Apple TV Was Making a Show About Gawker. Then Tim Cook Found Out
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This right here tells you everything you need to know about Gawker and people that worked there.
I'm having a little trouble with the premise of this story, that it's somehow novel for an executive to have a hand in killing a show. This is like 40% of the premise of 30 Rock. But that was about the Sheinhardt Wigs hegemony over NBC (and tri-vection microwaves), not Tim Cook's influence over a tiny portfolio of streaming shows nobody watches.
As long as he doesn't fuck with Ted Lasso, I honestly don't give a shit. I'm sure I'll buy another Apple product in 2021, which will re-up my Apple TV+ subscription somehow.
Further, I suspect the emotional reaction here comes from Apple playing a much larger role in the public's mind than General Electric.
This tends to support tptacek's point here, that this is a normal thing to be going on and people are exercised more because they are conditioned to have fainting spells over the name "Apple" than because Apple is doing something different than what's always been done.
If anything, the misleading part of my comment was the suggestion that this was a 30 Rock premise --- it's the premise of a pretty solid chunk of all late night NBC comedy in the 1990s, too, because GE actually did own NBC.
> I'm sure I'll buy another Apple product in 2021
I am quite sure not many people care if you buy another Apple product this year or the text; I am very sure I don't give a shit whether you give a shit.
This story is not about you or your buying habits. It is about the fact that concentration of power and money in the hands of a few tech executives is killing news stories, information about the world (not some comedy show).
The fact that it may not be novel doesn't make it unimportant. Crime is as old as time; it doesn't mean we shouldn't care.
as opposed to the old status quo, where stories would get killed by a few non-tech executives. This is just a power struggle between old media and new media. The general public has no reason to give a shit.
To most people canceling a tv show isn't 'crime' and gawker isn't 'news'
Like how the New York Post’s Twitter account was disabled for about 2 weeks because of a story they ran?
First they came for "Firefly", and I did not speak out -
Because I did not watch "Firefly".
Then they came for "Community", and I did not speak out -
Because I did not watch "Community".
Then they came for "Ted Lasso" - and there was no one left to speak out for "Ted Lasso".(As a side note, this may be funny and witty and all, but there's a term named "Trivialization of Holocaust", you might want to look it up.)
Social media alone proved to the world over how much the press can manipulate a story to the point of outright fraud by major news organizations. Well the news media isn't taking that attack sitting down and finds every opportunity it can to reign in big tech, restricting what can they can say and do directly or facilitate through their services to prevent their customers from doing the same.
This article fails on purpose to acknowledge the Tim Cook only killed the show for his network. Another network can make the show if they want. Now if Apple or Tim Cook were getting in touch with other studios and threatening them that would be a real issue but what we have here is not
That is really fucking funny.
> Apple TV+, which started a year ago, has struggled to find its feet in a climate in which its top creative executives, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, appear to be constantly trying to guess what Mr. Cook and Mr. Cue might like, or might object to.
Pretty much everyone expected Apple to make terrible TV. Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment.
Ted Lasso is stellar. Mythic Quest is great.
Boys State was a great purchase. I haven't watched Earth at Night in Color yet, but it looks really cool and promising.
It's not really worth $5/mo yet. But it came for free with my new iPhone and I've enjoyed the content so far.
Edit: Why on earth would anyone downvote this? Because I liked a few shows on AppleTV? Y'all crazy and make zero sense.
They've, imo, already gone one amazing show in 'Ted Lasso'. The premise doesn't sound like it should work. A comedy based on old American soccer commercials? But somehow it really, really works.
Although check out the special Quarantine episode, #10 I think. That was my favorite.
Episode 5: “A Dark Quiet Death” takes a left turn so bizarre that for 5 minutes I thought my AppleTV had switched to an entirely different show. When I finally realized it was the same show in a different time, place and with different characters I was like OK, that’s it, I gave it enough of a chance, time to stop watching.
But just before I tapped the menu button, Doc and Bean drew me in enough to watch longer, and longer, until I reached the end.
By the end I decided A Dark Quiet Death was one of the best tv episodes I’d ever seen. I wasn’t crying, you were crying! my eyes were just very, very dry and tired, and sad.
