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Neil Young is returning to Spotify after boycotting it over Joe Rogan's vaccine comments
Neil Young is back on Spotify after boycotting the platform over two years ago.
English soccer to boycott social media for four days over racist abuse
English football is boycotting social media for four days starting later this month to pile pressure on Facebook and Twitter to combat racist abuse online.
Facebook fails its own audit over civil rights and hate speech decisions
Facebook has released a long-awaited civil rights audit that’s bound to ramp up pressure to change its policies. The report revealed that executive decisions caused “significant setbacks for civil rights” and that the site could become an “echo chamber” of extremism if it doesn’t take stronger measures.
PlayStation is the latest to join the Facebook ad boycott
At this point, Facebook has had very little response to the boycott, with a VP reportedly telling advertisers that the company doesn’t make policy changes due to revenue pressure. Surprisingly enough, even hundreds of big-name brands pulling their ads for July might not even make much of a hit to Facebook’s bottom line — according to CNN, only a few of the top 25 spenders on Facebook have pulled their campaigns. Last week, Facebook announced it would add warnings to posts from politicians that break its rules, and it also cracked down on accounts related to the violent “boogaloo” movement.
Starbucks pauses all social media ads over hate speech concerns
Starbucks has joined the ranks of big companies putting social media ads on hold in response to sites' hate speech policies.
The North Face pulls Facebook ads over hate and misinformation policies
Major advertisers like The North Face are pulling ads from Facebook, if temporarily, to oppose the social network's approaches to hate and misinformation.
Turkey’s president calls for a boycott of US electronics
As tensions mount between the US and Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now calling for the country to boycott US electronics. He even called out the iPhone specifically -- a product he's often seen using. "Every product that we buy in foreign currency from outside, we will produce them here and sell abroad," Erdogan said during a speech given in Ankara, "We will boycott the electronics products of the US." He added, "If they have iPhone, there is Samsung on the other side. And we have our own telephone brands."
Jack Dorsey responds to #WomenBoycottTwitter: New rules incoming
Last night #WomenBoycottTwitter spread among many high profile accounts that stood in solidarity with "victims of hate and harassment Twitter fails to support." The boycott itself wasn't without controversy and spawned responses including a push to highlight and appreciate women of color on the platform under the hashtag #WOCAffirmation. While many weren't sure it would have any impact, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded with a thread promising that after a day spent focusing on "making some critical decisions...We decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them." Changes that he says are coming in the next few weeks include "New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence." Of course, we've heard these kinds of statements from Twitter before, and critics may note it only plans to deal with "violent" groups and overt symbols of hate. Will that be enough to make any real difference in the experiences so many people report on Twitter? Unfortunately, we're still waiting to find out.
Twitter's opaque thinking fails everyone
It seems like Twitter can't go long before finding itself embroiled in a new controversy about how it applies its conduct policies. And yet it's hard not to feel a sliver of sympathy in the face of the latest backlash against the ailing company. In suspending Rose McGowan's account for 12 hours, it might have done the right thing, but in completely the wrong way.
#WomenBoycottTwitter protest spreads across social media
Twitter has been home to many hashtag campaigns, but tonight one is trending that's a little different: #WomenBoycottTwitter. Sparked by its "temporary lock" of Rose McGowan's account yesterday, the movement's purpose is to go dark "In solidarity w @rosemcgowan and all the victims of hate and harassment Twitter fails to support." Participants include fellow celebrities, women who have experienced harassment online and men who support its cause.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk won't quit Trump's advisory council
While a boycott movement that registered over 200,000 account deletions and messages from employees convinced Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to end his tenure on the president's economic advisory council, Elon Musk will not be moved. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted that at tomorrow's meeting of the advisory council he and others will "express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy."
Netflix's 'Beasts of no Nation' already has 3 million views
With Netflix's first theater-ready film, Beasts of No Nation, content chief Ted Sarandos broke a long-standing company rule not to reveal viewing numbers. "It is worth sharing that this movie, in North America alone, has over 3 million views already," he told Deadline. Netflix racked up those figures in two weekends, and the Cary Fukunaga directed film, starring Idris Elba, was the top Netflix movie in its first week of release. The service helped it along with a strong launch, though. "We focused on making the film available to all 69 million Netflix subscribers around the world, in more than 50 countries," Sarandos said.
Buycott lets you boycott evil companies while you shop
An app called Buycott is giving iPhone owners the chance to make a political statement each and every time they shop. The concept behind the app is simple: when you're in a store, scan an item's UPC code to see what parent company owns the product. "What company owns the product?" you might ask. "Wouldn't that be the name of the company on the package?" Not necessarily. Popular brand names are often subsidiaries of bigger corporations. And those corporations might have their fingers in things you politically disagree with. This means that even though there is no way you would support the corporation's political activities (say they donate to political campaigns you don't like) you may be inadvertently supporting that corporation by buying one of its subsidiary's products. %Gallery-188393% Take, for example, Angel Soft bathroom tissue. The ultimate owner of that company is Koch Industries, which has extreme political views on one end of the spectrum that you may disagree with. By scanning that product with Buycott in the store, you're immediately told who the owner is (Koch Industries) and that information can allow you to make more informed buying decisions. Buycott also allows you to create and follow campaigns covering issues you care about. These campaigns cover a wide variety of topics and allow you to make better buying decisions by not only telling you what companies to boycott, but also by telling you which companies support your ideological views (hence the "buy" in Buycott). Currently the most popular campaign is "Demand GMO Labeling," while the most trending campaign is 'Avoid Koch Industries.' Buycott is a free download.
