I have written on journalism and media trends eariler few years ago. So it is time for update. What is the state of journalism and news publishing in 2017? NiemanLab’s predictions for 2017 are a good place to start thinking about what lies ahead for journalism. There, Matt Waite puts us in our place straight away by telling us that the people running the media are the problem.
There has been changes on tech publishing. In January 2017 International Data Group, the owner of PCWorld magazine and market researcher IDC, on Thursday said it was being acquired by China Oceanwide Holdings Group and IDG Capital, the investment management firm run by IDG China executive Hugo Shong. In 2016 Arrow bought EE Times, EDN, TechOnline and lots more from UBM.
Here are some article links and information bits on journalist and media in 2017:
Soothsayers’ guides to journalism in 2017 article take a look at journalism predictions and the value of this year’s predictions.
What Journalism Needs To Do Post-Election article tells that faced with the growing recognition that the electorate was uniformed or, at minimum, deeply in the thrall of fake news, far too many journalists are responding not with calls for change but by digging in deeper to exactly the kinds of practices that got us here in the first place.
Fake News Is About to Get Even Scarier than You Ever Dreamed article says that what we saw in the 2016 election is nothing compared to what we need to prepare for in 2020 as incipient technologies appear likely to soon obliterate the line between real and fake.
Headlines matter article tells that in 2017, headlines will matter more than ever and journalists will need to wrest control of headline writing from social-optimization teams. People get their news from headlines now in a way they never did in the past.
Why new journalism grads are optimistic about 2017 article tells that since today’s college journalism students have been in school, the forecasts for their futures has been filled with words like “layoffs,” “cutbacks,” “buyouts” and “freelance.” Still many people are optimistic about the future because the main motivation for being a journalist is often “to make a difference.”
Updating social media account can be a serious job. Zuckerberg has 12+ Facebook employees helping him with posts and comments on his Facebook page and professional photographers to snap personal moments.
Wikipedia Is Being Ripped Apart By a Witch Hunt For Secretly Paid Editors article tells that with undisclosed paid editing on the rise, Wikipedians and the Wikimedia Foundation are working together to stop the practice without discouraging user participation. Paid editing is permissible under Wikimedia Foundation’s terms of use as long as they disclose these conflicts of interest on their user pages, but not all paid editors make these disclosures.
Big Internet giants are working on how to make content better for mobile devices. Instant Articles is a new way for any publisher to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook. Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a project that it aims to accelerate content on mobile devices. Both of those systems have their advantages and problems.
Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier article tells that there’s a new form of digital censorship sweeping the globe, and it could be the start of something devastating. The centralization of the internet via app stores has made government censorship easier. If the app isn’t in a country’s app store, it effectively doesn’t exist. For more than a decade, we users of digital devices have actively championed an online infrastructure that now looks uniquely vulnerable to the sanctions of despots and others who seek to control information.
2,357 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Wikimedia urges European Parliament to weigh effects of its copyright vote next week, which could set a copyright on “snippets” and shift liability to platforms
Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/04/wikimedia-warns-eu-copyright-reform-threatens-the-vibrant-free-web/
The Wikimedia Foundation has sounded a stark warning against a copyright reform proposal in Europe that’s due to be voted on by the European Parliament next week. (With the mild irony that it’s done so with a blog post on the commercial Medium platform.)
Your internet is under threat. Here’s why you should care about European Copyright Reform
https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/your-internet-is-under-threat-heres-why-you-should-care-about-european-copyright-reform-7eb6ff4cf321
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Nicas / New York Times:
Analysis: since last month’s Facebook and YouTube ban, Infowars’ audience has dropped by roughly half to about 715,000 daily site visits and video views
Alex Jones Said Bans Would Strengthen Him. He Was Wrong.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-infowars-bans-traffic.html
After Silicon Valley internet giants mostly barred Alex Jones from their services last month, traffic to his Infowars website and app soared on the blaze of publicity — and the notorious conspiracy theorist declared victory.
“The more I’m persecuted, the stronger I get,” Mr. Jones said on his live internet broadcast three days later. “It backfired.”
Yet a review of traffic on Infowars several weeks after the bans shows that the tech companies drastically reduced Mr. Jones’s reach by cutting off his primary distribution channels: YouTube and Facebook.
Tomi Engdahl says:
European Science Funders Ban Grantees From Publishing In Paywalled Journals
https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/09/04/2322236/european-science-funders-ban-grantees-from-publishing-in-paywalled-journals?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Frustrated with the slow transition toward open access (OA) in scientific publishing, 11 national funding organizations in Europe turned up the pressure today. As of 2020, the group, which jointly spends about $8.8 billion on research annually, will require every paper it funds to be freely available from the moment of publication. In a statement, the group said it will no longer allow the 6- or 12-month delays that many subscription journals now require before a paper is made OA, and it won’t allow publication in so-called hybrid journals, which charge subscriptions but also make individual papers OA for an extra fee.
