Mediaboss Marketing

Instagram updated its Sensitive Content Control feature on June 6, and now users can filter out weight loss related ads on their news feeds.

The update widens the feature that Instagram introduced last summer by allowing users to filter content on more than just their Explore page.

"In addition to Explore, you will now be able to control the amount of sensitive content and accounts you see in Search, Reels, Accounts You Might Follow, Hashtag Pages and In-Feed Recommendations," the company wrote in its statement.

The "body weight control" topic is the latest to be included on the list of topics that can be filtered out of users' daily feeds. Other social media apps have made similar decisions in recent years. TikTok banned fasting app ads and restricted advertisements from promoting 'negative body image' in 2020.

It's unclear if Instagram was following TikTok's lead or made its changes as a result of a petition created by body neutral influencer, Katie Budenberg.

Last year, Budenberg created a petition to encourage Instagram to include an option for filtering weight loss ads in its Sensitive Content Control feature. In the petition's description, she wrote, "To some, these ads may be harmless and they can scroll on but for some these ads are triggering and dangerous."

The petition received over 30,000 supporters, and less than a year later, Instagram updated the feature. In a post on the app, Budenberg shared a graphic informing her followers of the change and listed steps for them to take to filter out weight loss content on their news feeds.

"I don't know if it was us, I don't know if Instagram just came to their senses, but most importantly - WE CAN NOW ASK TO NOT SEE WEIGHT LOSS ADS," she wrote in her caption.

If this is a change that you'd like reflected on your personal Instagram account, here are the steps you can take:

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don't miss:

The rest is here:
New Instagram feature allows users to remove weight loss and weight control ads from their feeds - CNBC

Almost every social-media platform offers its users an option to privatize their accounta way for people to control who engages with their content, often to avoid the judgment, schadenfreude, bullying, and snark that are ubiquitous online. Many of these options arent terribly helpful, though. Facebook seems to constantly adjust its privacy settings, and it can be difficult to tell what information your friends have access to. On TikTok, unless you want a fully private account, you have to select who can see each and every video before you post. And Twitters protected-Tweets feature isnt ideal if you have a large following; the Retweet button may be disabled, but your followers can still screenshot and share what you post.

Instagram arguably edges out the competition with its Close Friends feature, which allows people to share Stories with a curated list of followers that is stored in their user settings. Though the app, with its recent attempts to mimic TikTok, has bred frustration and seems to be growing irrelevant among Gen Z, Close Friends is a corner of the platform that many still find useful. The features advantage is that it mitigates the effects of what social scientists call context collapsethe idea that on social, theres a flattening of multiple audiences in one space, Elia Powers, an associate professor in the mass-communication department at Towson University, told me. Its akin to being at a wedding and giving a speech to friends, parents, in-laws, and people you dont know. Jokes about your college exploits, for instance, wont necessarily land with your Boomer relatives as they might with your best friends.

Beyond privacy, the feature sometimes has a deeper payoff: It provides an option to be heard and feel validated in a safe yet open space of your own creation. Even on a group of so-called close friends, something feels more public like youre putting views out into the world and taking a stand in a way that feels different than sharing it with a private friend, Adam Kleinbaum, an associate professor at Dartmouth Colleges Tuck School of Business who studies the relationship between social networks and echo chambers, told me. A lot of us feel very strongly about things we see on the news and things we see in the world, and the ability to speak out in a way that feels public, but also safe, is maybe a good thing.

Devra Thomas, a 44-year-old arts administrator in Wake Forest, North Carolina, told me that social media often feels like a performance to her. We have become a world where unless we share it, it didnt necessarily happen, she said. This propensity to share publicly isnt just about vanity, though. People want to believe that their voices resonate, especially when it comes to sensitive issues around politics or shifting cultural norms or even personal struggles. How do we, as a culture, talk about things if were not willing to share those things?

Read: Close Friends, for a monthly fee

In recent years, Thomas has experienced depressive episodes and wanted to talk about it on social media. But when shed previously opened up on Facebook about her mental-health struggles, shed run straight into context collapse. Some followers were supportive but others left comments such as Are you sure you want to be talking about this? and A potential employer could see this. To avoid the pushback, Thomas turned to Close Friends. About 20 people from her follower list of just over 700 now receive monthly updates about her progressand its had the desired impact. Not only does she feel validated and emotionally soothed, but she also feels empowered. I had someone on the Close Friends list let me know they were starting their own therapy journey because Id been so open about my own.

