Greetings X,
would like to address the false claim that we "cropped out attribution" from a Spaceflight Now video by removing their logo, replacing it with our own, and reuploading it to X. We did not.
We have since contacted the original clip's owner and submitted a formal appeal to X.
We have taken some time to think about our response to this incident and or misunderstanding, which has led to our removal from X's Creator Program.
After almost 18 years on the platform, the purpose of content, and that of many fellow X news aggregators, is to spend our time curating and summarizing current news events so that you, our followers, don't have to. Our goal is to help people quickly stay informed without having to spend the over 12 hours per day 7 days a week that we do to stay updated on news events. Our work is a continuous curation process across long news cycles, involves extended monitoring of live events, broadcasts, reviewing numerous sources and publishers to extract and verify the most relevant information for our followers. Our work also extends beyond X, it is multi-platform, including YouTube and TikTok, where we've produced short documentaries and short-form content, as well as a dedicated news website where we host additional summarized news content in article form.
For this specific incident, we did not crop or remove anything. Most importantly, our team member obtained the footage off-platform, from what they believed to be a public broadcast YouTube livestream that contained no watermarking, graphics, or logos. Had the livestream contained watermarking, graphics or logos of any nature, we would’ve included these as our track record illustrates. Additionally, if we had seen the original creator’s post on X we would’ve used the true creator’s video rather than clipping and posting ourselves.
We would like to note here that the logomark on video clips is used only for internal tracking across distribution channels. It is applied in OBS capture at low opacity (about 7%) and is deliberately unobtrusive, hence its small size of just 65 pixels. In darker footage, it may appear more visible simply due to contrast with the background. It does not include an @ handle, promotional messaging, or any other elements one would expect if the intent were advertising, follower acquisition, or claiming ownership of the content.
There is no historical precedent of intentionally removing watermarks and reuploading content. In fact, we routinely preserve third party logos, watermarks, and attribution when they are present in source material as a matter of policy; explicitly providing clear sourcing. The same applies to text-based reporting with headlines and excerpts from current events generally attributed explicitly to the original source. We note here that many X users have downloaded and reused our content in their own posts, which has never been an issue for us. Keeping people informed about world events has always taken priority.
We believe the Creator Program has been a positive development for X. It enabled us to provide members of our team with better hardware and software, inspiring us to reconsider relaunching and developing new, more original forms of content for the platform behind the scenes. But, we also note that for more than 15 of the 18 years we have spent on this platform, we were not monetized, nor did we ever take any sponsorship, enabling editorial freedom.
That being said, one person being able to demonetize accounts arbitrarily, without warning or due process and under an immediate presumption of guilt, reminds one of the old Twitter days, when lunatics reigned over the platform enforcing rules that nobody asked for, where non-compliance led to account deletion at any time, with no clear path to appeal. Our small team was disappointed as we really thought that X had grown up and become a more professional platform.
Human aggregators, especially human news aggregators, were always and are part of X's core, just as human creators and human consumers are. They provide valuable signal amid all the noise.
—
Show more
And the goalposts have moved.
He WAS doxxed, but he DESERVED it because he said something antisemitic privately to Gabe.
It's idiot takes like this that cause me to believe social media, and "for-click" social media "etiquette" has ruined the way people think and how they go about dealing with conflict.
I was on Venise Beach and saw a cracked out hooker screaming the N word at a group of rappers performing on the street.
I could have posted it to the internet. Ruined the woman's life (even more than it seemed to have been ruined). Gotten those juicy clicks at the expense of humanity. Virtue-signaled how offensive it was and how not racist I was.
I didn't.
Because this is not how people should treat other people.
And if your goal were to prove to Austin why he was wrong... well congrats.
If he wasn't antisemitic before, he sure as hell is now.
but it sure felt good in the moment, amirite?
Show more
Fox News ran at least *six* segments yesterday attacking 19-year-old college student Austin Franco over a private email he sent saying he's "not interested in working for a Jew."
America's Newsroom interviewed the doxer—Gabriel Z. Einhorn—then it was covered by The Faulkner Focus, Outnumbered, America Reports, The Story with Martha MacCallum, and Fox News @ Night.
Fox hosts not only said they want Franco's life to be "ruined" as documented below, but also repeatedly suggested that other prospective employers should keep him from getting a job.
They also falsely claimed Einhorn did not intend to dox Franco, yet Einhorn's very first post included Franco's dox and is still up if you look at the post's edit history.
Show more