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CBC president compares Netflix to cultural imperialism, Amazon applications explode after minimum wage increase; and fake news finds a way around Facebook’s fact checkers.
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The president of CBC says Canada has to be wary of the negative effects from foreign-owned media services like Netflix. Catherine Tait’s comments at a recent panel in Ottawa, specifically around how too many global media companies could create “cultural imperialism” has spurred a lot of conversations online, with many people pointing to the fact that at the same panel, Netflix’s director of public policy for Canada said the streaming service had pledged hundreds of millions of dollars for productions in Canada. Netflix has more than 6 million subscribers in Canada. As of this recording, Netflix has not responded directly to Tait’s comments.
During its fourth quarter earnings last week, Amazon said 850,000 people applied for hourly positions in the U.S. after the minimum wage increased to $15 November. It doubles the previous record for most applications received in a month. Amazon says its wage increase affected more than 250,000 employees in the U.S., but a lot of workers were upset to hear the tech giant also announced plans to eliminate stock options and monthly bonuses for its warehouse workers.
Lastly, trending on Reddit – a lot of chatter about how one of the most frequently debunked sources of fake news on Facebook is still getting past the platform’s fact-checking system. In order to accomplish this, the site formerly known as YourNewsWire has simply rebranded to News Punch, posting fake news content similar to before. And when its content is shared on Facebook, the content is no longer marked as false under Facebook’s fact-checking program. YourNewsWire’s co-founders have even said in an interview with Bloomberg that the rebranding was made due to declining revenues stemming from Facebook’s fact-checking system.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network.