Journalists decry Facebook experiment's impact on democracy

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/25/facebook-orwellian-journalists-democracy-guatemala-slovakia

by guuz • 9 years ago

195 131 9 years ago

dustfinger• 9 years ago

This was recently posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15552252

Why don’t these publishers band together and launch their own news aggregator if they think that’s something people want? I don’t see Facebook owing them a platform here and from a personal perspective politics can’t be removed from my _social_ feed fast enough.

sharemywin• 9 years ago

but if you spent a bunch of time liking/following things on facebook and it's not in your feed anymore, a good chuck of your "experience" is gone. so it's not just the publishers that are losing out. Personally, I hate facebook and don't use it.

malvosenior5• 9 years ago

I think if that was going to be a major issue for user engagement that FB wouldn’t be making this move.

surge2• 9 years ago

Yeah, the more they "improve" it, the less I want to use it.

anigbrowl• 9 years ago

- Journalists =/= publishers

- Ignores non-negligible capital costs

- Complaining about politics in your social feed is asinine since many people are interested in politics and choose to share that interest socially, so you're gonna hear about it anyway

malvosenior5• 9 years ago

Journalists =/= publishers

The article is about publishers (and the journalists who work for them). Not independent journalists/bloggers.

Ignores non-negligible capital costs

That’s the same problem every service in the internet has. It’s pretty cheap to get started though so costs would come as usage scaled up.

Complaining about politics in your social feed is asinine since many people are interested in politics and choose to share that interest socially, so you're gonna hear about it anyway

I would unfriend or mute those people so not sure why my point is “asinine”. In fact if your friends are talking about politics then this article’s topic is non-applicable since it’s not about filtering content produced by your friends.

cwperkins• 9 years ago

Exactly this - when did Facebook become a platform for everyone I'm associated with to blurt their opinions. I think there needs to be another forum because the only thing I am interested in using Facebook for is to catch up on my friends doings. Weddings, vacations, etc.

AndrewKemendo• 9 years ago

It philosophically transitioned away from the "personal friend update feed" to the "hub of all social networking on the internet" a few years ago.

I just kind of realized that happened in the last few months and it wierds me out. What used to be personal stuff between friends and family, they want you to share with everyone.

zjaffee• 9 years ago

For most younger people, the solution to this is some combination of snapchat and instagram.

PakG12• 9 years ago

Journalists creating a new service wouldn't have an impact on whether your feed has politics. Only Facebook and your Facebook friends can influence that.

medfok• 9 years ago

If you construct a community resource, you have a responsibility to the community. This transcends business interest, which is illegitimate and immoral. If you want to be a part of my life you need to be responsible.

gt_2• 9 years ago

As things stand, Facebook has no responsibility beyond those required by law and market. This is not an endorsement of anything, but a reminder of the reality.

return02• 9 years ago

The journalists should really blame themselves for using facebook in the first place. They knew what they were buying into.

surge2• 9 years ago

Sadly, it's where their audience is.

return02• 9 years ago

i dont know. it didn't have to be. journalists embraced social media so tightly both for getting input for their work as well as for audience. They 'd hate to admit it but they became lazy. Partly, they made facebook (and twitter) as mainstream as it is now.

_rpd3• 9 years ago

It was inevitable that Facebook would eventually become more selective about which content producers are promoted to their users for free.

robryan• 9 years ago

I think that most probably couldn’t afford not to leverage the Facebook source of traffic while their traditional print ad business was tanking.

Inception• 9 years ago

This is why you don't put all of your eggs into someone else's basket.

B1FF_PSUVM• 9 years ago

Old agents of disintermediation complain of new agents of disintermediation.

More news at 11.

jack9• 9 years ago

Indeed, the usual as usual.

More speech from sources = goodright unless it's someone else's different message to a wider audience. Then it's badwrong. As long as you have the money to shout it loud enough and long enough you have the same equity of audience as anyone else.

markyuckerberg• 9 years ago

There was a time when patio11 was going through a phase calling out Zynga as one of the shadiest companies around.

I remember thinking "If Zynga is that bad, then what about Facebook?"

