Media
Media
Media company Vice Media Group, co-founded by Gavin McInnes and valued six years ago at $5.7 billion, is filing for bankruptcy on Monday, George Soros-backed Fortress Consortium has agreed to acquire the assets for $225 million unless another buyer place higher bids
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wins gold and silver medals in Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition in Redwood City, California, says he took up the interest during the pandemic, one of his trainers called the Shadow says it was pretty epic to watch Zuck compete and that no match was easy and everything was earned
David Miranda, Brazilian congressman and the husband of American journalist Glenn Greenwald, dies at age 37 after nine months in intensive care for gastrointestinal infection, leaves behind couple's two sons
Tucker Carlson leaves Fox News, LA Times reports that Rupert Murdoch fired him but the media house has not provided further comments, CNN's Don Lemon and the CEO of NBCU Jeff Shell have also had to leave during the day
Dominion Voting System is suing Fox News for USD 1.6 billion for defamation after the media company reported that the vote counting machines may have influenced the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, among other things Fox mentions in the defense that Dominion's product and security
The New York Times is suing the European Commission after the institution failed to release text messages between its president Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, which the newspaper claims may contain information about the decision to buy doses of the vaccine against Covid-19,
Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts are being reactivated, Meta has been working on new rules of conduct for his accounts that cannot be broken unless they are to be shut down again, Twitter reactivated his account in November but the former president has not posted to date
Russia Today's German branch shuts down following the latest round of EU sanctions, the move follows RT France's closure last month after their assets were frozen, RT DE describes the sanctions as repressive restrictions on press and media freedoms and says they will continue to operate from
Meta says it is removing content supporting or praising the Brasília storming, comments that Brazil has been designated as a temporary high-risk location and the storming a violating event meaning that the situation is actively followed
Meta's Oversight Board overturns decision to remove a Facebook post containing the phrase "death to Khamenei", says the slogan is often used to mean "down with Khamenei" and thus does not constitute a violent threat, says such statements differ from threats posted around January 6 as
Seattle's public school district sues the companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat for causing a mental health crisis among youth, writes that the defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth by hooking them into positive feedback loops with
AP fact checks and rebuts claim that 1,598 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest since Covid-19 vaccinations began compared to a previous average of 29 per year, says the comparison from sources with different methodologies is scientifically unsound, exemplifies with some cancer cases and
Western media falsely reports that Iran is shutting down its morality police, statements by Attorney General Mohammad Javad Montazeri are being misinterpreted as he only acknowledged cuts it in recent months, but the parliament and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution will announce
The creator of the US loan company SoFi's retracted advertisement says that the criticized character would not be an archetype of a Jewish banker but a professor, in the ad, a young couple is harassed by a middle-aged man who, among other things, looks for money in the woman's bag and kisses dollar bills, the company announces that the ad is now being removed out of caution given the current rise in anti-Semitism
Elon Musk says he has resolved the misunderstanding with Tim Cook that Apple could consider removing the Twitter app from the App Store since the two met in Cupertino, Twitter's new owner criticized the mobile company in a series of tweets, claiming that their control of the app store violates free speech
The CEO of Kering, the fashion house Balenciaga's parent company, François-Henri Pinault owns the auction site Christie's, which auctions disturbed so-called art of young children in sexual situations, including a work called F*ck Face with a toddler with an erect penis instead of a nose and anus instead of mouth
Kanye West once again suspended from Twitter after having posted image of swastika inside Star of David, platform's owner Elon Musk says that controversial rap star thereby committed incitement to violence
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton tells Elon Musk that Twitter must significantly increase efforts to protect users from hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content to avoid violating the new Digital Services Act regulations that come into force next year
Twitter users vote to restore all suspended accounts in poll on the platform by Elon Musk, the amnesty that applies to all users who have not broken the law or spammed is to begin this week
