Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Following a year in which YouTube has repeatedly promoted conspiracy-theory videos during breaking news events like the shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas, the company announced on Monday a slew of new features it hopes will make news on the platform more reliable and less susceptible to manipulation. The company is also investing $25…
Change is coming to HBO, now that it is part of the AT&T corporate family. That much was clear to the 150 employees who attended a recent town hall meeting at the network’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. The main speaker was John Stankey, a longtime AT&T executive who now oversees HBO in his new role…
Left: Migrant children at a Kansas City detention center in 2014. Photo by AP/Eric Gay, File. Right: Donald Trump. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty When the Trump administration announced this month it would criminally prosecute everyone who crossed the border illegally, which meant jailing immigrant parents and separating them from their children, it effectively manufactured a whole new…
(Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) It’s officially the beginning of Pride month; however, the celebrations at YouTube appear to be lukewarm at best. The video streaming platform, which has long been a haven for independent LGBTQ+ creatives, has recently been accused by users and channels of running advertisements by anti-LGBTQ+ brands alongside creator content. Screenshots and…
‘Sometimes our systems get it wrong’, says spokesperson for video streaming giant YouTube has been accused of preventing videos that contain LGBT+ related words from making money, by popular users of the video-sharing platform. At the same time they have also claimed that the video streaming were running adverts for gay conversion therapy and companies that were…
Earlier this month, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to prosecute “100 percent” of migrants illegally crossing the Mexican border, it became official US policy to routinely separate children from their parents. Already, hundreds of children have been ripped from their families: 658 kids in the first 13 days of the program alone, Customs…
I happened to listen to “This Is America,” the new single by Childish Gambino, a.k.a. Donald Glover, before I saw the eloquent, ultra-violent accompanying video concocted by Glover and the director Hiro Murai. One of the song’s three strands is set to a benign Afrobeat rhythm, with Glover and a backing choir echoing old, edifying…
Earlier today, Jezebel published a look at the people behind Lil Tay, a 9-year-old girl and controversial Instagram personality, whose fame is the result of participating in some extremely adult beefs. Shortly after the story was published, Alex Goller Gelbard, who works with Tay in some kind of management capacity, answered a few questions we…
Photo: Screenshots via YouTube Social media stardom is a brutal Darwinistic competition, a craven and utterly shameless battle for space on our screens and in our brains carried out by a phalanx of influencers, thinkfluencers, beauty vloggers, charlatans, health quacks, spiritual phonies, and unhinged vegans. Recently, Lil Tay entered into this fray. Tay is—as far…
close story-meta Photo Patrick and SpongeBob in “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Credit Nickelodeon When a yellow sponge in rectangular pants came to children’s TV in 1999, who could have guessed that it would lead to “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” which was nominated this week for 12 Tony Awards? With the musical on a slate that includes…