Just the Facts – Or Not
| Just The Facts – Or Not |
| This week a few announcements were made in tech regarding the elimination of fact checkers, and now it’s even more challenging staying on the RightSideofRelevance™: – Google notified the European Union that, “never mind,” it won’t voluntarily institute fact checking organizations into search and YouTube. Google had previously made commitments to fact checking in advance of the European Union instituting the Digital Services Act. Google’s position, according to The Verge, “(it) simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services.” – Also this week, Meta made an announcement regarding “Community Notes,” its crowdsource fact-checking tool. The tool will allow users to crowdsource annotations on posts they believe are false or deserve context. Community Notes is meant to replace the former fact-checker organizations Meta had hired. Community Notes will not apply to paid placements. Still unclear is how Community Notes will apply to brand and influencer organic posts |
Netflix Doubles Growth Estimates
| Driven largely by its ad supported plan, Netflix’ reported subscriber growth of nearly 19 million in Q4 2024 – 55% of that was from the lower-tier, ad-supported plan. An incremental nineteen million subscribers is nearly double analysts’ expectations. In fact, analysts had Netflix pegged for a growth of 20 million for the entirety of 2024. In reality, Netflix doubled that number too, earning 40 million new global subscribers last year. |
Here’s A Number For You
$150 billion – that is how much worldwide consumers spent on in-app purchases in 2024. That’s a 12.5% YOY increase in revenue, reflecting a 9.2% increase in the number of apps utilized. The US was #1 with $52 billion in consumer spend.