Elon Musk tweets that publicizing Twitter's internal discussions surrounding the censorship of Hunter Biden's computer news just before the 2020 US election is necessary to restore public trust in the social media platform, at the time users were banned from sharing the article and The New York Post's account was locked for more than two weeks
Fashion house Balenciaga replaces its criticized campaign that shows small children holding teddy bears wearing bondage accessories and poorly hidden excerpt from Supreme Court ruling on child pornography with campaign that uses books with pedophile and occult undertones as props
Elon Musk reinstates Donald Trump's Twitter account after poll shows users voting 51.8% yes and 48.2% no on the matter, Trump has said he will stay on his social media platform Truth Social instead of returning to Twitter as it is doing phenomenally well
Banned right wing groups return to Twitter immediately after Musk's takeover, Britain First who was banned in 2017 after posting inflammatory anti-Muslim videos among the returnees which worries the Center for Countering Digital Hate who fears the group might spread divisive hate and racism, Musk writes that anyone suspended for minor and dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail which is interpreted as indicating that Jordan Peterson's suspension for using transgender actress Elliot Page's former name is to be examined
The documentary Republika Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom by Boris Malagurski which, among other things, depicts the war in the former Yugoslavia is accused of being revisionist and calls to be silenced, the Institute for the Research of Genocide in Canada has received 30,000 signatures and says it promotes the denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, the idea of a Greater Serbia and the independence of the Republic of Srpska and its unification with Serbia
Kanye West buys social media platform Parler which was created during Trump era to cater to conservatives, rap star was recently banned from Instagram and Twitter for making controversial statements about Jewish influence
Meta included in Russia's list of terrorist organizations, was banned in March for Russophobia, Facebook and Instagram are still used in Russia with the help of VPN services
Trump files USD 475 million lawsuit against CNN for defamation, claims the company has been running a campaign of libel and slander that has been escalating due to fear of a possible candidacy in the presidental election 2024, he concludes that he is proud to file the lawsuit in order to begin the process of standing up to Fake News and the Mainstream Media
Google, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram all suppress any advertising for Alex's War, the documentary about Alex Jones is ranked 2nd on the iTunes movie preorder rankings behind Top Gun: Maverick, director Alex Lee Moyer says the movie is an impartial, fly-on-the-wall look at why so many revere Jones as a hero when he has said things that would make anybody uncomfortable
Twitter sues Elon Musk to try to force him to buy the company according to his contractual obligations, Musk walked away from his proposed USD 44 billion takeover due to not being given information about the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform
Dutch right wing broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland fined EUR 92,000 for spreading wrongful information and not differentiating between facts and opinion, allowed for instance Flemish politician Felix de Winter to unopposed talk about replacement theory, ON chair Arnold Karskens calls the fine unjustified and says they are getting fined for letting elected representatives speak about mass migration and the consequenses of rampant climate measures
Elon Musk threatens to walk away from his USD 44 billion bid to buy Twitter as the company repeatedly has refused to provide information regarding the amount of spam bot accounts, says the company's offer of only providing details about the testing methods breaches the merger agreement obligations
BBC alters female rape victim's quote from he/him to they/them to prevent misgendering the transgender attacker, the pronouns reportedly changed on advice from the 14-member central diversity team in accordance with the editorial policy
Infowars files for bankruptcy, presumably to avoid paying damages for commentary on Sandy Hook massacre
Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter and becomes largest shareholder, has critized the platform for lacking free speech and hinted at planning shake-up of social media industry
Germany blocks several of Covid-19 denier Attila Hildmann's Telegram channels from German users and investigates a Bavarian man for hate speech and Holocaust denial on the platform, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser met with Telegram earlier this week and has previously threatened to shut down the platform in the country as researchers have found that that popular power users such as Hildmann and Austrian Identitarian Movement leader Martin Sellner contribute to a spiral of radicalization
