
Facebook to Invest $300m in Supporting Local News - atlasunshrugged
https://www.facebook.com/facebookmedia/blog/doing-more-to-support-local-news
======
monkeynotes
> Last year, we worked to better understand what kind of news people want to
> see on Facebook.

This opening line is just all wrong. News isn't about 'what you want to see',
writing news to garner clicks is basically another way of saying 'our news
reporting is fundamentally biased'.

Real journalism isn't entertainment. But, I get it, real journalism doesn't
sell, people don't have time to understand world problems, don't care much
about corruption unless it's dramatic, don't care about plain boring facts.

Facebook understands that in order to own a market they have to spoon-feed it
what it wants. Curate an audience of idle minds and feed them what they
measurably want.

This play to 'local news' is simply a tool to advance their own agenda, they
want to own local news and help you feel that FB is all warm and 'local' to
your needs.

Your 'local' world-view, sponsored by Facebook. It's kind of sick really.

~~~
jdironman
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with nor endorse Facebook. I actually deleted
mine for 6 months before making a new one to keep in touch with friends.

But, I will not knock a company for wanting to maximize profits. They want
their users to want to use their platform. If I owned a social media, or any
product really, I would want to do everything I can to keep them coming back.
I feel like as long as it isn't illegal, and done with best practices
(ethically and morally) then that is what a free market is about. Should a
competitor arise and do it better then That would be fantastic! Markets thrive
through competition and freedom of choice. But as it stands there is not a
whole lot of competition state side.

I don't agree with a lot that Facebook, or Mark, does. But I have respect for
them from strictly a business point of view for staying above water as long as
they have. I just wish there was a viable competitor.

~~~
kakarot
> I will not knock a company for wanting to maximize profits.

This statement only exists in a vacuum. The only way you can truthfully make
this claim is if you can put absolutely anything inside the blank in the
following sentence:

"I will not knock a company for wanting to maximize profits, even if they
______"

> If I owned a social media, or any product really, I would want to do
> everything I can to keep them coming back.

Again, you should be able to place absolutely anything in the blanks here and
still believe in your statement:

"I would want to do everything I can to keep them coming back, even _______"

> I feel like as long as it isn't illegal

Slavery was legal for a very long time, and had its own "best practices".

> Should a competitor arise and do it better then That would be fantastic!

Yes, what this world needs is a cutthroat surveillance complex even _more_
smart and ruthless than Facebook.

> But I have respect for them from strictly a business point of view for
> staying above water as long as they have.

Facebook hasn't even been around for two decades. My grandmother's small
business has been around longer than that, and she doesn't have a board of
advisors.

> I just wish there was a viable competitor.

This entire argument feels like a strawman. No one is saying Facebook needs a
competitor. People are saying Facebook is too powerful. Any viable competitor
would thus also be too powerful.

~~~
jdironman
> I never said 'even if they ______'. That's kind of a stretch of what I
> originally meant. What I had in mind when I said that I guess was imagining
> someone running flyers or business cards around town advertising their
> startup. Stuff that does not manipulate, put at risk, harm, or exploit the
> user.

I do believe a line should be drawn regarding the reach of any company. It was
why I left Facebook in the first place, because yes I considered them too
powerful. Not only technology wise but playing a too powerful role in my own
personal life. But then I figured the 20+ years I have already spent on the
internet has already garnered a healthy data profile on me and just dropping
the one service wasn't going to dent that too much. So I came back to keep in
contact while now minimizing my time spent on there.

When I mention competitors I am thinking of a company that closely provides a
lot of the same functionality as Facebook but without the censoring,
surveillance, exploiting of its users. But, even if one existed the only way
that would work is if people moved to it. I think it is entirely possible for
that to happen. But like you said, who is to say down the road they won't take
the same turn that Facebook did?

Its a risk that will always exist on these type of services. One thing remains
is that there will always be a demand for socializing / connectivity.

Comparing Facebook to slavery is a bit of a stretch. I think we as a people
now have a better understanding of our inherent rights and where boundaries
should be. The problem lies in the fact that a majority of the people do not
care or acknowledge being the product of a company.

I'm not sure what else to say other than I believe that everyone and every
business should have a market that they can succeed in. You're grandmother
probably does so because she treats people right. Makes them feel welcome and
listens to their concerns and requests in whatever it is that she does. The
same should go for larger corporations. They should listen to their users
feedback and provide them with what they are wanting. Whether or not these
things should even exist is not an argument I am qualified to explore.

~~~
kakarot
> What I had in mind when I said that I guess was imagining someone running
> flyers or business cards around town advertising their startup.

Which is exactly why I explained that your claim only existed in a vacuum. Say
what you mean and mean what you say. Don't say "I will not knock a company for
wanting to maximize profits" in the context of Facebook trying to create a
larger echo chamber and control local news consumption if you don't mean it.
That has nothing to do with running flyers.

