Are Meta and X walking publishers to their deaths?

While pictures are lovely, the change means that unless users write their own captivating and informative headlines, there’s a chance that news will get lost on the social platform most closely associated with news. From its earliest days, Twitter distinguished itself from other social media platforms because of its strengths as a modern-day newswire and its reputation as a public chat room for journalists.

Up north, Meta is blocking news articles on Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada after the country passed a law allowing news organizations to negotiate payments for content shared on their platforms. This is happening against the backdrop of significant wildfire activity, inspiring ire from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said: “It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organizations can get up-to-date information to Canadians,” at a Monday news conference.

These things—hed-less images floating on Twitter and Canadian Instagram feeds filled with bikini models, focaccia art, and other banalities while the country burns—would’ve been inconceivable a few years earlier. In 2014, Meta (then-called Facebook) went on a “listening tour” of publishers and proposed that it share advertising revenue with publishers to incentivize media companies to post links to the Facebook mobile app. “Facebook is a bit like that big dog galloping toward you in the park,” wrote legendary New York Times journalist David Carr in 2014. “More often than not, it’s hard to tell whether he wants to play with you or eat you.” 

When I worked at New York Times in audience marketing less than two years after Carr penned that column, it certainly seemed like the Facebook pooch wanted to play—even snuggle—with our Times Square-based crew. 

I was a lowly analyst on the team responsible for spending money on social media to convert regular Times readers to subscribers. But in my year-ish on the team, Meta and Twitter acted as our lap dogs. Not only did we have weekly calls with both platforms where they incentivized us to use new features and attempted to solve our problems, they wined and dined us. Meta hosted my team in a suite for an Ariana Grande concert at Madison Square Garden. Twitter rented the tip of floating waterfront restaurant the Frying Pan for us to eat cheese and drink wine with views of the Hudson and talk Twitter video.

Now, of course, I’ve switched to the other side of the media where my professional platform interactions occur through tense on-background phone calls. I have no idea how the relationship between the Times’ audience marketing team and the social platforms has evolved over the years. Still, as Meta moved from courting publishers with ad revenue sharing to countrywide news bans and X overhauls the article format, it’s safe to say the publisher-platform relationships have soured over the years. 

And indeed, as Politico noted on Tuesday, Musk’s move to scrap headlines comes as European regulators are trying to make social media platforms compensate news publishers for using snippets of their content. Removing headlines and other text from tweets could give X a clever way to sidestep news publishers’ copyright claims.

As Carr wrote in that 2015 column, “Everyone knows that if the dog is big enough, he can lick you to death.”

Here’s what else is going on in tech today.

Alexandra Sternlicht

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NEWSWORTHY

Chronological Instagram and Facebook feeds in Europe. To comply with the European Union’s sweeping Digital Services Act, which mandates that tech giants allow users to opt out of personalized recommendations, Meta is launching its naked version of the feed on Instagram and Facebook.

Microsoft’s new twist on Activision deal. In a bid to appease U.K. Regulators, Microsoft says it will offer Activision Blizzard’s cloud gaming rights to competitor Ubisoft. Microsoft hopes this will make its planned $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision less scary to British antitrust regulators who had previously objected to the deal.

Arm IPO. Softbank-owned chip designer Arm filed plans for a U.S. IPO on Monday. Chips based on Arm technology are everywhere—from smartphones to televisions and cars. Softbank recently valued Arm at $64 billion when it acquired the British-born company from its Vision Fund investment vehicle, though the filing does not indicate the amount of money Arm hopes to raise in the IPO, or the proposed valuation it hopes to get from Wall Street.

ON OUR FEED

“According to the hearing today, Sam Bankman-Fried is subsisting on a diet of bread and water (and no Adderall) at the Metropolitan Detention Center."

—Coins2Day reporter Leo Schwartz, in a tweet about the FTX/SBF legal proceedings he's been covering. It’s another hilariously tragic detail in the hilariously tragic downfall of the former crypto kingpin. 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Exclusive: 79% of seed funding for diverse founders goes to white women, BBG Ventures report finds, by Emma Hinchliffe and Joseph Abrams 

Binance claims it adheres to Western sanctions in Russia. At least 5 blacklisted lenders are still processing payments for the exchange, by Ben Weiss

GM’s Cruise agrees to immediately take half its robotaxis off San Francisco’s streets after crash with firetruck sends passenger to hospital, by Christiaan Hetzner

The voice actor behind Nintendo’s Mario is retiring, by Chris Morris

The most powerful seed stage climate tech VCs, by Lee Clifford

BEFORE YOU GO

Checking out of Airbnb NYC. The dream of New York City rentership continues to dwindle as the deadline to comply with the city’s new laws around short-term rentals approaches. Going into effect Sept. 5, the restrictive new laws require hosts to register their units with the city, prevent hosts from renting out entire homes or apartments (even if they own), and mandate hosts be present during guest stays. As a result, thousands of NYC Airbnb listings are vanishing, reports the Wall Street Journal. 

This follows Airbnb crackdown in other major cities like Miami, Santa Monica, and Paris. We’ll keep watching to see whether other major urban markets follow suit, which would create a big challenge for the $81 billion (market cap) juggernaut.