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Standard not met: What Astronomer said on CEO Andy Byron's Coldplay kiss cam row

Standard not met: What Astronomer said on CEO Andy Byron's Coldplay kiss cam row

India Today20-07-2025
Andy Byron, Astronomer CEO who hit global headlines after he was caught cuddling Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot on Coldplay's kiss cam, could not meet standards, the company said, confirming that he has resigned from his post. The duo received massive backlash after a short clip of them at Coldplay's Boston concert went viral. In the video, Cabot is seen wrapped in Byron's arms as the two appear completely immersed in the music, until the kiss cam catches them by surprise. The reaction is immediate: Cabot notices first, followed by Byron, who quickly bends and hides behind the railing.advertisementColdplay frontman Chris Martin, reacting in real time, joked: "Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy." The moment quickly caught fire online, fuelling speculation - including rumours of an extramarital affair.
The dramatic footage surfaced on the internet and became the subject of memes, mockery, criticism and allegations of cheating. In response to the online storm, Astronomer placed Byron on leave and later announced his resignation.NEW: CEO Andy Byron and HR head Kristin Cabot from Astronomer caught having an affair on the jumbotron at Coldplay's Boston concert pic.twitter.com/QloKq6n5NO— Unlimited L's (@unlimited_ls) July 17, 2025'As stated previously, Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding," the company said.'Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met. Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted," Astronomer added.Both Byron and Cabot are reportedly married. While Bryon is married to respected educator Megan Kerrigan, Cabot is reportedly married to Privateer Rum CEO Andrew Cabot. According to his LinkedIn profile, Andy Byron held senior leadership roles at companies including Lacework, Cybereason, Fuze, BMC Software, BladeLogic, and VeriCenter before becoming CEO of Astronomer. He is married to Megan Kerrigan Byron, Associate Director at the Bancroft School, and the couple reportedly lives in New York with their two children.Following the public backlash, Megan reportedly removed her last name from her Facebook profile before deactivating it.Kristin Cabot serves as Chief People Officer at Astronomer, the company behind Astro, a data orchestration and observability platform built on Apache Airflow.- Ends
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What the 'first photos' of Astronomer's ex-HR head Kristin Cabot since Coldplay 'Kiss Cam' scandal reveal
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Time of India

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  • Time of India

What the 'first photos' of Astronomer's ex-HR head Kristin Cabot since Coldplay 'Kiss Cam' scandal reveal

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Spectacle, privacy and sharing in the digital age

The Hindu

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  • The Hindu

Spectacle, privacy and sharing in the digital age

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When personal discomfort becomes meme material and moral commentary, we must inquire. What is the cost of our participation? Media theorist Mark Andrejevic describes this as 'lateral surveillance', where individuals monitor and expose one another through digital instruments. In his seminal work, iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era, he identifies this as a characteristic of participatory culture, distinct from institutional surveillance. The Coldplay video was likely shared in jest or curiosity, but its viral spread, propelled by platforms such as Instagram and X, led to reputational damage. Shoshana Zuboff's concept of surveillance capitalism elucidates this phenomenon — platforms are designed to amplify emotionally provocative and ambiguous content. The video's success lay not in truth but in its ability to provoke speculation. Its virality was orchestrated by algorithms that favour engagement over ethics. India has seen similar episodes. 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Daniel Trottier describes this as 'digital vigilantism' — a sort of informal justice where online users act as moral enforcers. Unlike formal systems, it relies on speculation, with rapid and often irreversible consequences. The issue of verification The function of legacy media in such incidents is increasingly troubling. News organisations, often influenced by social media trends, tend to amplify viral content without adequate verification. In the Coldplay case, reports of the CEO's resignation largely reflected online narratives, with minimal independent investigation. This reversal, where publication precedes verification, challenges the ethical foundation of journalism. Should private individuals be subjected to public scrutiny based simply on unverified social media content? What evidential standards should apply? Platform design exacerbates these issues. Algorithms on TikTok, Instagram, and X prioritise emotionally charged content, emphasising engagement over accuracy. 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Gwyneth Paltrow helps turn Astronomer's infamy on its head
Gwyneth Paltrow helps turn Astronomer's infamy on its head

