"Several independent media outlets in Turkey face a potential risk of closure after algorithm changes made by Google led to a significant reduction in reader traffic. They said Google's algorithm changes since the end of January had wiped out the vast majority of reader traffic to their websites"
https://www.reuters.com/technology/turkeys-independent-news-websites-face-closure-risk-after-google-changes-2025-03-13/

Cancelling Prime subscription is a bonus!
"I invite all guest opinion writers to withhold their pitches and boycott the Washington Post op-ed page. It is no longer an arena where debate among the best ideas helps the truth emerge. It is the propaganda instrument of a billionaire. 75,000 have canceled their digital subscriptions. It is time for opinion writers to do the same. Advertisers will follow suit."

https://www.promarket.org/2025/03/05/teaching-bezos-a-lesson-in-free-markets/

"South Africa's Competition Commission said that Google's algorithm distorts competition between news media organisations insofar as it overrepresents global news media in South Africa for search and top stories and underrepresents local language and community media.
'This inequity has materially contributed to the erosion of the media in South Africa over the past 14 years and will continue to do so unless remedied.'"
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-meta-face-penalties-anti-competitive-behaviour-towards-south-african-news-2025-02-24/

"Meta is revamping a program that has paid bonuses to creators for content based on views and engagement, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts it once policed. The new program is currently invite-only, but Meta plans to make it widely available this year."
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-meta-abandons-fact-checking-boosts-viral-content

Bond moving from MI-6 to SPECTRE. #Primefinger
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mn9gz5x3mo

Finally, this will solve everything

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/technology/microsoft-quantum-computing-topological-qubit.html

"As well as democratic governments, it has interacted with dictatorships, sanctioned regimes and governments accused of human rights abuses, including the police in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/google-helped-facilitate-russia-china-censorship-requests

🧵"So this is how liberty dies..." Trump’s first 3 weeks have been a relentless flood of actions. It's incredibly hard to keep up. I’ve gone through 69 actions & mapped out the pattern - showing how they fall within 5 broad domains consistent with authoritarian states 1/9

https://cosocial.ca/@david/113945857443668796

Good for a laugh, for sure... Now, how about doing something that will actually matter #Canada?

@pluralistic shows a way: repeal the Copyright Modernization Act and kick the broligarchy right where it hurts here https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham and here
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1100-a-weird-way-to-win-the-trade-war-with-trump/

#canpoli #tariffs

The US response: protect Big Tech from regulation, antitrust so they can acquire startups instead of innovating, and any real competition, in exchange for changing Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, cutting content moderation, and moving workers from CA to Texas?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czepw096wy4o

Investors waking up to the fact that the US big tech AI talk was all smoke, mist, and vapor.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/28/deepseek-selloff

Oh yes, cannot wait for TikTok to join the Office365 family
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/28/donald-trump-microsoft-tiktok-purchase-claims

US big tech stopped innovating. "The focus should not be on how DeepSeek achieved parity with its US rivals, but rather, that OpenAI and other Silicon Valley GenAI services have not yet invented a commercial use-case that justifies the capital raised from investors"
https://www.verdict.co.uk/did-chinas-deepseek-just-burst-the-enterprise-ai-bubble/

Hitching "economic growth" to the promises of a concentrated tech sector, whose only recent innovations ("AI") have been more discourse than material reality is a gamble, to say the least

https://www.reuters.com/technology/britain-appeals-big-tech-with-change-regulatory-guard-2025-01-23/

Four years was not enough time to undo the 15+ years of inaction by tech-captured regulators. But Khan's FTC leaves a strong record that shows what a motivated regulatory agency can do to upend structural concentration of power. Though this legacy will be eradicated over the next days, weeks, months, and years, it serves an index of what is possible
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-ftc-chair-khan-resign-commission-coming-weeks-2025-01-20/

Charging $20-30 / month for a product that literally tells you it gives you false information (without specifying when and what) may not be the best business model
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/21/microsoft-google-price-hikes-ai-chatbots

Too cold to watch at home
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/22/tv-viewing-figures-fall-for-trumps-inauguration

"I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvged988377o

"it is weakness, and not strength, that explains their recent behaviour. ... They have realised that they cannot win the battles with foreign governments and legal systems by themselves. They are not powerful enough to solve their own problems. They need help."
https://www.ft.com/content/917c9535-1cdb-4f6a-9a15-1a0c83663bfd