Shmaywall

Wikipedia:

Iran International (Persian: ایران اینترنشنال) is a Persian-language news television channel headquartered in London aimed at Iranian viewers, and broadcasting free-to-air by satellite. Iran International was established in May 2017 and has broadcast its programmes from both London and Washington, D.C. In February 2023, Iran International moved its headquarters temporarily to Washington, D.C. due to increased threats from the Iranian government against their UK-based journalists, but back to London in September 2023.

Programming:

According to Middle East Eye, Iran International is a media platform for the Iranian opposition. Kourosh Ziabari of Al-Monitor wrote it “does not shy away from presenting itself as an opposition media organization” and frequently gives the microphone to guests who criticize the Iranian government. The channel has been referred to as an “Iranian exile news outlet” by Borzou Daragahi of The Independent.

Ownership:

Iran International is owned by Volant Media UK Ltd . . . Corporate documents for Volant Media shows that another Saudi national, Fahad Ibrahim Aldeghither, was the major shareholder of Volant Media before Adel Abdukarim. Aldeghither owned over 75% of the shares of Volant Media from May 2016 to May 2018. Fahad Ibrahim Aldeghither was the chairman of Mobile Telecommunication Company Saudi Arabia (Zain) from March 2013 to February 2016. Zain Saudi is the third-largest telecoms provider in Saudi Arabia.

Editorial Independence:

Though the TV station states that it “adheres to strict international standards of impartiality, balance and accountability”, questions have been raised regarding its editorial independence.

In October 2018, a report by Saeed Kamali Dehghan in The Guardian linked Iran International’s funding to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It also interviewed an unnamed insider who said that the editorial content had been influenced by its investors. A source was reported by The Guardian as saying that Iran International received $250m from Saudi Arabia for launching the channel. The insider and an unnamed ex-employee expressed dismay that Saudi funding had been concealed from the employees. Iran International denied The Guardian’s report . . . Azadeh Moaveni of New York University has charged the channel is an arm of Saudi Arabia: “I would not describe Iran International as pro-reform, or organically Iranian in any manner”.

They said the same thing when he was repeatedly lining up troops along Ukraine’s border.

Who’s ‘they’? The US warned the world repeatedly that Putin was planning an invasion. They spent a month prior to the full-scale invasion herding skeptical cats in Europe trying to get everyone on the same page.

Seemed like a cool thing to say in the moment. No good?

I said it was my Mastodon account but that server was running Firefish then a fork of Firefish called iceshrimp, neither of which are Mastodon. But it’s now a Mastodon account again.

I follow my own Pixelfed account on Mastodon and will often boost posts. I have a pixelfed.social account though. It’s probably a federation issue on your specific Pixelfed instance. I’ve moved the Mastodon account a bunch and I’ve had problems on specific instances. I was never able to see my Pixelfed posts from fedia.social (ice shrimp), for example.

I was also able to search, follow, and see your Pixelfed posts from mastodon.social.

Edit: Your two newest photos from Aug 31st aren’t actually showing up on m.s. and I can’t see them on pixelfed.social either.

The only information provided by the F.S.B.’s press service has been about criminal cases opened against Western and Ukrainian journalists, who followed the troops onto Russian territory without following Russian customs procedures and getting passport checks.

Always good to end on a comedic note.

https://archive.is/AeZhN

They aren’t really polling well. The best realistic scenario is probably the current one – Libs in power with the NDP holding the balance and making awesome demands. They’re most likely to have way less power after the election. I don’t really get what Singh is seeing in the tea leaves here.

We were just too jealous of you Americans and all the election fun you’re having. We want some too! It’s topple time.

To do that in the short term, the Fediverse probably just needs more money. The competitors have a fuckload of it and can introduce features way faster because of it. I think Mastodon’s been “exploring/planning” quote posts for like 18 months and haven’t even begun working on it. I’d love to have user-controllable, optional algorithmic feeds in Mastodon (not replacing the main reverse-chron feed) but I can’t imagine it existing in less than 5 years.

Mods cracking down on the plague of ‘polite’ harassment (ex. passive-aggressive FYIs about CWs) wouldn’t hurt. It’s not as bad as it used to be but it’s chased a ton of people away.

I think in the long term the Fediverse has an advantage. The only real goal Fediverse services have is to get better for users. At some point, Bluesky and Threads will have to make money or die. I don’t think they have a way to do that without damaging the user experience.

The initial ruling was by a single judge but it was upheld yesterday by a panel of five supreme court justices:

Members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.

Uh… he’s only had those far-right coalition partners since December 2022. A ceasefire deal that would lead them to topple the government wouldn’t have made a ton of sense in September 2023 (or September 2014). Gantz also wasn’t an opposition leader in 2014. Those don’t seem like unimportant things.

I don’t disagree with your points but I think they apply to pretty specific groups. I doubt that the average person knows or cares that Bluesky is a PBC. The reaction of the average person to ‘open source’ is probably, “I have no idea what that is and please for the love of god don’t explain it to me.”

1. There are more people there.
2. Fewer people even know the Fediverse exists at all.
3. Mastodon (where most would probably move from Twitter) has a reputation for being more difficult to use.

Nailed it

From Mehdi Hassan’s Wikipedia page:

Mehdi Raza Hasan (born July 1979) is a British-American progressive broadcaster, political commentator, columnist, author and co-founder of the media company Zeteo.

. . .

Zeteo was presented as a subscription-based news organization. He announced that the platform will “bring you hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis that you won’t find elsewhere”. Hasan presents a new video series on the Zeteo News channel, the first one was called “Debunked! Top seven lies about Gaza”.

Hassan is identified as the founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief. His Wiki page says he’s a co-founder but I can’t find mentions of other founders. This is a media company built around Substack newsletters and they generate revenue from subscriptions. This Rolling Stone article says that they also raised $4M in seed money before launch but don’t note the source(s). They just launched in April and there doesn’t appear to be any fact check or bias analysis on them yet.

Prem Thakker is currently listed as a staff reporter for the Intercept, though it says he worked for them “previously.” According to his bio there, he’s also worked for The New Republic, The American Prospect, and CNN. On July 23, he was announced as Zeteo’s “first full-time reporter.”

A lot of odd reactions to this one. Great read though, thanks for sharing it.

But it’d be better if they were bringing that to the Fediverse instead of reinventing the wheel with ATP.

Eugen posted that Mastodon (or maybe m.s?) sign-ups from Brazil are up as well, but has anyone posted numbers/analysis?

Edit: “Aug 10, 10 sign-ups from #Brazil. Aug 28, 152 sign-ups from Brazil. Today, 4.2k sign-ups from Brazil. Portuguese (Brazil) has already entered the list of top 8 active languages for the last 30 days.” - Gargron