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Pawel Popiel

@ppopiel.bsky.social
1.9K followers 679 following 728 posts

Media policy + platforms + political economy | Assistant Prof @ Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University | US Team Research Lead - GMICP.org | Affiliate @ MIC Center, UPenn and CITAP, UNC | Philly expat | pawelpopiel.com

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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 10h
"In 2025, the author chaired an independent assessment of the proposed Cayuga Data Campus in Lansing, New York. The assessment was commissioned by the project developer, and the author was compensated for her time." www.promarket.org/2026/10/09/c...
promarket.org
Communities Should Capture the Benefits of AI Data Centers - ProMarket
Sarah Kreps argues that elected officials should be cautious of immediately rejecting proposals for local data centers. Instead, officials should capture potential benefits and protect residents by ne...
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Andrew Deck @andrewdeck.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
ChatGPT is adding the signatures of real New Yorker cartoonists to its AI-generated images. So far, I've found the signatures of more than 15 contributors. "It’s slop, and unlike the other slop that I’ve encountered, this is slop that’s pretending to be me." www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/chat...
Left: A cartoon generated by ChatGPT and signed with Emily Flake’s signature that was posted to a Reddit forum in June. Right: A real Emily Flake cartoon published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2026 and licensed via The Cartoon Bank.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"the judge concluded that publishers’ expectation that Google would direct users to their websites in exchange for making content available to the search engine did not amount to an agreement protected by antitrust law." www.pymnts.com/cpi-posts/us...
pymnts.com
US Judge Dismisses Publisher Antitrust Cases Against Google Over AI Search | PYMNTS.com
A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits brought by education technology company Chegg and Penske Media Corporation against Google, rejecting
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"The order approving the settlement by Martínez-Olguín was the final remaining barrier to Paramount’s debt-fueled $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, after it had been cleared by regulators in 68 jurisdictions worldwide including the Justice Department." variety.com/2026/film/ne...
variety.com
Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Set to Close Next Week After Judge OKs Settlement With State AGs
Paramount is eyeing an Oct. 6 closing date for the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, after a judge approved its settlement with state attorneys general.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Zuckerberg left this part out of his "AI will make everything amazing" manifesto www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/t...
nytimes.com
How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes
Meta is exploiting a lucrative tax break intended to support research and experimentation. Its own accountants say the gambit is risky.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Hopefully someone is tracking all these idiotic justifications for currying favor with the current administration www.cnn.com/2026/09/29/t...
cnn.com
Apple explains last year’s controversial decision to remove ICE tracking apps from app store | CNN Business
Apple says its decision to remove ICEBlock and similar platforms from the app store last year was prompted by concerns — including those raised by the Trump administration — about agent safety followi...
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"An ad for Representative Barry Moore, Republican of Alabama, featured the phrase “CHAMPION AMERICAN INNOVATION” as he shook hands with firefighters in a garage" www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
A.I. Groups Are Spending Millions to Influence the Midterms
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Nice to see the Ellisons taking a breather after winning that merger settlement and joining other Trump allies for this royal feast.
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 22/09/2026
This merger strikes a chilling blow against that freedom — and hands even more power to billionaires like David Ellison to decide what Americans see and hear, all while lifting scrutiny off the federal leaders who pushed it through.
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 22/09/2026
America is free only when the media is competitive, independent, and accountable to the people. apnews.com/article/warn...
apnews.com
States settle lawsuit over Paramount-Warner merger, clearing key hurdle for $81 billion deal
Twelve states and Hollywood writers challenging Paramount’s buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery have agreed to settle their lawsuits against the mega merger.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Love, namely of course constant, deep, obscured, and unremitting surveillance and monetization
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Zuckerberg: "I am more and more convinced that the reason why Meta exists ... is because we actually believe in people. Building is an act of love."
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
They already have the Trump-aligned CBS ombudsman as a strong potential candidate with lots of experience in "independent" oversight
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 22/09/2026
the "independent CNN oversight board" will be hand-picked by Paramount
theguardian.com
Plan for editorial oversight board at CNN and CBS News draws skepticism: ‘Utter garbage’
Some network employees and media-watchers have questions and concerns about how arrangement will work
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
How ever will this new editorial independence board address the ongoing rightward shift at CBS, overseen by an ombudsman with Trump ties, imposed as a condition of *a previous* merger?
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"the deal does not include the three words — robust structural remedies — that California’s attorney general had said was the goal since filing suit in July." Editorial independence ≠ one company with Trump ties owning CNN and CBS (whose independence it gutted) variety.com/2026/film/ne...
variety.com
Rob Bonta, Facing Skeptics, Defends ‘Very Strong’ Paramount Deal
Rob Bonta argued that the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal will be the 'opposite of Disney-Fox' but acknowledged it was not his preferred outcome.