Facebook's ability and willingness to manipulate just about everything in sight - WhatsApp ad policies, privacy policy changes, arbitrary censorship of content, providing clear misinformation to legal entities for e.g. the promise to EU that they cannot infer/merge user profiles, the absolute shitshow that is shadow profiles - in line with corporate profits is starting to make Zynga look angelic in comparison.

dang2• 9 years ago

Substantive critique of Facebook is fine on HN. To illustrate the point, I used a moderation mechanism to rescue the OP from being penalized, which is why you see it on the front page now.

That said, you can't do this with an account named "markyuckerberg". We want thoughtful conversation, not cheap shots or personal attacks. Perhaps Zuckerberg needs no protecting when it comes to these things, but HN certainly does, so I've banned this account. If you want to comment on HN, a good place to start would be with a username that doesn't violate the spirit of the site, re which please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html.

Btw, special-purpose accounts aren't allowed here either. We're hoping for good conversation, not pre-existing agendas.

nkurz• 9 years ago

Perhaps Zuckerberg needs no protecting when it comes to these things

Thanks, Dan! But regardless of one's feelings toward Facebook, I think Mark Zuckerberg should be treated with respect here just like anyone else. Not only is it good for the overall tone of the site, but there are enough "public figures" in tech that use this site that a flat "no personal attacks" (without exceptions for fame) seems like the best policy.

kelvin0• 9 years ago

FB is like a big dumb blind elephant. FB users are people expecting to get on the elephant for their daily commute ... and expect to get from A to B in a timely fashion.

Fail.

thrusong• 9 years ago

I think there will be increasing scrutiny over Facebook's ability to wipe their hands while claiming "it's free speech."

There's a reason the media were information gatekeepers: there's a responsibility to be accurate and unbiased.

Facebook's product was manipulated and helped Donald Trump get elected by swaying public opinion. There has to be consequences- sorry, but in my opinion not every voice deserves to be equal.

dnautics• 9 years ago

there's a responsibility to be accurate and unbiased

In what universe is this true? Historically journalists have had long eras of questionable judgement, e.g. the yellow journalism era. Sometimes it feels like they're not really any better.

Journalists have been information gatekeepers because of a structural monopoly. As this monopoly is being broken down by technology, of course the entrenched interests will clamor against the disruptors, claiming a sense of propriety that never really existed in the first place.

malvosenior5• 9 years ago

Facebook's product was manipulated and helped Donald Trump get elected by swaying public opinion.

That is definitely speculation and not fact.

cobookman• 9 years ago

and helped Donald Trump get elected

Do you have actual proof of that. For all we know if facebook didn't exist the population might have voted even more towards Trump.

1337biz• 9 years ago

Actually entertaining how some are manipulating their biased, subjective opinion into some sort of truthieness.

neo4sure• 9 years ago

The joint statement by 7 intelligence agencies...

tomjen3• 9 years ago

"I will furnish the pictures, you will furnish the war"

Let's not, in justly criticizing Facebook, excuse the crimes of the press. They were gatekeepers, and that was a role they loved, but they were not, in general, fair unbiased.

jdoliner• 9 years ago

Consequences?

For a social network that may have hosted content that may have convinced people to vote for a candidate you don't like? What sorts of consequences do you have in mind here? And where exactly do you draw the line between "manipulating" Facebook to help a candidate and using Facebook legitimately to get a candidates message out there?

at-fates-hands• 9 years ago

Two fatal flaws in your reasoning:

Facebook's product was manipulated and helped Donald Trump get elected by swaying public opinion.

I find this exceptionally hard to believe for a myriad of reasons.

- The MSM never gave Trump serious consideration. They thought he was a clown when he announced his candidacy. Even his own party thought he was a joke. Clinton never prepped for the possibility he might be the candidate. After he beat out 14 other candidates for the nomination, she still never took him seriously. She was so arrogant about winning, it was if she merely expected this to be her coronation after ceding to Obama in the previous race.

- The MSM was running nothing but glowing stories about Clinton the entire race. At one point MSNBC said she had a 98% chance of winning. At the same time, Trump was enduring a non stop wave of bad publicity and negative stories about him. The juxtaposition of the way the MSM covered the two campaigns is so obvious it felt at times the MSM was on the DNC payroll. All you heard was positive spin for every Clinton story, and negative spin on every Trump story.

- Clinton started to believe her own polling that showed her up in many of the battleground states. So much so, she started campaigning in traditional republican strongholds. The media were running stories that she didn't just want to beat Trump, she wanted to humiliate him like Reagan did to Mondale.

