You Can Curate the News for Me (AVALON Podcast)
In the 36th episode of the AVALON podcast, Neil discussed the following topics/subjects:
What's on the Agenda (the bulk of the discussion modeled after Apple’s Monday morning meetings)
Apple News curation bias alleged.
How the bias allegations contain holes.
Apple News is gaining power.
Why Apple News is a proxy for Apple's broader services play.
Lighting Round (two topics two minutes each)
Google releases YouTube app for Apple Vision Pro.
Apple is holding an “experience” on March 4th in a few cities.
Give Me a Break (something ridiculous that jumped out at me)
Tech companies treating their quarterly earnings releases as product launches aimed at retail investors.
Tell Me More (something intriguing that has my attention)
Revisiting smart glasses vs. headsets product strategy.
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Apple News Bias Alleged, FTC Warns Tim Cook, EssilorLuxottica Discloses Ray-Ban Meta Sales
Hello everyone. Let’s jump into today’s update.
Apple News Bias Alleged
Last week, MRC, a partisan website, alleged that Apple News was taking a “defiant stance against offering news from right-leaning outlets….” The website went on to cherry-pick a few headlines from what hundreds of stories curated within Apple News to say that Apple was purposely “rejecting” only “right-leaning outlets.”
Not surprisingly, the article was picked up by outlets including the New York Post and Fox News, two of the publications mentioned in MRC’s article as allegedly receiving unfair treatment from Apple. Due to the exposure generated by the outlets, the MRC report was eventually highlighted by President Trump, Elon Musk, and others on social media. Within a day, the FTC had sent a threatening letter to Tim Cook regarding the alleged Apple News bias.
AllSides, a publication that labels news sites based on their perceived political leaning, pushed out its own article based on Apple News data that they collected in October. Here’s AllSides:
“A new AllSides bias analysis found Apple News (Lean Left bias) continued its trend of publishing primarily from left-wing media outlets in 2025, displaying 2% of news articles from outlets on the right, and 50% from outlets on the left.
This is consistent with data from our 2023 analysis, when Apple News curated 1% from outlets on the right and 53% from the left.
While users can personalize which outlets appear on their Apple News app, for the purposes of this analysis, AllSides looked explicitly at Apple News’ ‘Top Stories’ and ‘Trending Stories’ sections, which are not personalized for individual users and are curated by Apple’s editors.”
AllSides published the following exhibit:
(click / tap exhibit to enlarge)
The chart caught my attention as it implied there has been no recent or sudden change in what Apple News has been doing.
Apple News relies on a few dozen former journalists to select the stories that comprise Top Stories. The selections are updated
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