> One preliminary solution seems fairly simple, and Zuckerberg is in a somewhat unique position in that he has the power to implement it on a large scale: stop feeding people an endless stream of ad-stuffed trash media selected by an algorithm maximizing for clickbait factor and nothing else
Then how would they make money?
Plus I'm not convinced ads are the thing killing media. People are. Anyone is a journalist these days.
I don't see how Facebook or their CEO is to blame. MySpace could've been in the same position had they continued to innovate. Networking with friends and strangers online is one thing the internet was built for.
I read the manifesto, and I don't understand the outcry in response to that.
I understand the outcry against the pervasiveness of Facebook. It can be annoying if you use it too much. That said, If there were a better media alternative, people would use that instead.
There are many ways to make money, one obvious one would be a subscription. Of course, that makes the service less viral since payment would be an obstacle, so in practice the services that win in the marketplace won't use that (at least not at first).
Another would be government funding. Many countries still do this for national broadcasters and to compensate music artists (a tax on owning TVs and a tax on recorded media). That option carries its own obvious problems, but it is an option. It's just not the option that would give IPO in the sky stock return opportunities.
I agree that it's not the ads themselves that are killing media. The problem is how ad revenue forces Facebook and newspapers to heavily optimize for time spent on site, and the end result is the "filter bubble" where you get more content you like, and less content you don't like.
I can't see Facebook willingly taking either of those options.
You might as well take away net neutrality if you want the government to influence Facebook via funding and whatever else comes with it. That would be a giant thumb on the scale.
I think that assumes that the truly valuable content on facebook is the "trash content" people are sharing.
If I'm speaking for myself, I love status updates, baby photos, dinner photos, and the mundane content created by my actual friends.
If I could never see another "shared article" I think I'd be OK with that. I wouldn't like facebook less because of that, I think I'd probably like it more.
If they make money off selling adds around the stuff I'm paying attention to, then they could still make money without driving the news and quiz sharing.
>Plus I'm not convinced ads are the thing killing media. People are. Anyone is a journalist these days.
People become "journalists" because there's money in it, through ads. Ads pay the same whether your article is worth reading or terrible blogspam. Said people realize that, and go with the least effort/profit maximizing strategy which is buzzfeed level articles, partly because ad providers will pay anyways, and partly because deontology isn't a matter to themAds keep paying the same, and other people see "journalists" make money this way. It's a vicious cycle. Journalists from reputable sources are salaried, and usually don't have to resort to this tactic.
Facebook is one hundred percent to blame. By reaching so many users and being so prominent in all those users' lives, they are directly responsible if they choose to stuff trash quality articles, which directly influence opinions, in there because it's the more profitable option.
People are dumb, and faillible. It's incredibly easy to sway their opinion one way or the other. You are, I am, we all are easily influencable. All that's different is the amount of fact checking that's done after.
But the web enabled that sort of gutter journalism and echo chambers for profit before FB even came along. I get hardly any news from Facebook itself; most of the crap I see is stuff that my friends share or that is reposted in groups.
Crap takes a few different forms. I have friends that post an excessive number of cooking videos and cute animal gifs, which has close to zero informational value, but on the other hand I enjoy the simple things in life too. More worrying crap come sin the form of poorly-written news or analysis articles that are shared and often written in good faith, but which are misleading and require either time and effort to debunk, or an acceptance that some of your friends are credulous fools. This is aggravating but it's also unavoidable in a free society with a free press - people are going to disagree in good faith and some of the time and arguments are inevitable.
The third kind of crap is the most worrying, where people deliberately troll and spread rumors for either quick profit or to injure others. This can often tip over into hate speech, and unlike most people I think the first amendment saw that the solution to unwanted speech is more speech fails in this domain, because many of the participants are not acting in good faith, and leverage the idea of unlimited speech as a means to curtail the liberties of others rather than in pursuit of any equitable outcome.
This interview might provide an interesting insight into the (pre-facebook) psychology of deliberately slanted news. I apologize for the source and the annotations; the original interview is from a media career site called Journalism Jobs (where I first came across it) but it's from 2003 and the original page has vanished off the website: http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Weekly_Standard_Matt-Labash_c...
If you don't want to read it's basically a really cynical industry conversation where Labash, a conservative writer, opines that finding a cohort of angry people and pandering to them is a really easy way to make money. This could just as easily be applied to other political fringes.
> People become "journalists" because there's money in it, through ads
So what? Most of the internet runs on ads.
> Facebook is one hundred percent to blame. By reaching so many users and being so prominent in all those users' lives, they are directly responsible if they choose to stuff trash quality articles, which directly influence opinions, in there because it's the more profitable option.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to define "trash". Once you begin censoring "garbage", you introduce bias.
This is the reason our country has free speech. It's the only practical way to keep us from revolting.
Imagine if Facebook were owned by Trump or Bannon and they were removing "fake news". You would be even more upset, right?
