Tag: small business for sale

Facebook has banned Australian news, but there’s a workaround

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Facebook users are currently caught in a fight between the social network and the Australian government over the sharing of news on tech platforms. On Wednesday, Facebook banned users in Australia from sharing links to any local or international news stories, blocked Australian news publishers from sharing their own stories, and prevented users worldwide from sharing news articles published in Australia. The drastic move is a response to the Australian government’s Media Bargaining code, which tries to counter tech giants’ decimation of the news business by making Google and Facebook share some revenue with local news publishers. [Screenshot: Jared Newman] The move by Facebook has sparked an international backlash , with one MP in the United Kingdom calling it “one of the most idiotic but also deeply disturbing corporate moves of our lifetimes.” Amnesty International Australia campaigner Tim O’Connor said that allowing one company to dominate the information ecosystem “threatens human rights,” and criticized Facebook for blocking access to community groups and emergency information. (Facebook itself acknowledged that some Pages were “ inadvertently impacted .”) It’s unlikely that the news ban will last forever, at least in its current form. Australia’s treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has said that he continues to have constructive discussions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google has already made its own made its own deal with News Corp, agreeing to pay the publisher for news in United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Deals between Google and other publishers are expected to follow , which could put pressure on Facebook to be less belligerent in its response. But in the meantime, Facebook users are stuck without a way to share reliable information on the world’s largest social media platform. That’s not ideal, given how easily misinformation can flourish on Facebook instead. Fortunately, there is a workaround. Read More …

These 2 Black founders aim to offer a fairer alternative to payday loans

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Travis Holoway, the CEO and cofounder of SoLo Funds, says his startup isn’t just a quick way to take out a small, short-term loan. It’s the start of something bigger. The startup, which raised $10 million in a Series A funding round last week, offers an app in which users can loan money to one another. Borrowers usually grant a small “tip” to their lenders when paying the money back, and in turn build up a “SoLo Score” that helps them take out larger loans in the future. While Holoway says SoLo’s immediate purpose is to provide quick access to emergency capital, he adds that the startup’s true goal is to create a virtuous cycle, in which borrowers work their way up the financial ladder and become lenders on the platform. Along the way, he hopes to introduce those users to new banking and investment opportunities that they otherwise might have missed. “If we can have individuals come here, take loans when they need them, pay them back on time, get access to more traditional financial tools and resources, and ultimately come back as a lender and pay that forward, that is the best life cycle of a user on our platform,” he says. But while the startup may deliver on its promises of upward financial mobility, the reality is nuanced. Apps such as SoLo Funds aren’t as predatory as high-priced payday loans, but they carry some of the same financial traps. And with SoLo in particular, its use of use of social data to score users’ trustworthiness raises concerns about bias. [Photo: courtesy of SoLo Funds] How SoLo Funds works Compared to other small-dollar loan apps such as Earnin and Dave , SoLo Funds is unique in that it isn’t tied to employee paydays and doesn’t loan any money itself. Read More …

How this Russian director’s Screenlife films went from gimmick to gold in Hollywood

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When Kazakh-Russian director Timur Bekmambetov was producing the 2014 horror film Unfriended , a movie told entirely on Skype screens in which a group of high school kids are haunted by a friend who’d been bullied and—they thought—committed suicide, he was constantly asked the same question: Why didn’t any of the characters, who, one by one, are freakishly tortured by the former friend, shut down their computers and go into each other’s homes?   Back then, of course, the question was a natural one. Now, Bekmambetov says, “No one asks that.”   Thanks to COVID-19, leaving your house and going to visit someone else, even to save their life, is a potentially fatal risk. Indeed, today no one would ever wonder why characters in a film never physically interact with one another. After all, that’s essentially what life has looked like for almost a year now. But while the pandemic has been devastating to Hollywood—shutting down productions and causing major studios to shift many of their tentpole releases to digital distribution or punt them into the future—it has been a boon for Bekmambetov and his production company, Bazelevs Studio. The company, whose primary hubs are in Moscow and Los Angeles, pioneered and specializes in so-called Screenlife films that take place exclusively on computer and mobile screens and are shot using GoPros and other nontraditional cameras, often with actors and filmmakers in separate locations Read More …

Remote court is now in session. But will defendants get a fair trial?

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For a long time, Judge Michael Christofeno just didn’t see a place for online hearings in his courtroom. “I needed to see people in person in my courtroom or I wasn’t going to be able to have the capability to get a sense of how they’re testifying, their demeanor, whether they’re telling the truth or not, whether they’re being candid with the court,” says Christofeno, a circuit court judge in Elkhart County, Indiana. He was also concerned about operating and maintaining control of hearings in an unfamiliar medium. But the judge’s opinion changed when the county looked to reopen courts that had been largely shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. It’s been a problem across the country. The New York Times recently reported  that criminally accused people have been languishing in New York jails, in some cases contracting the virus, while only a handful of trials have taken place during the pandemic. Even participants in civil cases had been left anxiously awaiting their days in court, Christofeno says Read More …

How WarnerMedia just killed the Hollywood way of doing business

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“It’s holy shit time.”   So proclaimed one Hollywood manager just minutes after WarnerMedia announced on December 3 that it will be releasing its entire 2021 slate of movies on HBO Max, the company’s fledgling streaming platform. The lineup of films, which includes major tentpole releases such as Suicide Squad 2 , Godzilla vs. Kong , Dune, and The Matrix 4 , will simultaneously be released in theaters.   The move marks the most significant milestone yet in the streaming-versus-theatrical debate that has been roiling for years now, growing more agitated and desperate in recent months due to COVID-19, which has all but decimated the theatrical moviegoing business. Yet even as COVID-19 has shuttered movie theaters around the world and caused movie studios to make historically unheard-of decisions—for instance, moving would-be theatrical films such as Hamilton and Mulan over to their streaming services (both of those were released on Disney Plus) or selling off otherwise worthy films to Netflix or another tech giant (such as Enola Holmes and Greyhound, which bowed on Netflix and Apple TV Plus respectively)—studios have nonetheless clung mightily to the belief that when it comes to big-budget films, there is simply no upside in releasing them on streaming. The reason? The box-office revenue for those films is simply too vast to justify a streaming release. This explains why, up until now, studios have been feverishly punting their most valuable gems into 2021 and beyond, praying that by the time their movies are set to debut in theaters, we’ll all be vaccinated and chomping on popcorn in close proximity to other humans again. (With Mulan , which cost a reported $200 million to make, Disney tried to insulate itself by charging subscribers $30 to see the movie during its first month in release.) But WarnerMedia’s move throws down the gauntlet on what has largely been an almost academic debate. One year from now, there will be actual data showing just how much money the company made or lost on its audacious bet. It won’t be a matter of hypotheticals; there will be actual numbers showing how movies like The Matrix 4 fared on streaming, at least in terms of how many new subscribers it attracted to HBO Max in the quarter it was released, if not actual viewing metrics. Nor is this a toe-dipping experiment, as the company has teed up for this Christmas with Wonder Woman 1984 , the first tentpole to be sacrificed to a combined HBO Max and theatrical release, a move prompted by the most recent surge in COVID-19 cases. This is a company going all in. Granted, WarnerMedia is being very clear that this is a one-year thing, driven wholly by the pandemic and (not that its executives are saying this) what was learned from the disastrous rollout of Tenet in theaters back on Labor Day weekend. But putting all of its planned 2021 movies on HBO Max at the same time as debuting them theatrically remains the biggest, most declarative statement yet in terms of the future of streaming.   As for the logistics of how this will work, the movies that WarnerMedia is releasing on HBO Max will be made available to subscribers for 31 days Read More …