- Even on the day of the election The MSM was saying she was up 10 points in all the battleground states. They were basically saying her victory was all but assured.

- She was under an ongoing FBI investigation the majority of her campaign. In the history of the country, we've never had a presidential candidate who was running under the threat of possible FBI indictment and the possibility of going to jail.

All of these far outweigh the Facebook ads that were run. It can't even compare to Clinton's own arrogance and the MSM culpability in attempting to do anything to get her elected.

There has to be consequences- sorry, but in my opinion not every voice deserves to be equal.

Every voice deserves to be equal, but unfortunately in our society, it will never be the case. We're so far removed from what "real journalism" is it's quite scary. There is no objectivity anymore. There is always a political angle to be had, pushed and manipulated so one side looks good and the other side bad. Hell, MSNBC and CNN, the Times and a multitude of other "news" outlets don't even pretend to be objective anymore. Real journalism is gone. What's replaced it is a political machine, bent on seizing power at all costs and pushing any other party that disagrees with them to the sidelines.

The days when journalists used to be the check on government are long gone. For the most part, they're all on the parties payroll now.

nerfhammer• 9 years ago

I recall quite a lot of headlines about Clinton's emails, I think you have to hand-wave that away to justify the more absolutist descriptions like "nothing but glowing stories" etc.

Besides that, this is just a list of things you think is unfair about the election or something but which doesn't actually address directly anything OP claimed

BeetleB3• 9 years ago

Facebook's product was manipulated and helped Donald Trump get elected by swaying public opinion.

And Facebook's product was used in 2008 to help Obama get elected.

And several traditional media were used in all previous elections to get presidents elected.

If the media are information gatekeepers, why do they allow political ads without challenging the misinformation in those ads? What were the consequences of CNN, Fox News, etc for not being proper information gatekeepers?

Drawing the line at Twitter/Facebook is very arbitrary (and perhaps convenient).

dmschulman• 9 years ago

I'd agree that the traditional media has had their hands in shaping the narrative to some extent in past elections and pointing to Facebook is slightly convenient for them.

But there is a vast chasm of difference between using social media to organize people and mobilize a campaign's message (as Obama's campaign sort of did in 2008, a lot of that engagement was organic though) and using the Facebook ad network and a network of phony accounts tied to real people in influencer groups to spread a litany of propaganda and false information meant to foment outrage and cultivate doubt in the integrity of the American election system.

saas_sam• 9 years ago

Maybe the problem is trying to centrally control vast and varied resources to reach some kind of "fair" outcome.

Wait, Silicon Valley techies wouldn't be in favor of anything like that, would they?

Ohhh....

SonicSoul• 9 years ago

it's the old Facebook honeypot. So easy to share your content with users, until FB decides what will and will not be shared.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people

c3534l• 9 years ago

The experiment, which began 19 October and is still ongoing, involves limiting the core element of Facebook’s social network to only personal posts and paid adverts.

This is the Orwellian outcry? I'm much more concerned about the idea of everyone getting their news (especially passively) from Facebook and making Facebook some sort of "social network" instead.

em3rgent0rdr2• 9 years ago

Regardless of how people getting their news (TV, news sites, or Facebook), there is always some entity controlling what news gets seen to some extent.

PhasmaFelis2• 9 years ago

The Orwellian part is that they rolled it out in Guatemala, where:

Soy502 is a new site in an unstable democracy where journalists and civil society groups already face an uphill battle to be heard. “We currently have a smear campaign that is targeting journalists, which is really vicious, fuelled by interest groups who are against the anti-corruption drive in our country,” she says. “We are regarded in the region as a success story on new media for the digital age. This can destroy us.”

ComodoHacker• 9 years ago

If I understand the problem correctly (I'm not a Facebook user) their articles, which were being stuffed into users' feed, now require one more click from the user to be seen. And if their audience don't do that click now, they overestimate importance of their work.

josephwegner• 9 years ago

This reads pretty similar to the cries that come out whenever Google updates their search algorithm. It's as if people believe there is some code big internet companies must live by, that ensures they never change.