Everyones reason for using Close Friends isnt necessarily as earnest. Some influencers use the feature as a paid VIP room where they offer exclusive content for a monthly fee via sites such as Patreon. Other people use it as a form of social strategy. I talked with the parents of some high schoolers who said that for their kids, getting on a Close Friends list is tied to status. Being removed from a list could be a sign of changing hierarchies.

For the most part, though, people cited trust as the reason they use Close Friends. The Close Friends feature is not for the close friends but for the nonjudgmental ones, Tatiana Dumitru, a 38-year-old branding specialist in Orange County, California, told me. Shes not especially tight with the moms at her kids school, though some of them follow her on Instagram. They only get to see me or know me through what I post, she explained. If they see her Stories of cocktails and nights on the town, she fears theyll jump to conclusions about her parental priorities. Maybe theyll judge me and wont let their kids play with my kids. In the past, she said, people have left snarky comments such as Boy, you go out a lot. And when she posted Stories from a weekend trip to New York without her children, someone responded, I could never leave my kids and go somewhere with my husband. Dumitru knows that people without access to child care might be responding out of frustration or envy. Even so, the comments hurt. As a result, she thinks carefully about what shell post on her general feed, lest she hurt someones feelings or trigger their schadenfreude. Life is easier and less complicated among her 12 Close Friends, she said.

Zongchao Cathy Li, an associate public-relations professor at San Jose State University, told me her research has found that people feel less vulnerable on social media when they experience three things: a sense of control, self-efficacy, and perceived competence. When you really know what you post wont hurt you, or if you have a strong sense of empowerment you can be more authentic, she said. This aspect can be especially attractive for people who use the feature to express political views. Vanessa Mae Rameer, a 25-year-old researcher, had always posted Stories about her ultra-left-wing politics. But as she entered her mid-20s, she began to shift more to the center. On one occasion, after posting a Story that questioned the way critical race theory is taught in schools, one of her friends unfollowed her. Theyve since smoothed things out, but when Rameer has something controversial to explore, she now uses Close Friends.

One possible criticism of Close Friends is that cherry-picking your audience reinforces an echo chamber or what Kleinbaum calls homophily, the tendency to associate with like-minded people. But for Rameer and others, its more complicated. All the people I spoke with intimated that they choose their audience not because of what people think but how they think. For Trisha Christophel, a 41-year-old process engineer from Dunlap, Illinois, Close Friends is a place for people who like to dig into the complexity of an idea instead of simply accepting or dismissing it offhand. On Close Friends, theyll say, Did you ever consider so and so? she told me. If I posted that to a broader audience, people will say Oh my gosh, I cant believe youd say something like that. Kleinbaum has seen people create their lists based on followers receptivity to conversation about specific topics, not necessarily only choosing people who share their views, he told me. We have multifaceted identities and homophily operates on all of them, cutting across race, ethnicity, gender, and political orientation. The essential connection that we share with the friends in our networks, he said, isnt always obvious.

For many people, the ability to just be themselves is the most attractive element of Close Friends. Ill have a slightly raunchy sense of humor, and then speak eloquently about Roe v. Wade and why its important, Christophel told me. Close Friends is a way for me to show them who I am, but without awkwardness. The last thing shed want to do, she said, is walk up to a friend and say, Hey, its Thursday, do you want to talk about Roe v. Wade? And yet, many of the Stories shared between Christophel and her Close Friends become fodder for actual conversation. This happens, she said, because knowing that youre on someones listand in their inner circlecreates a baseline of trust. Its a deeper connection, Christophel told me. Im not just posting my breakfast for the masses to see. The message is more, Hey, Im talking to you.

Read the original here:
Close Friends Is the Last Good Thing on Instagram - The Atlantic

He tweeted: We need to change, especially the Brazilian gamer community, from threatening and trying to make the person on the other side feel afraid to punish something that was done and we dont like it. This in no way reflects our essence as a people.

