Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#211

Post by freeflight » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

That's making a lot of assumptions about people on HN, all to basically say this [0]

If you want to stereotype the typical HN user, then I'd be willing to bet money the average HN user is more aware about the dangers, problems and short-comings of social media than the average FB user.

Mostly because there are only a couple of million people reading HN, even fewer actually participating, while FB has billions of active users, the vast majority of which are complete laymen about tech. A rather big number of them see FB as synonymous with the web, as in a lot of developing countries FB struck deals with mobile-carriers so FB traffic won't count into the data caps.

Compared to that, the HN crowd is tiny and while they are more likely to be employed in the tech sector, it's a bit misleading trying to ascribe collective guilt to HN as if every single FB employee hangs out here to get inspiration. Case in point: I don't even work in tech, I work in healthcare.

In that context I really don't see how not even a handful of million people would be able to influence the behavior of billions of people on a completely different platform, the biggest platform of its kind, the platform that actually championed many of the things considered problematic with social media.

[0] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/330/819/e47...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#212

Post by throwaway3699 » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #87

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

Respectfully, not everyone here is American. Canadaian and UK citizens reading this forum are actively paying for the CBC and BBC, respectively.

I don't have a TV license, nor do I read BBC. Plenty of other people don't either.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#213

Post by aembleton » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #83

serial_dev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I'm not sure what's your point. But... Why wouldn't a "partisan" substack count? What if I spend around 30 seconds a day on Google News, just to see what the different propaganda machines try to push for today, so it's not something I would like to pay for, but I value and trust some "Substack" journalists and opinion people.

See my other comment. In most cases, you are probably not paying for the reporting of “new” news and instead paying for a filter of existing news. Substack is super great. Just paying for it is not the same as paying for a NYTimes subscription however people would like to spin it.

> In most cases

Maybe. I pay for The Mill [1] which is published on Substack. The founder of it has written an excellent piece, explaining why he created it [2]. It is a local paper, that you have to pay for; which means actual journalism. It's still small but now has an office and one full time employee. I'm hoping that one day this model works for cities all over the world; because advertising doesn't work for local journalism.

1. https://manchestermill.co.uk/

2. https://manchestermill.co.uk/p/the-case-for-a-new-newspaper-...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#214

Post by imgabe » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

hsitz wrote: post #156

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; the…

> My question is: Do you really need to ask that?

Yes, you really need to ask that. When accusing someone of misconduct you really do need to ask if it is really happening and not just hand wave about human nature and make judgements based on untested assumptions. You really really can’t just go along with whatever fits your biases.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#215

Post by warkdarrior » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #49

echelon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t Apple News+ the Spotify of newspapers? I'm not on an Apple platform and don't even know what this is. I suppose it works for Apple subscribers?

Then why not look it up?

Where would you look it up? Big Media and Big Tech are always lying, man.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#216

Post by gonehome » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a bribe and extortion.

The case in Australia was definitely the latter and based on the quality of NYT reporting on these issues I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case here too.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#217

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

kgog wrote: post #162

donohoe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news/reporting side of the organization and the Opinion group are very very separate. It's important to look at the news gathering side. Reporters don't take to being told to 'go easy on this group cos we have business ties' - that usually provides the opposite response.

This x1000. Although on HN, the core message is "media bad, cos good" so I doubt that people will want to understand how media orgs actually work.

As someone who was raised in a news media household by two editors, "writers calling the shots" is exactly not how media orgs actually work.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#218

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #198

motohagiography wrote: post #179

Private mainstream media in Canada takes a lot of direct subsidy money from government as well (famously, $600m a few years ago), and it's to the point where it's debatable whether news outlets are real businesses producing something people need or desire, or they're just a policy objective. A real news business, one that publishes non-fiction content about current events that people want to read in exchange for subs…

> It's not official news unless it supports an establishment narrative. You're so close that's it's annoying that at the last second you veered off into right field. There are two different things that you're confusing. There's capital-N news which is the purview of capital-J journalists; they create a verified bone dry account of events and statements made by those involved which is more historical record than somet…

Confused, surely. To me that conflates contrived narrative with honesty. Reinforcing an overarching cohesive narrative comes at the expense of a true and coherrent one. The difference is that cohesion is necessarily consonant, where coherrence accepts dissonance in exchange for greater fidelity, or truth, the craft of actual reporting.

People (us) want what we can use, and sometimes indeed that's just a sense of actual shared community experience, but usually, it's more concrete. Like should I move my savings into a certain sector, my odds on finding a better job, should I sell my house now or wait, do I need to move to another state to get my kids a proper education, etc. This is what people use real reporting for. Journalists are not in posession of a bigger picture, and the ones who think they are believe so at the expense of their reporting.

Capital-M Media has become the inferior good, since as soon as people have alternatives, they switch away from it.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#219

Post by Nasrudith » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #141

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

> Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook is a great scapegoat, and most here likely contributed to bigger issues with information distribution in one way or another through their employment. That's bullshit. The current state of affairs came about due to Facebook and Google's actions and business practices over the past two decades. Both of these companies massive scale (obtained in large part due to anti-…

That doesn't add up - it is Craigslist who surplanted classifieds, Monster and other for job postings.

Furthermore why are media companies assumed blameless for failing to adjust their business model. "Millenials are killing X industry" was widely mocked because it was understood that it was undue entitlement to think their business model was sancrosanct and anything which went against it was guilty. How does the news differ?

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#220

Post by Nasrudith » Mon, Apr 19, 2021, 11:47 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #168

So, Facebook is allowed to not only determine what is 'true' and 'untrue', on their platform, thereby giving certain news agencies essential monopolies on their platform and they're giving money to these organizations. Explain to me how Facebook is not considered a publisher again?

Because the publisher/platform distinction is propaganda and it has never worked that way.

Section 230 was only a thing in the US because a vapor brained judge applied third party liability to a financial forum for not catching fraud with one hundred percent perfection when moderating.