Internet Media

Tech-Lords Inform Us Now

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Podcast in The Nation by Paris Marx, 2/13/25

Headline: “The Tech Oligarchy’s Campaign Against the Media”

Subhead: “On this episode of Podcast ‘Tech Won’t Save Us’, Eoin Higgins on tech billionaires’ effect on the media ecosystem.”

“On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, we’re joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss how tech billionaires changed the media ecosystem and made it profitable for influential voices to shift to the political right.

“Eoin Higgins is a journalist and the author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.”

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/archive/the-tech-oligarchys-campaign-against-the-media/

When You Let A.I. Edit Your News . . .

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Article in Slashdot by BeauHD, 2/12/25

Headline:  “AI Summaries Turn Real News Into Nonsense, BBC Finds”

“A BBC study published yesterday  found that AI news summarization tools frequently generate inaccurate or misleading summaries, with 51% of responses containing significant issues.

“The Register reports: The research focused on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity assistants, assessing their ability to provide ‘accurate responses to questions about the news; and if their answers faithfully represented BBC news stories used as sources.’ The assistants were granted access to the BBC website for the duration of the research and asked 100 questions about the news, being prompted to draw from BBC News articles as sources where possible. . .  Overall:

– 51 percent of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form.
– 19 percent of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors — incorrect factual statements, numbers, and dates.
– 13 percent of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered from the original source or not present in the article cited.”

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/12/2139233/ai-summaries-turn-real-news-into-nonsense-bbc-finds

Virtual Musk Media

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Article in Common Dreams by Tom Valovic, 2/10/25

Headline:  “What Is the Mainstream Media Missing About Elon Musk? He Is Instituting Technocracy”

Subhead:  “What Musk is doing is tantamount to hacking the inner core of the federal government and the public trust—a blatant coup and power grab for technocratic ends.”

“It’s hard to see articles about the “move fast and break things” approach of the Trump administration without also hearing about the hovering presence the world’s richest man, technocrat extraordinaire Elon Musk. The mainstream media likes to describe Musk primarily as an oligarch. His involvement—which now includes having a desk in the White House—is a rather alarming event and something hardly anyone expected. Unfortunately, most media reports are lacking an important perspective about this unexpected bestowal of political power to him and other technocratic oligarchs. Is this a deliberate omission or do many media outlets simply have blinders on because, in their perception, Big Tech is now fundamental to Wall Street’s economy and national security?”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/elon-musk-technocrat

Fake Russian Media

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Article in Reporters Without Borders by Staff, 2/5/25

Headline:  “International Reporters: the new website where foreign propagandists spread Russian disinformation”

“For over a year, the Kremlin-funded website International Reporters has been masquerading as a professional news outlet in order to spread Russian disinformation. Using a misleading name that implies its content contains real journalism, the website assembles propagandists from all corners of the globe to promote the Kremlin’s false narratives that justify the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and celebrate Russia’s foreign policy. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns this new propaganda tool, which pollutes the information space and intentionally misleads the public.”

https://rsf.org/en/international-reporters-new-website-where-foreign-propagandists-spread-russian-disinformation

Media Pay-Off List?

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Article in The Verge by Nilay Patel, 2/4/25

Headline: “Meta just wanted to pay off Mr. Trump.”

“Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute — and previous Decoder guest — runs down the list of major media companies capitulating to frivolous Trump lawsuits and investigations, with particular scorn for Meta, which agreed to donate $25m to Trump’s presidential library instead of fighting a case it would have won handily. . . ”

https://www.theverge.com/policy/606015/meta-just-wanted-to-pay-off-mr-trump

New Assignment Editor?

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Article in The Guardian by Edward Helmore, 2/2/25

Headline:  “‘He’s become America’s assignment editor’: US media owners bend to Trump”

Subhead:  “Billionaires and corporations leading TV networks and newspapers seem to have caved to the president’s pressure”

“In a tumultuous first two weeks back in power in the White House, Donald Trump has targeted many familiar enemies, including one of his most passionate obsessions: the US media, whom he has frequently dubbed “enemies of the people”.

“Trump’s new federal communications chair, Brendan Carr, is reported to have ordered an investigation into the sponsorship practices of taxpayer-supported NPR and PBS member stations – a media network long hated by conservatives who accuse it of a liberal slant.
‘Safe to be a white male again’: how conservative media covered Trump’s first week
Read more

“At the same time, and just as concerning for some media watchers, core segments of the US media landscape – via the wealthy billionaires and gigantic corporations that own them – have seemingly caved under Trump’s pressure or apparently sought to curry favor with the new administration.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/02/trump-media-pressure?ref=upstract.com

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Edited content not safe?

Article in The Hill by Sterr Danielle Thomas, 2/1/25

Headline:  “CBS agrees to release Harris transcript to FCC amid Trump lawsuit “

“CBS News has agreed to release a full transcript of former Vice President Harris’s October interview with “60 Minutes” to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the outlet revealed Friday.”