He wasnt done. While underlining the general warmth and joy Brazilians are known to bring to sport, and life in general, he added: To defend ourselves we dont need to incite fear, violence or punish others for being wrong. We are better than that.

At the heart of the matter that triggered these thoughts were a series of controversial results that occurred in the first half of the VALORANT season this year, where simmering tension between Brazil and North America escalated further in the wake of certain decisions.

Like the one where Riot was accused of lack of consistency in punishing exploits as VKs (the Brazilian outfit) win was overturned to give Ascend a victory. At the time, the organisers said one of the Brazilian players had abused a Cypher cam glitch. Immediately in the aftermath of that result, there was mayhem from the fans on social media.

Prior to VKs reversal, there was another storm when a close affair between Sentinels and FURIA was stopped just when it seemed as if FURIA had seized the advantage. A tech pause over a jump exploit was deemed to be the official reason, but the Brazilian fans were having none of it. They alleged the 15-minute stoppage was the reason for FURIAs loss from there on.

Even if it just ended in a simple warning, the mayhem they caused online was as if the team had been served a ban. Social media profiles of opposition players received plenty of hate, bile, abuse and threats enough to cause grief to the most disconnected of personalities who detach sporting results to the maximum extent possible.

If its grief from the Brazilian fans in VALORANT, the Korean fans have taken it up a notch at League of Legends. They have waged online wars to the extent that superstar mid-laner Lee Faker Sang-hyeok even took fans to court, after being subjected to a barrage of online insults and harassment directed at him and his family. The players lawyers even confirmed there would be no plea nor favourable arrangement deals.

The issue stemmed from slanders towardsFakers mother and obscene drawings that would be considered unspeakably foul. Faker has long accepted assessment of performances and the scrutiny that comes with them are part and parcel of superstardom, but he wasnt going to take such hate lying down.

By extension, the hate that Fakers received has transferred onto T1 too, seemingly because of their unprecedented success in LoL. Their prominence has led to flashpoints and online mobs with fans. Players have in the past spoken about personal attacks while taking it in stride, but that trend is slowly changing.

The overwhelming sentiment now has moved from tolerance and pleas for better behaviour to fighting fire with fire. Players now want to respond to serve a lesson to not indulge in online bullying or cause mental anguish to players and their families.

We would like to ask fans to keep their distance for their safety and their privacy, T1 said in a statement. Please show your respect for the players when they are near HQ, especially before and after the games, as they need to prepare in peace. We ask the fans for your cooperation to protect and respect the players privacy as well as create a safe fan/player culture.

But it isnt just fans who have been at the centre of such abuse. In 2017, a professional League of Legends player in China had been fired from his team, after it had emerged that he had beaten his girlfriend and had inadvertently live-streamed the incident. It emerged later that the trigger for his behaviour was intense competition from a rival he wanted to beat at any cost.

There have been a few cases of physical abuse, as mentioned above, but its mostly online abuse and trolling that has been central to leagues and esports the world over. Theres no denying that social media is a double-edged sword.

Fans are there to cheer and root for their team irrespective of the end result, but a layer of anonymity can at times provide fodder to those with nefarious intentions to abuse players. Its something several organisations have now woken up to, trying to take the matter seriously. Some have appointed mental health experts to chat with their players from time to time, others have tried to deal with it in their own way, like Faker has.

Two superstars in the Overwatch League in America Atlanta Reigns Kai Kai Collins and Toronto Defiants Andreas Logix Berghmans have completely steered clear of social media because its probably the worst place for abuse. Jiri LiNkzr Masalin from the Vancouver Titans believes subjecting oneself to social media after games can be the most depressing feeling, and not a good hobby to have for a pro player because nothing can prepare you for that. Then there are forums like Reddit where abuse has been taken to another level, as Los Angeles Gladiators off-tank Indy SPACE Halpern has experienced.

So how can such issues be tackled? Can rules be tweaked to antagonise fans less? At least VALORANT is looking at options, such as trying to do away with the existing mass reporting system that automatically suspends players. This system has caused numerous false bans and can be infuriating to players and fans alike. Riot, the organisers, can also do well to place more resources in their tribunal department.

