Pawel Popiel
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ppopiel.bsky.social
Pawel Popiel
@ppopiel.bsky.social
1.8K followers 650 following 460 posts
Media policy + platforms + political economy | Assistant Prof @ Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University | US Team Research Lead - GMICP.org | Affiliate @ MIC Center, UPenn and CITAP, UNC | Philly expat | pawelpopiel.com
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ppopiel.bsky.social
Some Thanksgiving reflection.
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o...
Annual after-tax wage growth compared with inflation. Only high income exceeds inflation rate. But the reason for her detention was a guess. “Never once did we receive any written notice for why she was officially detained,” Mr. Pomerleau said. Border Patrol “wouldn’t answer phone calls. They wouldn’t respond to emails, written letters. It got to the point where I sent three associate attorneys to the airport after nearly four days of her detention, demanding to see her.” But, he said, “they wouldn’t even acknowledge that she was there.” (In a statement to Times Opinion, D.H.S. said that Ms. Rosa “was detained by C.B.P. at Boston Logan International Airport after her records revealed a conviction for possession of a controlled substance in 2003,” adding, “While in custody, Rosa had access to water, bathroom facilities, medicine and food.”)
November 21, 2025 at 3:29 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
" Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/fce77ba4-6231-4920-9e99-693a6c38e7d5 Even allowing for some fudging between annualised run rates and period-end totals, the apparent gap between revenues and running costs is a lot more than has been reported previously. And, like Ed, we’re struggling to explain how the numbers can be so far apart. If the data is accurate — which we can't guarantee, to reiterate, but we’re writing this post after giving both companies every opportunity to tell us that it isn’t — then it would call into question the business model of OpenAI and nearly every other general-purpose LLM vendor. At some point, going by the figures, either running costs have to collapse or customer charges have to rise dramatically. There’s no hint of either trend taking hold yet."
November 12, 2025 at 10:40 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
variety.com/2025/film/fe...
"Paramount’s leadership has not shied away from making its views on the war in Gaza public. In September, it became the first major studio to denounce a celebrity-driven open letter signed by A-listers like Emma Stone and Javier Bardem that called for a boycott of Israeli film institutions implicated in “genocide and apartheid” against Palestinians. (Warner Bros. followed, but cited legal reasons for its decision.) And sources say Paramount maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be “overtly antisemitic” as well as “xenophobic” and “homophobic.” Whether the boycott signatories are on that list is unclear. [Update, Nov. 7: Other sources intimately familiar with Paramount said that while an itemized list does not exist, the management team shares a set of values and has no desire to work with anyone who expresses hate in public and damaging ways]."
November 8, 2025 at 7:30 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
"The three human rights groups’ account terminations cumulatively amount to the erasure of more than 700 videos, according to an Intercept tally. The deleted videos range in scope from investigations, such as an analysis of the Israeli killing of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, to testimonies of Palestinians tortured by Israeli forces and documentaries like “The Beach,” about children playing on a beach who were killed by an Israeli strike. Some videos are still available through copies saved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine or on alternate platforms, such as Facebook and Vimeo. The wiping only affected the group’s official channels; videos which were produced by the nonprofits but hosted on alternate YouTube channels remain active. No cumulative index of videos deleted by YouTube is available, however, and many appear to not be available elsewhere online."
November 5, 2025 at 4:25 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Disgraced or re-graced?
In April of 2024, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he and Binance had failed to adequately implement anti-money laundering protections. The company was also hit with a massive $4.3 billion fine as part of its settlement with the Department of Justice under the Biden administration. The department said that Binance had become a hub of criminal money laundering, facilitating “billions of dollars of unregulated cryptocurrency transactions,” including “nearly” $900 million in transactions between the US and Iran.
October 23, 2025 at 6:54 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
October 21, 2025 at 3:13 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Simple Syllabus is being used as a targeting tool
October 9, 2025 at 3:12 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Revenge of the snowflakes...
www.theguardian.com/media/2025/o...