European science funders ban grantees from publishing in paywalled journals
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/european-science-funders-ban-grantees-publishing-paywalled-journals
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
FCC’s Pai says transparency law may be needed for Twitter, Facebook, Google, citing privacy issues, even though he supported ending ISP privacy rules in 2017
FCC chairman says Twitter, Facebook, Google may need transparency law
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/4/17819418/fcc-chairman-web-company-transparency-regulation-pai
The leader of the Federal Communications Commission says that major web companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have offered little transparency into how they work — and it’s time to seriously consider forcing them to tell us.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
DoJ says AG Jeff Sessions will meet with state AGs to discuss a “growing concern” that social media giants are “hurting competition” and stifling free speech — The Justice Department has confirmed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expressed a “growing concern” …
Justice Dept. says social media giants may be ‘intentionally stifling’ free speech
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/justice-dept-says-social-media-giants-may-be-intentionally-stifling-free-speech/
The Justice Department has confirmed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expressed a “growing concern” that social media giants may be “hurting competition” and “intentionally stifling” free speech and expression.
The comments come as Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey gave testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers investigate foreign influence campaigns on their platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Justice Department’s threat to social media giants is wrong
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/justice-departments-threat-to-social-media-giants-is-wrong/
Never has it been so clear that the attorneys charged with enforcing the laws of the country have a complete disregard for the very laws they’re meant to enforce.
meddling into U.S. elections and addressed the problem of propagandists and polemicists using their platforms to spread misinformation, the legal geniuses at the Justice Department were focused on a free speech debate that isn’t just unprecedented, but also potentially illegal.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expressed a “growing concern” that social media giants may be “hurting competition” and “intentionally stifling” free speech and expression.
tries to make a case that private companies have a First Amendment obligation to allow any kind of speech on their platforms.
The simple fact is that they do not. Let me repeat that. They simply do not.
Why are these legal eagles so up in arms? The simple answer is the decision made by many platforms to silence voices that violate the expressed policies of the platforms they’re using.
Chief among these is Alex Jones
The decision to boot Jones is their prerogative as private companies. While Jones has the right to shout whatever he wants from a soapbox in free speech alley (or a back alley, or into a tin can) — and while he can’t be prosecuted for anything that he says (no matter how offensive, absurd or insane) — he doesn’t have the right to have his opinions automatically amplified by every social media platform.
Almost all of the big networking platforms have come to that conclusion.
real cold war for platform security.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Plagiarizing? There’s an App for That!
https://www.eeweb.com/profile/max-maxfield/articles/plagiarizing-theres-an-app-for-that
Be cautious so near organizations utilize an account so accommodates a tremendous pardon concerning resemblance administrations costly!
If the title of the article is something like, “10 Toys Your Cat Would Love,” then I bang my head on my desk while crying, “Did you even look at our website?”
And then we have the articles that look “OK” but that have a certain “feel” to them. Well, maybe not the article itself, but the person who is submitting it. Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, we received a submission that seemed OK until I asked the “author” to register on EEWeb and upload her photo and bio (this is so that we can tie the article to the author, which also means the author is automatically notified as to any comments).
Something seemed “off” with the author photo. It seemed a little too professionally staged, so we performed a search and found that it had been ripped off from the cover of a book written by someone else entirely. We then performed a search on some key sentences from the proposed article, only to find that it had been posted in its entirety under someone else’s name on another website.
The surprising thing was that whoever sent the article to us was really aggrieved when we suggested that this article had already been published. They continued to deny it even after we’d pointed them at the word-for-word original. What really blew me away was when they then asked if we’d be interested in another article on a different subject.
became apparent that the “author” was basically plagiarizing other peoples’ work.
My chum went on to say, “They must have run the text through some app that supposedly rewords it into English synonyms, so they think they’re not plagiarizing, but it’s really just gobbledygook, not English.”
My chum continued by saying, “It is only my suspicion that an app for rewording previously published articles to avoid plagiarism is out there somewhere. However, the reason I suspect this is that on three recent occasions, I’ve encountered manuscripts from different authors on different topics that have this same problem — ‘gobbledygook English’ — that I then traced to rewording of previously published books or articles.”
“They obviously don’t understand enough English to realize that the output from the app, if that’s what it is, makes no English sense whatsoever. “
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Look, Same Great Reporting
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=40&doc_id=1333654
We’re revamping our site, but the commitment to editorial excellence we have maintained for decades remains priority No. 1.