The number of reports a player receives should only be a trigger of priority for reviewing manually. This will ensure all reports are reviewed, which would then reduce the likelihood of false bans, which in-turn could lead to fewer flashpoints between fans. Also in VALORANT, the current toxicity detection system is only limited to text chat. But with VALORANT encouraging voice chat, the organisers should look to implement a system that can sift through voice communication upon receiving reports.

Valorant has taken measures to increase communication restrictions, queue bans and account suspension of players indulging in such behaviour. Extending this to fans is easier said than done, and given how access is a lot easier in the online world, a foolproof method to keep serial abusers and trolls away hasnt yet been devised.

If any, the awareness around such behaviour and toxicity has led to more players and teams talking about it openly, which has led to them trying to also address such issues, which may have earlier been brushed under the carpet.

In any case, the bottom line is this. Sport has no place for abuse. Trolls will just be trolls. As long methods are devised to weed out such disruptive forces from games, players and teams can breathe easy knowing theyre on the right track. A full-blown process may take time, but just that its coming up for discussion is a massive leap towards weeding out this problem of plenty.

With esports having been mentioned as a possible Olympic sport it was included as a demonstration event at the 2018 Asian Games this crackdown couldnt have come at a better time.

Read more:
Toxicity in Esports is Out of Control - Hotspawn

Three hundred current employees at TikTok and its parent company ByteDance previously worked for Chinese state media publications, according to public employee LinkedIn profiles reviewed by Forbes.

Twenty-three of these profiles appear to have been created by current ByteDance directors, who manage departments overseeing content partnerships, public affairs, corporate social responsibility and media cooperation.

Fifteen indicate that current ByteDance employees are also concurrently employed by Chinese state media entities, including Xinhua News Agency, China Radio International and China Central / China Global Television. (These organizations were among those designated by the State Department as foreign government functionaries in 2020.)

Fifty of the profiles represent employees that work for or on TikTok, including a content strategy manager who was formerly a Chief Correspondent for Xinhua News.

The LinkedIn profiles reviewed by Forbes reveal significant connections between TikToks parent company, ByteDance, and the propaganda arm of the Chinese government, which has been investing heavily in using social media to amplify disinformation that serves the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese state media outlets have a large presence on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but so far, they have been relatively quiet on TikTok.

Unlike the other major platforms, however, TikTok does not currently label accounts controlled by Chinese state media. In March, TikTok announced a plan to label some state media entities, but a Forbes review of Chinas largest state media entities on the platform, including China News Service, Xinhua News Service, CGTN and the Global Times, found no added context or labels indicating the accounts state control. (Disclosure: In a previous life, I held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.)

ByteDance and TikTok did not contest that the 300 LinkedIn profiles represent current employees or deny their connections to Chinese state media. None of the state media outlets named in this story responded to a request for comment.

Jennifer Banks, a spokesperson for ByteDance, said that ByteDance makes hiring decisions based purely on an individuals professional capability to do the job. For our China-market businesses, that includes people who have previously worked in government or state media positions in China. Outside of China, employees also bring experience in government, public policy, and media organizations from dozens of markets."

In response to the 15 profiles that show ByteDance employees concurrently employed by Chinese state media, she added that ByteDance does not allow employees to hold second or part-time jobs, or any outside business activity, that would cause a conflict of interest.

People spend more time on TikTok today than they do on any other app. In recent months, the app has been hailed as a powerful driver of American culture, and has rapidly emerged as a critical player in our electoral and civic discourse. The LinkedIn profiles raise further concerns that China could use TikToks broad cultural influence in the US for its own ends, a fear that led a cohort of US politicians, including former president Donald Trump, to call for a ban on the app in 2019.

ByteDance Headquarters on January 6, 2022 in Shanghai, China.

The profiles also provide critical insight into how ByteDance manages its relationship with Chinese state media entities. In addition to TikTok, ByteDance runs numerous other websites and services, including two of mainland Chinas most popular apps: Douyin (a short form video app) and Toutiao (a news aggregator). Chinese state media entities are among the most popular accounts on Douyin, where they have many millions of followers. Many of the LinkedIn profiles detail work on Toutiao and Douyin, which must comply with stringent Chinese censorship laws.

But 50 profiles also specifically mentioned work on TikTok, in areas including policy, strategy, operations, monetization, user experience and localization (the process of adapting a product to fit the needs of foreign markets).

