Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook" Trump told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference.

Zuckerberg made the major shift on Tuesday, announcing that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers and will relax moderation policies on topics like gender and immigration.

"We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship," Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Facebook. "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

Joel Kaplan, recently promoted to lead Meta's global policy team, outlined the announcement during an interview on "Fox and Friends," Fox News' morning show that Trump has long watched.

"There is a real opportunity here, with President Trump coming into office, with his commitment to free expression, for us to get back to those values," Kaplan said.

Trump said he saw Kaplan's comments and called the former Bush White House official "very impressive."

Zuckerberg recently dined at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, part of a larger wave of tech CEOs hoping to reset relations with the incoming administration. Meta is also donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration.

Zuckerberg and Trump haven't always gotten along.

Trump's first administration and several states teamed up in 2020 on a major antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. In 2021, Trump, then-a former president, sued Facebook and other platforms for banning him in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Trump and his allies have also been highly critical of Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's charitable giving ahead of the 2020 election to help local election officials deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are watching him closely," Trump wrote in his book earlier this year in a section about Zuckerberg," and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election."

Before the presidential election, Zuckerberg announced he would not make any donations to election officials again, and he called Trump a "badass" after the president-elect survived an assassination attempt in July.

A representative for Meta didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• The Netflix docuseries "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action" premiered on Tuesday.
• It explores the controversial rise of Springer's daytime talk show, which gained fame for its brawls.
• Former producers describe manipulative tactics they used to get guests riled up and ready to fight.

The unruly guests on "The Jerry Springer Show" were not professional actors — but their infamous brawls were encouraged and teased out behind the scenes, producers say.

Netflix's new two-part documentary, "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action," unpacks the show's outrageous premise and its rise to the top of daytime TV ratings in the late '90s. It features several interviews with former producers, who describe the tactics they used to recruit real people with real problems and coax them into having emotional meltdowns on air.

"Just like any other manipulative situation, you need to instinctually pull out of them those points of tension that create a soap opera," Melinda Chait Mele, a producer who'd been hired from the tabloid world, says in the doc.

"A lot of the guests were earnest. They literally did think they were coming on to solve a problem. You wouldn't believe how many people said to me on the telephone, 'I can't wait to meet Jerry. I really hope he can help me with this,'" Mele tells the camera. "Jerry didn't help anybody with any of it. He just stood there and did his thing."

As the show was gaining popularity and producers were under more pressure to orchestrate shock and awe, Mele hired Toby Yoshimura, a former bartender with no talk show experience. He proved exceptionally skilled at convincing people to publicly air their grievances.

"These are small-town folk, right? And you're really trying to sell it to them, like, 'You've got this great story. We want to give people an opportunity to see that,'" Yoshimura explains. "In order for them to deliver, they have to like you. So you treat them like they're kings."

Yoshimura says producers would send limousines to ferry guests to and from the airport. A "Jerry Springer" guest identified as Melanie says they were also supplied with plenty of alcohol.

"They did everything in their power to get us as crazy as possible," Melanie says. "They were like, 'Go hog wild! Have fun!' And so we got wasted." By the time she arrived on set the following morning, Melanie says she was hungover, sleep-deprived, and "ready to fuck it up." Meanwhile, producers were with her backstage, coaching her on "what to say and how to act."

Yoshimura describes the environment as a "pressure cooker" and admits that some stories went too far. (Some of the show's most controversial episodes include "I'm Pregnant By My Brother" and "I Married a Horse.")

"You had to reach into their brain and tap on the thing that would make them laugh, cry, scream, or fight. You rev 'em up to tornado level, and then you send 'em out onstage," Yoshimura says, adding later, "This was basically the Stanford Prison Experiment, in that you were playing with people's psyches until you get a result."

This methodology was designed to generate higher ratings, which spiked after an episode that saw a member of the Jewish Defense League start a fistfight with members of the Ku Klux Klan.

