“In designing this new organization, Facebook’s leaders … formed a separate legal trust with an initial $130 million investment from Facebook. But they also empowered that trust to both accept funding from sources outside Facebook and to form companies of its own. That structure would ensure Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t just shut down the board if he didn’t like its decisions. But it also opens up the possibility that the trust might some day spin off additional oversight boards for, say, YouTube, Twitter or any other platform that makes content moderation decisions.” – Protocol
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‘The New Facebook Review Board Will Have No Influence Over Anything That Really Matters In The World’: Siva Vaidhyanathan
“It will hear only individual appeals about specific content that the company has removed from the service — and only a fraction of those appeals. The board can’t say anything about the toxic content that Facebook allows and promotes on the site. It will have no authority over advertising or the massive surveillance that makes Facebook ads so valuable. … It won’t dictate policy for Facebook Groups, where much of the most dangerous content thrives. And most importantly, the board will have no say over how the algorithms work and thus what gets amplified or muffled by the real power of Facebook.” – Wired
The Satellite Company That Helps Transmit Everything To Everyone Has Just Gone Bankrupt
“Set up in the 1960s via international treaty, Intelsat SA has played a critical and often-overlooked role providing connectivity infrastructure for more than a half century so that humanity could witness everything from Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969 to Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes’ recent victory in [this year’s] Super Bowl. But thanks to technological evolution, shifting FCC priorities and the latest COVID-19 pandemic, the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday.” – The Hollywood Reporter
A New Kind Of Corona-Concert: Ten Minutes, One Musician, One Listener, One Empty Airport
Flutist Stephanie Winker has been organizing these very intimate events at the airport and in other locations around Stuttgart — inspired, she says, by The Artist Is Present, the project in which Marina Abramović sat in a chair and, one at a time, stared into people’s eyes. – The New York Times
Time For Spotify Et Al To Pay Musicians More
Spotify, which controls 36 per cent of the world streaming market, reported third-quarter operating proceeds of $60 million (all figures U.S.) in October 2019. YouTube, meanwhile, revealed its ad-revenue intake publicly for the first time in February: last year it was $15.15 billion, a 36 per cent increase from 2018’s $11.16-billion tally. And here’s what you’ve been offering the creators in return for all that content that has enabled you to attract and retain tens of millions of loyal subscribers — paltry per-stream or pre-view royalty rates of, by platform: YouTube, $0.00069; Pandora, $0.00133; Vevo, $0.00222-$0.0025; Amazon, $0.00402; Spotify, $0.00437; Deezer, $0.0064; Google Play, $0.00676; Apple Music, $0.00783; Napster, $0.019 and Tidal, $0.01284 (all figures according to the online music distributor Ditto). – Toronto Star
Education Moved Online With Startling Speed – But It Will Be Bumpy From Here…
In non-pandemic times, even the most modest change at a college or university can take months, if not years. Think of the committees, reports, reviews, and approvals needed to introduce even a timid curriculum revision. That millions of faculty moved hundreds of thousands of courses online in a matter of weeks reveals the surprising resilience of academia in crisis. But with colleges and universities still shuttered and no clear indication of when they might reopen, don’t expect smooth sailing from now on. – Spectrum IEEE
Could The Pandemic Be The Catalyst To Change How Museums Work?
A sense of precariousness is not unfamiliar to museum workers who were already living through austerity, Brexit, and the deregulation of the workforce. But long before this current health crisis, the skepticism about whether commercially-driven blockbuster exhibitions could ever plug the widening gaps in public funding for museums was already part of a much bigger existential question: Is the dominant model for 21st-century museums sustainable? – Artnet
UK Leaders Discuss The Future Of Theatre After Virus
“Some tough decisions are going to have to be made. And it’s not going to be small changes, it’s going to be big changes for a time. And that feels incredibly painful if I’m honest.” – BBC
How The Chicago Symphony Is Thinking About Returning To The Stage
“If things are not yet 100 percent (in Chicago in September), it’s possible we could have a group of the orchestra divided into two parts: a group of 45, 50 people (and) another group of 45, 50 people. One part plays in the first part of the program, the other in the second part, so everybody can play, can come back to make music.” – Chicago Tribune
Why Does American Culture Treat Kids As A Different Species Of Human?
We isolate them together, seal them off, protect them from the larger world. It’s not like this in other cultures. So why is that? – Aeon