> When I mention competitors I am thinking of a company that closely provides
> a lot of the same functionality as Facebook but without the censoring,
> surveillance, exploiting of its users

The larger arc of this conversation is that Facebook shouldn't be allowed to
do certain things. Another Facebook clone in the wild only increases the odds
that more than one company will try to completely subsume your digital life
and influence your thoughts and conversations, it does nothing to address the
above problem and is irrelevant to the conversation. Here lies the straw man.

> Comparing Facebook to slavery is a bit of a stretch.

I agree. But I obviously didn't do that. I was clearly making a statement
about the fact that there is no basis for the belief that the laws in a
country reflect what is actually right and wrong.

There was no comparison between Facebook and anything. I'll chalk that up to a
misunderstanding rather than another straw man argument.

> I'm not sure what else to say other than I believe that everyone and every
> business should have a market that they can succeed in.

A lot of people disagree with you. With the idea that legislation should be
business-first instead of people-first. Because that is the ultimate
eventuality of such a system.

We end up with the situation we now have in America where corporations run
rampant across our human rights, destroy the environment and cause mass
extinctions, lie and steal from our pockets, pay absurdly less taxes than they
are supposed to, breach our privacy and sell our transactional history for a
buck fifty, buy overwhelming majorities of local news stations, implant
reporters, displace native cultures in order to build oil pipelines, engage in
economically-motivated paramilitary operations all over the world, support
oppressive regimes and the dismantling of democracy everywhere south of the
border, etc etc etc.

Your Candyland world where businesses listen to users, users who are educated
enough to engage in serious conversations with Facebook's support about major
technological and socioeconomic consequences of their platform, and these
businesses respond in a moral fashion, flourishing in their free markets,
where scarcely a law exists which puts a dent in their bottom line, inevitably
ends in an apocalyptic wasteland.

A company is just a group of people with a common goal. Nothing magically
transforms it into some other entity with legislative preference. Claiming
that a group of people with a common goal should get legislative preference
over a singular individual (which is required if you believe in free market
capitalism) is just absurd, and the consequences are incredibly obvious: the
strong will bully the weak, groups will bully individuals, companies will take
advantage of individuals if the individuals are not legally protected from
certain kinds of "business".

------
zoul
As someone who has been running a local newspaper for the last four years in a
town of about 11 thousand people, getting money or support from Facebook would
feel like someone robbing you and then being so kind as to split the money
with you. My trust in them is exactly zero.

They have practically monopolized news distribution, helped to destroy the
business model of an important social service and now they would like to make
up for it by giving a fraction of the money back?

~~~
freehunter
I also run a local news outlet, digital-only though and not print. Facebook is
both the reason for our success and also the source of our biggest pain. They
almost put us out of business within the last year.

For how they're helping, it's really hard to get people to care about
websites. People as a whole just don't care. They don't want to visit your
website. So we publish our stories and share them to Facebook. We get about a
10% click through of people who saw the story, which is better than we'd do
without publishing to Facebook.

On the other hand, our biggest draw is the event calendar, organizing all of
the city and business events into one local calendar. People visit for the
events, and then also click on news headlines they find interesting. Up until
April 2018, we got this event data from the Facebook events API and linked it
all back to Facebook if people wanted more details. A win-win I think. In
April 2018, they shut off the events API with zero warning. So these public
events from businesses who want people to attend their events, events which
are visible by people who are not even logged into Facebook, are now
considered private data by Facebook and no longer part of their API.

The big draw of aggregating them is that people see a curated list of good
events that are actually near them: in a small town, just clicking Discover on
Facebook events shows you mostly stuff from the big cities nearby. It takes a
few clicks to get to events actually happening in the small town itself. We
still have it, but we have to type it all by hand every week, which leaves
less time for writing stories, talking to story leads and city officials and
customers, selling ads, you know the actual "local news" part of the business.

Facebook, if you're reading this and want to help local news: turn the public
events API back on. A local band playing at my local brewery is not private
information, it is the definition of "things that should be shared".

~~~
steve-benjamins
That’s interesting- would you be willing to share your publication? I’d love
to check it out.

~~~
freehunter
It's very closely tied to my real-world identity so I'm not comfortable
linking it here at this time. It's only interesting to the people living
in/around my small town, to anyone else it would just look like a generic
small town news website full of unimportant small-town topics.

~~~
exotree
Are you capturing these folks from FB through email sign-ups? Have seen a
couple local news orgs successfully get people to visit their site directly by
investing in email.

~~~
freehunter
I have a call-to-action on every page asking people to sign up for the
newsletter, but the number of people who actually do that are so insignificant
that it doesn't matter. Over the past year I've had about two dozen signups,
compared to 15,000 people hitting the site.

I haven't explored more of the popular avenues for this though, things like
"if the mouse moves to close the tab, show a pop up asking for a signup". It
might convert but it's not something I'm comfortable doing at this point.

------
joshfraser
Facebook already has way too much power in their ability to shape reality for
billions of people. Now they have even more power as the local news companies
will be beholden to their investor.

------
yumraj
Best win-win outcome IMO would be for Facebook to pay itself this $300M as an
incentive to stay completely out of news, local and otherwise.

