2 years ago
The Associated Press canceled the merchantability of a non-fungible token showing an inflatable raft crowded with migrants, capitulating to a question of backlash connected Thursday evening.
The AP has an NFT marketplace offering images and videos taken by the organization’s photographers. This video contained top-down footage of migrants and refugees awaiting rescue successful the Mediterranean Sea, changeable by the lensman Felipe Dana.
The quality agency’s since-deleted tweet promoting the merchantability characterized it arsenic a “drop,” a descriptor immoderate commentators considered crass successful the discourse of Europe’s exile crises.
“This was a mediocre prime of imagery for an NFT,” AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton said. “It has not and volition not beryllium enactment up for auction. The tweet promoting it was besides deleted.”
The Discord server for the AP’s NFT marketplace was abuzz connected Thursday evening with users demanding answers straight from staffers.
“I excessively privation to bargain ownership of suffering migrants,” wrote one.
This isn’t the AP's archetypal foray into crypto: In 2020, the enactment published statesmanlike predetermination results connected the blockchain. It besides made plans to provide definite information to blockchains implicit the crypto web Chainlink. The photojournalism NFT marketplace launched past month.
“AP’s NFT marketplace is simply a precise aboriginal aviator program, and we are instantly reviewing our efforts,” Easton said.
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Will Gottsegen is CoinDesk's media and civilization reporter. He holds ETH and 2 NFTs supra CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1000.
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