Top News:
CNNMoney:
Brands like Nike, Expedia, Acer suspend ads on Infowars' YouTube channels when contacted by CNN; some wonder why YouTube filters failed to block ads on Infowars — Facebook, YouTube fail to blunt conspiracy theories — Some of the biggest brands in the U.S. had ads running on the YouTube channels …
Discussion:
BetaNews, TechCrunch, Mashable, Engadget, The A.V. Club and The Verge
RELATED:
Tom McKay / Gizmodo:
YouTube says it did not tell Alex Jones his Infowars channel would be deleted from the site on Sunday; as of Sunday evening, it was still available — Conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones, that guy who thinks the government is flooding waterways with chemicals that turn frogs gay …
Discussion:
Media Matters for America and Motherboard
Gardiner Harris / New York Times:
State Department has spent $0 of the $120M allocated by Congress since late-2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy — WASHINGTON — As Russia's virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching …
Discussion:
The Week and Slate, more at Techmeme »
Daniel Funke / Poynter:
Snopes fact-check of a satirical story led Facebook to flag it as false, flag removed after complaint; Snopes says it received several inquiries about the story — A recent debunk from Snopes exposed a grey area for Facebook's fact-checking tool. — It started as a joke.
Discussion:
@krazy_cat_katy and @prageru
Issie Lapowsky / Wired:
Facebook says it doesn't know how many followed Russia's IRA accounts on Instagram; researcher finds that 27 of 170 deleted accounts had ~2.2M followers total — FOR MORE THAN a year, Jonathan Albright has served as something of a one-man General Accounting Office for the tech industry.
Discussion:
@rasmus_kleis, @justinhendrix, @wired and @benioff, more at Techmeme »
Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
A look at NewsGuard, led by Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, which has raised $6M and plans to use journalists to rate reliability of ~7,500 online news sources — Media entrepreneur Steven Brill thinks there's something missing from all the efforts to separate fake news from the real kind: Some smart and discerning humans.
Discussion:
CNNMoney
Christine Schmidt / Nieman Lab:
Profile of Outlier Media, a free text message-based news service for low-income residents in Detroit offering to check the public record of houses or landlords — “I was not satisfied with covering low-income communities for a higher-income audience. I wanted to cover issues for and with low-income news consumers."
Carlotta Gall / New York Times:
Turkish government attempts to clamp down on country's digital media with proposed law which will make broadcasting via internet illegal without a license — ISTANBUL — Having already brought Turkey's mainstream media to heel, and made considerable headway in rolling back Turkish democracy …
Discussion:
pulse.ng
Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed:
Profile of PragerU, a nonprofit site whose five minute explainer videos, presented by well-known conservative pundits, have amassed 1B+ YouTube, Facebook views — A right-wing online “university” is on track for a billion views in 2018, its professors are some of the best-known conservatives in media …
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
Interview with Anna Veduta, one of two people running the English-language version of Latvia-based Meduza, an independent Russian news site — The English edition of the three-year-old Russian news site now gets an average of 100,000 monthly unique visitors and can count among its readers everyone …
Wayne Ma / Wall Street Journal:
Marriott US staffer says he was fired after HR questioned him on Tibet related tweet he liked via Marriott's account; China pressured Marriott over Tibet issue — The severity of the penalty—termination, not reprimand—highlights the unforgiving consequences for companies that offend China
Discussion:
@africasacountry, VentureBeat, @ethanwsj, @marcorubio, @rwhelanwsj, Gizmodo, @martinsfp and @marcorubio, more at Techmeme »
Andy Bechtel / The Editor's Desk:
Interview with Lisa Tozzi, global news director at BuzzFeed News, about curating breaking news, headline writing, and advice for journalism students — Lisa Tozzi is global news director at BuzzFeed News, a position she has held since 2013. She previously worked at The New York Times …
Discussion:
@tjdoyle and @sulliview