Friday 8th January: Twitter and Facebook finally blocked Trump

January 08, 2021

What a week! Can you believe 2021 is only eight days old? This Friday roundup is brought to you by Peter.

There's really only one story to lead on at the moment - the attack on American Democracy. But as we seem to be saying say a lot recently, we're not really set up to comment on breaking news. Suffice to say we, like you, are watching on in sadness and hoping desperately that this is an aberration.

What may help the situation is the 'better-late-than-never' action taken by the leading social media platforms to finally suppress Trump's inflammatory pronouncements. With events were still unfolding, both Twitter and Facebook locked the outgoing President's accounts and deleted posts claiming election fraud and calling the mob 'Patriots'.

As the dust cleared yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg went a step further and announced that he would be banning Trump from Facebook and Instagram for the remainder of his Presidency, possibly forever. He said the risk of allowing the Insurrectionist in Chief to continue using the platforms for the remainder of his Presidency are 'simply too great'.

Now probably isn't the time to start unpacking the Zuck's motivations, although I'm sure a full and frank debate is coming. Instead I'll just share the thoughts of Anand Giridharadas on Twitter.

I want to congratulate Mark Zuckerberg from the bottom of my heart for bravely shutting down for the final two weeks what he has stoked and enabled and profited from for the last 206 weeks. Philanthropic!

This retweet absolutely represents an endorsement.

Off the back of Adweek buying Social Media Week, Media Nut Josh Sternberg take a quick run through a few recent B2B acquisitions. He's making the point that niche verticals catering to a specific audience are better at monetising those audiences than consumer media relying on ads or more recently subscriptions. He's also warning that VC backed media acquisitions haven't always proven to be sustainable.

The Wall Street Journal has been looking at community building among its female readers in the context of the pandemic. Building on the annual 'Woman in the Workplace' forum they've launched newsletters and monthly virtual events. The key innovation, however, has been the engagement sparked through conversations taking place on an exclusive Slack group.

Meredith has sold Travel + Leisure to a Florida based timeshare company looking to enhance its travel club relationships. In the $100 million deal, Wyndham Destinations will acquire the former Time Inc. title, but Meredith will continue to operate the media properties under a long term-licensing deal.

From Media Voices:

Our podcast returns on Monday 11th January, but in the meantime, why not relive the twists and turns of 2020's media journey in our report? It's packed with case studies, and explorations of what this year could hold for publishers as well.