"It was brilliant. And it rated through the roof," says Richard Dominick, the executive producer for "Jerry Springer" who's widely credited as the show's mastermind. "If you're producing a show that you want to be insane, and unlike anything that's ever been on TV before, there's your goal. That's what you want."

From that point onward, producers were instructed to pursue on-camera confrontations — and for a while, Dominick's method got results. In 1998, Springer even beat out Oprah Winfrey in the ratings for the most-watched daytime talk show, a feat that producers previously thought was impossible.

"There was no question: Jerry and Richard were on top of the world. I mean, the riches that it gave them, and the fame, were very compelling," says Robert Feder, a longtime media critic who worked for the Chicago Sun-Times during the "Jerry Springer" era.

"But what did they have to do in order to achieve it?" Feder continues. "The degree to which Jerry sold himself out, and the degree to which he was complicit with Richard in exploiting the people who came on the show, is something that had serious consequences."

"The Jerry Springer Show" ran for 27 seasons before it was canceled in 2018; Springer died of pancreatic cancer in 2023. In the final years of his life, Springer disavowed his own show and publicly apologized for the role he played, declaring, "What have I done? I've ruined the culture."

"I look at some of the stuff that's being done now, and I go, 'We're kind of responsible for this crap,'" Dominick says in the doc, which pairs the quote with clips from "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," and "The Apprentice." He adds: "Maybe I am gonna go to hell."

However, Yoshimura suggests the show's success reflects just as negatively on viewers — including any viewers of the Netflix doc today — as it does on hosts, creators, and producers.

"Look at the history of the show. A guy punches a girl in the face, it gets huge ratings. We put a girl without clothes on the show, everybody loses their mind," he explains. "All you guys wanna talk about is all that shit."

"But, you know, we're the problem," he adds. "If none of that happened, there's no documentary on Netflix. Full stop."

• A Russian attack submarine that was stationed in Syria has officially left the Mediterranean Sea.
• The departure of the Kilo-class Novorossiysk leaves Russia without any known submarines in the region.
• The uncertain fate of Russia's naval presence in Syria amid other setbacks could spell trouble for its submarine force.

Strategic Russian naval bases have been upended by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, creating headaches for the Kremlin's navy, including its submarine force.

Moscow no longer appears to have any attack submarines in the Mediterranean Sea after NATO forces spotted its last known submarine leaving the region last week.

Portugal's military said that it observed a Russian Kilo-class submarine moving through the country's continental exclusive economic zone near northern Spain on Friday. NATO Maritime Command later identified the vessel as the Novorossiysk.

The Novorossiysk was spotted several weeks earlier at Tartus, a naval base in Syria that Russia had used for years. The future of Moscow's military footprint at the facility — and in the country in general — was, however, thrown into uncertainty after the shocking collapse of the Assad regime last month.

There are indications that Russia is drawing down forces at its bases in Syria. Losing Tartus for good would be a significant blow to Moscow's navy — including its capable submarine force — which relies on the warm-water port to project power across the region and beyond.

Early December satellite imagery showed the Novorossiysk docked in Tartus, but by the middle of the month, it was gone, along with the rest of the Russian warships that had been there. Some of the Russian naval vessels have been spotted in recent weeks loitering off the Syrian coast, but the whereabouts of this submarine were less certain.

Should Syria's new leadership decide Russia can no longer station its forces at Tartus, it would mark another setback for Moscow's navy, which has suffered a string of stunning losses in the nearby Black Sea since the start of the full-scale Ukraine war nearly three years ago.

Ukrainian forces have used missiles and naval drones to damage or destroy dozens of Russian naval vessels, including one of six improved Kilo-class submarines Moscow's Black Sea Fleet operates, during the conflict.

These attacks have forced Moscow to withdraw the Black Sea Fleet from its long-held headquarters in Sevastopol, a major city in the southwestern corner of the occupied Crimean peninsula, across the region to the port of Novorossiysk along western Russia's coast. If Russia is unable to move back into Sevastopol, that creates complications.

