For real.

It’s got to be crazy corruption from Lopez Obrador too though. The cartels have killed around 180 000 people since he took office and he’s asking them to ‘act responsibly’ and chiding people for demonizing them.

In what universe? It’s reporting based on dozens of interviews.

According to the joint statement, they will now “be taking immediate steps to cancel bilateral air services agreements with Iran,” and work towards sanctioning Iran Air, the country’s flag carrier.

“Entities and individuals involved with Iran’s ballistic missile program and the transfer of ballistic missiles and other weapons to Russia” will also face sanctions.

. . .

The U.K. released a statement detailing which Iranian individuals and organizations had been sanctioned by both London and Washington.

These include Brigadier General Seyed Hamzeh Ghalandari, the Iranian Defense Ministry’s director general for international relations, Second Brigadier General Ali Jafarabadi, the head of the Space Command of Iran’s Aerospace Force, and Majid Mousavi, Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The U.K. also announced sanctions on five Russian cargo ships “for their role in transporting military supplies from Iran to Russia.”

Wikipedia:

Iran International (Persian: ایران اینترنشنال) is a Persian-language news television channel headquartered in London aimed at Iranian viewers, and broadcasting free-to-air by satellite. Iran International was established in May 2017 and has broadcast its programmes from both London and Washington, D.C. In February 2023, Iran International moved its headquarters temporarily to Washington, D.C. due to increased threats from the Iranian government against their UK-based journalists, but back to London in September 2023.

Programming:

According to Middle East Eye, Iran International is a media platform for the Iranian opposition. Kourosh Ziabari of Al-Monitor wrote it “does not shy away from presenting itself as an opposition media organization” and frequently gives the microphone to guests who criticize the Iranian government. The channel has been referred to as an “Iranian exile news outlet” by Borzou Daragahi of The Independent.

Ownership:

Iran International is owned by Volant Media UK Ltd . . . Corporate documents for Volant Media shows that another Saudi national, Fahad Ibrahim Aldeghither, was the major shareholder of Volant Media before Adel Abdukarim. Aldeghither owned over 75% of the shares of Volant Media from May 2016 to May 2018. Fahad Ibrahim Aldeghither was the chairman of Mobile Telecommunication Company Saudi Arabia (Zain) from March 2013 to February 2016. Zain Saudi is the third-largest telecoms provider in Saudi Arabia.

Editorial Independence:

Though the TV station states that it “adheres to strict international standards of impartiality, balance and accountability”, questions have been raised regarding its editorial independence.

In October 2018, a report by Saeed Kamali Dehghan in The Guardian linked Iran International’s funding to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It also interviewed an unnamed insider who said that the editorial content had been influenced by its investors. A source was reported by The Guardian as saying that Iran International received $250m from Saudi Arabia for launching the channel. The insider and an unnamed ex-employee expressed dismay that Saudi funding had been concealed from the employees. Iran International denied The Guardian’s report . . . Azadeh Moaveni of New York University has charged the channel is an arm of Saudi Arabia: “I would not describe Iran International as pro-reform, or organically Iranian in any manner”.

I follow my own Pixelfed account on Mastodon and will often boost posts. I have a pixelfed.social account though. It’s probably a federation issue on your specific Pixelfed instance. I’ve moved the Mastodon account a bunch and I’ve had problems on specific instances. I was never able to see my Pixelfed posts from fedia.social (ice shrimp), for example.

I was also able to search, follow, and see your Pixelfed posts from mastodon.social.

Edit: Your two newest photos from Aug 31st aren’t actually showing up on m.s. and I can’t see them on pixelfed.social either.

The only information provided by the F.S.B.’s press service has been about criminal cases opened against Western and Ukrainian journalists, who followed the troops onto Russian territory without following Russian customs procedures and getting passport checks.

Always good to end on a comedic note.

https://archive.is/AeZhN

We were just too jealous of you Americans and all the election fun you’re having. We want some too! It’s topple time.

To do that in the short term, the Fediverse probably just needs more money. The competitors have a fuckload of it and can introduce features way faster because of it. I think Mastodon’s been “exploring/planning” quote posts for like 18 months and haven’t even begun working on it. I’d love to have user-controllable, optional algorithmic feeds in Mastodon (not replacing the main reverse-chron feed) but I can’t imagine it existing in less than 5 years.

Mods cracking down on the plague of ‘polite’ harassment (ex. passive-aggressive FYIs about CWs) wouldn’t hurt. It’s not as bad as it used to be but it’s chased a ton of people away.

I think in the long term the Fediverse has an advantage. The only real goal Fediverse services have is to get better for users. At some point, Bluesky and Threads will have to make money or die. I don’t think they have a way to do that without damaging the user experience.

The initial ruling was by a single judge but it was upheld yesterday by a panel of five supreme court justices:

Members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.