Russia closes the Moscow bureau of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and revokes its employees' accreditations in the country, will also terminate the broadcasting output on its territory and plans to label the company a foreign agent, Russia has earlier criticized a German ban on the state broadcaster Russia Today's German-language programming
Former CNN anchor Leon Harris arrested accused of trying to leave a DUI crash scene in Maryland, faces a total of nine charges including driving while under influence of alcohol, driving while impaired by alcohol, attempting to elude police and failure to control vehicle speed to avoid a collision, Harris previously pleaded guilty to DUI in 2013
Facebook loses a million daily active users during Q4 2021 which is the first ever decline, adds 2 million monthly actives which is the slowest ever quarter-on-quarter growth rate, has close to 3 billion daily active users across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp
CNN President Jeff Zucker resigns immediately over undisclosed relationship with his key lieutenant Allison Gollust, Gollust remains with the company and says she looks forward to continuing the great work, senior executives Michael Bass, Amy Entelis and Ken Jautz to fill the position as interim heads until the merger with Discovery is complete
BBC director-general Tim Davie warns about job cuts after GBP 285 million missing in the budget due to freezing the licence fee for two years, says they need to rethink their operational structure, the staff reportedly upset and depressed according to insiders
Nigeria lifts ban on Twitter after seven months For its 200 million people, the ban followed a censoring of a President Buhari post where he threatened to handle separatist rebels "in the language they will understand", Twitter reportedly to open an office in Nigeria, appoint a country head and meet its tax obligations according to the deal
Germany’s minister of justice Marco Buschmann calls for concerted EU action against Telegram over spread of extremist content, saying it's in Telegram’s own best interest to have uninterrupted access to the European market, while Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov made it the messenger’s policy not to cooperate with authorities in any country
Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann and NBC settles lawsuit over media giant's wrongful portrayal of the Kentucky student in controversy during interaction with Omaha tribe elder in 2019, Sandmann asked for USD 275 million in damages when filing suit
Jack Dorsey steps down as Twitter CEO effective immediately and will leave the board at the 2022 stockholders' meeting, says he left of his own accord and that he believes it to be severely limiting and a single point of failure for a company to be founder-led, former CTO Parag Agrawal appointed CEO
British newspaper The Independent criticized for claiming that Kyle Rittenhouse shot three black men despite all three attackers being white, Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times and Dutch news site NU.nl also described the rioters as black
Facebook blocks searches related to Kyle Rittenhouse who is currently on trial for shooting three people in self-defense during a 2020 riot in Wisconsin, the company comments that it deems the incident a mass murder and has removed Rittenhouse's Facebook and Instagram accounts
Facebook shuts down its face recognition system that automatically recognizes opt-in users in pictures and videos as well as automatically creates image descriptions for visually-impaired people, promises to delete more than a billion people's individual facial recognition templates, says that facial recognition is a powerful tool but that limiting its use is appropriate due to societal concerns and regulators still being in the process of providing a clear set of rules
Facebook changes its company name to Meta to reflect the vision for working and playing in a virtual world, Mark Zuckerberg comments that it's in the company DNA to build technology to connect people and that he hopes the metaverse will reach a billion people within the next decade
Doctors around the world report rise in cases of tics in young girls due to watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome, Texas Children's Hospital reported 60 cases of teen girls being admitted with tics since March 2020 compared to 1 or 2 the previous year, concerned parents are advised to encourage their kids to take a break from social media or block Tourette videos
Internal Twitter research shows bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets, largest discrepancy found in Canada, the company says it is unclear as to why the results were produced but that it may now need to change the algorithm
Google quietly updates its image search to promote greater skin-tone diversity for terms related to beauty and family, comments that they are in the early phases of the effort and that they will continue to experiment to provide greater diversity in results
Sky News Australia barred from publishing new material for one week by YouTube over Covid reporting
British news channel GB News vows to be anti-woke and that they will have no no-go areas which has triggered outrage on the left despite claiming to be heaving with diversity, recruits high profile presenters from BBC, ITV and Sky as well as a former Labour MP