Weiss, 41, has no experience working in broadcast television, though she has carved out a reputation as a heterodox opinion writer and burgeoning media operator. Known for her attacks on liberal institutions and “cancel culture”, Weiss founded the Free Press with her partner Nellie Bowles in 2021 after she left the New York Times as a columnist, claiming that she was heavily scrutinized for her conservative views and criticism of the left at the paper. On Monday, Weiss wrote in the Free Press: “As of today, I am editor-in-chief of CBS News, working with new colleagues on the programs that have impacted American culture for generations – shows like 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning – and shaping how millions of Americans read, listen, watch, and, most importantly, understand the news in the 21st century.”
October 6, 2025 at 4:51 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
We argue that we must rethink the current approach to digital inclusion, be more ambitious, and move beyond predation toward liberation.
October 6, 2025 at 1:15 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
🚨 New article out, great colab w/ @davidberman.bsky.social, assessing the primary U.S. response to the digital divide: the corporate subsidy. Using mixed methods, we show how networked "digital equity" reinforces network monopoly. @miccenter.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2BPFG...
ABSTRACT This study examines the political economy, discursive legitimations, and effectiveness of the primary U.S. policy response to narrowing the digital divide: public subsidies for internet service. Using Philadelphia as our case study, we analyze municipal efforts to enroll low-income communities in low-cost commercial broadband plans supported by the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). Like many other U.S. cities in the neoliberal era, Philadelphia sought to organize its digital equity initiative as a decentralized network of public agencies, commercial broadband providers, and nonprofits. Drawing on expert interviews, focus groups with ACP-eligible subscribers, and policy documents, we find that despite the city’s goal of achieving universal service, the networked initiative ultimately advanced the economic interests and market position of Comcast, the city’s monopoly broadband provider – with only minimal gains in connectivity. We argue that the evolving relationship between Comcast and the city of Philadelphia exemplifies what we refer to as the dialectic of the network. While often assumed as opposing forms of economic and social organization, the monopoly – centralized, vertically organized, hierarchical – and the network – decentralized, horizontal, leaderless – actively reinforce and legitimize one another as part of the neoliberal conquest of America’s communication infrastructure.
October 6, 2025 at 1:15 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Chart showing polarization, state of democracy, and both political parties party as the most important problems facing U.S. today, up from 2023 when economy and inflation were top concerns
October 2, 2025 at 3:11 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
"Since last fall’s election win, Trump has raked in more than $80 million in settlements stemming from lawsuits he has brought against Big Tech and media companies."
The settlement makes YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet’s Google, the final Big Tech company to settle a trio of lawsuits Trump brought against social-media platforms in the months after he left the White House. Meta Platforms agreed in January to pay $25 million, most of it to a fund for Trump’s presidential library, and X agreed to pay $10 million, much of it going directly to Trump, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Google executives were eager to keep their settlement smaller than the one paid by rival Meta, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump’s share of the settlement—$22 million—will go to the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall, earmarked for the construction of a Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom Trump is building at the White House, according to the court documents. The White House has said the ballroom, expected to cost $200 million, would be funded by donations from Trump and “other patriot donors.” A further $2.5 million will go to the other plaintiffs on the case, a group that includes the American Conservative Union and writer Naomi Wolf. The settlement doesn’t mention attorney fees. Google declined to comment.
September 29, 2025 at 9:55 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
In addition to helping allies buy a growing share of U.S. media, in his first eight months Trump also has managed to score conciliatory overtures from the nation’s tech billionaires, who fired fact-checkers at major social media platforms, curbed moderation of hateful content and asserted rigid editorial control over the op-ed pages at The Washington Post, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers. If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved and Larry Ellison joins Andreessen Horowitz as part of the impending TikTok deal, a movie studio, CBS, CNN, Fox, 185 Sinclair-owned TV stations and a major social media platform will have owners with strong ties to Trump.