For Russia, losing the ability to keep submarines at Sevastopol and Tartus is less than ideal.

Bryan Clark, a former US Navy officer and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said that the remainder of the Kilo-class vessels are based in St. Petersburg, where there is a large naval facility and dry docks for maintenance.

"The Russians are now having to redeploy their submarine force back up to the north" instead of relying on warm-water ports that "you could get in and out of them year-round," Clark told Business Insider. "St. Petersburg, you can't get in and out of year-round."

Recent developments also seriously undermine Russia's military influence in the Mediterranean and southern Europe, Clark said.

The Novorossiysk is a newer improved Kilo sub. Submarines of this class are diesel-electric vessels and formidable long-range strike platforms that can attack ships and land targets, deploy for weeks on end, and stay relatively undetected. They are effectively Russia's most capable non-nuclear subs and can carry Kalibr missiles.

Russia has kept a Kilo-class vessel in the region for years. The boat's departure from the region, though Russia could ultimately opt to move another sub into the area later, may signal a broader decline in Russian naval might in the Mediterranean.

In four years, Russia appears to have gone "from being a pretty big player in the Med — in terms of naval forces — to now being a nonexistent player," Clark said.

Russia's basing challenges could ultimately hinder its ability to project power. The uncertainty with Tartus and nearby Hmeimim Air Base — underscores a broader issue for the Russian military.

Satellite imagery captured on Monday by Maxar Technologies, a commercial imaging company, shows no obvious signs of any major Russian naval vessels at Tartus, as has been the case for weeks. Ukraine's military intelligence agency has said Russia is withdrawing from the base.

Whether Moscow is able to negotiate an arrangement with the new Syrian leadership to stay in the country or is forced to relocate to a new hub in North Africa to sustain its operations remains to be seen.

• Jensen Huang has unveiled a platform called Cosmos to simulate scenarios to train real-world robots.
• Huang likened it to Marvel superhero Doctor Strange simulating millions of versions of the future.
• The Nvidia boss said at CES that physical AI is the "next frontier" of artificial intelligence.

In "Avengers: Infinity War," Marvel superhero Doctor Strange looks into the future to see over 14 million different outcomes of the galactic battle against supervillain Thanos. Jensen Huang thinks it's the kind of power needed to reach "the next frontier of AI."

In a keynote address at CES in Las Vegas on Monday, the Nvidia CEO introduced Cosmos, a platform that aims to make "physical AI" a reality by simulating endless real-world scenarios for robots and autonomous vehicles to study and gain a deeper understanding of their environment.

According to Huang, the path to this next frontier — in which autonomous hardware becomes a common sight in daily life — has been limited until now because of data availability. As he put it, "Physical world data is costly to capture, curate, and label."

That's where Nvidia Cosmos comes in, for Huang at least. "You could have it generate multiple physically-based, physically plausible scenarios of the future," he told the Las Vegas audience. "Basically, do a Doctor Strange."

Nvidia's next frontier is coming

Here's how it works. Cosmos ingests text, image, or video prompts to generate videos with virtual renderings of real-world environments, lighting, and more.

Developers of robots and autonomous vehicles can then use these virtual creations to provide their technology with synthetic data for reinforcement learning — a research technique used to teach AI models — as well as test and validate the models behind the physical AI.

According to an Nvidia blog post, Cosmos can also be used along with Omniverse, the company's platform for creating 3D graphics and metaverses, to "generate every possible future outcome an AI model could take to help it select the best and most accurate path."

Cosmos itself starts with a strong, foundational understanding of real-world environments. It has been trained on 20 million hours of video focusing on everything from humans walking and "dynamic nature" to camera movements, Nvidia said.

If robots and autonomous vehicles are to become a widespread reality, as other industry leaders like Elon Musk think, they'll need a highly sophisticated understanding of these kinds of scenarios.