Facebook freezes Nicolás Maduro's account for 30 days for repeatedly stating that carvacrol works as a miracle medication against COVID-19, Facebook's spokesman comments that they follow WHO's guidelines saying there currently is no medication to cure the virus
Donald Trump will return to social media in 2-3 months with his own platform which is going to completely redefine the game, has been having high-powered meetings with various teams and numerous companies have approached the former president, according to his advisers Jason Miller
CNN hemorrhages viewers since Donald Trump left office, dropping 49% since Inauguration Day from 3.1 million primetime viewers to 1.6 million and 58% among key demographic of adults age 25-to-54 most important to advertisers
Indian authorities threaten to jail local Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter staff if companies don't abide to government requests to remove information on protests over agricultural bills which have drawn thousands of farmers to rally in the Indian capital
Disney slaps The Muppet Show with offensive content disclaimer, warning viewers the show features stereotypes and mistreatment of people or cultures and that "these stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now", wanting it to "spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together"
Facebook blocks pages from domestic and international news organisations as well as state governments in Australia in escalation of dispute with the government over law to require it to share news revenue with news outlets, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Facebook is as arrogant as they were disappointing
Rush Limbaugh loses battle against lung cancer at age 70, was foremost star of talk radio and for three decades one of the most influential individuals in US politics
China bans BBC World News claiming it seriously violated broadcasting regulations, saying BBC’s relentless fabrication of lies of the century in reporting China runs counter to the professional ethics of journalism, comes a week after Chinese state channel was kicked off Britain's TV screens
Parler partially reappears with the help of Russian technology firm DDos-Guard, displaying a message from its chief executive John Matze saying they are working to restore functionality
Gab CEO Andrew Torba recreates President Trump’s Twitter on Gab from a backup before the account is deleted, traffic for Gab was up 753% while adding 600 000 new accounts in a single day
AP: Podcasting loophole through which extremists can escape censorship, Big Tech has taken responsibility for silencing oppositional voices in other formats but still allow unacceptable opinions on their podcast platforms
Facebook blocks President Donald Trump's account for at least two weeks while Twitter locks the Presidents account for 24 hours, with Zuckerberg saying the risks of allowing the President to continue to use their service during this period are simply too great
Twitter deletes Breitbart video of press conference held by America’s Frontline Doctors sharing their views on Covid-19 and the medical community’s treatment of the virus for violating social media's Covid-19 misinformation policy, also removes posts by President Trump and suspends Donald Trump Jr. for sharing video footage
NBC News and MSNBC to capitalize the "B" when referring to black people or their community
John Malkovich blames social media idiocy for the death of comedy with its toxic outrage culture, says what is considered funny one day could well end an entertainer’s career the next, the ire of a generation a few clicks away from being sparked
Social media to be regulated through executive order by Donald Trump, could change interpretation of 1996 law which shields platforms from legal liability for content published by users
Dutch grandmother ordered to delete photos of grandchildren which she uploaded to social media against the wishes of parents, court finds GDPR applies despite exception for personal processing of data since pictures where made available to wider audience
New York Times develops own ad system and phases out third-party data collected on other sites, part of industry trend where publishers move toward more privacy-friendly solutions
Joe Rogan quits YouTube and joins Spotify, has one of world's largest podcasts with 190 million downloads per month, reportedly gets more than 100 million USD for five year exclusive deal
23-year-old Iraqi-born Tishko Ahmed Shabaz charged with murdering Swedish 17-year-old girl Wilma Andersson and keeping her head in his closet, claims innocence
YouTube bans all videos linking covid-19 to 5G networks, decision follows live-streamed interview with David Icke where he says that 5G is linked to today's health crisis and that human life as we know it is over if 5G networks are allowed to spread according to plan, YouTube spokeswoman says all content that disputes WHO and local health authorities is now in violation of its policies
Google removes Infowars' app from the Play store after Alex Jones posted a video where he questions the world governments' Covid-19 approach including quarantines and lockdowns, Jones blasts the ban and says the app is still available on the Infowars website