Tech

Medium announced that Colin Kaepernick is joining its board of directors, the first non-white member of the board. Medium also will partner with the ex-NFL star and civil rights activist to develop anti-racist content for the blogging site. The other members of Medium’s board — which remains all-male — are Medium founder/CEO Ev Williams; Biz

All-new podcasts starring Batman, Wonder Woman — or Bugs Bunny — could be streaming to your headphones soon. In the latest move to punch up its podcast biz, Spotify inked a multiyear pact with Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment to produce and distribute an original slate of narrative scripted podcasts, which will be exclusively licensed

Spotify continues to bulk up its podcast roster, signing a deal with Kim Kardashian West for an exclusive series looking at a case involving criminal-justice reform. A Spotify spokesman confirmed the company’s deal with Kardashian West and TV producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi for the podcast, to be made available exclusively on the Spotify platform. Kardashian

Netflix chairman/CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, are awarding $120 million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities in support of scholarships — the largest single contribution by an individual donor to HBCUs. The couple are donating $40 million each to Spelman College, Morehouse College and the United Negro College Fund. The grants come

Miami-based sales and distribution company FiGa Films launches streaming service FiGa en Casa on June 25 with the world premiere of Argentine medium-length film “Rompiente” by Juan Schnitman whose 2015 debut feature, “The Fire,” was hailed by Variety as a “riveting chamber piece of subtle shifts and evenhanded power struggles…” In “Rompiente,” a director shooting

Quibi, built for mobile-only viewing by an audience envisioned to be phone-toting millennials, now wants to get on more living-room TVs. The company, founded by ex-movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, has been in talks with both Roku and Amazon about building native apps for their connected-TV platforms, Variety has learned. In Amazon’s case, that would be

Google denied a report that it had kicked The Federalist, a right-wing blog, off its advertising network over violations of its policy against derogatory content specifically related to Black Lives Matter protests. On Tuesday, NBC News reported that Google had banned The Federalist from being able to serve or generate revenue from Google Ads. Another

The World Trade Organization has ruled that there is vast evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia has supported pirate broadcaster beoutQ in using encrypted channels to illegally air premium sports and Hollywood content across the Middle East and beyond. The case was brought to the WTO 18 months ago by the government of Qatar.

Disney, looking to gain synergies of scale, created a new Advertising Platforms team merging the company’s advertising technology and product operations — including Hulu’s — into a single team. The Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International Technology group’s new Advertising Platforms team will be led by Jeremy Helfand, previously Hulu’s VP and head of advertising platforms, which

Marc Antoine d’Halluin in December was appointed CEO of leading Middle Eastern free-to-air satellite network MBC Group, which also operates the region’s top SVOD service. Its recently rebranded and reconceived Shahid VIP platform since January has seen its subscriber growth skyrocket. A combination of the coronavirus pandemic, Ramadan, and MBC’s stepped-up efforts to produce high-end

Kimberly Hébert and Ryan Michelle Bathe take over Variety‘s Instagram account Tuesday, June 16 at 12 p.m. PT to discuss the upcoming virtual presentation of the late actor, writer and social activist Beah Richards’ “A Black Woman Speaks.” Richards — who earned an Oscar nod for her performance in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, died

“Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” has a long — and occasionally rocky — history. When its first installment was released in 1999, its smooth controls, impressive physics and classic punk rock and ska-infused soundtrack captured the attention of a generation of burgeoning skateboarding fans and spawned a full-blown video game franchise. But some of the recent

Netflix said it will donate $5 million to organizations dedicated to creating opportunities for Black creators, Black youth and Black-owned businesses, including Ghetto Film School, Black Public Media and Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp. The subscription-video company announced donations of an initial $3 million, with more to come. “Tackling racism and injustice in meaningful

Instagram is “taking a harder look” at how the photo and video sharing app affects different communities, starting with Black users, according to the app’s top executive, Adam Mosseri. In a blog post Monday, Mosseri said Facebook-owned Instagram has been “hearing concern about whether we suppress Black voices and whether our products and policies treat

For the end of Chapter 2 Season 2, “Fortnite” went underwater. “Fortnite” publisher Epic Games marked the end of of its current season with it’s latest in-game spectacle, as a mysterious orb in Midas’ office in HQ was finally put to use. At the end of the countdown, pillars rose from the water and the

