Media Bits and Bytes – January 21, 2025
- Free Our Feeds
- Media in Galloping Retreat
- How to Protect Your Meta Data
- TikTok and RedNote
- AI Fans the LA Flames
- Trump’s Crypto Grift
- Immigration News Source Getting Ready
- Boss Bezos Reins In the Post
- Shake-up at MSNBC
- Palestinian Filmmakers Tell Their Truth
By Aisha Malik
TechCrunch
A group of international tech entrepreneurs and advocates has launched a campaign to protect social media from the control and influence of billionaires. The initiative, Free Our Feeds, aims to protect Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, and leverage it to create an open social media ecosystem that can’t be controlled by a single person or company, including Bluesky itself.
By Chris Lehman
The Nation
After journalists have documented a long series of unprecedented abuses of executive power under the presidency of a Roy Cohn protégé setting policy on a broad Mob-like calculus of punishment and tribal exclusion, media managers are sizing up the prospect of a resurgent MAGA siege of power with the wan shrug of practiced brand managers.
By Lena Cohen
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Meta tracks your activity across millions of websites and apps, regardless of whether you use its platforms, and it profits from that data through targeted ads. If you want to limit Meta’s ability to collect and profit from your personal data, here’s what you need to know.
• Now You See It By David Shepardson, Reuters
• What’s Up With RedNote By Jianqing Chen, The Conversation
By Schuyler Mitchell
Truth-out
It’s worth revisiting one of the major water-guzzling industries that’s hastening future crises from California’s own backyard: artificial intelligence (AI).
Crypto politics collide with digital finance as Trump’s meme coin launch triggers a volatile market reaction, polarizing industry watchers and prompting regulatory caution. In the hours after launching, $TRUMP coin reached a market cap of $13.6 billion, with its fully diluted valuation soaring to roughly $67.6 billion. Then, less than 48 hours after launch, the coin began a steep decline.
Immigration News Source Getting Ready
By Lauren Watson
Columbia Journalism Review
“So what happens if the community is asking for content, or has a concern, that is not very comfortable for us? Immigrant communities are just as susceptible to the same mainstream issues of media wanting to reaffirm their worldview. How do you challenge that and serve them at the same time? Those are the things we’re grappling with.”
By Parker Molloy
The New Republic
The Post is ironically citing Eugene Meyer’s 1935 principles for the paper, including, “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.” It’s a noble sentiment. It’s also completely at odds with everything else in this corporate rebranding exercise.
By Alex Weprin
The Hollywood Reporter
Staff at the channel had been dealing with the agita that comes along with a change in ownership, wondering what the spin off to SpinCo will mean. Would MSNBC lose its brand or identity? What would happen to the news hours? Where would it be based?
Palestinian Filmmakers Tell Their Truth
By Matt Minton
The Progressive
From Ground Zero is a collection of twenty-two short films from Palestinian directors, all shot in Gaza during Israel’s attacks since October 7, 2023. Shortly after the war started, Rashid Masharawi came up with the anthology idea and opened up submissions to filmmakers and artists across the region to submit their work. Out of the fifty submissions, he chose twenty-two.