Time of India

time15 hours ago

  • Time of India

Gwyneth Paltrow helps turn Astronomer's infamy on its head

To take control of a scandal that turned a previously obscure data-operations firm into a household name practically overnight requires some skillful cunning. And, it turns out, the Hollywood A-listers Gwyneth Paltrow and Ryan Reynolds . On Friday, Astronomer — the technology company whose married CEO was caught on video at a Coldplay concert canoodling with a human resources executive at the firm who is not his wife — capitalized on the heightened attention when it released a video response featuring Paltrow as a 'temporary spokesperson.' As in: Paltrow, the ex-wife of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, and the woman who introduced the world to the concept of 'conscious uncoupling,' became the face of a niche tech startup with roughly 300 employees operating in 'a small corner of the data and AI world,' as the interim CEO described it in a LinkedIn post. 'Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days and they wanted me to answer the most common ones,' Paltrow says directly to camera in a video posted on Astronomer's social channels. The first question then appears on-screen: 'OMG! What the actual f' 'Yes!' she responds, a hint of knowing and exasperation in her voice. 'Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow .' She adds: 'We've been thrilled so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation .' Viewers were given a peek at what Astronomer actually does, a move that 'was quite clever, I must say,' said Michel Pham, a business professor and marketing strategy expert at Columbia Business School. For companies that abruptly find themselves embroiled in scandal, he explained, using humor to capitalize on the spotlight requires a deft touch. It's little surprise that the tongue-in-cheek ad has since ricocheted across the internet. On Instagram, the video has so far received over 64,000 likes. (For context, Astronomer's previous post, about a recent data conference in Berlin, had received 135 likes as of Monday afternoon.) On YouTube, the ad has been viewed more than half a million times. The video was produced by Reynolds' production company, Maximum Effort, the company confirmed in an email statement, but it's unclear who reached out to whom or when, exactly, the company was hired. Neither Astronomer nor representatives for Paltrow responded to requests for comment. Reynolds founded Maximum Effort in 2018 and has since cultivated a reputation for creating snarky advertising and viral content that the actor calls 'fastvertising.' 'A lot of times we're working really quickly, working with limited budgets, but we're also acknowledging and playing with the cultural landscape,' he said in a 2022 interview with The Washington Post. 'We try to create marketing that's moving at the exact same speed as culture is.' When companies face negative scandals that are related to their core product, like a mechanical failure in a car, for instance, there is little space for humor, Pham said. 'But in this case, this was about an affair and most people, I think, understand that affairs happen and that it doesn't necessarily compromise what this brand does.' That gave the company leeway to play along with the conversation. Pham pointed to an example in Britain where, in 2018, fast food chain KFC had no chickens to serve its customers because of supply-chain disruptions and was forced to close hundreds of outlets across the country. Days later, instead of an apology statement from an executive, the company took out newspaper ads with a simple message. 'FCK' — an anagram of its own name and a thinly veiled obscenity — followed by a tagline: 'A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It's not ideal.' 'They were pretty candid and they acknowledged the problem,' Pham said. Another example of a brand turning infamy into a positive came in 2019 in a move again orchestrated by Maximum Effort. When exercise equipment manufacturer Peloton released a holiday ad showing a man giving his wife a bike, the 30-second spot was swiftly criticized for being sexist and dystopian. Within hours of its release, Maximum Effort reached out to the woman in the commercial, who came to be known as 'Peloton Wife,' and a few days later, she starred in an ad that showed her drinking Reynolds' gin with her friends, toasting 'to new beginnings.' In 2014, Prince pulled off a similar marketing twist, or what comedian Dave Chappelle described as a marketing 'judo move.' In 2004, Chappelle had played Prince, dressed in a 'Purple Rain'-era ruffled suit, in a sketch on 'Chappelle's Show.' When Prince released the single 'Breakfast Can Wait' almost a decade later, he used a picture of Chappelle dressed as him. 'You make fun of Prince in a sketch and he'll just use you in his album cover,' Chappelle told 'Tonight Show' host Jimmy Fallon. 'What am I going to do? Sue him for using a picture of me dressed up like him?' he said. 'That's checkmate right there.'

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