EE Times continues to solicit feedback from our dedicated readers as we continue working on the first major overhaul of our site in more than five years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Breitbart News Network is a far-right syndicated American news, opinion and commentary website and they are reporting this (could be fact or “alternate fact”)
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: We Use ‘Alternative Facts’ to Combat ‘Misinformation’ and ‘Fake News’
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/05/facebook-coo-sheryl-sandberg-we-use-alternative-facts-to-combat-misinformation-and-fake-news/
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said her company would present “alternative facts” to combat what she described as “misinformation” spread on Facebook’s digital platform. She offered her remarks during a Wednesday Senate Intelligence Committee hearing ostensibly examining “Russian interference in U.S. elections” in Washington, DC.
SANDBERG: Finding a line between what is hate speech and what is misinformation is very, very difficult, especially if you’re dedicated to expressing free expression, and sometime free expressing is expressing things you strongly disagree with. In the case of misinformation, what we do is we refer it to third-party fact-checkers. We don’t think we should be the arbiter of what’s true what’s false, and we think that’s really important. Third-party fact-checkers then mark it as false. If it’s marked as false, we dramatically decrease the distribution on our site, we warn you if you’re about to share it, we warn you if you have shared it, and importantly, we show related articles next to that so people can see alternative facts.
We’re making progress on fake news. We’re getting rid of the economic incentives to create it, and we’re limiting the distribution it gets on Facebook.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Jack Dorsey testified that, before fix, Twitter algorithms unfairly filtered 600K accounts, including some members of Congress, from certain search results
Twitter’s shadow banning bug ‘unfairly filtered’ 600,000 accounts
Jack Dorsey confirmed the figure to the House Energy and Commerce Committee
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/05/twitter-shadow-banning-bug-accounts-jack-dorsey/
Twitter’s supposed account shadow banning, which the company says was a bug, was “unfairly filtering 600,000 accounts, including some members of Congress” in search auto-complete and results.
Dorsey explained that the shadow banning occurred due to algorithms that take into account how the people following those filtered accounts behave on the platform. Ultimately, Twitter determined that wasn’t a fair way to assess accounts, and changed course. “We’ll always improve our technology and algorithms to drive healthier usage, and measure the impartiality of outcomes,” he said.
Twitter is working on ways to ensure a high standard of “algorithmic fairness,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Nather / Axios:
Survey of 2,698 US adults shows 66% of Democrats think search engine results are unbiased while only 22% of Republicans think the same
Exclusive poll: Big GOP majority fears bias in search engines
https://www.axios.com/axios-surveymonkey-poll-public-distrust-search-engines-republicans-93f6e982-4511-4287-a088-1e5fd095faee.html
Two-thirds of Republicans believe the results of internet searches are skewed to the left — a shift that’s driving significant public distrust in search engines, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.
Why it matters: The survey shows that tech companies will have a hard time convincing the public that their algorithms aren’t built to favor any point of view, regardless of the reality. The distrust is driven largely by the right, but a significant minority of independents believe the results are biased toward the left, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Donie O’Sullivan / CNNMoney:
Interview with Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher, an ex-DOJ prosecutor, who focuses on shutting down foreign interference on Facebook
http://money.cnn.com/2018/09/04/technology/nathaniel-gleicher-facebook-russia-disinformation/
Tomi Engdahl says:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Google unveils Dataset Search, a search engine that will cover datasets from environmental and social sciences, government, and ProPublica-style news orgs
Google launches new search engine to help scientists find the datasets they need
Dataset Search could be a scientist’s best friend
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17822562/google-dataset-search-service-scholar-scientific-journal-open-data-access
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet Apologizes …
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-internet-from-the-people-who-built-it.html
Even those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created. A breakdown of what went wrong — from the architects who built it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trump inauguration crowd photos were edited after he intervened
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited
Exclusive: documents released to Guardian reveal government photographer cropped space ‘where crowd ended’
A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president, according to newly released documents.
They shed new light on the first self-inflicted crisis of Trump’s presidency, when his White House falsely claimed he had attracted the biggest ever inauguration audience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BuzzFeed News:
Twitter permanently suspends Infowars and Alex Jones’ accounts, saying they violate “abusive behavior” rules, will suspend other accounts he registers or uses — After weeks of equivocation, Twitter permanently suspended the accounts of Infowars and its founder Alex Jones on Thursday …
After Multiple Provocations, Twitter Has Banned Alex Jones And Infowars
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/twitter-bans-alex-jones-infowars
“We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ previous violations.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A disastrous EU copyright proposal threatens our freedom online. We can stop it.