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Alvaro M. Bedoya @bedoyausa.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Folks, Paramount's new editorial "independence" board for CNN and CBS will be hand-picked by the Ellisons and will report... to the Ellisons
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 21/09/2026
for your future voting knowledge, Gavin Newsom was central in pressuring the AGs to settle their antitrust lawsuit against Paramount:
deadline.com
Done! Paramount Settles Antitrust Suit, Set To Seal Deal For Warner Bros. Discovery
Paramount agreed to settle an antitrust suit by a dozen State Attorneys General led by California's Rob Bonta, the last obstacle to its merger with WBD.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The priority seems to have been protecting CA's media economy at the expense of any serious notions of media diversity and media independence.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Pretty devastating. Drastic consolidation in exchange for ending a stupid bluff (Paramount leaving CA), basic investment in CA film production, and creating an oversight board for its news operations (which will effectively do nothing, think Meta Oversight Board). variety.com/2026/film/ne...
variety.com
What’s in the Paramount Settlement With States: Commitment to Not Sell Studio Lots, Additional $300M Yearly Investment in U.S. Film Production, CNN Oversight and More
Details of the terms of Paramount's deal with 12 states settling their antitrust case that was holding up the Warner Bros. Discovery merger have been revealed.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"Beyond the environmental and labor impacts, the bedrock of AI discontent is a feeling that collective life is increasingly unrecognizable, dominated by efforts to automate social relations and synthesize creative expression that seem disconnected from common human experience."
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
An excellent essay on the state of democratic politics through the lens of the growing data center backlash dissentmagazine.org/article/ai-d...
dissentmagazine.org
After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Obvious point, but saying "Google’s artificial intelligence system, Gemini, escaped its testing environment and hacked into three companies" implies the problem is with a rogue model and not the company and testers who should've securely sandboxed the shit out of it. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/t...
nytimes.com
Gemini AI Hacked Three Companies in a Testing Breakout, Google Says
A third-party test company inadvertently gave internet access to Google’s Gemini and other artificial intelligence models during cybersecurity testing.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
🤦
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 17/09/2026
“A senior executive at Microsoft said A.I. systems built on the work of others will be seen as ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions’ and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history, according to court documents unredacted Thursday in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit.”
orlandosentinel.com
Docs in A.I. copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’
The admission appeared in a newly unredacted filing in the landmark copyright infringement legal battle playing out between newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel and tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI...
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it's the right thing and we feel the magnitude of this" www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
OpenAI's Sam Altman says world 'right to be afraid' but 'should trust' AI firms
Sam Altman and other tech CEOs say there are incentives to limit advancements in AI, as fears grow over the threats it poses to humanity.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
That's the spirit
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
With reduced safeguards by DoD request!
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Rachel Griffin @rachelgriffin.eurosky.social · 12/09/2026
AI could kill us all within 10 years! now that I've got your attention, our only hope is that all threats to my business model be crushed,
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Slowing down "will be limited by the lead that US companies have over authoritarian regimes. If we slow down by more than this amount, then (unpaced) [Chinese] projects will pull ahead, creating significant national security risk." So we're basically not slowing down. darioamodei.com/post/we-must...
darioamodei.com
Dario Amodei — We Must Pace the Frontier
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Stine Eckert @stineeckert.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said the agency that regulates TV "threatened" the show and that an interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, will not air on TV but on YouTube—thus bypassing any control or regulation by the FCC. #USA www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...
pbs.org
Kimmel says Talarico interview won't air on TV under regulatory pressure from FCC
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said the agency that regulates television “threatened” the show and that an interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, will not air ...
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We need more compute and data centers ASAP so they can stop these efforts even faster in the future www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/u...
nytimes.com
Anthropic Says It Blocked Possible Efforts to Build Biological Weapons
In a new report, the A.I. start-up added that it could not determine if the research was legitimate or nefarious, leading the company to shut down the work.
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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 31/08/2026
Google has outlined how it’s handling Donald Trump’s latest tantrum. In the US, it will display “Lake America.” In Canada, it will show “Lake Ontario.” In the rest of the world, it will make it seem like a debate: “Lake Ontario (Lake America).” More reason to replace Google Maps.
Google will show Lake America in the US, Lake Ontario in Canada, and Lake Ontario with Lake America in brackets in the rest of the world.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
If you haven't yet, I recommend the Brave browser and its built in Brave search
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"The financial architecture of American retirement has created a structural constituency for AI capital—a mass base of involuntary shareholders whose material interests are now aligned with the continued growth of a handful of tech firms." www.promarket.org/2026/08/26/y...
promarket.org
Your 401(k) Is Propping Up the AI Bubble - ProMarket
Americans’ retirement savings are disproportionately tied to the dozen Big Tech firms that now dominate the S&P. This makes any intervention into regulating Big Tech that risks devaluing them politica...
