Top News:
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
Twitter says it's seeking proposals from experts to assess its “health” and whether it's fostering positive debate or enabling “abuse, spam, and manipulation” — Twitter, like other major tech companies, has faced a year of punishing criticism, as it's been roiled by misinformation …
Discussion:
Twitter, @jack, Cortico, The Wrap, TechCrunch, Variety, Business Insider, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, CNNMoney, USA Today, Gizmodo, @ibarguen, Mashable, @jack, The Outline, BloombergQuint, @rogerpielkejr, @jack, Recode, @gracie, @jimprosser, @jack, @darth, Jezebel, CNBC, @jack and Engadget, more at Techmeme »
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Interview with Tow Center's Jonathan Albright on how disinformation spreads across platforms: “the ways we get news ... are literally disintegrating around us” — “The kinds of things that I often see could literally be stopped by one person. I mean: 4chan trending on Google during the Las Vegas shooting?
Discussion:
BuzzFeed, @elilake, @mat, @miriamelder, @ggreenwald, @jimwaterson, @kevincollier, @niemanlab and Wolfgang Blau, more at Techmeme »
Benjamin Mullin / Wall Street Journal:
ABC News, The Athletic, and Atlantic are contending for ownership of FiveThirtyEight, which averaged 4M-6M unique visitors/month in past year, ~21M in Nov. 2016 — Statistics guru's website is poised to move on from a five-year tie-up with ESPN — The list of suitors for Nate Silver's …
Discussion:
The Big Lead and Awful Announcing
Natalia Drozdiak / Wall Street Journal:
EU announces guidelines mandating that tech firms remove terror content within one hour of it being flagged by law enforcement or Europol — EU announces guidelines to tech giants for removing terror and other illegal content from their websites — BRUSSELS—The European Union on Thursday upped …
Discussion:
EU Press Room, Mashable, Financial Times, The Verge, Gizmodo, Engadget, The Daily Beast and Bloomberg, more at Techmeme »
Maggie Haberman / New York Times:
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks says she's resigning in coming weeks; sources say she has been considering leaving for several months — Hope Hicks, the White House communications director and one of President Trump's longest-serving advisers, said Wednesday that she was resigning.
Discussion:
Forbes, New Yorker, Mediaite, Ad Age, Washington Post, CNN, The Wrap, ABC News, The Daily Caller, CBS San Francisco, @aprildryan, The Gateway Pundit, Vanity Fair, Hollywood Life, New York Magazine, @newyorker, East Bay Times, The Blast, 50 States of Blue, CNNMoney, @jonathanalter, @kimmasters, Splinter, The Daily Beast, The Mary Sue, @arimelber, Footwear News, Slate, Refinery29, Editor & Publisher, @jdawsey1, Washington Post, @juddlegum, Variety, @maggienyt, KTLA, Fortune, FOX2now.com, @sethabramson, Mother Jones, @kellyannepolls, The Root, @funder, @farhip, TVNewser, Jezebel, Paste, @dictionarycom, @20committee, @brianstelter, thecut, @annehelen, @ryanbeckwith, @bluechoochoo, Axios, @brianstelter, @sarahkendzior, @shanegoldmacher and @pkcapitol
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Sony Music owns 5.7% of Spotify's shares, which is more than other music labels and potentially worth $1.1B based on a $20B valuation — Now it has to figure out how to divide that money with Beyonce and its other artists. — Spotify's coming IPO is validation for CEO Daniel Ek, who has built a giant music streaming business.
Discussion:
Variety, Rolling Stone and @pkafka
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Recode:
Spotify's gross margin has grown from 16% to 21% from 2014 to 2017, but since it pays per stream, it still must figure out how to turn usage growth into profit
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Fast Company and Fortune, more at Techmeme »
Katie Roof / TechCrunch:
Spotify had 159M MAUs in December 2017, up 29% YoY, of which 71M were premium subs; CEO Daniel Ek owns 23.8% of the firm, co-founder Martin Lorentzon has 12.4%
Dan Primack / Axios:
Spotify files with SEC for $1B direct listing, will use SPOT as stock symbol; reports 71M paid subs, up 46% YoY, $4.09B revenue in 2017, up from $2.95B in 2016
Discussion:
Bloomberg, Yourstory, The Verge, Android Police, Tech Startups, Business Insider, Ubergizmo, BloombergQuint, Paste, RAIN News, MacRumors, Engadget, BGR, Consequence of Sound, 9to5Mac, FMQB, Slate, @alexbarinka, @willknight and The Wrap
Paris Martineau / The Outline:
After removing some conspiracy and pro-gun videos and channels, YouTube says it will reinstate videos that were removed in error by moderators — Looks like that whole “content moderation” thing wasn't a joke after all. — The Future — Looks like that whole “content moderation” thing wasn't a joke after all.
Discussion:
Tubefilter, BetaNews, Gizmodo, Bloomberg, Splinter, Engadget, The Next Web, The Gateway Pundit, The Hill, The Verge and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »
RELATED:
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Facebook says it's ending test in six countries that moved Pages' posts from News Feed to secondary Explore Feed, is also ending Explore Feed bookmark globally — Facebook has ended a test that put publishers in one feed and friends in another. — Facebook has decided it's a bad idea …
Discussion:
Facebook and The Verge, more at Techmeme »
Gary Dinges / Austin American-Statesman:
Texas Monthly editor-in-chief Tim Taliaferro to become chief innovation officer in May, with Rich Oppel stepping in as interim editor-in-chief — There's been a management shakeup at Texas Monthly. — The Austin-based magazine said Thursday that current editor-in-chief Tim Taliaferro …
Discussion:
@carlosasanchez, @oliviamesser and @alexandrianeas
Columbia Journalism Review:
Canadian government pledges CAD$50M to support local journalism over five years, but media leaders worry amount is too little and may not flow to right outlets — Newspapers stacked and folded in Toronto. Image: Kat Northern Lights Man/flickr. — The Canadian government has pledged …
Discussion:
Nieman Lab, Toronto Star, @debananenschil and @sprawlcalgary
BBC:
UK culture secretary rejects second stage of Leveson inquiry, says government will not implement rule forcing media to pay legal costs in all libel cases — Culture Secretary Matt Hancock has said the government will not implement the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry.
Discussion:
The Guardian, The Guardian, @markdistef, Sky News, Financial Times and The Guardian
Chris Stokel-Walker / Bloomberg:
Study: top 3% of most-viewed YouTube channels receive ~85% of all views, attract 1.4M+ views/month, but could bring only ~$17K/year each in advertising revenue — You can have a million views a month and still not be able to make rent — Do your children dream of YouTube stardom?
Discussion:
@tictoc, @alexisohanian, The New York Observer, Gizmodo and Fast Company
Matt Brian / Engadget:
UK's Sky announces deal with Netflix granting access to all of Netflix's content to Sky customers with Sky Q boxes following the example of BT and Virgin Media — While Sky continues to wade through multi-billion dollar bids from Fox and Comcast, the UK pay-TV provider has quietly …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Variety, The Guardian and Sky News
Akhil Arora / NDTV Gadgets 360:
Amazon Music launches in India as a free service for Prime members, available on Android, iOS, and the web — Amazon Music has been given a full-scale launch in India, the subscription-based music streaming service that's part of Amazon Prime membership. You can now access it via music.amazon.in …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, MediaNama, MediaNama, Firstpost, Ubergizmo, RAIN News, Android Central, The Next Web, MediaNama and Music Business Worldwide
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