Tech

The Onion mercilessly lampooned the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary tilt following Friday’s historic decision to nullify Roe v. Wade. The satirical outlet’s eight top stories Friday on the homepage were simply headlines — over the same photo of the current Supreme Court justices — that alluded to the court’s 5-4 vote to overturn Roe v.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision Friday overturning Roe v. Wade, which eliminates the constitutional right to abortion, Google has notified American employees that it will allow them to relocate to another state — no questions asked. In a memo Friday (via CNBC), Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, reiterated that the internet

Studio71 has dramatically stepped up Facebook video distribution efforts — with the digital content studio and network claiming its efforts have already produced more than 1 billion views on the platform. In addition, the company announced that it has signed several top creators to its roster, including Whitney Port; Epic Meal Time, the cooking show

Netflix has made no secret that it would rely on third-party partners to roll into the ad-supported VOD space. Now word has emerged that Google and NBCUniversal are the top contenders to potentially land a coveted deal with the streamer to sell and serve ads for Netflix’s lower-cost plan with ads. Google and Comcast’s NBCU

Khaby Lame is now the official king of TikTok. The short-form comedy video virtuoso now has 142.8 million followers on TikTok, which puts him above previous top TikTok creator Charli D’Amelio (who currently has 142.3 million). Lame was born in Senegal and his family moved when he was a 1-year-old to Chivasso, Italy. He launched

To get a sense of Pocket.watch’s rapid rise, look no further than the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The start-up was launched by founder and CEO Chris M. Williams in March 2017 with a mere $6 million in Series A funding and the bold goal of taking digital kids and family content creators and turning them

“Hey Alexa, what’s another word for ‘creepy’?” In a demo that has drawn comparisons to dystopian series “Black Mirror,” Amazon revealed that it has developed a way for its Alexa voice assistant to replicate the speech of a dead relative — based on less than a minute of recorded audio of the original person. The

Next week, Disney+ will release its second annual variety special for Pride Month — featuring a parade of talent celebrating the LGBT community “through song and storytelling.” But “Say It With Pride: Disney+ Celebrates Pride 365” won’t be available on Disney+ itself. Rather, the special will premiere June 30 at 8 p.m. ET on Disney+’s

Chrissy Teigen will be donning her judge’s robes once again for Season 3 of “Chrissy’s Court,” returning exclusively to the Roku Channel this fall. Roku’s greenlight for a third run of the courtroom series, patterned after daytime TV fare like “Judge Judy” and “The People’s Court,” comes after Season 2 scored as the most-watched unscripted

MasterClass, the celebrity-driven online learning subscription service with big-name Hollywood talent partners, has cut its headcount by 20%. CEO David Rogier cited “the worsening macroeconomic environment” for the cutbacks. The layoffs by San Francisco-based MasterClass, which previously had about 600 employees, affected all the company’s teams. “Today is a sad day @masterclass,” Rogier tweeted Wednesday.

Good news for verbose Twitter users: The social network is testing out a new feature that will let people go over the 280-character limit in a single piece of content. With the new feature, called Notes, users can include text — up to 2,500 words — as well as photos, videos and GIFs in posts

Emma Chamberlain stans, rejoice: The popular YouTube creator has shared her first video on the platform after a six-month break. The 18-minute video uploaded Wednesday, titled “what’s good in new york,” was captioned simply, “happy to be back.” It’s a kind of travelogue with the West Coast native roaming about New York City, interviewing people

The “Batman Unburied” story will continue. Spotify, Warner Bros. and DC announced the Season 2 renewal of the hit series. Season 1 of “Batman Unburied” starred Winston Duke and Hasan Minhaj as Bruce Wayne/Batman and The Riddler, respectively; for now, it’s unconfirmed whether they will reprise those roles. “Batman Unburied” premiered globally on May 3

Pornhub, the massive pornography site owned and operated by MindGeek, has laid off an unknown number of staffers, according to social media posts. A rep for MindGeek declined to specify the number of employees who have been pink-slipped. The layoffs at MindGeek came as the company said CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned

Kate Mara will topline “Necropolis,” a scripted supernatural thriller podcast series from sci-fi and fantasy podcast studio Echoverse. Mara (“A Teacher,” “The Martian,” “House of Cards”) also will executive produce the audio drama, alongside Project X Entertainment’s James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, Paul Neinstein and Nicole Tossou. “Necropolis” is adapted by Brian Miller (“Apollo 18”) from

