
How Facebook Is Changing the Way Its Users Consume Journalism - Celsus
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/business/media/how-facebook-is-changing-the-way-its-users-consume-journalism.html?referrer=&_r=1
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xnull2guest
It isn't just about what users 'might want to read'. Between experiments done
that changed election results in the 2010 Congressional Elections ("Here we
report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization
messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US
congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly
influenced self-expression, information seeking, and real world voting
behavior of millions of people. Furthermore the messages not only influenced
the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of
friends."), the Facebook emotion experiment with direct financial ties to the
DARPA Minerva Initiative, and partnered censorship, and censorship
partnerships with governments worldwide I don't trust Facebooks to be stewards
of the information I'm encouraged to read.

[http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf](http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf)

[https://stallman.org/facebook.html](https://stallman.org/facebook.html)

~~~
userbinator
Indeed, I see Facebook's "recommendations" and content filtering (which they
innocuously refer to as "personalisation") as being nothing more than
instruments of persuasion and control. Facebook is just one example but they
are not alone - Google is the other big one.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

~~~
vdaniuk
Do you also consider HN voting and flagging system to be nothing more than
instruments of persuasion and control?

~~~
simonh
Facebook's personalisation and content filtering is managed by a central
authority that chooses what gets filtered and what gets broad circulation.
They have also demonstrated a willingness to use that capability to pursue
their own agenda, such as in order to perform experiments in behaviour
manipulation to determine exactly how much control they can exert.

A voting system based on free and fair participation by the users is in no way
similar or equivalent to that.

~~~
poolpool
How about the shadowbanning or comment curation that admins do?

~~~
DanBC
As I understand it the admins very rarely shaddowban or curate comments.

Users with karma over 750(?) can downvote and so it's entirely users who are
greying out comments or flag-killing comments.

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tokenadult
It may be that the article correctly reports the majority experience of
Facebook users. I try to be an outlier, and to bring in part of the Hacker
News culture of recommending good links rather than crap links to my Facebook
wall. If I see crap links from my friends on my Facebook wall, then I reply by
calling out the crap in them (linking to Snopes or a better news source for
debunking, or identifying bias in certain sources, or whatever). Several of my
friends have told me that they appreciate that some of the sources they have
heard about (from other friends of theirs, no doubt) are crap, and many have
told me that now my posts to Facebook are essentially their news aggregator. I
get stories from all over about all kinds of topics, and I post those that I
find most interesting to my Facebook wall, with visibility set to "friends
only" by default. The best stuff I see over on Facebook from my friends is one
source of some of what I submit here to Hacker News. I try to build good
online communities by learning from other good online communities. My subset
of all the bajillion posts on Facebook is unlike anyone else's, but it works
for me.

AFTER EDIT: Encouraging, as I do both here on Hacker News and on Facebook,
informative disagreement, I'd be very delighted to hear an explanation for the
early downvote this comment received. What did you not like about it? How does
your experience with Facebook differ from mine, and what is your view of the
article kindly submitted here?

~~~
Vraxx
I have a friend who does a very similar thing on Facebook who is definitely a
large influence on the news I read. I'd estimate that person accounts for 90%
of the news I read on FB, and threads on a source he posted are almost always
thoughtful and worth reading. I definitely believe that this is an effective
method of cultivating a community that isn't deaf to opposing view points.
Keep up the good work!

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vonklaus
>Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, a news and entertainment site, said
his rule for writing and reporting in a fragmented age is simple: “no filler.”
News organizations that still publish a print edition, he said, have slots —
physical holes on paper or virtual ones on a home page — that result in the
publication of stories that are not necessarily the most interesting or
timely, but are required to fill the space. It was partly to discourage such
slot-filling that BuzzFeed did not focus on its home page when it first
started, he said.

In summation, buzzfeed has a commitment to only report current events, and the
most interesting and thought provoking content. They have a strict "no filler"
mandate and a commitment to only report important news stories.

