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Monday, September 24, 2018
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Watch out, algorithms: Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson unveil The Markup, their plan for investigating tech’s societal impacts“Journalists in every field need to have more skills to investigate those types of decision-making that are embedded in technology.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Aiming to attract buyers who aren’t cryptocurrency nerds, Civil is offering a way to buy its tokens with regular old cashAnd it’ll need a new wave of buyers in order to reach its goals. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
The Daily Beast / Robert Silverman
Inside Barstool Sports’ culture of online hate: “They treat sexual harassment and cyberbullying as a game” →
“Barstool Sports isn't like any other sports-media company. The online harassment by Portnoy and in turn by Barstool's most devoted fans—largely young, white men or ‘Stoolies,’ as they're known — is a feature of the site, not a bug.”
TechCrunch / Romain Dillet
SiriusXM to acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion →
“The announcement says that SiriusXM plans to leverage both services to cross-promote the other service. For instance, you could see references to SiriusXM shows while listening to Pandora. And SiriusXM hosts could suggest downloading the Pandora mobile app.”
Twitter / BBC Africa
How BBC Africa used Google Street View, Facebook profiles, and sundials to dispel the Cameroon military’s “fake news” →
“In August, there was a sudden change in the govt's position. After weeks of denying that these killings took place in Cameroon, the Minister of Communication announced that 7 members of the military had been arrested and were under investigation.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Bloomberg Media is trying to turn its Twitter network TicToc into a full-fledged media brand →
“Publishers are trying to make social video that gets people to watch for longer periods of time, but they've had limited success so far. Three-fourths of videos published in 2017 were less than 2 minutes long, according to Vidyard. TicToc videos tend to run under 70 seconds. TicToc is also honing its format mix to match what people are looking for, but like other publishers, it's a work in progress.”
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin and Amol Sharma
Vox Media is expected to miss its revenue goal for this year by more than 15 percent →
“One concern for Vox Media, much like other digital media firms, is that revenue from sponsored content isn't growing as fast as it once did, the people familiar with the matter said.”
Business Insider / Isobel Asher Hamilton
Instagram’s new TV service recommended videos of potential child abuse →
“Business Insider spent nearly three weeks monitoring IGTV, the Facebook-owned video service that launched in June as part of Instagram’s attempts to muscle in on rivals like YouTube and Snapchat. IGTV’s algorithm recommended questionable content during that time, including sexually suggestive footage of young girls and an explicit video of a mutilated penis.”
Marketplace / Jennifer Pak
Where are podcasts rolling in money? China’s “pay-for-knowledge” economy →
“Podcasts with subscription fees, interactive Q&A's online with experts or celebrities and live-streaming lecture-sessions where the audience can participate and pay as they wish are what people in China refer to as the ‘pay-for-knowledge’ economy. It was estimated to be worth $7.3 billion last year, with the bulk of the revenues from paid podcasts, according to a research institute run by China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. The figure is focused only on consumers paying directly for content online and does not include ad-driven podcasts.”
Agence France-Presse / Allison Jackson
13 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan in 2018 — the highest number in a single year since the start of the war →
“The risk now of going to a bomb site, of getting hit by a second bomb… outweighs the journalistic value in doing that.”
Bloomberg BNA / Jon Reid
The New York Times is suing the FCC for records that might reveal Russian government interference →
“The FCC has ‘thrown up a series of roadblocks’ to prevent the Times from obtaining records, which were first requested by Confessore and Dance in June 2017, the plaintiffs said. About half a million comments on the FCC's proposal were submitted from Russian email accounts, including some sent by automation, the Times alleged, citing data from a Washington Post op-ed by Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel.”