Facebook replaced its trending editors with a new fully automated trending module last week. According to the Guardian, the team was fired without notice at a meeting with a security guard present, with four weeks’ severance. The move towards automation has so far turned out to be quite a disaster, as the new algorithm has pushed false, misspelled and obscene stories to the top of the trending list, resulting in a picture of a man masturbating with a chicken burger going viral. It would seem that in some cases the human brain can still do the job better than computer algorithms.

An innocent game or one step closer to “Big Brother”? Marit Hansen, privacy commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, has warned “Pokémon Go” users in an interview with Handelsblatt that it is in fact the biggest data collecting service out there, with full control over all major features of the users’ smartphones, sourcing data from cameras, microphones, GPS and even friends’ lists. One of the problems, mentioned by Deutsche Welle, is that the developer Niantic could use the game as a marketing tool, deliberately affecting consumer behaviour by steering them with Pokémons towards retail outlets. Legally, this is a difficult question because of the international scope of the enterprise. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) has however challenged 15 clauses of “Pokémon Go” developer Niantic’s terms of usage and privacy statements, threatening to go to court if their demands were not met. The first deadline for the court date has passed (9th of August), and the VZBV have pushed the date back by a month after Niantic allegedly contacted them.

In this week's news round-up, George Sims takes a look at RSF's transparency report on the ownership of media outlets, the deteriorating situation of journalists in Turkey and the dilemma of self-censorship while reporting on terrorist acts such as the recent attack in Nice.

In this week's news round-up, Karin Fleming reflects on the ethical implications of reporting on tragedy, as well as the role of social media platforms to censor or moderate user-generated content. Also, she explores the Commission's most recent charges against Google, the motivations behind ad block users and the outcome of the conference on the role of press freedom in Europe.

In this week's round-up, the Future Media Lab. looks at the new tweaks Facebook has done to its news feed algorithms, the state of press freedom across Europe, and the move to combat ad blockers by focusing on the user experience.

In this week's news round-up we take a look inside the blocked web, how fake news sites hurt audience trust and the European Commission's review of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.

In this edition of the Future Media Lab. news round-up, Future Media Lab. intern Anna Capraro looks at the decline of press freedom worldwide, the need for a publishers' right, how WhatsApp gives content creators access to audiences and Google's exploration into an acceptable ads policy.

In this week's news round-up, the Future Media Lab. team looks into the effectiveness of distributed media strategies, the worldwide decline of media freedom, and the death of impressions as a metric for selling online ads.

This week's Future Media Lab. news round-up looks at the power of collaborative journalism, algorithms and the assumptions that go with them, and the new EU laws on data protection and trade secrets.

In this week's news round-up, we look into Der Spiegel's leaked innovation report, a publishers' right in the digital age, and how data is holding back journalism.

In this week's news round-up, Filip looks how new formats can boost engagement, why are publishers going native and pure digital,how Swedish publishers tackle adblocking and how will journalism look in the future

In this week's news round-up, Filip looks how media analytics slowly becomes the centerpiece of each newsroom and why publishers don't need just data, but next generation insight to grow and engage audiences.

In this week's news round-up, Filip looks how publishers cooperate to tackle adblocking, how Time Inc. and BuzzFeed see data and if messaging apps are the future of news

In this week's news round-up, Filip looks into the causes of adblocking, the implementation of native ads, strategies to cope with a rapidly changing content distribution landscape and the popularity of mobile news apps.