Ask Massively: Developers, players, and respect
Welcome back to Ask Massively We're pleased you could join us on the deck of the Massively yacht for today's edition. You should really try a mojito. It's the best. In between drinks today, we're talking about respect -- the earned kind, not the given kind. Don't worry; I'm not talking about respect you have for us or even for each other. (We all know that's non-existent.) I'm talking about the respect game studios have (and don't have) for MMO gamers in general.
Captain's Log: A two-minute read could save you 15% or more on nerdrage insurance
Captain's Log, Stardate 65340.3... Hello, computer (and players)! Welcome to this week's edition of Captain's Log, brought to you by "Geko" Insurance. (And let's just say, you may want to purchase a policy). If you are a Star Trek Online player who watches Cryptic's official forums, you know that the game experienced an Occupy movement of its own this past weekend. Even if you don't frequent the forums, you may have seen some of the concerns raised through the #STO Twitter feed. Over the weekend, players lashed out against some of the recent changes that have made their way to the Tribble test server. It may be surprising to some of you reading this, but the commotion was not related to the economy changes. The main concern is that some of the items for purchase in the C-Store are going to be changing from account-wide unlocks to per-character transactions. While I was a little perturbed at the thought too, I was happy to see that some of the misconceptions were cleared up once we got an official statement from one of the devs. But since there is a lot more to the story, let's take a look. Ensign, warp 10! And don't forget to buckle your seatbelt...
Apple boycotts Fox News because of Glenn Beck
A two-week old report by the Washington Post is only now gaining traction in the tech section. It appears that Apple has boycotted Fox News based on Glenn Beck and his ludicrous statements, including calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a "cancer." "More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of Beck's program, making it difficult for Fox to sell ads," the Washington Post reports. "The time has instead been sold to smaller firms offering such products as Kaopectate, Carbonite, 1-800-PetMeds and Goldline International. A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers." Given that Fox has the largest cable news viewership in the US, Apple's decision to boycott them was no small decision, especially with the impending launch of the iPad. Then again, Apple doesn't have a problem garnering media attention; it'll probably still penetrate a majority of the mindshare market without running a single iPad ad. [Image from sodahead]
Sonic fans create the best boycott of all time
[Fanpop; bramcurtis] digg_url = 'http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/26/sonic-fans-create-the-best-boycott-of-all-time/'; Thanks to the internet, the word "boycott" no longer conveys an element of gravitas. In fact, we're pretty certain that this collection of 1080 (and counting) Sonic fans doesn't actually understand the point of a boycott. The petitioners are upset about Sonic the Hedgehog 4, knowing full well from the leaked footage that it will "simply not be anywhere near as good as the original Sonic games." They're not going to stand for this and have threatened to hurt Sega where it hurts the most: sales. "We will not buy it," the petition explains. "We will in fact buy Sonic 1 on release in protest of Sonic 4." Take that, Sega! Instead of giving you money, these people are going to ... give you money? Ha! Lesson learned. But in all seriousness, we do want to take a moment to offer some advice to the protesters: The best way to show Sega your disapproval isn't to buy another one of its games. Instead, satiate your desire to hurt Sega and needlessly throw away your money by sending a check or money order to: Andrew Yoon c/o AOL, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Thanks, Sonic fans! [Via Destructoid]
Anti-Aliased: Eye candy leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Global Agenda is one of those games that's really dividing people. Some people love the game for whatever reason, other people bash on the game for whatever reason, and that's fine by me. While I personally love the game and have been playing it a bunch as my permanent side game, I gave it a less than stellar review that I thought was fair of the game at the time I wrote the review. Of course, since then, many changes are coming (many of which I approve of) and I think Hi-Rez has a pretty good roadmap for their game in place. However, one of my twitter followers recently pointed me to an editorial posted by Kyle Bennett, founder of HardOCP -- a website dedicated to hardcore gaming. Kyle's going for a full blown boycott against the indie company for one simple reason: they won't let him rock his multi-monitor setup because it could "give him an unfair advantage." While Kyle's entitled to his opinion and dissatisfaction, I have two problems with his editorial. The first lies in a misconstruction of the facts and the second lies in the nature of his request.
Dell pulls ads from Jersey Shore, calls show 'derogatony' (video)
Its seems that casual TV viewers and large corporations handle Schadenfreude very differently. While MTV's Jersey Shore has been a constant source of amusement for at least one Engadget editor, TMZ (our other favorite tech site) reports that Dell has joined a growing list of advertisers that are backing away from the reality series. In fact, a company spokesman (with a less jaded view of humanity than us) has gone on record stating that Dell doesn't "condone or support ethnic bashing in any form." And neither do we, of course -- but we do love a good laugh. Jenni "Jwoww" Farley is unavailable for comment.
How not to boycott Modern Warfare 2
Don't worry, guys. We're fairly certain that most of those copies are pirated. (Click here for the full version of the image, as captured by PC Gamer forum poster Olu446.) [Via Rock Paper Shotgun]