These companies live by the code of the market - they will happily make changes that make them more profitable. It does not make them evil if a small customer gets caught in the crosshairs - it just means that small customers need to be resilient to change.

cisanti• 9 years ago

And if you complain about low internet speed pick up a showel and start digging that fiber. I don't see a reason why cable companies need to cater your need for Netflix.

icelancer• 9 years ago

Was Facebook granted a government-sanctioned monopoly like Comcast was?

dillondoyle3• 9 years ago

I assume probably a response to decreased engagement metrics. My 'sample of one': I don't look at FB anymore, going from a daily user to maybe once a month if that. I would likely re-engage if only 'human social' posts were in my main feed. Sounds like I could still find public page posts and meme video shit if I want in the second feed. I could manually attempt to manipulate this outcome but the time and effect would pale in comparison to what FB could do fairly simply.

As an advertiser, I would love this change if it does in fact bring daily users back to engaging on FB. I already pay for reach, but much of it is mobile and off FB news feed.

I wonder what their metrics for ad engagement would show though: does ad engagement increase if the ad is the only non 'human social' post in view, or does the mixed content that 'blends' an ad into similar looking content produce more engagement (perhaps through engagements that users don't realize are on an ad)? And if engagement is higher because of this blending 'trick' engagement, do I actually want to pay for it or do I want to pay maybe a higher price for more 'authentic' engagement? Probably very hard to measure, which is why in my business we use polling to look beyond metrics FB reports...

frank_abagnale• 9 years ago

I think FB only cares about maximizing impressions (if the ad is CPM) and clicks (if the ad is CPC).

Maximizing user's time by decreasing efficiency with dark patterns seems to be the name of the game.

dillondoyle3• 9 years ago

Simplistically yes. I am not an engineer there so I don't know for sure, but my experience says its a bit more complicated since you can have a more complex bid that might be bidding CPM but uses LTV or CPA or some other metric (ie for us we are happy to pay $50 CPM to reach certain voter who donate to campaigns). Increasing impression load might work short term (or maybe even might work in majority of cases so my point might be moot) - until the end metric that ad buyers care about takes a hit (which in itself is a balance of quality/cost so again, it's complicated).

I mean it's harder to measure for brand advertising, but we track very closely lifetime value and persuasion through surveys, so the bid method doesn't matter as much to us - and FB is probably the best IMHO at letting us bring in whatever value data we want and optimizing for that.

dillondoyle3• 9 years ago

BTW w your username I can't tell if I should be watching for a con!

guuz2• 9 years ago

FB is not obligated to listen to every media outlet in the world when it decides to change its product, but certainly it's ethical to estimate the impact a change will cause on society, how small it can be. Remember: they are not testing the new feed in established and healthy democracies, but in places where independent journalism needs to gain traction

delhanty2• 9 years ago

Have no love for Facebook but: The Guardian would publish this wouldn't they?

This is a good idea by former editor (1975-95 [1]) Peter Preston: move The Guardian back to Manchester from London and trim the wage bill in the process. [2]

Perhaps then they might slow the cash burn of their Scott "Trust" endowment (£838.3m 2015) ... [3]

Also, if they weren't quite so London centric they might be less surprised by "events" outside their Facebook bubbles like Brexit and Trump.

I write the above as someone born in London, but now an expat (Japan) who voted against Brexit, but wasn't surprised or offended that others didn't.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/profile/peterpreston

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/09/guardian-manch...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scott_Trust_Limited

peoplewindow12• 9 years ago

The Guardian has been pushing the line that non-Guardian news sources are 'dangerous for democracy' for a long time now. Other similar publications like the NYT have the same viewpoint.

It's impressive double think: what they mean is, exposure to views they disagree with might cause people to vote against things Guardian writers like and for things Guardian writers dislike, therefore, it's important that such people are not exposed to "wrong" views. The assumption that the Guardian can't or shouldn't argue against those views is held very deep - if they took opposing views seriously and tried to engage in debate, that would "legitimise" such views or worse, they might lose the argument.

I used to be a Guardian reader. I read it religiously around the time Snowden's stuff was getting published there. But I came to find it manipulative and extremist. The amount of vitriolic hate they publish in their comment is free section is very disturbing. If they go bankrupt I won't miss them.

delhanty2• 9 years ago

This.

The publishing that they did concerning Snowden was important for journalistic freedom.

All that stuff stopped after Katherine Viner became editor in 2015.

