YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl reaffirmed the company’s plans to take its Originals out from behind the paywall, making them free and ad-supported.
Kyncl was speaking at YouTube’s annual Brandcast event, where the Google-owned company lays out its plans for advertisers (with lots of razzle dazzle provided by musicians and YouTube stars). Since last fall, the YouTube has acknowledged that it’s moving towards an ad-supported model for its Originals, and tonight, Kyncl said that all original programming moving forward will have an ad-supported window.
He didn’t say anything more about that window, but it sounds like YouTube isn’t fully abandoning paid subscriptions yet. Still, everything on its slate should be available for free at some point. That includes the first two seasons of the “Karate Kid” follow-up “Cobra Kai” — season one will be available for free from August 29 to September 11, and then season two will become available.
“While every other media company is racing to put their content behind the paywall, we’re headed in the opposite direction by making our original content available for free,” Kyncl said.
He also announced that “Cobra Kai” will be returning for a third season next year, as will Kevin Hart’s comedic fitness series “What The Fit.” And he said YouTube is also working on an Originals project with Justin Bieber, although the company isn’t sharing any other information about it.
In addition, the team behind the popular Dude Perfect YouTube channel is working on a documentary that goes behind-the-scenes of their tour this summer. Other projects that YouTube announced today (though they weren’t mentioned on-stage) include a documentary about Paris Hilton, expanded Lollapalooza coverage and YouTube’s first interactive special, “A Heist with Markiplier.”
In addition to Kyncl, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki spoke at the event, where she declared, “Primetime is now personal, and it’s happening on our cellphones. Every one of us has a new primetime.”
She also addressed the question of “responsibility,” which presumably refers to removing hate speech and misinformation from the platform Wojcicki described this as “my number one priority,” and said YouTube is removing millions of bad videos every quarter, most of which “have not received a single view.”
“I recognize that there is still work to be done, but we are committed to getting this right,” she said.
Source: TechCrunch
Tumblr has been squandered ever since it was bought for $1.1 billion in 2013 by Yahoo, now part of Verizon Media Group. Without proper strategy or talent, the blogging tool and early meme-sharing network fell into decline while Medium and Instagram soared. Yahoo wrote down Tumblr’s value by $230 million in 2016. Then last year, Verizon evicted Tumblr’s huge and loyal base of porn bloggers, leaving no viable platform for independent adult content creators and curators.
Now the Wall Street Journal reports that TechCrunch parent company Verizon is considering selling Tumblr.
Many immediately hoped it’d change hands to an owner who’d embrace pornography, such as social media darling Pornhub. BuzzFeed quickly reported that Pornhub VP Corey Price told it “We’re extremely interested in acquiring the platform and are very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content.”
But given Pornhub parent company MindGeek’s record of exploitation of adult performers, that could be a disastrous proceeding for the world of kink.
Outside of Pornhub, MindGeek owns many of the top porn streaming sites like YouPorn, RedTube, and GayTube. Widespread piracy of porn films by those sites has made it tough for performers to earn a living. Many smaller studios or performers don’t have the legal or financial resources to file constant copyright infringement takedown notices, and MindGeek’s sites have been accused of allow re-uploads of videos days after taking them down.
The truly insidious part is that MindGeek has also bought up a bunch of the top porn production studios including Brazzers, Babes.com, and Digital Playground. MindGeek has been accused of allowing those studios’ films to be pirated by its own streaming sites. That lets MindGeek earn and keep streaming ad revenue without giving performers a proper cut.
The result has been a massive decline in the wages of porn performers and the number of films being made. This is turn pushes performers into more rough and extreme porn genres they’re not comfortable with, or into other sex work like prostitution that can be dangerous. We reached out to Verizon Media Group which told us “we don’t comment on rumors”, and we’re awaiting comment on piracy issues from MindGeek.
If Pornhub and MindGeek succeed in acquiring Tumblr to strengthen their near monopoly, they could end up exploiting porn bloggers and the performers they post about too. You could imagine the photos and GIFs in diverse porn genres that populated Tumblr getting scraped and shared across MindGeek’s network of sites beyond the bloggers’ or performers’ control. Or Tumblr’s porn blogs could be used to funnel traffic towards MindGeek’s crooked streaming sites, exacerbating the piracy problem. A more optimistic view is would be that Pornhub’s newer features that let performers set up their own paywalls could help Tumblr curators earn money for themselves…and MindGeek. If Pornhub managed to turn Tumblr around, it would deal a stern lesson to platforms that were quick to ban adult content.
Since many of the puritanical US government’s elected officials likely see porn performers as godless heathens undeserving of protection, they’re unlikely to try to safeguard the profession with anti-trust or fair payout regulation. The SESTA-FOSTA law that went into effect last year intending to stop sex trafficking ended up pushing sites like Tumblr, Facebook, and Patreon towards tougher crack downs on porn, nudity, or even innocent discussions about sex within support communities for LGTBQ people and other underprivileged minorities.