~~~
everythingisbad
prevent people from posting news articles? you know that facebook doesnt post
or promote news itself... right?

------
fareesh
My favourite story involving Facebook and the news is when Facebook's head of
news - Campbell Brown (the former CNN anchor), went down to Australia. She was
hired after the 2016 election as a go-between for Facebook and news
organizations.

According to a report in "The Australian" she is quoted to have allegedly said
"We will help you revitalise journalism... in a few years the ­reverse looks
like I’ll be holding your hands with your dying ­business like in a hospice"
and "We are not interested in talking to you about your traffic and referrals
anymore. That is the old world and there is no going back – Mark wouldn’t
agree to this"

Then Facebook denied that this happened.

So to summarize:

\- Facebook is accused of not doing enough to combat fake news

\- Facebook hires Campbell Brown to be a point person to deal with the fake
news situation

\- A newspaper reports that Campbell Brown allegedly tried to push them around

\- Facebook says this is fake news

------
claudiulodro
Interesting timing, the day after Newspack was announced.[1] I know which one
I'm going to support, but it's going to be tough to take on a $300mm
commitment with a $3mm commitment.

1\. [https://en.blog.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/newspack-by-
wordpre...](https://en.blog.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/newspack-by-wordpress-
com/)

~~~
ijafri
With Google Reader Gone, Facebook and Twitter essentially have taken the place
of feed readers. It makes a lot of sense for Facebook, it's not merely a
social network anymore. It's acting like a social 'OS' for the users now.

~~~
zozbot123
Yahoo.com used to be that "social OS" in the 1990s and early 2000s, and look
at them now. They even had a Facebook-like feature as part of their service,
Yahoo 360.

------
warent
Interestingly the post says nothing about Sinclair which makes me think this
is nothing more than a gigantic media partnership and yet another reason to
distrust the news.

------
lquist
Ah yes the bastion of journalistic quality that is local news...wait...what?

FB gets a lot of flak for fake news and then decides to invest in local news?
Why not in institutions that set the standard for journalism and bring
accountability such as Pro Publica?

~~~
porpoisely
Pro Publica was created by billionaire bankers a little more than 10 years
ago. They aren't in need of any funding. Also, it's a bit of a stretch to say
that pro publica is the standard of journalism or accountability. Pro Publica
is an advocacy institution.

~~~
throwaway5752
You may not intend it, but when you write, "created by billionaire bankers" it
doesn't add to the conversation much (specific behavior influenced by that
funding would be more useful, if it exists) and is recalls some kind of
unpalatable language/imagery used by far right groups - which I'm definitely
not accusing you of, to be clear.

One thing you may not know is that they publish their full financials, in
accordance with the mission statement around transparency. You can see their
full 2017 finances here: [https://assets.propublica.org/2017-Financial-
Statements-for-...](https://assets.propublica.org/2017-Financial-Statements-
for-Pro-Publica-Inc.pdf) (and you can see they are financially conservative,
but are very much in need of funding to support their operations).

I have no connection to them other than admiration for how they are operated
and their mission.

~~~
porpoisely
We were discussing whether facebook should fund pro publica like they are
supporting struggling local news companies. Since pro publica is supported by
billionaire bankers, they aren't struggling for money and if they need it,
they can tap the foundation that the billionaire bankers set up for them.
Frankly, I don't think facebook should be supporting either, but given the
choice between struggling local news and pro publica, I think struggling local
news is the proper choice. Also, I'm not accusing you of being a far leftist
to be clear, but it's an unpalatable tactic used by the far left to label
everything as being far right and it really doesn't add much to the
conversation. Also, if a company is financially conservative, they wouldn't be
in need of additionally funding. That's the central idea of financial
conservatism, the budget drives your needs rather than your needs driving the
budget.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
That preamble in his post was most likely drawing a a connection between
"billionaire bankers" and the far-right triple parentheses anti-banker
sentiment (to be a bit euphemistic).

~~~
throwaway5752
Yeah. And your response to my original comment is fair. It is definitely a
dog-whistle for some people, but I had ceding ground to people trying to steal
common usage words to encode hate speech. I was on the fence about mentioning
it.

------
joelrunyon
Anyone else not want local news support coming from FB of all places?

------
CodeSheikh
Or Facebook to Invest $300m in Influencing Local News.