One profile, representing a current TikTok feature strategy lead, says that person previously worked for the China Internet Information Center, or china.org.cn, a state-run web portal whose editor-in-chief is also a party secretary and former deputy head of propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party. Banks said that this individual could not have held a senior-level position because they are not a Chinese national. She confirmed they do work on ByteDances businesses outside of China.

Per LinkedIn, the TikTok employee worked as an editor for the centers China Development Gateway (chinagate.cn). During their tenure, chinagate.cn published headlines including, "Safeguarding Xi's core position is the key: communique," "Under Xi's watch, China's sunshine island basks in warmth of opening up," and "Xi stresses importance of The Communist Manifesto."

Both TikTok and ByteDance declined to answer questions about if they have collaborated with Chinese state media entities to produce or distribute content.

James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Forbes that he wasnt surprised that a lot of Chinese state media employees would eventually move over to ByteDance and TikTok. Its probably a normal career path; Im sure ByteDance pays more, he said, but ties back to the old homestead might be concerning.

In recent months, concern about TikTok has risen due to a string of new reports about the apps links to the Chinese government. In June, BuzzFeed News reported that ByteDance employees in China had repeatedly accessed sensitive information about US TikTok users, setting off a flurry of responses from legislators and regulators in the US and abroad. (TikTok confirmed the reporting in a late-June letter to nine Republican senators.)

In July, BuzzFeed News reported allegations by former employees that ByteDance had pushed pro-China messages to Americans in its now-defunct news app, TopBuzz, which was active between 2015 and 2020. (ByteDance denied the claims.) The TopBuzz report marked the first claims that TikToks parent company had attempted to use its content distribution engine to influence Americans views about China. Just days later, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government asked TikTok for permission to set up a stealth propaganda account in 2020, which TikTok confirmed.

According to Bloomberg, members of TikToks policy department declined to grant the Chinese governments request for such an account. But a LinkedIn profile representing ByteDances deputy general manager of media cooperation suggests there may be more collaboration between Chinese state media and ByteDance than that story suggests.

The profile states that the deputy general manager is responsible for the formulation of the cooperation strategy between the company and the central media and cooperate[s] with partners in content planning, data mining, product interaction, business, etc. (Some quotes from LinkedIn profiles in this article were originally written in Chinese and translated by Google.)

An interview request sent to this profile went unanswered. ByteDance declined to specify what cooperation strategy the deputy general manager was referring to.

For this employee and the other ByteDance employees mentioned below, ByteDance's Banks confirmed that they "exclusively work on the companys China market businesses.

The LinkedIn profiles raise further concerns that China could use TikToks broad cultural influence in the US for its own ends.

Another employee, now ByteDances vice general manager of media partnerships, previously ran social media for china.org.cn. Among the portals social media posts during his tenure were Facebook posts titled, Why China needs Xi Jinping as its core leader and Human Rights Hype Isn't Good For The US Or China, and a tweet asking, Is Western ideology doomed to fail? The employee did not respond to an interview request.

Other profiles also suggest expertise in tailoring messages based on users online behavior: A profile for a current ByteDance director of government affairs cooperation described past work for Peoples Dailythe newspaper of record of the Chinese Communist Partywhere the now-director analyz[ed] the reading habits of Internet audiences and the identity characteristics of mainstream party media audiences and without violating the partys propaganda policy, actively carr[ied] out special news planning with local government offices. An interview request to this profile received no response.

Fifteen profiles also listed both ByteDance and a state media organization as a persons current employer. The profile for one such employee, who has served as an editorial director at ByteDance since March 2019, says that she is also a current member of the editorial boards of the China News Service, which is run by the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, and China Weekly, which is supervised by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. The editorial director did not respond to an interview request.

The profile for another such employee, a director of public relations, says that she is also a current senior reporter and operations manager at Beijing TV. The profile for a third employee, an Internation [sic] Operation Manager at ByteDance, says that person is also the current chief editor for international news at Beijing Time (btime.com), a news website affiliated with Beijing TV. Neither of these employees responded to interview requests.

According to its About Us page, Beijing Time takes the dissemination of positive energy, mainstream voices, and Chinese excellent culture as its own responsibility, and builds a media communication platform for Beijings patriotism education base for the Beijing Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department.