And even though the story returns to present day in the very next episode, every episode after A Dark Quiet Death was imbued with a great deal more meaning. And an understanding that making games isn’t just a fun way to make a living. Sometimes it’s an expression of things you really care about, and an attempt to communicate those feelings to others.
Also, it's just gorgeous footage and Ewan McGregor is pretty entertaining.
Ted Lasso was great too.
I just wish Apple would bring back 20-25 episode seasons from the golden age of TV.
That’s when shows became part of your life, rather than a friend that shows up for a couple months every couple years.
Looking forward to Foundation.
I did enjoy it as something to leave playing in the background while doing something else, or to watch when there's nothing else to do.
Recommended if you like: In Bruges, pre-2009 Guy Ritchie, Oceans *.
In any case I recommend it, the premise was enough to get me to sign up.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9qAhXfNAU
If you like The Boys, then you'll also like Utopia.
Amazon does tons of great series like Fleabag, Marvelous Ms Maisel, Expanse, The Boys...
As software is a complement to hardware, that means to sell phones they had to commoditize the software.
Thing is, it worked too well.
Before the app store, software could cost 39.99 and people were fine with it.
But n a very short time the price an app quickly became 99 cents, and then free.
Years later we're seeing the result of all this.
To be paid for software development apps must either sell data or use psychological tricks such as making gaming tedious unless you pay.
Also, The Expanse.
Ted Lasso, Tehran, Mythic Quest, Little America, and Central Park.
I enjoyed the first 4 of those and haven't seen the last.
They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production - but the left hand of marketing doesn't talk with the right hand and you get a lot of disjointed efforts.
If you look at Netflix, for all their downsides, they go big and hard, buy working shows based on data and don't shy away from controversy. They also have way better middle talent which I think makes the difference.
The Executive Producers are like the Board. The show runner, director and sometimes certain talent are like the C-Suite or SVPs. These set the vision, pace, hiring, management, budgeting etc... like in a normal business.
There are then the middle level directors (casting, lighting, sound) editors and line producers who do the lions share of the work and are supposed to interpret the intents of the director and show runners - basically handle all the details and make sure things run smoothly.
Finally the supporting cast, craft services etc...are basically told what to do, how to do it and when.
We have a running comparison of "LA people coming to the Bay Area to do tech because 'How hard can it be?'" and the reverse being true as well, "Bay Area people going to LA to produce television/movies because 'How hard can it be?'"
Reality is complicated, and smart people so often seem to miss that.
I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses, and we get a fair number of calls from smart people who started with the best of intentions and then after a number of hours of struggle decided to seek aid.
I had two roommates try to make a structurally stable stool / box out of lumber. 3 hours later I returned to find both of them pissed off & a "box" without a square corner in sight.
Days later, I offered in a conversation with them how odd it is that dimensional lumber doesn't measure the named dimensions.
They looked at me in shock and said "Maybe that's why nothing was lining up."
That's "X does Y, because how hard can it be?" in a nutshell. But the broader takeaway is to test & validate your own assumptions -- they had a measuring tape the entire time.
> Hollywood's really different than Silicon Valley. And neither understands the other at all. People up here think being creative is some guys in their late 20s and early 30s sitting around old couches drinking beer thinking up jokes. It couldn't be further from the truth. The creative process is just as disciplined as the technical process; it requires just as much talent. And yet people in Hollywood think technology is only as deep as something you buy. There's no technical culture in Hollywood, they couldn't attract and retain good engineers to save their life, because they're second class citizens down there. Just like creative people are second class citizens in Silicon Valley.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,32207-6...
My experience as a geek, on shores very far from Silicon Valley, is that engineers are second-class citizens almost everywhere, but particularly where "creatives" are on top.
Look at any high paying industry/job, apart from FAANG tech or doctors - it's either marketing or sales at the end of the day. I'll go so far as to say that even most doctors in the US are in the sales business.
There are places where engineers' and creatives' opinions are valued and taken into account when making decisions, for instance certain quant funds or Hollywood studios. If you want to not be considered a second-class citizen, so to speak, work in a place where ideally your job isn't just coding or building content, but also convincing others of your own ideas (sales) and building consensus within the organization to back them (marketing).
