Advertising is the root cause of all that ails the Web -- from gross privacy violations to dramatically declining content standards -- and the only reliable fix is to embrace paid content models. That’s essentially the theory put forth by Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, in The Altantic. “20 years into the ad-supported Web, we can see that our current model is bad, broken and corrosive,” Zuckerman writes. “It’s time to start paying for privacy, to support services we love, and to abandon those that are free, but sell us -- the users and …

Responding to pleas from gullible Facebook users, the site says it is testing a system in which it will tell users fake news stories from The Onion are, indeed,  fake stories from The Onion. Like?  

Confirming a recent report by Gawker, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti says he did in fact oversee the deletion of thousands of posts, because they no long met the publisher’s rising editorial standards. Challenging critics, however, Peretti doesn’t think the purge reveals Buzzfeed to be any less credible in the eyes of industry peers or readers. That’s because, as Peretti tells Slate, Buzzfeed began as -- and to some degree remains -- a technology company with different standards than a traditional media publisher. 

When Microsoft announced a major restructuring, last month, it was widely understood that the company planned to dismantle its Xbox Entertainment Studios division. Now, however, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the software giant is shopping the unit -- made up of about 200 employees producing original programming -- to potential buyers. “XES is shopping for a new home and has had preliminary talks with Warner Bros. about possibly becoming a stand-alone entity based at the studio,” THR reports. “In that scenario, Warners [sic] would look to merge XES with Machinima, the video game-centric YouTube network in which it owns …

As part of broader effort to clean up its image, Buzzfeed reportedly erased thousands of “specious” staff posts, earlier this year. That’s according to Gawker, which already reported on the case of several posts disappearing because, in the words of a Buzzfeed rep, they no longer met the company’s “editorial standards.” Gawker calls the expunging of more than 4,000 staff posts “virtually unheard of in online publishing.” 

Demand Media just brought in former Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty to serve as its new CEO. “The company also announced on Monday that it has acquired Saatchi Online, Inc. of which Moriarty was serving as chief executive officer,” The Wrap reports. “Saatchi operates a leading online art gallery driven by its global community of more than 45,000 artists … selling their original artwork.” The addition is an odd one for Demand, which operates Web sites like Cracked and eHow. 

To the degree that viral content sites are held to traditional journalistic standards, it appears as if Aplus.com is in hot water. Yes, “Ashton Kutcher’s flagship viral content site has republished large quantities of material from across the Internet apparently without the original authors’ consent,” The Daily Dot reports. “The site has lifted content from BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, Cracked, Matador Network, and elsewhere -- all … with little in the way of source credits.” 

Did Matt Parker and Trey Stone start the viral video thing? Here's a short history of videos you can't forget, including a great Bill O'Reilly explosion over the apparent fact he was unfamiliar with the meaning of the phrase "play us out" used to introduce a Sting video at the end of an "Inside Edition" telecast.

...which includes Australian subway car pushers, a new Underarmour ad, a Russell Brand rant and a 5-year old Pennsylvania county fair-goer who is apparently a viral sensation

CBS CEO Les Moonves, on an earnings call,  said CBS’s TV studio “will be producing more and more shows for more and more outlets, including major streaming companies and other emerging distributors” like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or others.