September 22, 2025 at 6:45 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
The deal, first revealed on September 11, 2025, would erase one of the five remaining movie studios and concentrate oversight of two of the country’s most prominent newsrooms – CNN and CBS, both targets of the Trump administration’s ire – under one owner with strong ties to Donald Trump. Based on research from the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, our analysis shows that Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery would gain control of more than a quarter of the US$223 billion U.S. media market, along with influence over film, television, streaming and the cloud infrastructure upon which digital media increasingly depends. The combined entity would acquire nearly half of the cable television market, including HBO and CNN. The merger would nearly double Paramount’s share of the video streaming market, uniting HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery. By combining two major Hollywood film studios, it would also capture nearly one-third of the film production market.
September 22, 2025 at 6:24 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
September 18, 2025 at 11:45 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
September 18, 2025 at 11:03 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Nexstar announced Tuesday that it intends to buy Tegna for $6.2 billion — a deal that has been rumored for weeks. To pull off what would be the biggest change in TV broadcast ownership history, however, the Federal Communications Commission would have to relax rules limiting how much of the country one company can reach with its over-the-air signal. The FCC appears open to changing the rules. Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency “is committed to ending all of the rules and regulations that are no longer necessary.” Similar rollbacks have happened before. The deal faces other complications, too. Almost simultaneously, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sinclair — another of the country’s largest station groups — is also eyeing Tegna. And while Nexstar called its deal with Tegna a “definitive agreement,” any sale must still be approved by Tegna shareholders. In the world of media mergers, “definitive” often comes with wiggle room.
September 18, 2025 at 2:41 AM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Brendan Carr doing the twist he was born to do
September 18, 2025 at 12:25 AM
ppopiel.bsky.social
But let's throw $364 billion at it.
September 17, 2025 at 7:06 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
This is a really useful tracker (that I'm just becoming aware of) - looks like most legal progress on birthright citizenship, public data, elections, and DEI, and least on tariffs, environment, and DOGE
apnews.com/projects/tru...
September 17, 2025 at 12:00 AM
ppopiel.bsky.social
Damning investigation by AP on Big Tech. We can talk about state platform capitalism, but in reality sovereignty less important than capability in domestic surveillance.
apnews.com/article/chin...
September 9, 2025 at 5:40 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
It's possible that AI discourse (generally speaking) has lost its grip on reality.
www.theverge.com/politics/773...
“I argue that the AI industry shares virtually no ideological overlap with national conservatism,” Miller said, referring to the conference’s core ideology. Hours ago, Miller, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico, had been on that stage for a panel called “AI and the American Soul,” calling for the populists to wage a literal holy war against artificial intelligence developers “as betrayers of our species, traitors to our nation, apostates to our faith, and threats to our kids.” Now, he stared right at the technologist who’d just given a speech arguing that tech founders were just as heroic as the Founding Fathers, who are sacred figures to the natcons. The AI industry was, he told Sankar, “by and large, globalist, secular, liberal, feminized transhumanists. They explicitly want mass unemployment, they plan for UBI-based communism, and they view the human species as a biological ‘bootloader,’ as they say, for artificial superintelligence.”
September 7, 2025 at 5:01 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/athletic/660...
The United States Tennis Association asked broadcasters of the U.S. Open to censor any protests or reaction to President Donald Trump’s appearance at the men’s singles final Sunday, according a memo reviewed by The Athletic on Saturday. The memo was first reported by the tennis reporter Ben Rothenberg of Bounces. According to the memo, Trump will be shown on feeds from the tournament during the pre-match ceremony, which includes the presentation of the U.S. national anthem, ahead of the final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. “We ask all broadcasters to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President’s attendance in any capacity,” the USTA said in the memo. The memo said Trump planned to watch the match from a suite as a guest of a sponsor, prompting additional security for the event.
September 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
ppopiel.bsky.social
🖕
September 3, 2025 at 1:42 AM
ppopiel.bsky.social
www.reuters.com/business/met...
August 31, 2025 at 9:12 PM