"It's really about teaching the AI, not about generating creative content, but teaching the AI to understand the physical world," Huang said.

There's a good reason Huang is talking up physical AI. While Nvidia has grown by roughly $3.3 trillion since the start of the generative AI boom, thanks to high demand for its chips needed to train AI models, the business isn't completely free of threats.

Some of Nvidia's Big Tech customers, such as Amazon and Google, are developing chips of their own to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. The company made 87.7% of its $35.1 billion revenue last quarter from its chip and data center business.

As Business Insider's Emma Cosgrove also notes, the semiconductor industry has historically been brutal. Companies typically experience boom and bust cycles as interest in niche chips can come in waves. There is an incentive then for Huang to diversify Nvidia's sources of income.

Time will tell if Cosmos can offer the path forward to Nvidia's next frontier. Development of robots that can navigate complex world environments has taken shape slowly, despite companies like Google, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI deploying increasing amounts of capital on developing these technologies.

Huang himself noted during his CES keynote that he expects autonomous vehicles to represent the "first multi-trillion dollar robotics industry."

With autonomous cars already on the road in certain locations from companies like Waymo and Cruise, this could be the case. During CES, Huang shared that Nvidia had struck a new partnership with Toyota to help power its autonomous vehicle ambitions.

Getting to a world where robots roam freely among humans will take considerably more effort, however. Huang will hope that Cosmos starts to provide the superpowers needed to pull off such a feat.

• The Department of Government Efficiency is hiring "a very small number" of full-time paid employees.
• DOGE said it is recruiting for engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles.
• Job application and compensation details remain sparse.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency is recruiting for "a very small number" of full-time, salaried positions, according to its X account.

As of early January, the commission is looking for people to fill software engineering, information security engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles.

DOGE is an advisory committee that aims to significantly cut the federal budget — Musk said he wants to slash $2 trillion in spending — and pare back regulations. It exists outside of the federal government and does not have the power to change laws or agencies, though its leaders have already exerted influence over legislative actions, like a recent spending bill.

Applicants for the HR, IT, and finance roles were instructed in an X post — which functions as a job listing — to DM the commission's account their resume and some bullet points about their interest. Those applying for software engineering and information security engineering jobs were told in a separate post to send bullet points "demonstrating exceptional ability" and a phone number over direct message.

In November, Musk said in an X post that employees at DOGE would not be compensated; it remains unclear how many salaried positions are available. That same month, DOGE's X account said in a post that "thousands of Americans" have expressed interest in working at the commission and that applicants must be willing to work more than 80 hours per week. Musk and Ramaswamy would, the post said, look at the top 1% of applicants.

In a recent blog post, a former tech executive, Vinay Hiremath, said that he applied to work at DOGE and had eight calls before getting in and being added to Signal groups.

"I was immediately acquainted with the software, HR, and legal teams and went from 0 to 100 taking meetings and getting shit done," he wrote in the post, noting that he worked at DOGE for four weeks.

Though DOGE is actively recruiting, details about specific employees remain sparse. In early December, President-elect Donald Trump announced that William Joseph McGinley will serve as the commission's counsel. He also announced on Truth Social that Katie Miller, who was deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term and is married to incoming deputy chief of policy Stephen Miller, will be joining the commission.

Representatives for Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, and DOGE's X account did not immediately respond to a direct message.

• Big-name managers mostly performed well in 2024, but some under-the-radar players soared.
• Managers like Glen Kacher's Light Street and David Rogers' Castle Hook returned 60% last year.
• Jason Mudrick's firm returned more than 31%, a person close to the manager said.

The biggest hedge funds in the world — names like Citadel, D.E. Shaw, and Millennium — had good years in 2024, as Business Insider has reported.

While most of these funds failed to match the S&P 500's 23% gain, their investors love their consistency and risk management.

