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December 5, 2025, 9:55 PM
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Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Netflix agrees to acquire WBD's studios and streaming business in an $82.7B cash-and-stock deal, including debt, to close after WBD splits in two in Q3 2026  —  Deal will transform US tech company into the dominant player in Hollywood  —  Netflix has agreed an $83bn takeover of Warner Bros Discovery …
More: The Hollywood Reporter, Axios, The Verge, Variety, Reuters, Deadline, Associated Press, GamesBeat, Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Times, The Ankler, New York Times, CNN, Business Insider, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren …, Barron's Online, Forbes, The Wrap, The Japan Times, Macworld, The Information, Kotaku, TVNewsCheck, Barchart.com, Blaze Media, today.rtl.lu, LinkedIn, The Daily Caller, Fortune, mxdwn Television, Cracked.com, USA Today, MediaPost, Adweek, The Daily Signal, Breitbart, DNYUZ, The Shortcut, and CNN
X: @jasonkilar, @superwuster, @jailedamanda, @sagaftra, @jason, @superwuster, @therochasays, @jailedamanda, @mbrandolph, @mbrandolph, @edmundlee, @edmundlee, @stocksavvyshay, @gerberkawasaki, @pronkdaniel, @joecarlsonshow, @buccocapital, @rogermarshallmd, @matthewberman, @senwarren, @danprimack, @sherman4949, @pkafka, @magicjohnson, @mattgaetz, @lucas_shaw, @joecarlsonshow, @douglaslfarrar, @rokhanna, @mikeisaac, @gentledoofus, @bedoyausa, @austincarr, @sonnybunch, @synthpotato, @mikeisaac, @grahamformaine, @brianstelter, @brianstelter, @mikeisaac, @criminalplaza, @ashleevance, @senmikelee, @sherman4949, @ziggys_duck, @daveleedwnundr, @lizrhoffman, @matthewstoller, @danprimack, @lucas_shaw, @jacobfeldman4, @laurenshirsch, @lauraloomer, @tomwarren, @laurenshirsch, and @joemillerjr
LinkedIn: Harshita Varghese, Jonah Zalken, David Callahan, Emil Protalinski, Xavier Collins, and Chris Heatherly
Bluesky: @davechen, @theonion.com, @carnage4life, @robertscotthorton, @richterscale, @jonathancohn, @droog811, @leafwarbler, @ernie.tedium.co, @jeffjarvis, @moleyg, and @badideas
Threads: @chriswelch and @davechensky
Mastodon: @virtualbri@mastodon.online, @Barredo@mastodon.social, and @harrymccracken@mastodon …
Forums: r/netflix, r/cravetv, r/HHN, r/pcgaming, r/heatedrivalry, r/MauLer, r/paulthomasanderson, r/universalstudios, r/fionnaandcake, r/MediaMergers, r/IATSE, r/babylon5, r/TurnerClassicMovies, r/iTunesDeals, r/iTunesMovieDeals, r/midcarder, r/television, r/DCU_, r/gaming, r/technology, r/Bluray, r/boxoffice, r/movies, r/HBOMAX, r/TheBigPicture, r/hbo, r/StockMarket, r/HarryPotteronHBO, r/cordcutters, r/wbdstock, r/battlebots, r/DCcomics, r/youngjustice, r/pilottvpodcast, r/canadacordcutters, r/TubiTV, and r/HBOMAX
See also Mediagazer
Chris Kerr / Game Developer:
WBD confirms that Warner Bros. Games will be acquired by Netflix along with its wider streaming and television business  —  A Warner Bros. spokesperson has confirmed the video game division will be acquired by Netflix alongside its wider streaming and television business.
Tony Maglio / The Hollywood Reporter:
Netflix says it “expects to maintain Warner Bros.' theatrical releases for films” but “the windows will evolve to be much more consumer friendly”  —  Now that that's settled...  Netflix just solidified itself as the leading entertainment company (and then some), and all it cost was $83 billion.
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
A look at the uphill battle to win regulatory approval for Netflix's acquisition of WBD, and the roles of the US DOJ, EU regulators, and state attorneys general  —  In the hours since it was announced, Trump has not yet weighed in, and the White House has said little.
Bloomberg:
Netflix has lined up a $59B unsecured bridge loan from Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, and HSBC to support its WBD deal, one of the largest ever loans of its kind
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
Netflix's WBD bid marks a striking strategy shift for a company long known for pivots, especially after years of avoiding full commitment to theatrical releases
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The EU fines X €120M for breaching online content rules, the first fine under the DSA, citing issues like its deceptive blue checkmarks, after a two-year probe  —  Elon Musk's social media company X was fined 120 million euros ($140 million) by EU tech regulators on Friday …
Liv McMahon / BBC:
Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr denounce the EU's €120M X fine  —  The EU has fined Elon Musk's social media platform X €120m (£105m) over its blue tick badges - prompting an angry reaction from the US.
Echo Wang / Reuters:
Meta acquires Limitless, which makes a pendant-style AI wearable that records and transcribes real-world conversations; Limitless has raised more than $33M  —  Meta (META.O) has acquired AI-wearables startup Limitless, maker of a pendant-style device that records and transcribes real-world conversations …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SpaceX is planning a secondary share sale that would value the company at $800B, surpassing OpenAI to make it the most valuable US private company  —  Company's CFO told investors about the transaction in recent days, sources say  —  SpaceX is kicking off a secondary share sale …
Katie Roof / The Information:
Sources: SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it is aiming for an IPO in the second half of 2026
Rose Henderson / Bloomberg:
Cloudflare says it has fixed an issue that caused a 25 minute outage on Friday, following a major, hours-long outage last month  —  Cloudflare Inc. said it has fixed a problem that led to the websites for several banks, Shopify, Zoom and LinkedIn to go down Friday.
New York Times:
The New York Times sues Perplexity, claiming the AI startup violated its copyrights and kept using its content despite repeated demands over the past 18 months  —  Filed in federal court on Friday, the suit joins more than 40 other court disputes between copyright holders and A.I. companies.
Bloomberg:
A US judge rules Google must renegotiate annually any contract that makes its search engine or AI app the default on smartphones and other devices  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Google must renegotiate any contract to make its search engine or artificial intelligence app the default for smartphones …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Meta strikes commercial AI data deals with news publishers, including CNN, Fox News, and The Daily Caller, to provide real-time answers in its Meta AI chatbot  —  Meta on Friday said it has struck several commercial AI data agreements with news publishers ranging from USA Today, People Inc. …
OpenRouter:
An analysis of 100T+ tokens from the past year shows reasoning models now represent over half of all usage, open-weight model use has grown steadily, and more  —  An Empirical 100 Trillion Token Study with OpenRouter  —  Malika Aubakirova*Alex Atallah†Chris Clark†Justin Summerville†Anjney Midha*
Reuters:
Sources and docs: India is considering forcing phone makers to enable always-on satellite location tracking; Apple, Google, and Samsung have opposed the move  —  India's government is reviewing a telecom industry proposal to force smartphone firms to enable satellite location tracking …
Shashwat Chauhan / Reuters:
The US CFTC announces that spot crypto asset contracts will begin trading for the first time on CFTC-registered futures exchanges  —  The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Thursday that spot crypto asset contracts will begin trading for the first time on futures exchanges registered with the agency.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says general counsel Kate Adams and policy chief Lisa Jackson are retiring, and Jennifer Newstead, Meta's chief legal officer, will replace Adams in March  —  Apple's general counsel, Kate Adams, and its vice president for environment, policy, and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson …

