
Big publishers are fleeing from Facebook's Instant Articles - PleaseHelpMe
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/16/15314210/instant-articles-facebook-future-ads-video
======
niftich
Facebook is sitting on the largest audience of real-world identities and
hasn't entered the market of microtransactions in exchange for content (like
news) yet [1], even though they could single-handedly wipe out the half a
dozen or so other firms -- the likes of Flattr, Brave, Webpass, the rebooted
Medium, the half-thought-out never-advertised-then-mysteriously-vanished
Google Contributor -- the ones who had to build their audience while trying to
make this model work for years. This is just bizarre.

Instead they let themselves caught up in the 'fake news' fiasco (a factor
absent from the article), re-prioritized personal posts, and deprecated their
previous actually-kinda-nice attempts to give a proper home to professionally-
written journalistic content, such that it's not jarringly intermingled with
memes, baby photos, and humblebrags.

Part of their problem, perhaps, is the insistence on using the Facebook brand
for their homegrown stuff, which is ironic considering they run parallel
services under different names. No doubt a lot of it comes from having to
harness the idle time of massive numbers of Facebook users sitting in their
flagship website or app, but if they started a news portal with micropayments,
cross-pollinated with their network of apps and backed with their identities,
they would still do more volume within a month than any of their competitors
managed to do so in years.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13375917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13375917)

~~~
paulcole
> Flattr, Brave, Webpass, the rebooted Medium

I can't imagine Facebook going up against those household names.

~~~
SerLava
Some of the people at Flattr probably live in houses.

~~~
sidegrid
Savage.

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Odenwaelder
98% of my facebook timeline is pure shit. I once went to facebook to keep up
with friends and family. Now, all I see is clickbait and memes.

~~~
nilkn
My Facebook feed is nothing but ads, low effort clickbait, and liberal anti-
Trump news pieces. I'm pretty liberal myself but I just find the incredible
level of groupthink to be completely insufferable.

Content from friends and family is rare to nonexistent these days.

For finding clickbait, memes, etc., reddit is pretty much strictly superior to
FB.

If I want to follow the news, my FB feed is one of the most biased sources on
the internet.

In short, FB has almost no purpose for me anymore.

~~~
astrowilliam
Installing an ad-blocker could save you a ton of head aches.

~~~
kristianc
Why? Adblockers are useless for filtering out think pieces and low effort
clickbait. They're not even very good at targeting Facebook Ads.

~~~
thetomthought
While I haven't added anything for memes and clickbait, some of the noise can
be filtered out with Sadblock ([http://sadblock.io](http://sadblock.io))

~~~
alexbecker
This is a great example of an extension I'd love to try out if the security
model for extensions wasn't so broken.

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apozem
> One former employee familiar with the matter said media companies' business
> models had initially been all but an afterthought. "The idea that these
> products could meaningfully impact the revenue of the news industry just
> didn’t really come up," the former employee said. "I don’t know that anyone
> [at Facebook] took that piece all that seriously."

Whoops! Almost accidentally destroyed the business model of a free press! Good
thing we encouraged all those bullshit clickbait meme Facebook pages to grow
on our platform. They'll do the hard, non-profitable accountability
journalism.

~~~
mschuster91
> Whoops! Almost accidentally destroyed the business model of a free press!
> Good thing we encouraged all those bullshit clickbait meme Facebook pages to
> grow on our platform. They'll do the hard, non-profitable accountability
> journalism.

Well, Buzzfeed (which grew to its size mainly due to FB) for example doesn't
just produce clickbait crxp, but also high quality journalism these days.

~~~
Tokkemon
Is that sarcasm? Really?

~~~
untog
Yes, Buzzfeed has a well staffed news operation that has covered some huge
stories.

In fact, Buzzfeed seems like one of the few news operations with a business
plan: clickbait and "sponsored content" successfully subsidising actual news
output. The problem comes either when a news story conflicts with an
advertiser's promoted content, or when shareholders start insisting on better
returns and look at the news operation as a liability.

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malchow
It isn't a popular opinion, but my feeling is that publishers' power in the
marketplace is severely underestimated. For those of us on HN who do use
Facebook, the content experience is pretty similar: a few juicy friend updates
per [day? week?]. One or two good articles. Then a morass of terrible, spammy
content.

It's clear that actual users don't put enough into the FB ecosystem to make FB
interesting for people each day, despite FB's best efforts. Content owners
therefore have quite a bit of power. Because if FB suddenly stopped surfacing
one or two great The Atlantic pieces per day, FB gets _noticeably worse_ for
me as a single user.

The old economics of journalism are: publications get 100% of ad revenue. The
Google economics (2001 - 2012) are that publishers get ~65% of revenue and
Google gets ~35%. That is self-evidently failing. [1] And Facebook built
instant articles on those now-failing economics. The price system is working.
Which is why IAs are getting less popular.

Maybe a decentralized web isn't such a bad thing.

[1] I'm self-interested: I cofounded a software company in this space,
premised on empowering content producers.

