Inside Disney’s decision to settle the Trump suit against ABC News →

“Forbes has an especially wide pool of outside contributors publishing to its site. Many of these writers are legitimate journalists who do fair, in-depth reporting. But there’s also the Forbes contributor network, a group of thousands of marketers, CEOs, and other outside experts who get to publish questionable content under the trusted Forbes name…Google’s spam policies state that the existence of freelancer content in and of itself is not a running afoul of the site reputation abuse policy — it’s only a violation if that content is also designed to take advantage of the site’s ranking signals.”

“Most of the large social-media platforms have been aware of this reality for years and have undertaken at least basic measures to address it…X is not only hosting eating-disorder content but actively recommending it in the algorithmically generated ‘For You’ feed, even if people don’t wish to see it”

“In setting aside two hours for the argument, the justices signaled that they viewed the case as presenting questions of exceptional importance…The court did not block the law while the case moves forward, which suggested that it may issue a ruling before the Jan. 19 deadline set by the law. That would mean that the case may be resolved before President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.”

“Surf’s big theory is this: in a decentralized social world, the internet will be less about websites and more about feeds…Surf’s job, in that world, is to help you discover and explore all those feeds. The app can see three kinds of feeds: anything from ActivityPub, which means things like Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; anything from AT Protocol, which means Bluesky; and any RSS feed…Just imagine a nicely designed, vertically scrolling feed, somewhere between a Twitter timeline and the Apple News homepage.”

“Those attacks have implications for the newspaper on many fronts, including its morale, its financial viability and its ability to build trust with conservatives in its own circulation area. Yet the events in Lancaster County bear just as heavily on a question that has vexed leaders in journalism in recent decades: Just how should they respond to the frequent, strident and often flimsy attacks from Republican politicians? Should they stick to the industry’s default mode of turning the other cheek? Or should they speak up to challenge the gripes?”