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From Mediagazer

Lucas Manfredi / The Wrap:
Fubo and NBCUniversal reach a deal ending a months-long blackout, with NBCU's Spanish-language networks available Wednesday, English-language networks later

William James / Reuters:
After civil unrest in Belfast, Ofcom reminds social platforms to heed the Online Safety Act, including by mitigating risks of content that provokes violence

Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:
A study of 600M+ article visits to a major US metro newspaper site from Jan. 2020 to Dec. 2023 finds hard news stories are most likely to drive subscriptions

More News

Hugging Face:
Hugging Face details how it used its new tool, Skills, to fine tune an LLM using Claude, including for writing scripts, submitting jobs to cloud GPUs, and more
About Amazon:
AWS unveils its 192-core Graviton5 chip, with an up to 25% better compute performance than Graviton4, and says Graviton makes up 50%+ of AWS' new CPU capacity

Earlier Picks

Casey Newton / Platformer:
An overview of the five years of Meta's Oversight Board, whose rulings on the relatively small number of cases that it hears have generally had limited impact
Google Research:
Google unveils Titans, an architecture combining RNN speed with transformer accuracy for real-time learning, which can scale to context windows of 2M+ tokens
A.J. Vicens / Reuters:
US and Canadian agencies warn that Chinese hackers are using Brickstorm malware to penetrate and maintain backdoor access to unnamed government and IT entities
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Two studies suggest that AI chatbots can shift political views more effectively than TV campaign ads, by presenting many claims, regardless of their accuracy
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