But allocators also have a need for managers that can take big bets and rip past peers and the market in a good year, as seen in the growth and interest in Chris Rokos' eponymous fund.

BI identified a few hedge funds that have been around, but are not as recognizable as their industry subsector peers — though that might change after their impressive performance.

Big-name macro funds, for example, had strong years thanks to geopolitical events like the US election that many were able to capitalize on. Rokos, PointState, and Rob Citrone's Discovery Capital Management all recorded large gains — but none of these bigger names matched the 60% gain by David Rogers' Castle Hook.

Rogers, a former investor in George Soros' family office, launched Castle Hook with fellow Soros alum Joshua Donfeld in 2016 with capital from billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. The manager now runs $4.4 billion, a person close to the firm said.

Tiger Cub Light Street Capital, run out of California by Glen Kacher, is smaller and less well-known than other firms linked to Tiger Management's late Julian Robertson like Tiger Global, Coatue, and Viking Global. But Light Street's 59.4% gain last year and Kacher's AI focus is sure to draw attention.

Kacher posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, that his "AI5 basket" outperformed the Magnificent 7 last year. There is some overlap between the two groups of stocks, specifically Nvidia and Microsoft, but the other holdings in his basket are semiconductor and AI infrastructure companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom.

Meanwhile, when stocks are soaring, there's often a lack of interest in credit managers, especially those playing in distressed space. But Jason Mudrick's $4 billion firm managed to pull out a market-beating year, a person close to the firm told BI.

The person said Mudrick Capital made 31.7% for the year and ended 2024 by investing up to $50 million in flailing British flying taxi startup Vertical Aerospace to bail the company out.

By comparison, the average credit fund, according to Hedge Fund Research, returned less than 10% through November 2024.

• Netflix's "Emilia Pérez" won four Golden Globes on Sunday, including the award for best musical or comedy.
• The film is expected to win big during awards season, including at the Oscars.
• But the film is facing growing criticism.

"Emilia Pérez" is a frontrunner for this year's Oscars, but as award season begins, a growing number of fans and critics are turning against it.

The Netflix film, starring Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Karla Sofía Gascón, is a cross-genre crime musical about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes her death so she can transition.

Variety reported that Netflix bought the film for approximately $12 million after it premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. While it wasn't a hit on the platform, it could boost Netflix's reputation if it wins big at the Oscars in March.

"Emilia Pérez" bagged four Golden Globes on Sunday, including the award for best musical or comedy motion picture over fan-favorite films including "Wicked," "The Substance," and "Challengers."

Some film fans criticized the decision, arguing that it is better than its competitors.

Here are the controversies surrounding the film, explained.

Fans mocked what they view as a bizarre musical number in the film

"Emilia Pérez" received rave reviews before it premiered on Netflix last November, but the general public seemingly hasn't been won over.

In one scene that went viral, a doctor sings about the gender reassignment surgeries he has performed.

Users on X who saw the clip out of context mocked the musical number, while others who had seen the film called it boring.

Film fans reignited criticism by resharing the scene after "Emilia Pérez" won at the Golden Globes on Sunday.

Gomez's performance and her Spanish language skills have also been criticized.

Eugenio Derbez, a Mexican actor who starred in 2021's "Coda," called her performance "indefensible" last December on the Mexican entertainment podcast "Hablando de Cine."

After Gomez said sorry and that she did the best she could with the time she was given, Derbez apologized the next day for his "thoughtless" comments.

Others have complained about how the film portrays trans identity

At first glance, it would seem progressive for a film about a trans person to win multiple Oscars, as an openly trans actor is yet to win an Academy Award. But critics say the film doesn't uplift the community, partly because it includes transphobic tropes, such as describing a transwoman as "half male/half female."

In November 2024, the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD called the film "a step backward for trans representation" and shared several negative reviews from critics who are trans.

On January 6, Gascón told Vanity Fair: "Many are running a negative, nasty campaign against the film, so anything that I say, they will use it to make their case bigger.