Uh… he’s only had those far-right coalition partners since December 2022. A ceasefire deal that would lead them to topple the government wouldn’t have made a ton of sense in September 2023 (or September 2014). Gantz also wasn’t an opposition leader in 2014. Those don’t seem like unimportant things.

1. There are more people there.
2. Fewer people even know the Fediverse exists at all.
3. Mastodon (where most would probably move from Twitter) has a reputation for being more difficult to use.

Nailed it

From Mehdi Hassan’s Wikipedia page:

Mehdi Raza Hasan (born July 1979) is a British-American progressive broadcaster, political commentator, columnist, author and co-founder of the media company Zeteo.

. . .

Zeteo was presented as a subscription-based news organization. He announced that the platform will “bring you hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis that you won’t find elsewhere”. Hasan presents a new video series on the Zeteo News channel, the first one was called “Debunked! Top seven lies about Gaza”.

Hassan is identified as the founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief. His Wiki page says he’s a co-founder but I can’t find mentions of other founders. This is a media company built around Substack newsletters and they generate revenue from subscriptions. This Rolling Stone article says that they also raised $4M in seed money before launch but don’t note the source(s). They just launched in April and there doesn’t appear to be any fact check or bias analysis on them yet.

Prem Thakker is currently listed as a staff reporter for the Intercept, though it says he worked for them “previously.” According to his bio there, he’s also worked for The New Republic, The American Prospect, and CNN. On July 23, he was announced as Zeteo’s “first full-time reporter.”

For sure, support isn’t always complete and the Masto API is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I think that Fedilab really wants to be a Fediverse app though. I’m pretty sure their development has slowed a lot in the last year too because their dev has had some health issues. Although it’s “tom79,” not Dansup (who makes Pixelfed and a million other things).

I don’t think it supports Pixelfed-exclusive features either. I don’t think there’s even an app that supports stories right now - even the official one.

It’s being brigaded by misinfo ghouls.

MBFC are well-respected, including by their peers. There are lot of people spreading misinformation right now and you shouldn’t take them at their word. Every claim in the other reply to you is false. This source is non-US, rated center left, and is most certainly not “right wing at best.” Peer-reviewed research consistently finds that all bias/quality monitors agree with each other to a high degree. That study compared data from academics, journalists, and organizations (including MBFC). Quite a feat for “one guy’s opinion.” Their methodology is public and, contrary to what the misinfo peddlers might say, explains their ratings.

I don’t think so. The closest might be fedilab. They support masto+ forks, pleroma, friendica, pixelfed, peertube, and many of the misskey forks partially (with fuller support promised). No Lemmy/mbin though and I haven’t seen anything saying that support is on the roadmap.

It’s always done that. It’s weird, though. MBFC doesn’t appear to actually have a page where they rate themselves. The link just goes to their homepage.

I think the thing of note here is that there are politicians that want an immediate end to the conflict in Gaza (Gantz, for ex.) who are calling for Netanyahu to escalate with Hezbollah. That makes it a bit more complex than the simple black-and-white you’ve drawn. It’s relatively easy to ignore Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – they constantly say horrific/idiotic shit and everyone hates them. Gantz, though, is extremely popular and the most likely person to succeed Netanyahu. He’s probably just looking to score some easy points on Netanyahu but it’s still harder pressure to ignore.

Even though this site screams “wordpress blogspam” – no editors listed, all the “authors” are listed as three letters without bios, and those authors cover the Everything beat (or close to it) – they are owned by Wirtualna Polska. According to their Wikipedia page:

Wirtualna Polska (WP [vuˈpɛ]) is a group of companies operating in the media and e-commerce sectors.

The WP Group owns the Wirtualna Polska horizontal portal founded in 1995 and known for being the first internet portal in Poland. It is currently the second largest online news source and one of the most quoted news media in the country. According to the Gemius/PBI surveys around 21 million Poles use WP’s internet products every month.

That’s a lot of Poles! So the parent company at least is big in Poland, apparently. But, not listing the source, authors, or editors is sketch no matter how many Poles use your internet products.

This exact story was published nearly simultaneously on DailyWrap.ca. There it’s credited to “ed. Tomasz Waleński.” Hey, that’s two of the three letters in “TWA,” the “author” of this story! Though it appears he’s the editor not the author. Tomasz Waleński is a real guy who works for WP. Here’s an interview he did with Steve Horrell who is also a real guy. DailyWrap.ca looks identical to EssaNews and is also owned by WP. DailyWrap.uk is another lookalike. They seem to own a few low-quality click harvesters. They don’t mention any of them on their brand page.

The earliest reporting of this story I could find is from WaPo. They mention 8VC but not a connection to Russia. This specific angle looks to be reported exclusively by a number of no-reputation sources possibly because it’s a pretty tenuous connection. Musk probably would’ve been aware of Joe Lonsdale but not individual investors or employees at 8VC. The Forbes article mentioned (but not linked! Dicks.) is an interesting read though.