My foreign friends all pointed at the screen and shouted! Anyone know what that means? Searching for yes no doesn't turn up appropriate results.
Non-tech, typical parents will stick with their vertical rather than be nickeled and dimed by Netflix, and Amazon, and CBS, and...
I’m pretty sure how the 20th Century thought about this stuff is on the way out.
My kids have no clue what any the names on those icons mean. They watch random stuff and don’t cling given the diversity.
I am teaching my kids to make content with modern tools. ML will no doubt take over.
Consider how much textual content we have given the internet. ML will be able to generate video and audio and where we need new ideas, help humans iterate much faster.
The emotional value of any given property will nose dive as it happens. Mario and Solid Snake will be lost to time. Really though, unlike Aristotle, or Galileo, will humanity have lost anything near the overall value?
Pop culture isn’t forever.
Those are more indie titles, they are rather original and different from AAA titles and don't have the refinement of AAA titles when it comes to graphics et al. But they are absolutely not paint-by-numbers
So basically, The Boys where Vought=Amazon & superheros=Amazon divisions.
What, no love for Ted Lasso? (I love that show, but I'm tired of grim gloomy edgy death-philic television. It's a nice change without being Hallmark.)
Later the same plane takes off from Tehran and there is a Southwest airlines jet in the background, like its supposed to be Tehran, not Phoenix. One hardly needs to be an aviation expert to notice these things. How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show?
However, in Servant, there's a continuity error where an Audi is shown without the emblem in one scene and then with it in another scene. This is especially surprising because Servant probably has the best Apple TV+ cinematography.
You must not have seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5v0Y1uM7g
I don't understand this - these are Apple people themselves? I was always under the impression that external production companies were making these TV shows and Apple was just buying the rights. They might (or might not, if you ask Apple) make editorial decisions, but I never expected Apple to have technical talent and input for set design, etc/
None of these were started because Apple thinks they could do better and contribute something, a word Steve Jobs likes to use. They are doing it simply because they needed those Services Revenue. Something to dilute down their near 100% App Store Margin and Google Search Placement.
Apple Music was something they wanted to save iTunes / Music as a Business. And they bought in Jimmy Iovine for that god damn "Next Song" idea.
Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade were part of the grand plan for Apple One. Unlike iCloud, Apple Music and Apple News+, Apple TV and Arcade does not have any per unit cost. iCloud are cost / GB, Music are cost per song played, and News are cost per article read. TV shows and Arcade Games are paid as a whole at a fixed cost regardless of users. This give opportunity for Apple to bundle them at a discount.
One could argue Apple Fitness+ is more like iTunes where it is used to sell more Apple Watch / iPod. And it isn't out yet so I am giving it some benefits of doubt.
For Apple Fitness+, it might sell more watches, but the reason it requires a watch is because the product includes sensors that read useful data during the fitness experience that other devices simply don't have.
Given Tim Cook has stated publicly that what Apple wants to be most known for when looking back on the company is improvements to people's health, I don't think Fitness+ was spun up to sell watches. It was created out of a genuine priority for the company to have a certain impact on the world.
I also don't believe the purpose of Apple TV+ and Arcade was to create Apple One. It seems like they genuinely are trying to come up with a unique service for these two areas. Apple One is just a bundling. They are also responses to growing problems. Apple Arcade is an answer to the growing problem of in app purchases and advertising. They want to create a pure, fun gaming experience that you can put in front of your kids and not worry about it. I think Apple TV+ is more about business deals required to build the Apple TV app itself. You aren't going to have a seat at the table if you aren't serious about buying and delivering content.
Here’s how: imagine a Miramax development executive, circa 1999, bringing in a movie that was about an actress who was molested by an overweight studio executive and then was blacklisted when she spoke up.
That executive would be fired in an instant.
Tim Cook is obviously no Weinstein, and he has the moral high ground here contra Gawker. But the principle is the same: don’t expect The Boss to greenlight a topic they’re sensitive about. This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”.
Classic blaming the messenger.
This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”.