I do read it occasionally - just have uBlock Origin picker handy each time her face pops up begging for funds ...

diogenescynic• 9 years ago

Facebook has gotten worse and worse to use. I’m still surprised it hasn’t gone the way of MySpace. Most of my friends don’t post nearly as much. I’m sure that’s partly getting older, but it also just didn’t seem fun anymore. Reading about all the the scummy stuff Facebook has done doesn’t thrill me either.

_rpd3• 9 years ago

it also just didn’t seem fun anymore

That's exactly why they are doing this experiment. To answer the question: will people come back if they don't have to wade through all this stuff they don't really care about?

PakG12• 9 years ago

In David Kirkpatrick's book The Facebook Effect, which was basically the positive counterpart book at the time to Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, Kirkpatrick talks on the first few pages how Facebook's viral and collaborative social network allowed for protests and eventually political revolutions to be organized in various countries. He says that one guy was so thankful for Facebook that he named his own child with the name Facebook.

If Facebook back then was lauded for enabling online communication in a way that wasn't possible before that led to political revolution for certain nations, it is ironic that these journalists are complaining about Facebook killing their click count by taking their official pages out of the mainstream feed. Taking their official pages out of the mainstream feed perhaps brings Facebook closer back to the Facebook that Kirkpatrick wrote about. This leads me to wonder whether the journalists are worried about political freedoms or really their income while raising the banner of political freedoms. The fact of the matter is that if Facebook indiscriminately removes these pages from the mainstream feed, they'll remove "good" pages, but they'll also remove "bad" pages (and let's not even get into which news media are "good" and which are "bad").

Today, we can see that Facebook is like any other technological product: it is amoral and can be used for "good" and "bad". Even though Zuckerberg now concedes that Facebook may have had a part to play in Trump's election, an idea he at first thought was nonsense, and even though he now makes overtures of wanting to help ensure elections around the world are fair (where a private American organization may or may not even be the right party to do this), Zuckerberg in fact does not have much ability to control what happens on his network. At a fundamental level, Facebook is about online social activity. Even if he manages to successfully ban politically manipulative ads (and which ads aren't?), bans fake accounts with amazing accuracy, and gets reviewed by government committees for political ads the way television and radio get reviewed, Facebook cannot survive without the lifeblood of its members engaging in online social activity. It would not be easy to ban all the "bad" people if there are a lot of "bad" people who still "deserve" their freedom of political speech. So there will likely always be an attack surface for some smart strategist to take advantage of Facebook and spread ideas maliciously and manipulatively.

Pandora's Box has been opened, and it's not going to get closed again. And if people mute those they don't like, then all it does is increase individual echo chambers, which in turn then increase political polarization.

If technology is amoral and can be used for both good and bad, depending on the user, we should have seen this future coming from a mile away. But we didn't, I certainly didn't. It's funny how all the lessons from 1984, Brave New World, and all the other classics have come true in so many ways. Not sure if there was a book that warned about this type of future discussed in these comment threads, but anyway. I should have seen it coming and not sure why I didn't. So we'll live in an era where information and misinformation seem to become one.

cocktailpeanuts7• 9 years ago

This tells more about the journalists than Facebook. Facebook has always been the same. It's journalists who sold their soul so that they can make money.

Furthermore, it's funny hearing this hypocrisy coming from journalists, since they are the ones who are throwing away their "journalistic integrity" to make money. It's impossible to come across a mainstream publication with unbiased point of view nowadays.

They have to write polarizing articles to gain more eyeballs since otherwise no one will have enough attention to read their articles. They should realize there's a bigger opportunity here but instead all they're focused on is short therm revenue and complaining about how Facebook (who focuses obsessively on long term value) is being unfair.

smadge• 9 years ago

The thing about rational actors is that their options are severely limited by the market. The publishers only choice is to follow the money and play the game or perish. And of corse complain about it.

rtpg4• 9 years ago

I bet there are some good opportunties for some concentrated journalism that people will find interesting enough to build a "proper business" untainted by as much advertising. The success of patreon has me believe that you could probably get enough rich people to pay (say) $50/month for a news source that feels less of a need to pander.

I don't want to be too dismissive, but even though I like the coverage I get from the NY Times, I'm still financing a bunch of think pieces on the fashion industry, their cooking apps, "78 hours in X" articles, movie reviews, Bret Stephens op-eds, "Republicans place doubt on Hillary for X"-style both sides pieces, etc.

