In the last few months, QAnon proponents have gained momentum on social media, with President Donald Trump recently offering encouragement to the theory advocates. QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory concocted in 2017, which argues that there’s a deep state working against Trump and his administration. Their statements have no grounding in reality, but they […]
Antitrust measures for the 21st century
On Wednesday July 29, the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google were summoned to a hearing with the House antitrust committee. It turned out to be one of the most critical antitrust events since the 90s Microsoft case. One thing is clear—U.S. politics are finally waking up on the antitrust front after three decades […]
Facebook’s new Instagram feature could crush Tik Tok
These last few weeks have been hard for Tik Tok. The Chinese app was banned from India—one of its biggest markets—in late June. In the United States, the administration is debating whether to restrict it for fears that it could be used as a surveillance tool. Meanwhile, Facebook is taking advantage of Tik Tok’s weakness […]
Where did Quibi go wrong?
Three months ago, the streaming service Quibi was launched with some fanfare and we devoted one of our posts to it (read Quibi, the new streaming platform for mobile devices). Its success so far has been quite limited. Its founders have blamed the pandemic for the app’s flop, but its problems may not stop here. […]
The limits of freedom of speech on social media
Amid the pandemic, the police violence, and the riots, President Trump’s executive order (EO) against social media companies may have gone unnoticed. On May 28, Trump introduced a rule to limit social media platforms’ editorial power after Twitter tagged some of its tweets as “potentially misleading.” Although the order will likely be challenged in court, […]
Noa, where curation is content
The birth of online news has made information overload a problem for consumers. With news updates popping up every second, it is hard to keep up with the current events while understanding the context for those events. For that reason, the audio company News over Audio (Noa) was launched three years ago to curate the […]
The rise of the healthcare influencer
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown light to a trend that had gone largely unnoticed until now—a lack of medical experts on social media. Since the virus hit Western countries, citizens have turned to the Internet for solutions. But, with the rise of misinformation, most of them decided to put their trust in the few medical […]
Local outlets struggle during COVID-19
As we settle in our quarantines, we have more time in our hands to read the news—and sometimes obsessively. Thus, it’s not surprising that since the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Western hemisphere, news readership has surged dramatically. But what has also drastically changed is newspaper revenue. With businesses closing, the number of ads has plunged, […]