> People are dumb, and faillible. It's incredibly easy to sway their opinion one way or the other. You are, I am, we all are easily influencable. All that's different is the amount of fact checking that's done after.
I agree. Do you learn better through your own experience or when someone tells you what to do all the time?
>> People become "journalists" because there's money in it, through ads
>So what? Most of the internet runs on ads.
Which is an entirely other story, that in my opinion is even worse.
But the point is in the entire paragraph. Most of these people do not become journalists to bring accurate and researched reporting. It's purely pecause there's money in it. Potentially lots. The guy working for the NYT and the guy working for Buzzfeed have two very, very different definitions of deontology.
>I think you underestimate how difficult it is to define "trash". Once you begin censoring "garbage", you introduce bias.
Removing obvious lies is a start. Which, for a start, would remove a good part of breitbart, infowars, and a few left leaning journals. And it's fine! Truth is not biased.
>This is the reason our country has free speech. It's the only practical way to keep us from revolting.
Your usage of free speech has been widely criticized in the entire world and no European country would trade their free speech for yours, for example. It could also be argued that a good old revolution might have made your country better. Dusting off that woefully outdated constitution, reworking your political system, etc. instead of worshipping it as some shining star.
>Imagine if Facebook were owned by Trump or Bannon and they were removing "fake news". You would be even more upset, right?
If they are _actual_ fake news (i.e. not what Trump considers fake news, but proper lies, or voluntary misdirection), I wouldn't give a damn as long as it is done on both sides.
>I agree. Do you learn better through your own experience or when someone tells you what to do all the time?
If it's something I actually want to learn? Myself. If it's something I don't really care about? Eh, I might let other people tell me about it. And that's the dangerous part. I have limited time and ability to do fact checking. It takes someone five minutes to type up a "Hillary Clinton doesn't enjoy poptarts and eats children" story, and an order of magnitude more for me to debunk it for everyone. Enough of those articles and it effectively overtakes truth in people's minds. That is the exact same thing in Facebook feeds. People are getting bombarded with articles, some accurate, many not. You simply cannot fitler them. Especially if you're not aware they are false. Critical thinking skills are one part of the solution. But until everyone is properly trained (and then the methods of propaganda will have evolved), for the good of society, people particularly vulnerable to it must be protected.
Also, let's not forget that a good majority of people are told what to do all the time, at leas tat work. It wouldn't be suprising that part of this behavior is translated to their personal time, which includes getting informed.
> Removing obvious lies is a start. Which, for a start, would remove a good part of breitbart, infowars, and a few left leaning journals. And it's fine! Truth is not biased.
You definitely underestimate the difficulty of identifying bias. Words imperfectly define truth. Words can be ambiguous, even when you have a video recording. Reporting is always a bit biased, and if you filter topics at a macro level, that can introduce a huge bias.
> Your usage of free speech has been widely criticized in the entire world and no European country would trade their free speech for yours, for example.
Well guess what, Europe gets to be more liberal because it doesn't need to invest in as big a military as the US does. Our alliance held off opponents like fascism and Russia for awhile. It seems to be breaking down. Nobody appreciates the value of the alliance or why it was made.
>Well guess what, Europe gets to be more liberal because it doesn't need to invest in as big a military as the US does. Our alliance held off opponents like fascism and Russia for awhile. It seems to be breaking down. Nobody appreciates the value of the alliance or why it was made.
/r/ShitAmericansSay
There's so much wrong here I don't know where to begin. First off, that's not the subject at hand, your point has _literally_ nothing to do with free speech in the US. But if you want to go into that, sure, let's go.
America's oversized army and its need to wag its dick around is nothing to be proud of. The US military is as big as the combined 25 next countries, and they're all allies. Do not disguise american imperialism under the guise of protecting the world.
America threatened to pull out of NATO, and Europe reacted immediately, pushing for a european army. The biggest threat around is Russia, and it would be crushed by an european army. It's nobody's wish, but that's what would happen.
You held off fascism? Where? WW2? Yeah, so did Canada, the UK, Russia, etc. It's callied the Allied side, not the American side. Every european is grateful for the US presence, but let's not pretend the US is the sole reason for victory.
You held off Russia? On the threat of nuclear weapons? Good, we're all grateful. But that was the only threat, as the russian army was in shambles after WW2.
There is absolutely no way to judge what is "trash" or not. They are working on removing the blatantly false but being a communications platform, there will always be the issue of 1st amendment allowances to let people post what they want.
Then how would they make money?
Plus I'm not convinced ads are the thing killing media. People are. Anyone is a journalist these days.
I don't see how Facebook or their CEO is to blame. MySpace could've been in the same position had they continued to innovate. Networking with friends and strangers online is one thing the internet was built for.
I read the manifesto, and I don't understand the outcry in response to that.
I understand the outcry against the pervasiveness of Facebook. It can be annoying if you use it too much. That said, If there were a better media alternative, people would use that instead.