Apropos illusions, I am reminded of a meeting with some media folks where I had to support the consensual hallucination which is the supposed technological distinction between "downloading" (boo! hiss! bad!) and "streaming" (phew! safe! good!)
Not sure what you're getting at; nobody is preventing any speech, certainly not the government. I'm talking about the editorial decision to continue to disseminate plainly false information that has already been published, simply because it feeds into the readers dopaminergic reward wiring, to Facebook's monetary gain. I think that's immoral.
Facebook's reach is unparalleled by almost any other organization on the planet. I do not doubt that other soapboxes exist as indeed The National Enquirer has been in print for 90+ years. I've given up expecting integrity from the bottom feeders, and perhaps there ought to be some room for that. But Facebook, with a market cap of ~$418Bn dollars is clearly not that, and we're allowed to expect more from the grown ups.
This is plainly not a freedom of speech or expression issue. No one is jailing anybody for publishing false information. Anyone is free to say or write whatever they please without fear of government persecution. This is not in question.
The matter at hand has to do with Facebook's juvenile absconding of their responsibilities as a media company. Facebook Newsfeed is arguably the largest publisher of news on the planet, all we are asking for is the application of Ethics in Journalism 101 professional integrity by this publisher in their choices of what information to disseminate. Again, I must stress, they do make these choices all the time. They are not an agnostic platform, they are very deliberate and selective about what they show you in your feed and when. This power entails responsibility.
What we who cried "Fake News!" wanted was for Facebook to take editorial responsibility for the content they publish and distribute on their site. We didn't ask for a 'label'; that was Facebook's weak response to our actual ask.
Facebook has been very resistant to admitting that it is, in fact, a media company. So long as they did not have an algorithm and you couldn't pay for added signal, there might have been some merit to the claim they were merely an agnostic publishing platform. But that hasn't been true in a long time.
If the NYTimes had published blatantly false articles, we would hold the editorial team and their EiC to account. The same ought to hold true for Facebook. Facebook has an editor, one that makes millions of editorial decisions every second. It's their algorithm.
They have decided, knowingly, to develop an editorial algorithm designed to optimize for user engagement. We now know that this means an editorial bias towards sensationalism and clickbait. There's no way to know this and to still maintain an agnostic or neutral POV on the matter; where is their integrity? They are arguably the largest media company in the world, and it is their choice to avoid altering the algorithm (=editorial direction) and instead add an external labelling system. I think this is not enough and expect them to own up to their editorial responsibilities as a powerful publisher.
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Re: Re:
Apropos illusions, I am reminded of a meeting with some media folks where I had to support the consensual hallucination which is the supposed technological distinction between "downloading" (boo! hiss! bad!) and "streaming" (phew! safe! good!)
Re: Re: Usually I'm with you, disagree on this
Re: Re: addendum on censorship
Not sure what you're getting at; nobody is preventing any speech, certainly not the government. I'm talking about the editorial decision to continue to disseminate plainly false information that has already been published, simply because it feeds into the readers dopaminergic reward wiring, to Facebook's monetary gain. I think that's immoral.
Facebook's reach is unparalleled by almost any other organization on the planet. I do not doubt that other soapboxes exist as indeed The National Enquirer has been in print for 90+ years. I've given up expecting integrity from the bottom feeders, and perhaps there ought to be some room for that. But Facebook, with a market cap of ~$418Bn dollars is clearly not that, and we're allowed to expect more from the grown ups.
addendum on censorship
This is plainly not a freedom of speech or expression issue. No one is jailing anybody for publishing false information. Anyone is free to say or write whatever they please without fear of government persecution. This is not in question.
The matter at hand has to do with Facebook's juvenile absconding of their responsibilities as a media company. Facebook Newsfeed is arguably the largest publisher of news on the planet, all we are asking for is the application of Ethics in Journalism 101 professional integrity by this publisher in their choices of what information to disseminate. Again, I must stress, they do make these choices all the time. They are not an agnostic platform, they are very deliberate and selective about what they show you in your feed and when. This power entails responsibility.
Usually I'm with you, disagree on this
What we who cried "Fake News!" wanted was for Facebook to take editorial responsibility for the content they publish and distribute on their site. We didn't ask for a 'label'; that was Facebook's weak response to our actual ask.
Facebook has been very resistant to admitting that it is, in fact, a media company. So long as they did not have an algorithm and you couldn't pay for added signal, there might have been some merit to the claim they were merely an agnostic publishing platform. But that hasn't been true in a long time. If the NYTimes had published blatantly false articles, we would hold the editorial team and their EiC to account. The same ought to hold true for Facebook. Facebook has an editor, one that makes millions of editorial decisions every second. It's their algorithm. They have decided, knowingly, to develop an editorial algorithm designed to optimize for user engagement. We now know that this means an editorial bias towards sensationalism and clickbait. There's no way to know this and to still maintain an agnostic or neutral POV on the matter; where is their integrity? They are arguably the largest media company in the world, and it is their choice to avoid altering the algorithm (=editorial direction) and instead add an external labelling system. I think this is not enough and expect them to own up to their editorial responsibilities as a powerful publisher.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Telecart.
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