Apple purchases CODA for $25M; Facebook employee says CAL-ed ban was error

Here are two Deaf News briefs.

The first — over the weekend, Apple Studios won a bidding battle to purchase the rights to the film, “CODA” for $25 million. It is a record amount of money for a Sundance festival film. The previous record was $22 million from last year — “Palm Springs,” which was bought by Hulu. This means “CODA” will be available to view on Apple TV+, but it is not known when it will be released. CODA has been praised for casting authentic deaf actors for deaf roles, but there is some criticism because the lead actor who played a child of deaf adults, Emilia Jones, is not herself a Coda in real life and learned sign language for the film.

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The second Deaf News brief — do you remember our coverage about California Educators of the Deaf (Cal-ED)’s Facebook page being taken down after a LIVE discussion about the insurrection at the Capitol? Cal-ED officials’ personal FB pages were also taken down, and they were shocked and did not understand why. After we released the story, I was contacted by a person who works with Facebook and they explained that the ban was a mistake based on a “false positive” for community violations of Facebook’s policies. It was not because people reported the page. The Facebook employee said Facebook uses artificial intelligence as a part of its system that monitors millions of posts and videos daily and that it is possible that the word “insurrection” and “Capitol” in its topics caused Facebook’s robots to mistakenly think Cal-ED was some kind of a “dangerous organization.” The Facebook employee said they are sorry that it happened. The Cal-ED page and the particular LIVE discussion from January 8 has since been restored online and you can see the page at the link in the transcript.

Janette Duran-Aguirre, the Cal-ED president, said they want to thank our community for their support because it made a difference. They posted a “thank you” video on their page.

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/apple-studios-wins-coda-in-record-breaking-25-million-sale-1234896460/

https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/30/apple-tv-acquires-hot-sundance-film-coda-in-record-setting-25m-deal/#:~:text=A%20release%20date%20for%20CODA,it%20premiere%20later%20in%202021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-l8eAOW6Kc&feature=youtu.be

https://www.facebook.com/caledorg/videos/228301732197943

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=4364260156936051