"When something has a big impact and is liked by many, others hate it just for existing."

When asked about critics who are trans panning the movie, Gascón said: "Being LGBTQ, having those labels, does not remove your stupidity, just like heterosexuality does not remove your stupidity.

"What bothers me is that the people that say things like that just sitting down at home doing nothing. If you don't like it, go and make your own movie. Go create the representation you want to see for your community."

Gascón added that the trans experience is not a monolith.

Juan Barquin, a critic of the movie who is trans and was mentioned in the Vanity Fair article, responded in an X post on Monday, telling Gascón to "go fuck herself" and give her money to make her own trans movie.

Another trans critic mentioned in the piece, Drew Burnett Gregory, said: "I've watched many trans actors and writers attach themselves to cis artists in the hopes of helping their careers.

"It's not a position I envy. When the dust settles and the awards are doled out, it's the cis people who have benefited while the trans people can barely get work."

On Monday, Jeremy O. Harris, a Tony-nominated playwright and actor, shared a Instagram story post criticizing the outlet THEM and other LGBTQ+ detractors of "Emilia Pérez," arguing its success could open doors for representation.

Some criticized how Mexico is portrayed

"Emilia Pérez" is mostly set in Mexico, but the film's director, Jacques Audiard, is French, and the movie was made in France. In addition, one Mexican-born actor has a lead role: Adriana Paz. Gomez is American and has Mexican heritage; Saldaña's parents are Dominican and Puerto Rican; and Gascón is Spanish.

Users on X, including Mexican actors and cinematographers, argued the film doesn't accurately portray Mexico, its culture, and people.

Rodrigo Prieto, a Mexican, Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on "Barbie," "Killers of the Flower Moon," and "The Wolf of Wall Street," told Deadline last November that he was "unhappy" the film was not shot in Mexico and didn't include more Mexican people in the production.

"The whole thing is completely inauthentic," Prieto said. "Yes, they had dialogue coaches but I was offended that such a story was portrayed in a way that felt so inauthentic.

"It was just the details for me. You would never have a jail sign that read 'Cárcel' it would be 'Penitenciaria'. It's just the details, and that shows me that nobody that knew was involved. And it didn't even matter. That was very troubling to me."

In December 2024, casting director Carla Hool told a SAG-AFTRA foundation Q&A that her team searched across Mexico and Latin America for the lead roles.

"We wanted to keep it really authentic, but at the end of the day, the best actors who embodied the characters are the ones right here," Hool said, adding that they changed the backgrounds of Gomez and Saldaña's characters' because they aren't native Mexicans.

This further angered critics.

Representatives for Gascón, Netflix, and THEM, did not immediately respond to a comment request from Business Insider.

• Trump wouldn't rule out using military force to take Greenland and retake the Panama Canal.
• The president-elect made the remarks during a major press conference just days before his 2nd term.
• Denmark has emphatically stated that Greenland isn't for sale.

President-elect Donald Trump isn't ruling out using military force in an effort to gain control of Greenland and retake control of the Panama Canal.

During a Tuesday press conference, Trump was asked if he'd assure the world that he wouldn't use military or economic coercion to secure the sovereign territory and the vital waterway, respectively.

The president-elect in his response reinforced the critical economic importance that he sees in Greenland and the Panama Canal.

"I can't assure you," he said. "I'm not going to commit to that. It might be that you'll have to do something."

"We need Greenland for national security purposes," he continued. "People don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up."

Late last year, Trump spoke about possibly taking back control of the Panama Canal from Panama as well as his wish to secure Greenland from Denmark. He also floated buying Greenland in 2019.

Trump during Tuesday's press conference also threatened to "tariff Denmark at a very high level" if the country didn't give up control of Greenland.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark earlier on Tuesday said that "Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders," adding that the strategic Arctic island is "not for sale."

Business Insider has reached out to representatives of Trump for comment.