Capitalism: making movies that people watch instead of making woke statements
Angel Studios surged to become one of the top 10 U.S. domestic box office studios in 2023, surpassing giants like Amazon’s MGM and A24. They are now inviting anyone with at least $151.20 to invest and earn a portion of future ticket-sale income.
The Rise of the People’s Studio
Angel is the studio behind the mega-hit “SOUND OF FREEDOM”, which earned $250 million at the box office and proved there’s a market for films beyond Marvel/Star Wars spin-offs and Oscars-approved storylines. The “Guild” — comprised of members from over 150 countries — and its democratic approval process are the sole determinants of which movies/shows receive funding for production.
In other words, being anti-woke is the new cool so we’re getting off the uncool bangwagon and now jumping onto the new one (publicly announcing being against DEI).
I wish these decisions were more grounded in data (pointing to what’s most beneficial for your bottom line) rather than what they think will be better PR. At least I’d respect much more companies that stated that they tried DEI policies and after seeing them fail to produce results, they were ending these initiatives, just like you take your losses and terminate any other project that did not pan out.
“reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired”
DEI policy is not adopted to improve the business’ bottom line, but to make a social statement. Sure sometimes the business will say that a “diverse workforce” is more productive, but there’s never any proof of this. Especially when their definition of diversity is different skin colors or sexual orientation.
I thought the DEI policies stemmed from initial research showing business advantages to do so. IIRC - cannot find the initial paper- they looked at the composition of the leadership teams between similar businesses, assigned DEI scores to them based on number of women and minorities, and noticed the ones with higher scores were more successful.
Now I think I remember that recently the methodology of that initial research was found questionable. But that is not the principal argument used by companies lately to explain why they’re dropping their DEI policies.
Yes, that was just political propaganda - the data it was bad. Here is the follow up discussion I posted previously that showed it was worthless, pretty much like you to expect from any sensible thinking. We discussed it back here -
I guess that may have had a positive impact on business (or lack of negative one).
But then, what prompted the change to anti-DEI though. Wouldn’t they be back on that same hit list? Or they figured there is a competing positive impact being anti-woke now? If they experienced no tangible benefits after implementing DEI policies, why not state as much for reason to scrap these DEI policies instead of invoking vague business environment reasons like “external landscape” BS?
To me, the recent announcements sound mirror opposites to the ones when they implemented DEI policies. More specifically, not actually data driven but based on the flavor of the month bangwagon. That sounds like weak governance to me.
That being said, not all companies are rolling back DEI policies even when these cut them off some talented hires. Some like mine are doubling down despite lack of evidence of benefits over the last few years. Not that I care about the success of my employer but still, I find it a perplexing way to run a business.
Good recap of all the anti-free speech policies getting rolled out by governments. Telegram CEO, our ally against Putin by helping his political opposition, now arrested by France for not putting back doors and censorship in his social media app. Brazil enacting huge fines for using a VPN, etc.
It seems to me that the distribution/monetization of children sexual abuse images is pretty universally illegal. I don’t have much sympathy for BS excuses for allowing this type of content to flourish personally.
We have an exception for it in Section 230. It was - thankfully IMO - amended under President Trump in 2018 to require publishers to remove sex trafficking content and allowed publishers to be sued for civil or criminal offenses related to this type of crime. So it sounds to me like the Telegram CEO arrest is very much in line with this line of thought, especially since Europe has much weaker safe harbor laws for criminal activity for social media publishers.
The VPN ban in Brazil though, that’s more concerning to me. Even though Musk invited it with his needless personal feud with a Brazilian Supreme Court judge (especially after allowing similar requests from the Indian government before), that doesn’t make their ban of X, or use of VPN to access it, feel less authoritarian. You could see it coming though from the constitutional change in 2022 giving this much power over information to a single supreme court judge. IMO that was just prone to being abused without enough scrutiny. The aftermath of the insurrection of Jan 8th 2023 also helped push things in that direction, maybe faster than it would have otherwise.
Sure, and I’m sure there are groups trading that stuff on Facebook and Twitter and wherever else, but Zuckerberg isn’t thrown in jail.
In a statement posted to its platform, Telegram said it abides by EU laws and its content moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.”
I’m sure Zuck’s freedom that has nothing to do with his doing the regime’s bidding for censoring politically inconvenient things like Hunter’s laptop, any Covid policies that might be bad for Pfizer’s bottom line, and suppressing anyone questioning election results / voting integrity.
Meanwhile, Durov wasn’t willing to do those things and so he’s in jail - “think of the children” is always an excuse to take away more freedoms or rights. He said in one interview that the FBI was always trying to talk to him about “cooperating” and tried to hire one of his engineers for technical details on how to compromise their systems when they visited the US in the past before he decided that the US, like Russia, was unsafe for someone broadly committed to free speech.
Governmental agencies also caused strife. Russian police were, at one point, believed to be pressuring mobile operators to intercept Telegram messages. At the same time, Durov claims the FBI tried to bribe him and his developers to introduce a backdoor. As he tells it, the US intelligence officials offered one of Telegram’s engineers “on the order of tens of thousands of dollars,” hardly an enticing proposal given Durov’s claimthat the app’s developers were all millionaires. Russian authorities reportedly made similar requests without luck.
And like a half dozen other iconic brands before them, the trans-border Molson-Coors quickly backed down on divisive DEI policies rejected by what was formerly America’s best-selling beer brand.
I think it may have more to do with two things: Section 230 which provides stronger immunity from prosecution that laws in Europe, and differences in the level of cooperation with authorities of Telegram and Meta. Cult-hero style flipping the bird to the various governments you have to work with seems to be worse than token lip service. At least it worked for Meta and Tencent.
Whatever the case may be, we’ll see how this will help Telegram repay its $2B bonds. The track record for monetization of messaging apps isn’t exactly stellar. Maybe it can offer anonymous third party payment services to capture a cut of the drug and child abuse image trafficking it enables.
If by cooperation, you mean making “official” opinions put in front of everyone, and opposition views practically invisible, I agree that’s the safest path to take. It worked for Meta, Tencent, and Twitter (before Musk bought it). Standing up for freedoms is risky, and not cost effective, (see Musk’s news stories before and after his purchase of Twitter / X) but I’m grateful that some are willing to do it.
ETA: I don’t mean this as an endorsement of Telegram or, for that matter, a defense of them. I don’t know anything about them, but I know some of what Twitter and Facebook did.
I’m more talking cooperation with law enforcement with criminal activities like homicide, drug and people trafficking, etc. not helping a government control the press and its citizens like in China or Russia.
Because some countries have a definition of criminal activity that includes limiting freedom of speech, I agree that it may be tricky at times to decide whether to cooperate or not with law enforcement user data requests. But I still think there are activities that are universally criminal, and for such activities, I don’t see a reason for media platforms to refuse to cooperate with law enforcement.
For me, promoting freedom of speech isn’t synonymous with abating any criminal activity, at least not when a media platform directly facilitates such activities and profits from it.
I know it’s only 5-6k mortgages nationally being given to people with ITINs but personally, I’m fine with this number being 0 federally. Let alone extend 0% loans to illegal aliens. There’s surely better use of taxpayer money, even in CA.
P.S.: Pet peeve, I notice a lot of Dems are using the woke term “undocumented” for illegal aliens. Often, they’re actually well documented via passports or birth certificates. They’re just unlawfully in the US. Wish they’d drop the purposely-obfuscating terminology making it sound like their illegal status is just a minor paperwork issue.