I mean, sure, journalism. And its a big outfit, we don't all need to be writing about the opiod crisis. But I would like to think there's a market.

Bonus points if you make this and get a rich person to help finance it. The subscription can help ease the losses whatever billionaire ends up taking. Medium is already kinda this.

PhasmaFelis2• 9 years ago

Furthermore, it's funny hearing this hypocrisy coming from journalists, since they are the ones who are throwing away their "journalistic integrity" to make money. It's impossible to come across a mainstream publication with unbiased point of view nowadays.

That's certainly a problem with the media I'm familiar with, but it's all first-world western. Does the media in Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cambodia, Serbia and Slovakia share those issues, in your experience?

I'm assuming you read the article and are aware that those are the only countries currently affected?

Quanttek• 9 years ago

This tells more about the journalists than Facebook. Facebook has always been the same. It's journalists who sold their soul so that they can make money.

I'm not sure what your whole screed about journaists has to do with the decision at hand. It's just a fact that one of the largest online audiences is on Facebook and that newspapers & magazines have to be present on that platform to get views. They can't really get around posting to Fb, can they? If Fb suddenly cuts a major source of revenue for a whole industry without any discussion, if that is Fb's power, then this is really unhealthy for our market economy and our ideas of democracy

cocktailpeanuts7• 9 years ago

The Web is an open platform. Facebook is not some big brother who has power to censor anything. People can type https://nytimes.com to go directly go to the new york times if they want.

From Facebook's point of view, these media sites are nothing more than parasites that try to write sensational articles to mislead the public and get people to fight online.

Users become unhappy because they get into unnecessary arguments with their friends and family about things that ultimately have no right or wrong answer (such as politics), and end up blaming Facebook for facilitating it.

Facebook is unhappy because their users are unhappy.

It's only these short-sighted media companies that "benefit" off of the traffic (but in the long term not so much).

By cutting this party out of the equation, users are happier. Facebook is happier.

And I would say it's a good thing even for the media because essentially they are being cut off of access to the race to the bottom that's killing them. One of the reasons why these publications had to write sensationalism articles and disseminate them onto Facebook was because if they didn't, their competition would.

Now that they are cut off, they are forced to compete in healthier ways. It's kind of hilarious because it's like these self-important media companies are some kids trying to get their hands on a cookie jar and fighting, and one day their mom (Facebook) takes it all away so nobody gets the cookie jar. The kids cry and bitch about it saying it's not fair. But soon something great happens. kids no longer fight because there's nothing to fight over, but go out to earn their own cookie in their own creative ways. They may even share the ones they earned with one another if they're generous.

Anyway this has nothing to do with democracy, they're just doing the thing they've become good at doing--spinning news to fit their interest--like kids crying and complaining about how it's not fair that the free cookie jar is gone.

eighthnate2• 9 years ago

If Fb suddenly cuts a major source of revenue for a whole industry without any discussion, if that is Fb's power, then this is really unhealthy for our market economy and our ideas of democracy

But that's what journalists are demanding. The NYTimes, Guardian, WaPo, WSJ and all the established news organizations have been pressuring FB, TWTR and google to censor other viewpoints.

The selfish hypocrisy of the media is what I just can't stand. The biggest proponent of censorship on the internet and social media are these supposing "free speech" loving journalists. They don't care about free speech or democracy. They just want money.

pjc503• 9 years ago

It's journalists who sold their soul so that they can make money.

Nobody goes into journalism for the money, the pay is terrible.

It's impossible to come across a mainstream publication with unbiased point of view nowadays.

Is this actually possible? Does believing in e.g. global warming constitute bias?

BayesStreet• 9 years ago

Just because the pay is bad doesn't refute the point that they haven't sold their souls, it's a race to the bottom where selling out for terrible pay is preferable to having integrity for no pay.

cocktailpeanuts7• 9 years ago

Nobody goes into journalism for the money, the pay is terrible.

I think I should have clarified. When I said "journalists", i used it in the same context as this article.

Which means by "journalists" I meant "journalistic organisations". I have worked with and know many journalists who have high integrity. But at the end of the day it's the organization as a whole that decides what to focus on.