Chinese state media entities have long used social media to target and influence Western audiences. Earlier this year, China Central Television (CCTV) and its global arm, China Global Television Network (CGTN), promoted Russian disinformation on Facebook about Ukraine. The outlets previously ran ads on the platform denying extensively documented human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government against Muslim minorities. CCTV/CGTN did not reply to a request for comment.

Forbes identified 49 LinkedIn profiles for TikTok and ByteDance employees who previously worked for CCTV and CGTN. Among them were CCTVs former editor-in-chief, who now serves as ByteDances director of media content partnerships, and a ByteDance overseas market operator whose profile says he is still an editor for CCTV.

Just last month, Xinhua News Agency denied that China has forced ethnic minorities into manual labor in Xinjiang, calling the reports fabricated false information. The agency has repeatedly posted denials of the governments abuse of Uyghur communities, while also promoting the local folk artists of Wondrous Xinjiang. In 2019, the outlet ran ads on Facebook and Twitter to smear protestors in Hong Kong; earlier this year, it ran more, blaming Russias invasion of Ukraine on NATOs ambition to expand eastward. Xinhua News did not reply to a request for comment.

The Communist Party loves TikTok and Im sure theyre trying to figure out how to use it, which is bad news for ByteDance.

Forbes found 39 profiles for current TikTok and ByteDance employees that previously worked at Xinhua. According to those profiles, one former Xinhua reporter, who is now the head of cooperation at ByteDance, won several government journalism awards. Another, who works in internal communications, is a former reporter for both Xinhua and Beijing Daily. Neither employee responded to an interview request.

According to LinkedIn, another 24 TikTok and ByteDance employees formerly worked for Peoples Daily, an outlet that press freedom advocacy group Freedom House has deemed the official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece. Others have worked for China Daily and China Radio International (both registered foreign agents, per the State Department) and China Youth Daily, the newspaper of the Communist Youth League of China.

ByteDances extensive connections to Chinese state media publicationsalong with its lack of policies for designating and monitoring their content on TikTokmake it an outlier among social media giants. While LinkedIn shows that Google and Meta also employ people who previously worked for Chinese state media, the numbers are different by an order of magnitude.

Forbes identified 23 profiles that appear to represent current employees at Google or YouTube, and 14 profiles of current employees at Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, who previously worked for Chinese state media. One of these people, Googles senior most communications official for greater China, spent more than 15 years at China Global Television Network, where he was a director, editor, reporter and anchor. (He did not respond to an interview request.) Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels declined to comment. Meta spokesperson Andrea Beasley acknowledged a request for comment, but did not offer comment by press time.

Lewis, the scholar at CSIS, cautioned against reading too far into any individual employees work history. But, he said, The Chinese government is probably trying to poke around to figure outhow can they use the information theyre getting from watching TikTok to better tailor their propaganda for a Western audience?

None of this is good for ByteDance, especially as scrutiny about its ties with the government heightens. The Communist Party loves TikTok and Im sure theyre trying to figure out how to use it, which is bad news for ByteDance, Lewis said. Because being the Communist Partys favorite child means unwanted attention.

Visit link:
LinkedIn Profiles Indicate 300 Current TikTok And ByteDance Employees Used To Work For Chinese State MediaAnd Some Still Do - Forbes

In the weeks after President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election, the Fox Business host Lou Dobbs claimed to have tremendous evidence that voter fraud was to blame. That evidence never emerged but a new culprit in a supposed scheme to rig the election did: Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election technology whose algorithms, Mr. Dobbs said, were designed to be inaccurate.

Maria Bartiromo, another host on the network, falsely stated that Nancy Pelosi has an interest in this company. Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News personality, speculated that technical glitches in Dominions software could have affected thousands of absentee mail-in ballots.

Those unfounded accusations are now among the dozens cited in Dominions defamation lawsuit against the Fox Corporation, which alleges that Fox repeatedly aired false, far-fetched and exaggerated allegations about Dominion and its purported role in a plot to steal votes from Mr. Trump.

Those bogus assertions made day after day, including allegations that Dominion was a front for the communist government in Venezuela and that its voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another are at the center of the libel suit, one of the most extraordinary brought against an American media company in more than a generation.

