By Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
With nominations set and just over a month until showtime, details are trickling out about the 93rd Oscars and neither sweatshirts nor Zoom made the cut.
"Our plan is that this year's Oscars will look like a movie, not a television show," said show producers Jesse Collins, Stacy Sher and Steven Soderbergh in a statement Friday. They've enlisted Emmy and Tony Award winning director Glenn Weiss to direct the live broadcast on April 25. Weiss has directed five previous Oscar shows.
Although considerably scaled down from a normal year, the producers have said they are committed to holding an in-person event at Los Angeles' Union Station for nominees, presenters and limited guests. There will also be a live component at the Dolby Theatre, which has been home to the Academy Awards since 2001.
But unlike the Golden Globes, which combined in-person and Zoom elements in its bi-coastal broadcast, the Oscars are not making a virtual element possible for nominees who either can't or don't feel comfortable attending. The producers said they plan to treat the event like an active movie set with on-site COVID safety teams and testing protocols.
And, yes, they expect attendees to dress up.
"We're aiming for a fusion of Inspirational and Aspirational, which in actual words means formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not," producers said.
The 93rd Oscars will be broadcast live on ABC on April 25 starting at 8 p.m. ET.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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