Facebook newsfeed model inherently works against local news and small guys
(unless some certain piece goes viral once in a while). Local news outlet
based out of some small locality does not have a huge follower base that gets
Facebook's attention. This is just another PR stunt by Facebook.

~~~
IronWolve
Same problem when using google youtube, they push CNN ahead of other news
bloggers. CNN is also excluded from being blocked like normal channels.

The future of Facebook news is their curated hand picked news.

------
shiftpgdn
Know what would actually help local news? Ad revenue share on their pages. So
many older people treat Facebook as "the internet" are rarely venture off
platform.

~~~
ojbyrne
Maybe we have a different idea of “older” people, but my experience is that
older people actually still read newspapers (ie dead trees).

------
luckydata
Lion invests $300M in the preservation of gazelles.

------
iicc
It's a good idea, but facebook can't be trusted.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/13/they-
dont...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/13/they-dont-care-
facebook-fact-checking-in-disarray-as-journalists-push-to-cut-ties)

>Journalists paid to help fix Facebook’s fake news problem say they have lost
trust in the platform

>“They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” said Brooke Binkowski, former
managing editor of Snopes, a factchecking site that has partnered with
Facebook for two years. “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more
interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck … They clearly
don’t care.”

~~~
swasheck
> It's a good idea, but facebook can't be trusted.

In my opinion it seems like the foundations for a Patron/Client relationship.
Those typically only really work out for the two parties involved.

------
maxhedrome
“We noticed that others were using our platform for psychological
manipulation, we can no longer continue to allow this unless it’s Facebook
approved messaging”

-Mark Zuckerfuck

------
roseburg
The old local news model is dying because it's top heavy and has enormous
overhead. Local news isn't dying though, and is as valuable as ever. It's just
in the process of completely changing.

One person can now do more with 1/1000th the budget of a local Newspaper with
the barrier to entry being hard work, good writing skills, social media savvy
and a love of the place they are covering.

More money to these organizations will just keep them on life support longer.
Now if they changed their model 100% that would be a completely different
story.

The future of journalism will be a lot of small teams (1-4) of
writers/journalists/personalities running their own show in their city or
state.

The financial woes of the old news industry is a symptom. A change is needed.

------
vilijou
Great! Though nothing on how the Facebook click-bait business model is at odds
with good journalism, which has led to the decline of reputable newspapers and
rise of Buzzfeed.

------
drugme
Facebook's idea of news is "anything that keeps you more addicted to our app,
and/or more easily targetable for ads".

------
rblion
The more they force themselves into the people's lives, the more people will
be pushed away. Just watch.

------
mudil
I am a publisher of a medical technologies website since 2004.

To really help journalism, Facebook and Google need to get out of the
surveillance capitalism business.

I left this comment before on a different thread.

What we have now is monopolized internet. Few entities, like Google and FB,
took over the internet and crafted the landscape to their advantage. They
monopolized ads revenue, search traffic, and more importantly, they are
actively spying on the general public, taking away any possible advantages
from publishers. So website for doctors cannot make money by advertising to
doctors. Doctors will see Google ads on Candy Crush. The result is a dearth of
advertising money for publishers and regulations aimed at destroying any
attempt to take over these behemoths. Local news is dead, because Google and
Facebook know your location, and they sell it.

When was the last time you saw GFPR notice on Facebook or Google? Do you think
publishers enjoy having "Please Donate" pop-ups? When was the last time you
heard of investment rounds in online publishers, or any publisher? Why do you
think Denver Post and USA Today are barely alive?

In the olden days we had websites and blog networks being born, Gawker,
Weblogs Inc, TechCrunch network, political networks, etc etc. And what do we
have now? Central stations with fake news shenanigans and retarded memes.
While publishers, including your local newspaper and your favorite websites,
are struggling.

------
legohead
Do these execs / decision makers live in some fantasy land where they think
this looks and sounds okay? I assume none of the employees were asked about
this, as any rational person would tell them "wait a second, I think this is
stupid."

------
ausbah
it's amazing how facebook has become an internet within the internet for stuff
like looking at news, company information, etc.

~~~
swasheck
my wife just told me that they're presenting recipes to her for her to save in
some other corner of her facebook ... experience.

they really are attempting to become an "internet within the Internet." kinda
reminiscent of how AOL started.

------
MrLeftHand
A platform that is renowned for sanitising the world around us to fit their
agenda, invests in news outlets. Is anyone else seeing the problem here?

I am glad I left that platform.

------
telaport
lol sure. Supporting local news with Russian propaganda

------
gammateam
Might as well have been posted by The Onion

------
creaghpatr
With stipulations, of course.

------
myworkhandle
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

~~~
zozbot123
Not sure if I got that, did you mean "Do not want." perhaps?

~~~
myworkhandle
Facebook has already proven to be liars. They are also biased with everything
they do. Facebook has clouded the minds of everyone! Get the f off facebook
and go live your life! Facebook needs to die in a fire.