First Amendment scholars say the case is a rarity in libel law. Defamation claims typically involve a single disputed statement. But Dominions complaint is replete with example after example of false statements, many of them made after the facts were widely known. And such suits are often quickly dismissed, because of the First Amendments broad free speech protections and the high-powered lawyers available to a major media company like Fox. If they do go forward, they are usually settled out of court to spare both sides the costly spectacle of a trial.

But Dominions $1.6 billion case against Fox has been steadily progressing in Delaware state court this summer, inching ever closer to trial. There have been no moves from either side toward a settlement, according to interviews with several people involved in the case. The two companies are deep into document discovery, combing through years of each others emails and text messages, and taking depositions.

These people said they expected Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, who own and control the Fox Corporation, to sit for depositions as soon as this month.

The case threatens a huge financial and reputational blow to Fox, by far the most powerful conservative media company in the country. But legal scholars say it also has the potential to deliver a powerful verdict on the kind of pervasive and pernicious falsehoods and the people who spread them that are undermining the countrys faith in democracy.

Were litigating history in a way: What is historical truth? said Lee Levine, a noted First Amendment lawyer who has argued several major media defamation cases. Here youre taking very recent current events and going through a process which, at the end, is potentially going to declare what the correct version of history is.

The Trump Investigations

The Trump Investigations

Numerous inquiries. Since Donald J. Trumpleft office, the former president has been facingseveral different civil and criminal investigationsacross the countryinto his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:

The Trump Investigations

Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committeeinvestigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a powerful accountof Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence couldallow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation,to indict Mr. Trump.

The Trump Investigations

Georgia election interference case. Mr. Trump himself is under scrutiny in Georgia, where the district attorney of Fulton County has been investigating whether he and others criminally interfered with the 2020 election in the state. This case could pose the most immediate legal perilfor the former president and his associates.

The case has caused palpable unease at the Fox News Channel, said several people there, who would speak only anonymously. Anchors and executives have been preparing for depositions and have been forced to hand over months of private emails and text messages to Dominion, which is hoping to prove that network employees knew that wild accusations of ballot rigging in the 2020 election were false. The hosts Steve Doocy, Dana Perino and Shepard Smith are among the current and former Fox personalities who either have been deposed or will be this month.

Dominion is trying to build a case that aims straight at the top of the Fox media empire and the Murdochs. In court filings and depositions, Dominion lawyers have laid out how they plan to show that senior Fox executives hatched a plan after the election to lure back viewers who had switched to rival hard-right networks, which were initially more sympathetic than Fox was to Mr. Trumps voter-fraud claims.

Libel law doesnt protect lies. But it does leave room for the media to cover newsworthy figures who tell them. And Fox is arguing, in part, thats what shields it from liability. Asked about Dominions strategy to place the Murdochs front and center in the case, a Fox Corporation spokesman said it would be a fruitless fishing expedition. A spokeswoman for Fox News said it was ridiculous to claim, as Dominion does in the suit, that the network was chasing viewers from the far-right fringe.

Fox is expected to dispute Dominions estimated self-valuation of $1 billion and argue that $1.6 billion is an excessively high amount for damages, as it has in a similar defamation case filed by another voting machine company, Smartmatic.

A spokesman for Dominion declined to comment. In its initial complaint, the companys lawyers wrote that The truth matters, adding, Lies have consequences.

For Dominion to convince a jury that Fox should be held liable for defamation and pay damages, it has to clear an extremely high legal bar known as the actual malice standard. Dominion must show either that people inside Fox knew what hosts and guests were saying about the election technology company was false, or that they effectively ignored information proving that the statements in question were wrong which is known in legal terms as displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.

A judge recently ruled that Dominion had met that actual malice standard at this stage, allowing it to expand the scope of its case against Fox and the kind of evidence it can seek from the companys senior executives.

In late June, Judge Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court denied a motion from Fox that would have excluded the parent Fox Corporation from the case a much larger target than Fox News itself. That business encompasses the most profitable parts of the Murdoch American media portfolio and is run directly by Rupert Murdoch, 91, who serves as chairman, and his elder son, Lachlan, the chief executive.

