Milo Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos
Milo Yiannopoulos at the moonwalk flash mob tribute at London Liverpool Street station
Nationality	British
Occupation	Journalist

Milo Yiannopoulos (born October 18, 1984), formerly Milo Wagner, is a British journalist and entrepreneur. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Kernel, an online magazine that focuses on European start-up technology,. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in Britain's digital economy by Wired UK in 2011 and again in 2012. He has been called a "rising star of the Right" by the Spectator, the "pit bull of tech media" by the Observer and "digital media's Citizen Kane" by Forbes magazine.

Yiannopoulos is known for his satirical and ascerbic manner and regularly takes contrarian positions on subjects such as women in technology and the sharing economy. He is regularly quoted in the media and in books on society and politics, such as Damian Thompson's The Fix.

He is editorial director of the Axel Springer-backed hy! event series in Berlin, hosting the biannual live show and private retreat, as well as serving as advisor to several start-up technology companies and a mentor on various accelerator and incubator programs.

Education

Yiannopoulos studied philosophy at the University of Manchester and English at the University of Cambridge but did not graduate from either. He told Forbes: "I try to tell myself I’m in good company, but ultimately it doesn’t say great things about you unless you go on to terrific success in your own right."

Journalism

Yiannopoulos has written about technology, culture, religion and the media for publications such as The Catholic Herald, The Times, Wired UK, DGA Quarterly, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Commentator, TechCrunch, Blottr, Slashdot , The Next Web and The Daily Telegraph.

As a journalist, Yiannopoulos has interviewed the likes of Michael Gove, Tory education secretary, Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of German media giant Axel Springer and Catholic Cardinal Daniel DiNardo.

The Kernel

Together with university friends David Rosenberg and David Haywood Smith, journalist Stephen Pritchard and former Telegraph employee Adrian McShane, Yiannopoulos launched The Kernel in November 2011 in order to "fix European technology journalism". The Kernel was at that time owned by Yiannopoulos's company Sentinel Media. In 2012, the online magazine became embroiled in legal disputes with some of its contributors after it failed to pay money owed to them. In an article published shortly before the first of two reports in The Guardian on The Kernel's legal disputes with former employees, Yiannopoulos said that he was not planning to end publishing the magazine.

In January 2013 a former contributor, Jason Hesse, won a summary judgement against Sentinel Media for £16,853. when the company declined to dispute the debt. Yiannopoulos told The Guardian that the company remained in good health, but four days later announced that The Kernel would suspend publication due to the company not being able to satisfy bailiffs' demands to recover the money. Yiannopoulos later settled The Kernel's debts personally.

German venture capital vehicle BERLIN42 acquired The Kernel's assets in early 2013. The magazine will be relaunched in August 2013 with fresh investment and Yiannopoulos reinstated as editor-in-chief. BERLIN42 founding partner Aydogan Ali Schosswald will join its newly formed publishing company, Kernel Media, as chief executive.

The Independent on Sunday reported that the relaunched publication, based between London and Berlin, will focus on "modern warfare, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, pornography and space travel" from August. Popular subscription newsletter The Nutshell, which Wired UK once called "legally incautious", will not return, said the Independent.

Business activities

Yiannopoulos organised a technology start-up awards scheme, The Telegraph Tech Start-Up 100, in 2011. The Start-Up 100 operated through an events company Yiannopoulos had started with David Rosenberg, a friend from Cambridge University, called Wrong Agency. The company was dissolved shortly after the ceremony, with Mike Butcher of TechCrunch claiming the main prize had been given to music streaming service Spotify even though his casting vote had gone to short-term loan company Wonga.

Butcher wrote: "Milo Yiannopoulos was put in an incredibly invidious position – it was a couple of days before a huge event he’d conceived of. He’d built the event on the legitimacy of the methodology behind the judging process. And it looks like that was sat on, unceremoniously. I don’t think he should take the blame for this at all. He could only do what he could do under the circumstances given what my sources tell me was overt pressure from his backer. I reached out to him about all this but he’s declined to comment – perhaps understandably." The Start-Up 100 did not return in 2012.

Other activities

Yiannopoulos is a regular on stage at technology and media conferences. He has spoken at LeWeb, London Web Summit and hy! Berlin. In May 2013 he became editorial director and host of the hy! Berlin event series, a biannual live show and private retreat for founders, investors and other technology industry figures.

Yiannopoulos hosted the Young Rewired State competition in 2010, an initiative to showcase the technological talents of 15–18 year-olds, and organised The London Nude Tech Calendar, a calendar featuring members of the London technology scene to raise money for Take Heart India. He also organised the moonwalk flash mob tribute to Michael Jackson in London's Liverpool Street station shortly after Jackson's death in 2009. He explained that the idea of a flashmob as a tribute to Jackson was originally a humorous suggestion on Twitter, but then decided to make it happen, inviting people via social networking websites.

Television appearances

He has appeared on Sky News discussing social media, and on BBC Breakfast discussing Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom.

As a gay Roman Catholic, he has debated gay marriage on Newsnight, and on Channel 4's 10 O'Clock Live with Boy George.

Controversy

Yiannopoulos received criticism in 2009 for tweeting that he hoped the police "beat the shit out of those wankers" at the G20 protests, and then deleting the tweet after a protestor was killed. He later pointed out that he could never have known in advance "via clairvoyance" about the death of Ian Tomlinson and that his tweet was sent in anger about another protester.

Controversy followed his appearance at the TechCrunch Europe GeeknRolla conference in 2009, during which he was criticised for remarks described as "men and women are different, men are better at tech, deal with it" by another participant in the conversation.

On 18 July 2012, Yiannopoulos had a public argument on Twitter with Zoe Margolis, author of Girl with a One-Track Mind. He commented: "We write about how tech is changing the world around us. You write about how many cocks you've sucked this week. Back off." and later added: "Is there a difference between writing about sex for money and having sex for money? Not really. What a grubby, humiliating way to make rent."

Yiannopoulos has been the subject of extensive negative coverage by Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur. On 27 June 2012, Yiannopoulos published an article about a private dispute between himself and Charles Arthur, technology editor at The Guardian. Arthur had complained about his Creative Commons-licensed photo being used without correct attribution (the name of the photographer, and a link back to the original on Flickr) and, after The Kernel offered to pay a licensing fee, requested that the fee be paid to the National Deaf Children's Society. The Kernel refused, asking "does Charles Arthur need medical attention?" and accusing him of a series of threats. They later sent an employee to The Guardian's offices to make payment in 1p coins, which was refused.

On 1 March 2013, The Guardian reported that Yiannopoulos threatened Margot Huysman, a former employee of The Kernel, when she asked him for her unpaid wages, and implied he had a salacious picture of her from a party that he would publish if she persisted in complaining. Sentinel Media was reported by the Guardian to be under investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office for failing to register itself as a data controller, but the company denied this.

External links

• Milo Yiannopoulos' personal website
• Milo Yiannopoulos on Twitter
• Kernel Magazine