Splice has tapped Maria Egan as its chief music officer. She leaves Pulse Music Group, where she was president and head of creative, to take on the newly created position. Egan will have oversight of a new structure for music and industry relations at Splice, the popular platform for rights-cleared sounds and beats, according to

VidCon’s annual Anaheim convention, which had been scheduled to take place this week, was canceled because of COVID-19. In place of the in-person confab, VidCon is launching a weekly programming series — accessible for free — that will include virtual concerts and performances, panel discussions, Q&As, online “meet and greets,” and other interactive events. The

HBO has announced the launch of a digital Pride celebration on its Human By Orientation platform, which will host daily virtual events honoring the LGBTQIA+ community from June 18 to June 28. All of the events on the platform are free, including musical performances from Janelle Monáe, Todrick Hall and Kim Petras. Jackie Gagne, vice

A court in Manila on Monday found Maria Ressa, journalist and editor of online publication Rappler, guilty of cyber libel. She has been a consistent critic of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa and Reynaldo Santos, the journalist who wrote the original article, potentially face a jail term of between six months and six years. They

Facebook fired an engineer who publicly — and vehemently — opposed the social-media giant’s inaction on Donald Trump, over a tweet criticizing a coworker for not cosigning a Black Lives Matter statement. The employee, user-interface engineer Brandon Dail, was terminated over a June 2 tweet in which he challenged a colleague who had refused to

The Chinese government says that it has been the victim of disinformation campaigns on Twitter. It called on the social media platform to delete accounts that have been attacking the country over the coronavirus. The move came a day after Twitter Thursday said that it had removed more than 170,000 accounts (23,750 accounts that were

Verizon signed a three-year sponsorship deal with the LCS, Riot Games’ “League of Legends” pro esports league in North America Under the pact, Verizon becomes the League of Legends Championship Series’ official 5G wireless and network service partner. In addition, the telco said it will work with Riot Games and the LCS to “transform the

“The Dukes of Hazzard,” the ’80s-era TV show featuring the Confederate flag emblazoned on the roof of the title characters’ muscle car, could be leaving Amazon’s IMDb TV free streaming service. Amazon is considering pulling the show’s seven seasons off IMDb TV because of the Confederate flag’s association with the history of racial intolerance and

It’s all water under the bridge, apparently: Chris Cox is coming back to Facebook as chief product officer, after his sudden departure in March 2019 over an apparent dispute with his boss, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, over strategy. Cox, in announcing his return to Facebook in a post Thursday on the social network, said “it’s a

YouTube has removed multiple videos whose creators said they were donating ad revenue to Black Lives Matter and other racial-justice causes — but who were trying to game the system. In a recent trend, creators have been offering to donate the AdSense revenue earned from their YouTube videos as a way to raise funds for

Sony Interactive’s been tight-lipped about the PlayStation 5, but finally released the first details of the new console during a live-stream on Thursday. Announced at the top of the live-stream, among the first titles for the PS5 will be another installment in the beloved “Spider-Man” series, this time focusing on Miles Morales. Officially titled “Spider-Man:

Burnie Burns has flown the Rooster Teeth coop — and is leaving the United States. Burns, who 17 years ago co-founded Rooster Teeth and served as its longtime creative director, announced his departure from WarnerMedia-owned RT on Thursday in a tweet, linking to a new website, burnie.com. “[A]s I set out on this new journey

YouTube announced a multiyear, $100 million fund dedicated to “amplifying and developing the voices of Black creators and artists and their stories,” according to CEO Susan Wojcicki. “At YouTube, we believe Black lives matter and we all need to do more to dismantle systemic racism,” Wojcicki wrote in a blog post. “We’re committed to doing

Snap took the lid off a number of new products and partnerships for its flagship Snapchat app, alongside new content and originals announcements, at the 2020 Snap Partner Summit. The new tools and partners run across the Snap Kit, Snap Games and Bitmoji ecosystems, and include new Snapchat Camera and augmented-reality features. Snap also introduced

Snap is bringing more content to Snapchat users, with a slew of renewals with media partners as well as a slate of more than a dozen new originals and returning short-form shows. The company announced that it has reached multiyear deals with Disney, ESPN, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, the NBA and the NFL to expand content they