Soon after, Fox replaced its outside legal team on the case and hired one of the countrys most prominent trial lawyers a sign that executives believe that the chances the case is headed to trial have increased.

Dominions lawyers have focused some of their questioning in depositions on the decision-making hierarchy at Fox News, according to one person with direct knowledge of the case, showing a particular interest in what happened on election night inside the network in the hours after it projected Mr. Trump would lose Arizona. That call short-circuited the presidents plan to prematurely declare victory, enraging him and his loyalists and precipitating a temporary ratings crash for Fox.

These questions have had a singular focus, this person said: to place Lachlan Murdoch in the room when the decisions about election coverage were being made. This person added that while testimony so far suggests the younger Murdoch did not try to pressure anyone at Fox News to reverse the call as Mr. Trump and his campaign aides demanded the network do he did ask detailed questions about the process that Foxs election analysts had used after the call became so contentious.

Foxs legal team has cited the broad protections the First Amendment allows, arguing that statements about Dominion machines from its anchors like Mr. Dobbs and Ms. Bartiromo, and guests like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, were protected opinion and the kind of speech that any media organization would cover as indisputably newsworthy.

When the president and his lawyers are making allegations, that in and of itself is newsworthy, Dan Webb, the trial lawyer brought in by Fox several weeks ago, said in an interview. To say that shouldnt be reported on, I dont think a jury would buy that. And thats what I think the plaintiffs are saying here.

Mr. Webbs most recent experience in a major media defamation case was representing the other side: a South Dakota meat manufacturer in a lawsuit against ABC for a report about the safety of low-cost processed beef trimmings, often called pink slime. The case was settled in 2017.

But Fox has also been searching for evidence that could, in effect, prove the Dominion conspiracy theories werent really conspiracy theories. Behind the scenes, Foxs lawyers have pursued documents that would support numerous unfounded claims about Dominion, including its supposed connections to Hugo Chvez, the Venezuelan dictator who died in 2013, and software features that were ostensibly designed to make vote manipulation easier.

According to court filings, the words and phrases that Fox has asked Dominion to search for in internal communications going back more than a decade include Chavez and Hugo, along with tampered, backdoor, stolen and Trump.

Fox News and Fox Business gave a platform to some of the loudest purveyors of these theories, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, and Mr. Giuliani, the presidents personal lawyer, in the days and weeks after major news outlets including Fox declared Joseph R. Biden Jr. the president-elect. In one interview, Mr. Giuliani falsely claimed that Dominion was owned by a Venezuelan company with close ties to Mr. Chavez, and that it was formed to fix elections. (Dominion was founded in Canada in 2002 by a man who wanted to make it easier for blind people to vote.)

Mr. Dobbs, who conducted one of the interviews cited in Dominions complaint, responded encouragingly to Mr. Giuliani, saying he believed he was witnessing the endgame to a four-and-a-half-year-long effort to overthrow the president of the United States. Fox canceled Mr. Dobbss Fox Business show last year, though it has never issued a retraction for any of the commentary about Dominion.

Dominion has also filed separate lawsuits against Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Powell and Mr. Lindell.

Dominion says in its complaint that in the weeks after the election, people started leaving violent voice mail messages at its offices, threatening to execute everyone who worked there and blow up the headquarters. At one office, someone hurled a brick through a window. The company had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security and lost hundreds of millions more in business, according to its complaint.

The harm to Dominion from the lies told by Fox is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believed them and continue to believe them, its complaint said.

The company has tried to draw a connection between those falsehoods and the Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol. These lies did not simply harm Dominion, the company said in the complaint. They harmed democracy. They harmed the idea of credible elections.

As part of its case, it cites one of the most indelible images from the Jan. 6 attack: a man in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, clutching zip ties in his left hand. Also in the suit is a second photo of the man, later identified as Eric Munchel of Tennessee, in which he is brandishing a shotgun, with Mr. Trump on a television in the background. The television is tuned to Fox Business.

But the hurdle Dominion must clear is whether it can persuade a jury to believe that people at Fox knew they were spreading lies.

Disseminating The Big Lie isnt enough, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Utahs S.J. Quinney College of Law. It has to be a knowing lie.

See the original post:
Lawsuit Against Fox Is Shaping Up to Be a Major First Amendment Case - The New York Times