So yeah, from my experience I'm pretty sure they all get into journalism because of their ideal and each journalist as an individual (especially those who work at those top newspapers) has high journalistic integrity, but my impression is that this spirit is dying away as new entrants see what's going on in the ecosystem. It's no secret that these media companies who pride themselves on having high bar for journalistic integrity have started pouring efforts to emulate Buzzfeed (and I'm not using Buzzfeed as symbolism, they have explicitly tried to study Buzzfeed and emulate it)

Is this actually possible? Does believing in e.g. global warming constitute bias?

I think I mentioned this elsewhere in this thread but I believe this is possible if you hire people from the both ends of the spectrum and write both points of view about the same story. This is impossible at the moment because the entire organization tends to consist of mostly left wing people or mostly right wing people, etc. It's a "company culture" thing, and you can't do this unless you change the company culture fundamentally.

detaro• 9 years ago

Kind of sad to see such a generic "journalism is bad!" rant with IMHO useless generalizations at the top of the comments here, instead of a discussion of the specific example. Yes, the relationship between Facebook and the media is problematic, but that doesn't mean every journalist using it "sold his soul" and that Facebook shouldn't be careful about how they experiment with changing this.

I get cutting down on noise, but it sounds like they made following a page basically irrelevant (since the "explore" tab apparently has "recommended content it thinks you might find interesting, including posts, articles, photos and videos from sources you haven’t followed yet" (https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/18/facebooks-discovery-focuse... ). That sounds a bit much.

Large media companies that "sold out" might be able to afford to promote some stories (which then will have to have a higher profit, pushing even more click-bait?), but for smaller actors as described in the article that seems unlikely. That kind of sounds like this move pushes what you dislike about "journalism" even more?

eighthnate2• 9 years ago

Furthermore, it's funny hearing this hypocrisy coming from journalists, since they are the ones who are throwing away their "journalistic integrity" to make money. It's impossible to come across a mainstream publication with unbiased point of view nowadays.

Not only that. These same journalists are the ones demanding censorship of opposing views on FB and the rest of social media.

All these selfish greedy journalists want is their own "fake news" making money on social media and other people's "fake news" banned.

Frankly, I wish google, fb, twtr, etc would all band together and just ban all news from their platform for a week. Maybe that will quiet these useless journalists.

0xbear2• 9 years ago

Where by “impact on democracy” they mean impact on their ad revenues.

_rpd3• 9 years ago

Yes, but also impact on their ability to generate and wield political power. Journalism is practically non-profit these days, but there'll never be a shortage of journalists looking to marshal the Fourth Estate.

0xbear2• 9 years ago

That, too. Everyone is so eager to offer their “valuable” opinion and omit the parts of the story that don’t conform to that opinion.

interfixus2• 9 years ago

My visits to Zuckerberg-land are few and getting fewer. Mainly to pick up the occasional personal message and redirect it to a more civilized channel. And when I visit, I am heavily insulated by various sorts of filters - I never see ads or silly recommendations.

So clearly, I'm in a bubble, and my ignorance is self-wrought, but honestly, I never get it when there's talk about people reading news - fake or otherwise - on Facebook. How do you even do that? Why would anyone? What am I missing? If I ever did see a news item there, my first instinct would be distrust, my first potential reaction would be seeking out some external source, and if none could be found, absolute dismissal.

Two billion users do realise FB is nothing but a cheap, tacky marketing ploy, yes? They do, don't they? Please!

remarkEon• 9 years ago

Narrator: they do not.

interfixus2• 9 years ago

And apparently, neither do several downvoters here.

dingo_bat2• 9 years ago

Ah, poor "journalists"! But on point, I'd pay a small fee to make my FB feed free of posts by any professional news outlet.

nofilter• 9 years ago

I don't get it, in the olden days where forums were popular everyone knew that the final say of the content in that forum was of the administrators. Now, however, we join a website we do not own, run by people we do not know, and expect them to what, do as we say? Yeah, doesn't work like that. I'm not supporting what Facebook does, but I'm not against it either. Like it, use it, don't like it, don't use it.

guuz2• 9 years ago

The forums were/are usually catering to niches. Facebook is a behemoth. To many people, the internet is basically it.

known• 9 years ago

"Media does not spread FREE opinion; It GENERATES opinion" --Oswald,1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West

Journalists decry Facebook experiment's impact on democracy

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