You and I must have read different articles. The one I just read has nothing to do with Silicon Valley's persecution complex. It was about Apple not understanding how to make TV shows.
1) The First Amendment says nothing about which content companies must produce, promote, or allow with their resources and on their platforms.
2) The principle of free speech extends beyond the First Amendment or government censorship: our society has a considerable interest in the open exchange of ideas and information, especially by the least popular among us, so that we may conduct the difficult conversations which are the prerequisite for progress, and possess the freedoms of thought and communication which are the prerequisites for enlightenment.
3) The increasing centralization of control over new media in a handful of large technology companies (mainly Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter) poses an intense threat to the aforementioned open exchange of ideas, especially where such ideas may threaten business interests of those companies, or merely taint them by association with something or someone unpopular.
4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms, the speed with which such disinformation spreads, and the active, asymmetric promotion of that disinformation by certain political actors, poses a paradox of tolerance of a sort, threatening the continuation of the open society on which everything good depends.
These four truths form a tangled knot which must be cut, but to do so, we must first see its whole, and not merely one or two of its threads.
I find it really funny when Twitter is lumped in with the rest of these countries. It is almost like an order or magnitude smaller than all the others, and makes considerably less money.
Twitter is a small niche social network with people who control the news, which vastly overstates it's size.
For complementary reasons, I excluded Microsoft, despite its large size.
I'm sure one could debate the exact composition of that list, but it's not too important to the larger point.
Twitter has political power, therefore it gets included.
How big is the newspaper industry relative to its influence?
Sorry if that was a bit ranty. About the other 3 points, I agree completely.
P.S. Wasn't the paradox of tolerance mostly about violence, not just untrue or undesirable information?
"Less well known [than Plato's paradoxes of freedom and of democracy] is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force…" (The Open Society and Its Enemies, ch. 7, note 4)
What's clear from this quotation is that Popper advocated neither unlimited suppression of all wrongthink (as the gleeful Nazi punchers sometimes misrepresent him, and indeed advocate themselves), nor the opposite extreme of unlimited tolerance of any political speech so long as no violence has yet been employed (as the more libertarian among us sometimes misrepresent him).
And that's the key to how I'd respond to your point about the "general level of ignorance". I think you may be right that the general level of ignorance has not worsened. It is in any case quite difficult to measure such a thing. But the prevalence of misinformation specifically about foundational matters of democratic governance, such as whether one can even trust the elections themselves, being promoted by actors with open disdain for open society, and a clear intent to end it, is the precise sort of situation I believe Popper had in mind with this passage.
I think misinformation is not really that problematic as the truth is valuable to most people and we seek it out all on our own. Its self correcting in an open society.
Note that he specifically says in that passage that he’s not advocating the suppression of all intolerant speech. Thus even if some speech were intolerant, that by itself would be insufficient for suppression.
---
Misinformation is problematic to the extent that it endangers the open society’s very existence, and with it its ability to self-correct.
Many leftist would meet this criteria just as strongly ala "My <x> is not up for debate." or other statements conflating ones existence with ones identity with the same result: No discussion (outside a select, tautological group of gatekeepers) allowed.
There's an obvious slippery slope in these discussions - ultimately it's reducible to who you give the right to vote to, and discomfort about measures to keep the undesirables from rallying ought not to be ignored.
It strikes me that this is why Facebook et al are so eager to censor; otherwise an attempt will be made to destroy them, as they provide a bypass around centralized mass media narrative control.
Narratives are how the world is practically governed. The ability to propagate a narrative to millions of people is a power on par with a standing army.
It has become apparent that the "uncensored mass media" can be controlled through money, ie. politicians steering the narrative on social media using disinformation campaigns. But now they are hidden behind millions of small agents that are so hard to fact check, hold accountable and prove the liason to said politician. With mass media big companies were in this sense vulnerable -- to 3rd parties attacks, to the legal system, to the public.
I'm hardly a fan of big corporations, but in the current state of affairs the common individual is helpless, drowned in a sea of noise à là Brave New World, and for the powerful chaos is indeed a ladder.
That's a gross oversimplification, and there's other issues at play. For instance the lack of trust in traditional media. I don't think the issue is that most people are susceptible to "viral radicalization", and can't tell the difference. Some small minority of people are vulnerable to these things, and can fall victim to it if exposed.
