Paul Popiel

298 Followers
320 Following
246 Posts
Assistant Professoring at Washington State University, working on media policy, platforms , and political economy | https://pawelpopiel.com
Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CW3X1pcAAAAJ&hl=en
ResearchGatehttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pawel-Popiel
Academiahttps://wsu.academia.edu/PawelPopiel
🚨 In a new article, Yoonmo Sang and I theorize platform governance as a communicative process via a case study of Australia’s Online Safety Act, to understand why and how (via a collision of macro/ meso / micro forces) governance develops differently in different contexts.
https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jdmp_00187_1

🚨 New article out, great colab w/
@_davidberman, 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.

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2BPFGBWUHXZ7VU87WKCT/full?target=10.1080/1369118X.2025.2561026

"Several independent media outlets in Turkey face a potential risk of closure after algorithm changes made by Google led to a significant reduction in reader traffic. They said Google's algorithm changes since the end of January had wiped out the vast majority of reader traffic to their websites"
https://www.reuters.com/technology/turkeys-independent-news-websites-face-closure-risk-after-google-changes-2025-03-13/

Cancelling Prime subscription is a bonus!
"I invite all guest opinion writers to withhold their pitches and boycott the Washington Post op-ed page. It is no longer an arena where debate among the best ideas helps the truth emerge. It is the propaganda instrument of a billionaire. 75,000 have canceled their digital subscriptions. It is time for opinion writers to do the same. Advertisers will follow suit."

https://www.promarket.org/2025/03/05/teaching-bezos-a-lesson-in-free-markets/

Teaching Bezos a Lesson in Free Markets - ProMarket

Luigi Zingales invites guest contributors to the Washington Post’s op-ed pages to boycott the opinion section in response to the recent decision by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, to restrict certain ideas from the publication.   “Democracy dies in darkness” is the famous motto of the Washington Post, adopted after President Donald Trump won the […]

ProMarket
"South Africa's Competition Commission said that Google's algorithm distorts competition between news media organisations insofar as it overrepresents global news media in South Africa for search and top stories and underrepresents local language and community media.
'This inequity has materially contributed to the erosion of the media in South Africa over the past 14 years and will continue to do so unless remedied.'"
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-meta-face-penalties-anti-competitive-behaviour-towards-south-african-news-2025-02-24/
"Meta is revamping a program that has paid bonuses to creators for content based on views and engagement, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts it once policed. The new program is currently invite-only, but Meta plans to make it widely available this year."
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-meta-abandons-fact-checking-boosts-viral-content
As Facebook Abandons Fact-Checking, It’s Also Offering Bonuses for Viral Content

Meta decided to stop working with U.S. fact-checkers at the same time as it’s revamping a program to pay bonuses to creators with high engagement numbers, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts the company once policed.

ProPublica
James Bond's long-serving producers give control to Amazon

Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson step down after decades of tight family control of the franchise.

Microsoft Says It Has Created a New State of Matter to Power Quantum Computers

Microsoft’s new “topological qubit” is not based on a solid, liquid or gas. It is another phase of matter that many experts did not think was possible.

The New York Times

"As well as democratic governments, it has interacted with dictatorships, sanctioned regimes and governments accused of human rights abuses, including the police in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/google-helped-facilitate-russia-china-censorship-requests

Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests

An investigation has exposed the tech firm’s cooperation with autocratic regimes to remove unfavourable content

The Guardian