Unfortunately, MindGeek’s massive footprint means it might be willing to bid the highest price for Tumblr. If Verizon does sell Tumblr, it should seek a buyer with an upstanding record for how it treats creators. But Verizon could also modernize Tumblr to emphasize what’s differentiated about it in today’s tech landscape versus when it was founded in 2007. Obviously, it could reopen to porn. But there are also family friendly opportunities.
Tumblr was one of the first big meme-sharing communities, even spawning its own format of screenshots of progressively crazier replies to a short text post. Yet in 2019, the top meme networks like Instagram, Reddit, and Imgur aren’t actually built for distributing massive ‘dumps’ of memes. They don’t understand which you’ve already seen to prevent showing re-runs, or how remixes of an original meme all relate and should be linked. Tumblr could build meme-specific features that give users more curational power than Reddit and Imgur, but more freedom of expression under less pressure than Instagram.
Tumblr could also be repurposed into a “your Internet homepage” platform. Most social networks are so desperate to keep users on their apps that they restrict or deemphasize the ability to promote your other web presences. They also often focus on a narrow set of content types like photos and videos on Instagram. This leaves users who don’t have their own dedicated websites without a central hub where they can freely express their identity and link to profiles elsewhere. This is a huge opportunity for Tumblr, which has already established itself an open-ended self-expression platform open to a variety of content formats.
AOL, which was combined with Yahoo to form the Verizon Media Group, previously owned a web profile platform called About.me, but sold it back to its creator Tony Conrad in 2013. Tumblr could assume much of About.me’s functionality as a directory of someone’s presences on other apps, and add that to its blogging platform. Instead of being locked into Instagram and Pinterest’s grids and standardized designs, Tumblr could let people create a homepage collage representing their prismatic identities.
Tumblr’s already been waning in popularity for years, so Verizon might not have a lot to lose by giving Tumblr a year to execute on this strategy before selling it for surely much less than it bought it for in 2013. Tumblr’s remaining users deserve better than the platform fading into nothing or being sold to the unscrupulous.
If any pornography industry professionals want to weigh in, please contact this article’s author Josh Constine via phone/text or Signal encrypted messenger at (585)750-5674 or joshc ‘at’ techcrunch dot com.
Source: TechCrunch
It’s time for another SpaceX launch, and though tonight’s (technically early tomorrow morning’s) isn’t as historic as the Falcon Heavy, it’s always impressive to see a Falcon 9 lift off with supplies for the International Space Station. But inclement weather threatens to delay delivery.
CRS-17 will be taking two tons of supplies and other items to the ISS, including the new Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3, an experiment to generate algae for human consumption on board (they won’t be trying it this time round), and a cool new multi-experiment microgravity platform called Hermes.
The full scientific payload is described in this NASA blog post from a few weeks back. Naturally the Dragon capsule (this one flew in August 2017 as well, it’s worth noting) also carries food and other supplies as well. The first stage will return to the surface and attempt to land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be cruising the Atlantic waiting for its passenger.
The launch is less than 24 hours after SpaceX issued a statement regarding the explosion of a Crew Dragon capsule during testing. The cause of the “anomaly” is yet to be determined, but it’s important to note that this is a completely different platform than the now proven and reliable Falcon 9/Cargo Dragon combo that has flown dozens of commercial missions.
Takeoff is set for 3:11 AM Eastern time in Cape Canaveral, with streams starting about 45 minutes beforehand — but there’s a good chance tonight’s launch will be scrubbed because of bad weather.
“We’ve been monitoring an area of disturbed weather over the Bahamas for the past few days, and that area of disturbed weather is encroaching upon the Space Coast,” said Air Force launch weather officer Will Ulrich in a NASA update. Right now there’s about a 40 percent chance of a successful launch.
This would be the second delay for CRS-17, which was put off from May 1st to the 3rd late in April. Don’t worry, though — the crew in the ISS has more than enough to get by for quite some time. The next launch opportunity would be within 24 hours, too. We’ll update this post if there’s a definite hold put on the launch.
If it’s a go, you’ll be able to watch the launch below:
Source: TechCrunch
A pilot project to test the DNA of migrant families raises concerns about the rise of a genetic surveillance state.
Source: Wired
Catch up on the most important news today in 2 minutes or less.
Source: Wired
With enough money in our bank accounts, these are the cars we think our moms would like the best. Although the traditional flowers will most likely hold sway.
Source: CNET
The blogging site has struggled to compete with the likes of Facebook and Instagram.
Source: CNET
The world’s biggest video site, which was at 1.8 billion viewers a year earlier, also has more hours streaming to TV sets than before.
Source: CNET
He’s giving the people what they want, presumably with less teeth.
Source: CNET
The Facebook CEO reportedly used a limited-liability company, a wealth manager and nondisclosure agreements to keep the real estate deal under wraps.
Source: CNET