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The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#11

Post by squarefoot »

Hermel wrote: post #6
vinhboy wrote: post #2

> It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model in journalism. (One could argue he has a moral imperative to do so, given his position of power, but that’s not the same thing.) That line is pretty much all you need to know about the article, despite what the title is claiming. In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact…

> If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact vs fiction. If you take a closer look, the established media is not so innocent about that. Most of them find it perfectly ok to lie for money every few minutes (TV ads)...

"Most of them find it perfectly ok to lie for money every few minutes (TV ads)..."

Agreed, but if advertising first purpose was to tell verifiable facts it would have been called information. The problem here is people believing everything is thrown at them, especially if done by some popular figure.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#12

Post by onion2k »

News organisations are finding that if your product has too little value that you have to support it with advertising instead of selling it directly then your business will fail as soon as someone figures out a better way of delivering adverts.

In the future I suspect Facebook and Google will have the exact same problem.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#13

Post by caisah »

vinhboy wrote: post #2

> It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model in journalism. (One could argue he has a moral imperative to do so, given his position of power, but that’s not the same thing.) That line is pretty much all you need to know about the article, despite what the title is claiming. In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact…

>it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact vs fiction.

Sometimes is not that simple. A lot of this is related to personal biases and just the way the brain works. Ofcourse people can try to train theirselves into being more skeptic but in a world in which every day you are bombarded with information is pretty hard to find the time and motivation to do so.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#15

Post by bigbugbag »

rjvir wrote: post #9

This chart ( https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/778260618914652164 ) suggests that Facebook should not a lone scapegoat for journalism's decline - the internet as a whole is a more reasonable target.

Haven't you noticed how the word "facebook" replaced "the internet/online" in many contexts ? It was a part of marketing facebook to the masses.

Then again the decline of journalism is not a matter of internet as much than a matter of selling out to advertisers and being bought by rich individuals or corporations. With internet access becoming popular it provided an alternative to the traditional media to get news and information.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#16

Post by gamesbrainiac »

I think the real threat to journalism is the fact that news outlets have decided to "cater" to a certain section of the population. I don't think Facebook started or is to blame for the demise of journalism, but outlets like Fox show deep systemic problems in the world of journalism.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#17

Post by WildUtah »

rjvir wrote: post #9

This chart ( https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/778260618914652164 ) suggests that Facebook should not a lone scapegoat for journalism's decline - the internet as a whole is a more reasonable target.

Facebook should not a lone scapegoat

Actually it was Craigslist. Back before the internet, the single biggest pot of newspaper revenue was classified ads.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#18

Post by Animats »

Crowd-sourcing news quality does not work. There's no ground truth.

Google News is suffering from this. I noted on Wikipedia today, in a discussion of reliable sources, that I had searched for info about a Wikipedia topic with Google news search, with terrible results. The top three results were Algemeiner (Jewish), Breitbart News (alt-right), and Mondoweiss ("progressive and anti-Zionist"). This is pathetic.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#19

Post by edblarney »

rjvir wrote: post #9

This chart ( https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/778260618914652164 ) suggests that Facebook should not a lone scapegoat for journalism's decline - the internet as a whole is a more reasonable target.

Possibly the 'sources' of information are 'all over the internet' - but the medium of virality is FB.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#20

Post by WildUtah »

Animats wrote: post #18

Crowd-sourcing news quality does not work. There's no ground truth. Google News is suffering from this. I noted on Wikipedia today, in a discussion of reliable sources, that I had searched for info about a Wikipedia topic with Google news search, with terrible results. The top three results were Algemeiner (Jewish), Breitbart News (alt-right), and Mondoweiss ("progressive and anti-Zionist"). This is pathetic.

Those three are probably more reliably accurate than Atlantic, NYTimes, WaPo and the other old properties that have distinguished themselves only with lies and credulity in this century.

Breitbart is now the third most read news source in America, so things are looking up.

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