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Racists and Taliban supporters have flocked to Twitter’s new audio service after executives ignored warnings — www.washingtonpost.com

Esther cited this in her predictions for 2022, under the banner of regulation of live audio spaces. Live audio - from Twitter Spaces to that on Clubhouse - is a boom industry with plenty of interest and investment. The ease of use of joining or creating a live audio space, enabled by tech and habit formation over the pandemic, has effectively created a new mainstream medium.

But innovation has outpaced moderation here. As the above article notes - despite being warned ahead of time - there is a problem with Twitter's foray into owning he live audio space. The chief unintended consequence? It's effectively providing a safe space for the worst sort of people:

"Fast forward six months and those problems have become reality. Taliban supporters, white nationalists, and anti-vaccine activists sowing coronavirus misinformation have hosted live audio broadcasts on Spaces that hundreds of people have tuned in to, according to researchers, users and screenshots viewed by The Washington Post."

Media companies riding the eCommerce wave seek to consolidate their successes — voices.media

Last year supercharged eCommerce, with lockdowns ensuring that both the total number of online shoppers and frequency of purchases increased fivefold. So which publishers are taking advantage of that? Chris Sutcliffe rounds up the key eCommerce moments of the year as part of our Media Moments 2021 report.

European regulation of online disinformation may be a “game changer” in 2022 — www.cjr.org

There's any number of reasons to be worried about regulation of online information (and disinformation). First and foremost - who's doing the regulation, and on behalf of whom? This article from CJR makes a good go at explaining why examples of regulation in Europe have a decent chance of being misused.

Blunder prevents early BuzzFeed employees from selling their shares — www.axios.com

We spoke about this in a cut section from this week's podcast - after BuzzFeed went public some early employees who had been kept on side with share options ended up losing out. More importantly Jonah Peretti finally said what I've expected to hear for years - that he's unwilling to accept a news organisation that loses money. It's been a long time coming, but without a plan to make BuzzFeed News profitable, the writing is on the wall.

This week's podcast:

The Big Issue UK Editor Paul McNamee on making every aspect of the magazine necessary — voices.media

This week UK Editor of The Big Issue Paul McNamee tells us about the Big Issue’s Breakthrough scheme, paying disadvantaged young people to get into journalism. He also talks about why the magazine needed a redesign to make everything important and necessary, working with designer Matt Willey, their relationship with subscribers, digital-first news and balancing campaigning with making a properly entertaining magazine.

Only another a week to get your podcast entries in! — voices.media

We've extended the entry deadline for the Publisher Podcast Awards to December 17th. But that's only five days away so make sure getting your entries submitted is top of your to-do list next week. If you've not got a podcast yourself, please do make sure industry friends and colleagues are aware - we love celebrating brilliant publisher podcasts.