~~~
AznHisoka
I see your point. It does not help that .01% of the general internet
population create most of the web's useful content.

~~~
grogenaut
I would posit that pretty much all useful content is generated by .01% of
people across all mediums.

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davesque
I recently deleted my Twitter account. Probably in the next few weeks, I'll
log onto Facebook, request email addresses, and delete my account there too.
Facebook has taken on too much of this "take over the world" corporate
attitude.

~~~
criddell
All I have Facebook for is to connect with family. I don't _like_ brands and I
don't follow anybody I don't personally know.

Twitter is where I follow people and organizations for which I don't have a
personal connection.

This separation works pretty well for me.

~~~
bigbugbag
You should invest in a phone line, those are great way to stay in touch with
your family. Direct interaction works way better that going through a middle
man.

~~~
criddell
Why would you assume I don't use a phone line?

Maybe this didn't occur to you, but I also want to share photos and video. I
mean, I can describe my daughter's piano recital, but they seem to enjoy
seeing and hearing it as well.

> Direct interaction works way better that going through a middle man.

Who has time to lay all that copper and build their own telephone exchange?
I'm happy to pay for middle men to help me out.

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rblatz
Good, I don't go to Facebook for news, or really any shared article or video.
It's a social network, I want to keep up with my social circle, not get pulled
into political fights between family and friends.

~~~
criddell
I think this is good as well. I hope news organizations realize that what
Facebook and Google (with AMP) gave readers was a page that loaded quickly.
News orgs don't need AMP or instant articles, they just need a little self-
restraint.

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itchyjunk
If people on facebook enjoyed reading long, information rich articles and
commenting on the content in an enriching way, i'd probably never have left
that platform. But here I am.

Images, gifs and short videos seems like a logical step forward for mass
consumption. Can't really blame facebook for heading in that direction.

~~~
quickben
Who knows, in my extended circle, Facebook is increasingly being viewed as:
"for old people". So we may not get to the direction they are heading towards.

~~~
ballenf
I keep hearing that from younger friends, but have yet to hear from a single
one of them that doesn't open it daily.

How many in your circle have actually quit FB (including Messenger)?

The impression I'm forming is that these younger people see FB as something
like my generation viewed the phone company.

~~~
bigbugbag
They don't quit, they just move their thing elsewhere and stay behind because
mom and grandma want them there.

[https://backchannel.com/a-teenagers-view-on-social-
media-1df...](https://backchannel.com/a-teenagers-view-on-social-
media-1df945c09ac6)

[http://mashable.com/2013/08/11/teens-
facebook/](http://mashable.com/2013/08/11/teens-facebook/)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/10/24/faceb...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/10/24/facebook_and_teen_user_trends.html)

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jknz
I solve the quality issues of my facebook feed by "unfollowing" all of my
friends. There is a section in facebook settings where you can do this all at
once.

The resulting feed has no post and displays "no more posts to show".

It is still possible to use messenger and to browse profiles. But this empty
feed has been a massive time saver!

~~~
kensoh
I did the same too, unfollowed all friends and pages. Then from time to time
when I miss a friend I go check out his page for updates.

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gumby
If your friends are the sort who post, and like to read, actual textual
comments, FB is happy to show that to you. I have some friends who posted
mostly photos and/or videos but by unfollowing only _them_ my feed became
interesting.

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olivermarks
Facebook is the packaged shallow tabloid version of the web, I've always felt
it would be hard to make the leap to anything deeper.

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Trill-I-Am
Why do so many of the complaints I see about Facebook in almost all forums
seem to instead be about the complaintant's friends and family and the things
they share? Why you would be Facebook friends with someone who shares stupid
or uninteresting things? And if you feel obligated to maintain that
friendship, why would you complain about it? How is it Facebook's fault that
your friends and family share stupid content?

