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Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

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Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#21

Post by maxfurman »

patja wrote: post #14
_23sd wrote: post #5

I'm interested to see where the local news initiative goes. Big outlets have plenty of room to innovate with or without Facebook's help, but newspapers outside of state capitals seem to be in a difficult position of falling subscriptions and no way to replace that revenue online.

I am curious about your conclusion that some newspapers in state capitals are doing OK with subscriptions. Can you say more about which specific state capitals and newspapers you see as thriving? What do you see as different that is making newspapers in state capitals succeed where those in other cities are struggling?

Not the parent, but I think it just means some cities are big enough markets to support a locally-focused newspaper but most smaller cities and towns aren't. It's no secret that local papers are dying but for example the Philadelphia Inquirer is still around.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#22

Post by komali2 »

Vaskivo wrote: post #12
Qworg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you draw the line between "alternative media" and "lies"?

You shouldn't censor lies. You should prove that they are lies. [EDIT] (just to add something to my post) If you delete/ommit/censor lies youd end up with: a) If every lie is removed, maybe everything that was removed is a lie. Which is not true. b) You end up with a "cry wolf situation", which may blow up hardly on facebook. You don't "cry wolf". You show that the wolf is there. Otherwise, the first time you screw u…

But people don't believe proof that a lie is a lie - see the entire Trump phenomena. All he has to do is Tweet "fake news," and people won't believe any attempts to rationalize.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#23

Post by mattlevan »

_23sd wrote: post #11
setra wrote: post #2

I'm sure this will be used for censoring political groups, and alternative media. As mainstream news sources become less popular / reputable they have really started pushing for methods to censor their opposition.

Why are you lot so reflexively opposed to anything related to journalism, even when explicitly aimed to help alternative media? It certainly doesn't make it look like you just want people to get news from more sources.

People, and hackers especially, generally don't "trust" Facebook to provide them with a platform to publish anymore. And why would they? Facebook will never open source the software responsible for determining what, when, and how people see news articles.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#24

Post by gspetr »

collias wrote: post #18
ConfuciusSay02 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that mainstream journalists are caught letting political operatives write their articles for them doesn't help their credibility either. Oh, and they're of course silent when it comes to reporting on their own corruption.

It reminds me of that clip of CNN saying that we could only get the Wikileaks emails through their interpretation, and we shouldn't be reading them ourselves. ...turns out it was because they were implicated in them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A

CNN is so corrupt it looks like a parody network.

Their most egregious breach of ethics to date: On October 31, 2016, the New York Times reported: "CNN has severed ties with the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, after hacked emails from WikiLeaks showed that she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton's campaign." CNN said it had accepted her formal resignation on October 14, adding: "We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#25

Post by 6stringmerc »

Notably absent:

Any mention of compensating the "participants" that Facebook is, I'd wager, pitching behind-the-scenes as a gigantic pool of free talent / labor ripe for monetization both as advertising targets and content generators!

Disclosure: I'm on Medium and don't get paid diddly for my writings on there, nor spend much of any time investing in the Facebook ecosystem because it reminds me too much of AOL.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#26

Post by niftich »

Facebook wants to solidify being a content portal for news. Its competition is Google with AMP, Google and other search engines without AMP, and first-party content producers, and 'orthodox news aggregators'. Both Facebook and Google have an advantage: they have hyperlocal info and tons of data on users collected through their tracking and ad networks, they are two of the most-visited websites and most-used apps in the world; meanwhile they subsume all the advantages of an old-style news aggregator by having a wide variety of third-party content they never had to pay for.

'Emerging business models': Facebook is a large IdP containing identities that they monetize through data mining with the goal of display ads. But this IdP allows their users to log in to other sites and engage in microtransaction-like behavior. Aside from making actual payments to FB, users could trade off 'ad credits' or whatnot. Flattr, Webpass are in this space; Google tried this with Contributor [1], which is about to see a revamp; Brendan Eich is trying this with Brave, but Facebook's install base and ability to focus and deliver means they could probably pull this off better than everyone else.

[1] https://www.slightfuture.com/blog/google-contributor-no-new-...

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#27

Post by 234dd57d2c8db »

collias wrote: post #7
setra wrote: post #2

I'm sure this will be used for censoring political groups, and alternative media. As mainstream news sources become less popular / reputable they have really started pushing for methods to censor their opposition.

Exactly. Yesterday was a great example of mainstream sources losing credibility. They were all over the (as far as I know) totally unverified document that an intelligence agency decided to leak to Buzzfeed for some reason. They wonder why no one trusts them anymore...

I want to know at what point this becomes treason. We have intelligence agencies trying to smear the PEOTUS and media agencies enthusiastically helping them. In other countries these are the steps the CIA takes before a coup happens.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#28

Post by ihsw »

It still doesn't change the fact that news orgs universally lack the time to conduct real journalism -- fake news is a direct result of reducing the time that journalists have to vet and verify content.

Frankly I'm quite happy about "fake news" proliferating, it makes obvious how hopeless and useless news orgs are. They peddle claptrap and tripe with reckless abandon.

Facebook could throw ten thousand engineers at the problem and 1) it wouldn't fix that nobody trusts Facebook 2) it wouldn't fix that nobody trusts news orgs. Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan needs to taken as religious dogma -- everybody gets as voice and Facebook has no say in who can't speak.

To any news tweeps reading: combating "fake news" by partnering with Facebook is a partisan attempt at self-fellatio -- all you do is get yourself off without accomplishing anything. Conduct real journalism with well-paid staff that have the time to do their job and anonymously share it with the public is the only way to restore trust, not 1) procuring access to high-value talking heads (eg: celebrities, pundits, "experts") that will regurgitate your propaganda or 2) shoving out unverified garbage (eg: 99% of reporting on Trump this past election cycle) at light-speed.

#1 is just a sad attempt at remaining relevant while having someone authoritative make an empty appeal to viewers and #2 is plain laziness.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#29

Post by oculusthrift »

wfo wrote: post #13
Qworg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you draw the line between "alternative media" and "lies"?

I could ask how you draw the line between "mainstream media" and "lies" just as easily and just as poignantly. The answer is easy in both cases. When they lie, it's a lie. When they don't, it's not.

because "mainstream media" like nyt and wapo have well respected, educated journalists working around the clock to research stories and find evidence whereas "alternative media" is a guy in his moms basement making up stories. just as with science, people only dispute it when it goes against their own interests.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#30

Post by the_watcher »

_23sd wrote: post #5

I'm interested to see where the local news initiative goes. Big outlets have plenty of room to innovate with or without Facebook's help, but newspapers outside of state capitals seem to be in a difficult position of falling subscriptions and no way to replace that revenue online.

The local news piece was by far the most interesting to me as well. Until recently, nearly all journalists got their starts in local news, and as Facebook correctly notes, it has the advantage of focusing on stories that actually impact the intended audience's day to day life. Also, since the readers are often closer to the actual events, players, and issues described, it's arguable that the readers are less susceptible to the opinion disguised as reporting that typifies much of partisan, new media (although I'll admit that this is arguable at best, and assumes that the readers actually want their reporting to be factual).
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