In a large population that winds up being many people, and is a huge issue. See the cult movement of the 60-80s. Most people knew it was a bad idea to go live in the woods with a bunch of free spirits. It's people who are absolutely fed up with reality and so anything that seems to bring back "community" looks attractive. On the commune people dance, sing, and share everything. In cases like Johnstown, it was often racial minorities that were just glad to find somewhere that seemed to treat them as real people (even though they were really props and pawns in a narcissists sick reality). It's so sad.
> 4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms [...]
Are these new points, or are is it just that the gatekeepers are changing? Arguably media is now _less_ centralised than its ever been. Before it was just a handfull of newspapers and tv companies, and now while we still have the same 'tranditional media' companies (who've gone through their own megers, acquisitions, and breakups) there are now all the tech companies as well getting into media, as well as all the independent orgs/voices (who might be beholded to bigger tech platforms, like Youtube)
I think it was easier to maintain an independent voice 15-20 years ago.
Views like "masks might make us safer from COVID" were suppressed not too long ago. It's a wacky place we're in. Some of the criticism out there (COVID denial, election fraud, etc) is dangerous, but legitimate criticism and nuanced points are getting crushed too in the process. And the entities involved in the suppression are powerful, moving in lockstep, and have limited accountability to the public.
Worse, these platforms have the illusion of being grassroots and open, but you never know when you're getting state-sponsored manipulation or what kinds of content isn't permitted to flow through them today.
Are there words missing here? I... don't see this as a viewpoint that is being suppressed at all. Maybe this particular example is more about the people who you follow/listen to?
Now, espousing the opposite views can get your posts and videos removed :P
Not to mention Medium, of course...
Too many people believe Free Speech is SOLELY about government censorship, we have culturally lost a huge amount of respect for the principle of free expression
Instead we look to "cancel" or socially isolate those that do not share our worldview.
There was a time where people could passionately debate politics, or even more personal issues such as abortion, and then still enjoy a game, party, or have a beer at the pub with someone you just passionately disagreed with on another topic. It seems today if persons / groups have an ideological opposition in anything, they must treat their opposition as if they are immoral and completely banish them from their lives
With out this base cultural respect for free expression the 1st amendment will become meaningless and will likely fail to protect from government censorship.
We need to get back to a time where people can passionately disagree on a topic with out being "cancelled", but I honestly do not see how to accomplish that
When was this mythical time? It wasn't too long ago when abortion clinics were being bombed and abortion doctors were gunned down at their homes and places of work. In living memory are periods when anti-war and civil rights protestors were set upon by dogs and firehoses. Gun companies were boycott for cooperating with gun-control measures. There was the whole South Africa divestment movement. PMRC was doing it's best to "cancel" rock & rap, Terry Rakolta was doing her level best to get Married with Children kicked off the network. And let's not forget Robert Bork.
Americans have always been passionate about issues, only the platforms and terminology are new.
Why were they able to have those debates and then go have a beer? I am guessing it was because the stakes were low or abstract and did not have a direct impact on their life (like when you are the mid-20s upper middle-class white male that the OP clearly was during this golden age...) or because they could afford to simply ignore the other side after the debate because there was no risk to their personal position of privilege. What annoys this person is not the conflict, but the possibility that they might face consequences -- consequences are something for 'the other' to deal with and certainly not something that they should ever need to consider.
> they could afford to simply ignore the other side after the debate because there was no risk to their personal position of privilege
What is the alternative - people not being allowed to ignore some side of a debate? This isn't just about stakes/skin in the game; It's also about quality of the debate, and when someone has so much invested in the outcome that they won't allow their position to lose, the quality wrt a free exchange of ideas, isn't likely to happen.
In fact, most versions of this can't be described as a debate at all. "shut up and listen" while being dictated to (without the right of reply) bears no similarities. This perspective is basically: "certain people believe the wrong things, so shouldn't discuss them; they should just be told what to think by the right people, and believe that.". If "wrong-thinkers" now want to debate amongst themselves without correction from self-appointed "right-thinkers", is it any wonder, even if they valued diversity of opinion/perspective?