The decision came after the FCC sent a letter to CBS asking for a “full, unedited transcript” of the interview, conducted ahead of Harris’s loss to President Trump in the 2024 election. The commission also requested the camera feeds from the episode.

“. . . A conservative law firm filed a complaint with the FCC last year following the interview, alleging that the outlet engaged in “significant and international news distortion.” The suit, originally dismissed under the Biden administration, was reopened by agency head Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead the commission.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5120625-cbs-kamala-harris-60-minutes-transcript-fcc/

Losing the Battle for Media

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Article in Raw Story by Thom Hartmann, 1/30/24

Headline:  “Fatal flaw: Democrats keep losing the media war — here’s why “

“Saturday afternoon, Donald Trump held a rally in Las Vegas. It was streamed and mentioned on social media millions of times within an hour of his repeating his “No tax on tips” mantra. By the time Facebook, Meta, X, TikTok, and Instagram were done with the weekend, using their now-heavily-tilted-to-Republicans algorithms, it’s safe to bet Trump’s rally got hundreds of millions of impressions.

“Senator Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, read the most boring speech ever on the floor of the Senate condemning Trump, evoking the Democratic version of the old “tree falls in the forest” question. I listened to it online (couldn’t find it on social media), but, frankly, it was so deadly tedious that I can’t remember a word he said.

“Being media savvy — and exploiting the hottest new media — isn’t a new thing. You’d think Democrats would have figured this out by now; they sure did in past generations.”

https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/fatal-flaw-democrats-keep-losing-the-media-war-here-s-why/

Tik Tok Media Clock Not Ticking Now

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Article in Mother Jones by Anna Merlan, 1/20/25

Headline:  “As TikTok Negotiates with Trump, Every Major Social Media Company Has Caved to the New President”

Subhead:  “Online life has “been taken over by the right wing,” warns Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”


“. . . Over the weekend, Tik Tok very briefly died in the United States before being reborn some 12 hours later, bearing a jaunty new banner. ‘As a result of President Trump’s efforts,’ it read, in part, ‘ Tik Tok is back in the U.S.’ The biggest tech and social media companies have consolidated behind Trump. . .”

“Trump was not yet president on Sunday, when TikTok began restoring U.S. access despite a Supreme Court ruling Friday upholding a law meant to ban it. But the deeper message was unmistakable: the Chinese-owned company ByteDance and its CEO Shou Zi Chew would do anything to placate Trump and keep its most profitable app online for American users. . .”

“. . . A day after the app’s American resurrection, Chew came to Washington for Trump’s inauguration, along with two other social media giants, Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Also present was Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple’s Tim Cook. . .”

“All of this, of course, points to one simple fact: the total consolidation of the biggest tech and social media companies behind the new president. ‘What this effectively means is that every social media platform, mass social media platform in the United States, has been taken over by the right wing,’ Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said in a Sunday video posted—ironically, but unavoidably—to Meta-owned Instagram.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/social-media-donald-trump/

EU Media Hate-Speech Ban

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Article in Reuters by Foo Yun Chee, 1/20/25

Headline:  “Facebook, X, YouTube to do more against online hate speech, EU says”

“Meta’s (META.O), Elon Musk’s X, Google’s (GOOGL.O), YouTube and other tech companies have agreed to do more to tackle online hate speech under an updated code of conduct that will now be integrated into EU tech rules, the European Commission said on Monday.

“Other signatories to the voluntary code set up in May 2016 are Dailymotion, Instagram, Jeuxvideo.com, LinkedIn, Microsoft (MSFT.O), hosted consumer services, Snapchat, Rakuten Viber, TikTok and Twitch.

” ‘In Europe there is no place for illegal hate, either offline or online. I welcome the stakeholders’ commitment to a strengthened Code of conduct under the Digital Services Act (DSA),’ EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said in a statement.”

https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-x-youtube-do-more-against-online-hate-speech-eu-says-2025-01-20/

Social Media In/Out of Dumpster?

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Article in Vox by Adam Clark Extes, 1/17/25Headline:  “The bright side of TikTok’s downfall”

Subhead:  “The end of one wildly popular platform is a chance to overhaul the broken social media industry.”

“The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that would spell the end of TikTok as we know it in the United States, and now all parties involved are freaking out. Influencers are fleeing to rival platforms, including Xiaohongshu, a China-based app also known as RedNote. Politicians, even the ones who initially supported the ban, are trying to delay it. TikTok employees are surely wondering what they’ll do at work next week.

“Others, however, are wondering if a future without TikTok could actually be a great thing for America. The complete demise of TikTok would mean one of the largest social media-slash-entertainment platforms is effectively out of the picture. . .”

https://www.vox.com/technology/395541/tiktok-ban-trump-supreme-court-instagram-rednote