
Being less friendly to advertisers insulates Snapchat from viral hoaxes - lnguyen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-26/how-snapchat-has-kept-itself-free-of-fake-news
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linkregister
Snapchat is my favorite social network because it is too difficult to spread
political opinions or share clickbait articles. The only easy things to do on
it are to record a funny video and share it with your friends.

I can comfortably open Snapchat knowing I'm not going to be confronted with
low-effort shares of third-party content or lazy copy+pasted political memes.
Sharing that content is certainly possible to do in Snapchat, but it is
difficult enough to discourage people to do so.

I certainly like to hear other political perspectives --because of my past
career I have lots of friends with opposite opinions from the Bay Area
prevailing beliefs. I just prefer it to be on my own time and not in the cheap
clickbait reductive fashion popular on Facebook and Instagram.

If only Snapchat were profitable. I really hope they pull it off.

~~~
diminish
Email, regular chat and other low-engagement channels have also the same
advantage of being viral-free.

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icebraining
Just don't forget to re-send this email to ten of your contacts or Hotmail
will delete your account.

~~~
mseebach
Can I combine it with the one about Bill Gates donating $10 per forwarded
email, or does it have to be separate forwards?

Please clarify, happy to do either.

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bambax
> _Sheryl Sandberg: “The responsibility for an open platform is to let people
> express themselves. We don’t check the information people put on Facebook
> before they run it, and I don’t think anyone should want us to do that.”_

What a bunch of lies. Try posting a nude pic on Facebook and see what happens.

If they can check for nudity why wouldn't they check for "fake news"? Non-porn
nudity is free speech, more than fake news. But fake news are viral and
efficient at engaging people, while nudity scares advertisers away.

Everything Facebook does is business-oriented -- which is fine, maybe, and
probably inevitable. But them lecturing us about morals makes me incredibly
angry.

~~~
throw2016
How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but
they lack meaning and value. Rumour mongering is as old as society itself,
global platforms amplify impact.

This kind of paranoia about 'fake news' ends up in the 'ministry of truth'.
There is no other alternative.

~~~
krapp
>How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but
they lack meaning and value.

Fake news has a well defined, explicitly understood meaning - the presentation
of falsehood as legitimate news, and its virality on the web, particularly in
social media.

Merely biased news isn't fake news, nor is news for which the facts are
initially misunderstood at the time of reporting fake news.

~~~
tqi
Agree there are lots of clear cut cases. But, for example, would you consider
articles that are talk about climate change (either for or against it's
existence) fake or biased news?

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SimbaOnSteroids
Climate change might not have been the best example as its a closed and shut
case from a scientific perspective. Maybe the merits of doing anything about
it would be a better example?

~~~
tqi
Actually I chose that specifically because I think that it is a "closed and
shut case". Yet many right leaning outlets like Fox News or National Review
routinely cast doubt on this. Do you think they should be considered Fake
News? Who gets to make that call?

~~~
mrguyorama
"Fake News"ness can have article level granularity. Fox can have perfectly
accurate reporting of an event, and then still be considered fake when they
incorrectly state that there is "controversy" over global warming

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uniformlyrandom
> Being less friendly to advertisers also insulates the service from viral
> hoaxes and propaganda

Not being a news platform also helps a lot.

~~~
MikeKusold
Snapchat has an entire section dedicated to news (with a quite liberal use of
that word). I get my sports news from the ESPN and Bleacher Report discover
stories. NYT, WashPo, WSJ all do stories in the discover tab as well.

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kneel
Snapchat has also avoided the GMO debate, by not being food.

~~~
craftyguy
I guess that also means Snapchat is gluten-free.

~~~
mar77i
I got that mad cow on Snapchat, though.

~~~
gotrecruit
just unfollow your girlfriend

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thisisit
Doesn't this has something to do with demographics? Most platforms have tried
and expanded beyond the core social media demographics.

A lot of people, currently company included, still don't get Snapchat. While
it might have younger audience and "engagement numbers" I am not sure if it is
the place for fake news yet.

Turn this around to fake celebrity news or hoaxes and let's see how Snapchat
fares.

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calvinbhai
I’m not a snapchat user and I’m tired of using Facebook and WhatsApp.

Something I realized about the difference between these platforms (Instagram
being an exception) is that Facebook benefits from the click bait fake news
articles on FB and WhatsApp whereas Snapchat benefits from its users sharing
the most valuable moments (no matter how quirky or lame they may seem) that
wee recorded on the phone.

That’s the reason why Snapchat users don’t talk about Apple Cider Vinegar as a
solution to all health problems and many Facebook/WhatsApp users do :)

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josteink
By not having news at all perhaps?

What a weird setup of an article.

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no_protocol
Snapchat is full of "news".

I just opened the app and swiped one panel to the right, here are some of the
"news" cards I can view:

    
    
      The New York Times
      The Washington Post
      Wall Street Journal
      Daily Mail
      ESPN
      NFL
      NBA
      National Geographic
      Bleacher Report
      Wired
      BuzzFeed
      IGN
      VICE
      Mashable
      Cosmopolitan

~~~
josteink
It seems you’re partially right. My bad.

Between posts from my contacts, there’s seemingly a “featured” section which
I’ve unconsiously have ignored, just like I inadvertently started to ignore
banner ads in the 90s.

My mind just don’t _see_ noise like that any more.

I guess that’s not exactly _representative_ though and some people may be
using this weird news-feature in what is essentially an IM app.

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tbirrell
This webpage is physically painful to read.

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erikb
Who upvotes this kind of article, btw? You know that fake news means "stories
that the current encumbment doesn't like" in contrast to "stories that the
current encumbment likes" which is then called news. For you as the reader one
is not more helpful or valuable than the other. Having both is what we call
free media.

What this says is that Snapchat is a good example of government controlled
media. Not something to like.

~~~
jjjensen90
Actually, outside of Twitter arguments and comment section accusations, I
think the real definition of fake news is news that is either partially or
totally fabricated and presented as fact. For example, "Obama signs executive
order banning the national anthem", or "Trump claims victory after Castro's
death! 'I did it!'". These are untrue irrespective of the current incumbent...

In fact, your conflation of true fake news with "politically slanted
journalist" is one reason it has such power. People just assume that they are
reading real news that caters to their interests and doesn't cloud the truth
like the "other guys," when in fact they may be reading and sharing complete
nonsense.

~~~
erikb
"fake news is news that is [...] partially [...] fabricated"

that is ALL news not fake news. All news are written to influence you in one
direction or another. There's always stuff that is left unspoken or added and
things that are expressed this way or the other.

Example: Pro-Saudi news says "The people fight against Assad terror regime in
Syria" and pro-Iran news says "Syrian government fights against terrorists"
(that were the stories about 2014 if I remember correctly). Depending on which
side you stand articles with your phrasing are the "news" and articles with
the other phrasing are the "fake news".

The truth would have been "ongoing battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for
leadership of the Arab/Persian world". I don't remember a single news paper
reporting that in US, Europe, Russia, China or local.

~~~
sk0g
Pointless argument, so people can make up completely random stories, and as
long as there's a tiny portion of truth, such as say person A being referred
to actually existing, it should be considered news?

I'm sure even you don't believe that though, people seem to enjoy making
pointless arguments a bit too much, at times.

~~~
erikb
No the other way around. You interpret my statement as "how to define what
should be considered news" while I'm saying "what you consider news is not
better than fake news but just as fake".

