Is the 'Metro' that regularly features pushing transactivist stories in Twitter headlines the same as the freesheet?

[IvyTwines]

And what is going on there? Why does Twitter so regularly showcase 'stories' from Metro in its 'what's happening/trending topics' sidebar? What's their relationship? I don't see Times or Guardian or other UK news outlet's headlines on there. Metro is not a website I visit or click on links to so it can't be linked to my personal browsing history.

Not sure but the print version has been very pro for a long time. I remember DS asking me (when he was about 7) ‘mum were you always a girl?’ - his class had a metro every morning and the kids used to read it. Gee, thansk son!

I had noticed that a lot of coverage - so fancy parties, womens awards etc would usually include a trans woman.

That's a really good question. I hadn't thought about it before, but now you mention it, headlines from the Metro come up in the "trending" sidebar much more often than stories from the Guardian, Times, Mail etc. yet I'm sure it has a much smaller readership than those publications. Is it a paid relationship?

What I find very telling is that the papers most keen on pushing gender ideology are the ones that are free. "The truth is paywalled but the lies are free". And free papers / websites are the ones most accessible to the youngsters, those too young to be wage earners. And I do think if something is free, in whatever medium it is, you are less demanding when it comes to quality, research, materials. A customer - someone who pays - expects better quality control and more oversight, and that includes in their journalists. Who Pays the Piper that enables these websites and papers to be distributed 'free'?

The Metro (whilst part of the Daily Mail group, which when I posted as a comment on their site got deleted because it "broke rules"), is incredibly pro-trans. So much so that they didn't even report on Tavistock closing.

A prominent TRA, called Owl, is a columinist and no doubt has a say over editorial policy.

@IvyTwines I'd never thought of it like that. Just thought the ones who want money are heartless capitalists. Being an old time socialist hack that I am. But you are onto something there!

It was seeing a Tweet by Stilltish yesterday on the Guardian's funders made me think about all the Twitter Metro stuff too. I hope one day we see an expose documentary on this, and with MPs and political parties too. Left wing politics when I grew up was very focussed on following corporate funding's influence - books like No Logo, Adbusters magazine. Now it's crickets / tumbleweed.

I find it interesting that Metro is described as a 'sister paper' to Daily Mail, which it undoubtedly is through ownership.

Both are free online, but are pushing opposite sides in this debate.

It feels carefully designed to maximize clickbait and exploit societal debate for profits, or am I too cynical?

I used to work for the Metro paper before gender ideology took hold and before it was online.
They are very much about profit, and charge a fortune for advertising.
I am so pleased I no longer work for them as they are total TRAs now.

Until it’s no longer in favour with the advertisers (also used to work in magazine/paper publishing).

Gawd - the ads we used to pull back then (sexeee ladies in their undies selling cement) compared to the stuff now! I’d thought we’d progressed.

It’s very common for sister papers to have opposing views. Generally, they follow the readership. So if the Metro has a readership of mainly young people and young people still tend to be pro-trans, they’ll be more pro-trans.

Ditto for if they have a lot of young staff on their first real newspaper - rather than the Mail’s bunch of cynical hacks who know how to research this kind of stuff.

It's a win-win if it's owned by the Mail, because I can't think of anything in recent history that has been more damaging to the 'Left' and made so many of its MPs and the Labour Party leader himself look, at best, dim, rabbit in the headlights and cowardly and, at worst, unhinged, untethered from reality, in hoc to a cult and a danger to women and children, than their adoption of this ideology.

I was a Labour party member for decades and quit over this. In the last two elections, I didn't vote.

@Anactor The post above is pretty much where I'm coming from.

I appreciate your points about sister papers and different readership, and agree. Although it's not very common.

I just think their joint owners are extremely financially savvy, and this is the best position to maximize the profits.

Daily Mail has not previously been known for its feminist stance, Metro wasn't always reminiscent of Pink News.

Although DM, like the Tories, know a story when they see one