In today’s podcast news roundup, Will Ferrell joins with Las Culturistas’ Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers for a series showcasing up-and-coming comedy talent; Apple TV+ digs into the notorious case of the Unabomber; iHeartMedia premieres a show about NFTs hosted by… three NFT characters; and more. DATES iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network

Rising Egyptian star Amir El-Masry (“Limbo”) has been cast as the young Egyptian billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed, the former Harrods owner, in the upcoming fifth season of Netflix’s “The Crown,” Variety can reveal. Netflix confirmed the casting but declined to provide further details. As previously reported by Variety, Salim Daw (“Oslo”) has been cast as the

President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are going into business with Audible, the Amazon-owned audio storytelling platform. Audible set an exclusive, multiyear and global first-look production deal with Higher Ground, the Obamas’ media company, covering multiple audio projects. The slate of Higher Ground’s shows for Audible “will reflect the companies’ shared mission to tell meaningful

MindGeek, the internet company best known for operating Pornhub, said that CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have resigned. In a statement to Variety, a company representative said, “Antoon and Tassillo leave MindGeek’s day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company. With the company strategically positioned for long-term growth,

Elon Musk said three issues still need to be resolved before his planned $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, originally announced in April, can close. Musk, speaking via teleconference Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum, said that he still hasn’t gotten clarity about Twitter’s claim that the fake and spam accounts comprise less than 5% of

Lake Bell first explored the power of voice in her award-winning 2013 film about the voiceover industry, “In a World…,” which she wrote, directed and starred in. Now, nearly 10 years later, the actor-writer-director-producer further unpacks the fixation in “Inside Voice: My Obsession With How We Sound,” an audiobook set to be published by Malcom

“Game of Thrones” iced out the Twitter competition on Variety’s Trending TV chart for the week of June 13 to 19, climbing to first place with more than 253,000 engagements on the social media platform. The HBO fantasy drama, which wrapped its monumental, eight-season run back in 2019, surprisingly returned to the conversation not for

Subscription streaming video is cooling down from torrid growth rates seen in 2020 and ’21 — fueled by pandemic lockdowns — but is still experiencing healthy expansion in the U.S., one of the segment’s most mature markets. In 2022, SVOD services in the United States will generate revenue of $25.32 billion, up 13% from last

The original “Squid Game” trailer took the green light all the way to a spot on YouTube’s top 10 ads leaderboard for the last 12 months. Coming in at No. 5 on the YouTube global ad ranking, Netflix’s “Squid Game” Season 1 trailer, released Sept. 1, 2021, has nearly 50 million views to date. Among

Tribeca Enterprises will launch Tribeca Audio, a new podcast network dedicated to curating audio content year-round, this July. Jane Rosenthal made the announcement at the Tribeca Festival on Saturday during a special presentation of the upcoming Radiotopia podcast “My Mother Made Me.” Tribeca Audio will launch its flagship series, and Tribeca Enterprises’ first podcast, July

“T-commerce” — letting consumers purchase stuff they see on TV using a remote control — has been around for decades. But it’s never really taken off. Now Roku, in an exclusive deal with Walmart, thinks it has a shot at cracking the code on making connected TVs a significant ecommerce shopping destination. Roku will sell

Amid Elon Musk’s pending $44 billion takeover of Twitter — which still isn’t guaranteed — the mega-billionaire fielded questions from the social network’s staffers Thursday. A top-of-mind question for Twitter employees: Will there be layoffs if he completes the deal? Musk said there needs to be a “rationalization of headcount,” per Reuters. The company “needs

Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac will headline Spotify’s newest scripted original podcast, “Case 63,” set to launch later in 2022. Both Moore and Isaac also serve as executive producers on the podcast. “Case 63” follows psychiatrist Eliza Knight (Moore), who records the sessions of an enigmatic patient, registered as Case 63 (Isaac), who claims to

Rome’s innovative MIA Market dedicated to international TV series, feature films, documentaries and more has now added a section specifically for animation series, stand-alone specials and feature films. The eighth edition of MIA to be held in Rome Oct. 11-15 will feature a boosted co-prods market and pitching forum featuring a brand new animation strand that

Spotify announced that it has closed the deal to buy audiobook distributor Findaway, touting the potential to expand beyond music and podcasts into the “substantial market opportunity” for audiobooks. The audio streamer has not disclosed the financial terms of the Findaway deal, announced in November. Originally, Spotify had expected the acquisition, which was pending regulatory