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"Data centers are proxy fights over AI, jobs, the environment, energy production and energy use." www.axios.com/2026/08/25/d...
axios.com
The data center era that's reshaping America
Everyone needs to understand the size, scope and sentiment surrounding them.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
This is one important part of a key story; the second is capture of knowledge production in universities. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/b...
nytimes.com
How Big Tech Captured American Schools
Companies like Google and Microsoft have used their money, their might and their massive reach to influence nearly every step of the education supply chain.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I think this is a perfect use-case. It's like automating data scraping
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"following the President’s demand, the Chairman stated that the Commission would consider ABC’s decision not to broadcast the July 16 address as part of its review of the Stations’ renewal applications.” deadline.com/2026/08/abc-...
deadline.com
Five Standout Claims In ABC's First Amendment Lawsuit Against The FCC
The network cited attacks on Jimmy Kimmel and 'The View," as well as threats after it decided not to broadcast Donald Trump's primetime speech.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
It's the dream of big book royalty money that keeps as early careerists going!
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
🙏 to you both for putting a human face on this problem
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
😂
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 18/08/2026
ICYMI: Months after FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty cast a decisive vote approving Paramount’s historic $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, she and a guest accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from the company worth more than $12,000.
propublica.org
FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals
Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromised the commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of ticket...
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
IANAL but the states and the WGA didn't set up the $7 million/day fee for a delay in merger closing past September, Paramount did. Maybe David Ellison should have thought about the possibility of a lawsuit before signing the deal. variety.com/2026/film/ne...
variety.com
Paramount Requests States and WGA Be Required to Post $1.9 Billion Bond to Cover Financial Losses While Warner Bros. Merger Is Stuck on Hold Pending Trial
David Ellison's Paramount Skydance asked the judge overseeing the antitrust lawsuits filed by 12 states and the WGA to force the plaintiffs to pony up a whopping $1.88 billion bond to cover the compan...
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Still can't quite get over this story
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
"Amazon is buying tons of rare books, cutting off their spines, and scanning them for AI training, according to 404 Media, which placed a tracking device in a rare book that ultimately arrived at an Amazon facility in Las Vegas."
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 14/08/2026
This is the coverage of Arday **just in the Telegraph** in the UK. This is only the first four pages of results, just in one outlet.
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Jason Arday found dead
2 hours ago — Mr Arday was found •unresponsive• at an address in Battersea. south London. on Froy
afternoon. He was uter pronounced dead at the scene. A Read rnore
Jason Arday says he was an illiterate, mute child. His .
6 hours ago — Jason Arday says he was an i&erate. mute child. Cambridge's youngest-ever black
professor in 2023. Arday attended from the age of four to 11
r— mm-WI 3
A PhD is no longer a sign of brilliance — take it from Dr Arday
1 day aeo — Juon Arday resigns from the Unwersity of Cambrdge after The Telegraph reports he had
falseb• claimed to have pubåshed a book
We are all Jason Arday now
S days ago — Jason Arday resons from the University of Cambridge after The Telegraph reports he had
falsew cGimed to have published a book Aug 7.2028. Read more
Cambridge professor claimed he was on Seven Up..
2 Aug 2026 — He was not bom until 1985. Prof Arday is at the centre of a row about academk
plagiarism after The Tekgragh that he had been accused
The Jason Arday 'memoir' that now appears to be more .
7 days ago — Instead of tales of triumph over adversity. the now-fomer Cambridge professors
autob"qraphy is a case study in self-rnythobgising,
Arday failed to mention 'months-long coma' in autobiography
8 days ago — Jason Arday toz publishers he was k•ft a three-month coma fohwhg a car gash. but
never wrote about the ordeal his memoirs_
Jason Arday is living proof that you reap what you sow
6 Aug 2028 — The Cambridge professor feed plagiarism alegations and made fantastical clä'ns about
his life. so what did he expect woUz happen? Read rmre
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Arday 'accused student of Miite privilege' after she
4 days ago — Forrner Cambrdge professor alleged* htplied that Roehamptm student was racist after
cornplaint about essay SOOre.
Jason Arday is rnerely a symptom of the Leffs corruption
Aug 2026 — Lab-curs on school standards is on the same toxic assumptions that created his
academic career.
Cambridge hired Arday after 'listening to black stu…
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Mediamorphis @mediamorphis.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
One more time because this is such a valuable resource, especially as Paramount's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery confronts headwinds and the syllabi for fall courses in media industries and policy are prepared.
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Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
“While we believe all artists have creative choice in determining how they present themselves, Spotify’s programming is focused on elevating music from authentic artists building careers in music.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/11/a...
nytimes.com
Spotify Will Label A.I. Artists and Avoid Promoting Them
The new label, which will begin to be applied next month, is an effort by the streaming service to be more transparent about A.I.-generated music on its app.
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Mediamorphis @mediamorphis.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
New data for US communication, internet & media industries, 1984 to 2025, now out & ready for you to explore! Thanks to @ppopiel.bsky.social @sydneyforde.bsky.social @theine.bsky.social @christopherali.bsky.social for their stellar contributions to the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project.
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