iWorld
EORTV embarks on interactive & inclusive programming with Goa Pride Festival
Mumbai: EORTV, India’s OTT Platform and a web streaming app has announced its innovative programming slate hinged on pride festivals around the world. EORTV has streamed four Pride festivals thus far at Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Goa. Taking a step forward and keeping consumers’ preferences in mind, EORTV has now collaborated with Goa Pride Festival to launch a film making competition. The festival in turn is organised by Moustache Escapes.
In a bid to extend its key agenda of inclusion, this special programme will promote new and budding filmmakers, artists & technicians and the winning film will make it to the EORTV platform. The pack will consist of one best winning film in the Professional and Mobile category each, best director, best cinematographer and best actors who will in turn get a chance to work on EORTV’s projects which are under production. Other than covering the ‘Pride Festival’ and streaming the best film from the competition, the prize distribution ceremony and naming of the winners will also be a part of EORTV’s content slate.
The content of these films that will partake in the competition will have to be based on the LGBTQIA+ community but could be from various genres such as drama, comedy, romance, thrillers, docu-dramas etc. The next edition of Goa Pride Festival will be held from 7 April 2023 to 9 April 2023 at Sangria, Vagator, Goa. The festival is a carnival of various activities, screenings and performances. The Goa Pride Festival stands to show acceptance, solidarity, inclusion, love and pride. With Goa Pride Festival, EORTV Embarks on innovative, Interactive & Inclusive Programming.
“Over the past one and a half years, we have witnessed a high appetite for LGBTQ focused movies and engaging content. Since the launch of EORTV, we have curated and produced the best stories on our platform across genres. This new programming slate is going a step further to create a platform for the young talent to create good content and give them a chance to reach a huge viewership through our channel. We are happy to partner with the Goa Pride Festival as our aim is to find strength through love, inclusivity and unite the community with mainstream society. There is no better way of doing it than hands on where we actually give an opportunity to people to come and work with us,” said EORTV founder Deepak Pandey.
The mission of this coming together of Goa Pride Festival and EORTV is to uplift the LGBTQIA+ community by raising awareness and providing access to diverse events and opportunities to create content and bring people together in the spirit of celebration, advocacy and community engagement.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