> consequences are something for 'the other' to deal with
Can you give an example? There is a big difference between, say, the consequences of the topic of a discussion, and the consequences of the discussion itself.
Yes, by a minority, because they where a minority. If the majority disagreed with the clinic, they would simply be illegal and no-one would need to seek extra-legal means of suppression.
Divorcing this discussion from quantitate measures allows for a distorted view based on cherry-picked examples.
That said, there’s a misunderstanding here:
(3) says much, not all, of the power is increasingly centralized, and that that’s concerning in light of (2).
(4) isn’t saying the companies lack power. It’s saying that their platforms are being abused. It’s understood (from (3)) that they can (indeed sometimes do) use their power to attempt to control that abuse.
It's not just that it says nothing about these things. It says the opposite of these things.
Any legal or social norm that attempts to enforce what content is produced, promoted, or allowed on private resources and platforms is fundamentally authoritarian. This includes the "principle of free speech" from your 2nd statement. The first amendment is a protection against authoritarianism. Using the ideas behind it to coerce private parties into hosting or promoting content they don't want to is a bit perverse.
humans are predilected towards that... this type of "media" preys on our insticts like sugar and oil (junk food)
if we really want to take this head-on, we would should be motivated to improve education to help students (who then become adults) to learn logic, reason and argumentation to better deal with this stuff
1: https://gawker.com/5082473/is-apple-coo-tim-cook-gay
2: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Gawker-Peter-Thiel-a...
OTOH, did it help anyone that Rock Hudson was outed? (Maybe?) Did it help anyone that Cook was outed? Probably not.
Just because someone is a minority from a oppressed demographic, doesn't mean they'll be kind and sensitive, in all social matters. Sometimes black people are racist and gay people are assholes.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designed_by_Apple_in_Californi...
I have real problem with Apple's cooperation with China, the total lack of documentation for developers, the faulty keyboards, the locking down of the App Store and total ban on sideloaded apps. I also have a big problem with the security stuff it builds in that can be (and most likely is) used for domestic spying. I want to run Linux on the M1 MacBook Pro. I think Scott Forstall should be brought back into the CEO role to replace Tim Cook. So don't get me wrong, my position is not reflexively pro-Apple or pro-Cook here.
I'm just saying that Gawker is just about the worst possible example to use. Does their point even stand at all without Gawker?
On the illegallity point, that is a job for law enforcement, not corporations to decide.
Cook didn't stop someone else making a show about Gawker, he stopped the company he runs from doing so. Huge difference.
Could’ve made a great, and timely, horrible-warts-n-all show about freedom of speech and those who’d manipulate it, but Cook is not one for such exuberant boldness. Hey, I’m fine with that: last thing I want is a desire to spend any more money on their overpriced tat.
Guess it’s The People vs Larry Flynt for movie night tonight. Now where did I put the DVD…
Yet. We are talking about Apple, which is blocking Microsoft's xCloud and Google's Stadia on iOS on the grounds that Microsoft and Google are not submitting each individual game for review. Both xCloud and Stadia are just glorified video players, where you are streaming video of a game being played in a server room and sending back controls. If streaming video game video can be subject for individual approval on iOS, I don't see streaming TV shows being subject to individual review that far off.
Anyone can sue anyone pretty much, that's what a free country is about.
It's not the government shutting down gawker, it's people who have money to sue them. If you think that's wrong then the government needs to change libel laws, that's easy. Similar to the section 230 issues right now, with enough political pressure you can change things.
But gawker, they were asking for trouble, and got it. There's a reason lawyers recommend you don't do stuff that they did, and have done for decades if not centuries.
As both of these protect you from defamation claims.
Credible media acknowledge their errors. The goal is seeking truth, not achieving perfection.
Zero-tolerance for error is the worst form of censorship.
> Gawker announced that it would not comply with the part of the court order requiring the removal of the post and associated commentary because it deemed the order "risible and contemptuous of centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence." Gawker removed the video itself, but linked readers to another site hosting the video
You can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals, and even the US does in libel and slander laws, as well as e.g. (more recently) revenge porn legislation.