>Not sure this guy has ever even read buzzfeed

~~~
netcan
Regardless of buzzfeed's standards for "thought provoking" and the superficial
irony, I think there's a point here. But, I think it's only half the equation.

Filler is pointless. But, an even more important point is depth. If someone
has an interesting point of view on anything from ISIS in Iraq, post conflict
Russia-Ukraine relations to the medium term implications of lower oil costs on
energy exporting economies of South American there is an unlimited level of
depth that a reader may want to get into. IE, there's a place for recent facts
in headlines, there is a place for two minute commentary. But, there is also
room for people to jump into far more depth.

Whether in print of on video, those talking heads frame a battling for 12
second soundbites in a battle of of cliche and shallow wit are now pointless.
If people want to engage deeper, there is no page limit.

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goblin89
> “Are you creating content for the way that content is consumed in this
> environment?”

The terms “content” and “consumption” in this context make me cringe. I know
it’s arguing over connotations, but I think they frame the matter in an
unfortunate way. On the other hand, they’re telling.

The content you speak of might be good journalism. It could even be art.
However, it could also be shitty journalism, it could in fact be advertising
copy, perhaps it's just some words designed to generate ad revenue. The word
is wonderfully ambiguous.

~~~
ivanche
Ditto. I don't "consume" journalism, I read newspapers. I don't "consume"
music, I listen musicians I like. I don't "consume" movies, I watch them. Etc.

Honestly I wish that all this "consume" thing would disappear soon...

------
ihsw
Ah yes, the "unfollow from blah.com" feature gets very thoroughly used by me.

There has been a massive influx of hopeless and useless junk in my Facebook
feed. Why do I need to click it off? Why isn't it opt-in?

~~~
batiudrami
It's just a phase. We had shitty profile apps, shitty quiz apps, shitty social
game apps, shitty "like to see this stupid picture" pages, shitty bit strips,
and currently we have shitty videos and pictures being shared by radio
stations and clickbait sites. This too shall pass.

That said, I have a Facebook group with just my friends in it, where we
organise social events, share interesting stuff and just generally shoot the
shit. It's exactly what I want Facebook to be - no junk, no ads, no brands
marketing to me, and no one cultivating their social presence. Just a couple
of posts a day and a bunch of follow up comments from my (real) friends.

~~~
Apocryphon
Ultimately, I think that core FB experience is what will allow the site to
last- the most direct person-to-person experience, of using it as simply a
method of communication between people who know each other well in real life.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how that can be monetized, unless the site was to
offer a paid subscription to this "True Facebook" in some dark dytopian
future.

~~~
bigbugbag
The core FB experience you described is pretty much describing something
called the internet (also email/im), something FB is trying very hard to
replace (as microsoft attempted in the 90's with its msn).

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klunger
I think the user created "echo chamber" is a real problem that is mentioned in
passing here, but not really addressed.

Many times, friends have told me that they either hid or simply unfriended
connections that posted political or ideological viewpoints which differed
from their own. Although I try to keep my feed diverse, I admit to doing the
same for the particularly extreme posters.

It suspect this is one of several factors in the increased partisan
polarization and really should be studied further.

~~~
VLM
"Although I try to keep my feed diverse"

Why support someone else's "grassroots" advertising model?

On the other hand, I have some FB friends who at least appear rational and
interesting as long as you don't see any post containing Obama, Marxist,
Kenyan, Job Creator, and a couple other key phrases. Keyword blocking would be
an interesting feature to add to the "I don't want to see this" menu that is
already present in FB. Add an option "contains keywords" and then select
predetermined keywords.

One interesting side effect is likely to be an explosion of vocabulary. Once I
block the obvious keyphrases above, I'll just have a newsfeed spammed with
'bama, Stalinist, African, and anticapitalist. I'm not sure that would be an
improvement. Or it'll look like modern spam with weirdly spelled words.

------
andygambles
It is simply old school newspaper political bias entering the digital arena.
Most papers are know for being left or right.

Facebook allows our peers/friends to influence what it thinks our preferences
are. Therefore we are now becoming more influenced by those around us and
possibly dulling the ability to form our own opinions.

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ap22213
When Slobodan Milošević was once asked why he didn't ban free speech he
responded something like, 'I control the television, and that's all that
matters.'

In today's world, when one controls the internet, that's all that matters.

~~~
pp19dd
Where did you see that quote? It doesn't sound right.

From WikiPedia: ''Upon the creation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
Milošević's government engaged in reforms to the Serbian Penal Code regarding
restrictions on free speech, which were seen by critics as highly
authoritarian. In particular Article 98 of the Serbian Penal Code during the
1990s punished imprisonment of up to three years for the following: "...public
ridicule [of] the Republic of Serbia or another Republic within the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, their flag, coat of arms or anthem, their
presidencies, assemblies or executive councils, the president of the executive
council in connection with the performance of their office..."[65]''

~~~
ap22213
Something I read a long time ago, in the 90s. That's why I had to paraphrase.
The context of the question was in regard to why he wasn't cracking down on
newspapers.

------
marban
Related plug: [http://popist.com](http://popist.com) — launching shortly.

