The Week That Was: IT and Media news week 26

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 03/07/2022

Abortion pills have become a headache for social media after the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling de facto has stopped access to abortion from being a constitutional right. Directly after the Court’s ruling women offered fellow sisters to help them get access to the pills. Various tests show that for instance Meta and its Instagram take down offers without delay.

Freedom of expression is suffering more dramatic downward shifts than at any time during the last two decades, freedom of expression organization Article 19 says in its 2022 report. Top three countries are Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden and three at the bottom are North Korea, Turkmenistan, Syria.

Google is paying USD 90 million to a fund supporting developers in the US. The background is a legal conflict with app developers over money they earned creating apps for Android smartphones and for making users to choose in-app purchases. Close to 50 000 developers could be entitled to applying for money from the fund, according to unconfirmed estimations.

European digital advertising grew 30.5% in 2021 which is the strongest since 2008. All 28 markets covered in a study recorded double-digit growth. Seven markets grew above the average growth rate of 30.5%, with a mix of countries from Western and Central & Eastern Europe, IAB’s AdEx Benchmark Report shows.

Reports on Russia’s war in Ukraine has meant more people avoid news reports that worry them. An increasing percentage of people avoid reading the news after two years of depressing reports about the pandemic, according to earlier reports. With Russia’s war against Ukraine, there are some evidence of accelerating news avoidance across several countries, according to  a new report from Reuters Institute.