Germany and other does European nations for example have a stronger claim to personal privacy rights of individuals than the US, based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights found that you cannot just publish any picture or piece of information you know but have to weigh the newsworthiness of information against the invasion of privacy such publication would mean.
E.g. paparazzos stalking somebody to a funeral of a family member is usually not newsworthy enough to overcome the personal right to privacy. Writing about somebody being gay would cross a line unless that somebody was/is publicly vocal about "gay matters" such as gay marriage legislation, gay adoption rights etc. Publishing pics of the family, especially kids, of famous people is usually a no go - except when those family members themselves engage in newsworthy activity such as coming a crime.
As it pertains to Gawker, they outed at least two high profile people as gay (Thiel, Cook), published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan and his partner, published nude paparazzo pics of various people including Justin Bieber and a slew of other things, while their sister site jezebel.com wrote pieces rather strongly condemning the publication of hacked nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other in the "fappening". If only Gawker listened to Jezebel...
Frankly, I like the European way, which is certainly not free of dangers, a lot better than the US way. But famous people are people too, and are entitled to at least some privacy.
The issue here, though, is not whether Gawker's behavior should have been protected speech, but whether it's concerning for a documentary about Gawker to be canned by a studio controlled by a large company which had another aspect of its business harmed by the behavior of the subject of that documentary.
Deciding not to continue the documentary is Apple's right to free speech.
If anything you can push for legislators to apply anti monopoly laws to media and have companies split off.
To me, Apple's own streaming offering - which at least for now has sizable competition from giants such as Disney and Netflix and Amazon as well as small producers on youtube and elsewhere - is quite different from "social media" companies with their defacto "marketplaces of ideas" interfering with legal free speech of regular people, which I see with far more concern. It is also quite different to their quasi monopolist walled garden otherwise known as the App Store.
Apple really is just a minor player in the TV space right now, and far more concerning is the Disney/Fox/Hulu behemoth, where we're slowly heading into antitrust territory.
Gawker is like a Rorschach test for how you think about these types of things.
If I remember correctly, when Zoe Quinn boyfriend complained about her behaviour, and accused her of having a relationship with an editor of Kotaku (that is property of Gawker), while her game was being reviewed by Kotaku, the reaction by Kotaku and Gawker at first was deny that it was an issue, leading to the shitstorm on twitter (since people were already pissed with media for other reasons, like Doritogate adn whatnot).
Only after things were already a huge mess, with death threats, trolls, people arrested (a Brazillian guy got arrested for sending death threats as a form of trolling, he had nothing to do with any of the groups involved, just wanted to watch the world burn), that Gawker did something about it. (sadly I don't remember what exactly they did, and do not have time to check now, but was something along the lines admit that editors having conflict of interest is a bad thing)
What left me puzzled for a while is that I automatically assumed the series would portray Gawker in a negative light, given how they operated. For Tim Cook to intervene, the opposite must have been the case, or am I missing something?
That said, seems morally upright compared to typical stories of blackballing in the entertainment industry.
I suppose you aren't an Apple developer.
I am glad I am not the only one. This is the same as Intel pushing out Pat Gelsinger. The product people get pushed out by sales and marketing. Which are increasingly running the show at Apple.
"Now?" When was Hollywood controlled by...small companies?
Apple isn't obligated to be fair in any sense, and we should stop expecting them to be virtuous or protectors of anyone's expectation that they are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Loves_Bernie
Apple isn’t obligated to be fair, but the public very much can expect them to be virtuous...the two aren’t incompatible. As Apple will probably discover as pressures grow about labor practices in China.
I miss the days when Apple wasn't run by cowards.
(It's also interesting that simple nudity now qualifies as "hard-core", a term formerly reserved for pornography.)
[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/09/new-eu-legislatio...
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/audiovisual-me...
Hell, Apple even lobbies against forced labour laws against Uighur slaves.
It was very good in its first season. Then it rapidly lost steam, since the writers had no idea what to do with the amazing characters they brought to life and the moral dilemmas they inevitably ran into.
As a result you had most of the characters just aimlessly wander around looking forlorn.
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_b...
It's a one click action with uBlock Origin in your browser.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...