https://saveyourinternet.eu
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
How mainstream users searching YouTube for info about Germany’s far-right protests get pointed toward extremist and conspiracy videos — CHEMNITZ, Germany — The day after far-right demonstrators took over the streets here, Sören Uhle, a city official who oversees municipal marketing and development …
As Germans Seek News, YouTube Delivers Far-Right Tirades
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/world/europe/youtube-far-right-extremism.html
A far-right protest in Chemnitz, Germany, last month. People searching on YouTube for information about the riots there were directed toward extremist videos about the riots — and then on to far-right videos on other subjects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Silverman / The Baffler:
How Campbell Brown seeks to repair the relationship between Facebook and publishers while undermining the news institutions she claims to support
No News Is Good News
https://thebaffler.com/the-future-sucked/bad-bad-campbell-brown-silverman
The relationship between Facebook and news publishers is a bizarre charade, peopled by unreliable characters, dotted with contradictions, suffused with dependency and resentment. Over ten long years, Facebook kneecapped the newspaper industry by devouring its main revenue stream. Together, Facebook and Google now take in more than 65 percent of digital advertising dollars—an extraordinary haul given that these sites grew fat in part by indexing and sharing the content produced by news organizations.
Just don’t call Facebook a publisher, please. By its own conception, it’s a platform, aspiring toward neutrality, that needs publishers to provide it with high-quality content that users can like, share, and comment upon.
Still, Facebook might argue that the value of news services is overblown, grounded in a false nostalgia for an era when a few newsprint and television conglomerates ruled the airwaves, because it turns out that news makes up only a tiny part of the Facebook megalith. According to Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s head of news feed until he decamped for a position at subsidiary company Instagram, only 4 percent of the average Facebook feed is news items; the rest is interactions with one’s contacts.
The relationship between Facebook and news publishers is a bizarre charade, peopled by unreliable characters, dotted with contradictions, suffused with dependency and resentment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marina Koren / The Atlantic:
Though BuzzFeed’s publication of an email from Elon Musk marked “off the record” meets journalistic standards, the term can be opaque to news consumers — The entrepreneur’s reaction to recent media coverage illustrates a common—and dangerous—misconception of reporting practices.
Elon Musk and the Meaning of ‘Off the Record’
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/elon-musk-buzzfeed-off-the-record-vernon-unsworth/569437/
The entrepreneur’s reaction to recent media coverage illustrates a common—and dangerous—misconception of reporting practices.
The earliest known use of the phrase “off the record” in print, according to Merriam-Webster, appears in a November 15, 1918 story in the New York Tribune by Theodore M. Knappen. World War I had been declared over a few days earlier, and Bernard Baruch, a businessman and adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, gave an interview to reporters.
Knappen wrote, “In an informal conversation with the newspaper men, in which nothing was ‘off the record,’
A century later, the term, as well as the practice it describes, is a well-known and well-worn element of journalism. But even after all that time, its collective meaning remains murky. Journalists and members of the general population, which include their potential sources, often have very different definitions for what it means to be “off the record.” The resulting miscommunication can have nasty consequences, and can amplify the chronic debate over sourcing practices, which has reached new heights this week, thanks to a controversial, anonymous op-ed in The New York Times.
The latest illustration of this disconnect comes in the form of an email exchange between Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Ryan Mac, a BuzzFeed reporter.
When sources tell reporters they want something “off the record,” there’s little ambiguity in the statement. Don’t print that.
But the way Musk uses it here—the way many people who communicate with reporters do, particularly in politics—suggests he believes that “off the record” is something akin to a protective talisman, one that, when invoked, both commands the reporter and protects the source.
And that’s not how it works.
“Every discussion with a reporter is in some sense a prearranged agreement, whether on the record, on background, or off the record,” explains Adam L. Penenberg, a professor in New York University’s journalism program. “On the record” means anything the source says can be published; “on background” means the information can be published without giving away the source’s name; and “off the record” means the reporter can’t print what the source told them (they can, however, try to verify or corroborate that information with a different source).
In every case, the reporter and the source must come to an agreement about how the information will be used. In other words, Musk prefacing his comments with “off the record” doesn’t trigger a binding contract. As Mac said in one of his emails to Musk, “I didn’t agree for the conversation to be off the record, but appreciate the response.”
That’s the bare definition. In practice, there’s more nuance. Mac could have conceded to Musk’s wishes, if he and his editors decided that the contents of the emails—an apparent reversal of Musk’s earlier public remarks about Unsworth—weren’t newsworthy. But they did, and they had every right to do so.
Another publication may have determined the emails weren’t worth publishing. BuzzFeed’s judgment was certainly in the letter of journalistic law.
There are some cases in which reporters don’t have much choice about the terms. A presidential campaign may invite reporters on the trail for a conversation with the candidate and stipulate beforehand that the whole thing will be off the record. Reporters must decide whether to accept the conditions and attend, or miss out. Compared to reporter-source relationships, their hands are tied when it comes to negotiating. But the premise of “off the record” remains: An agreement is made.
Perhaps part of the confusion for some sources stems from where these agreements are being made, or not made, in the first place. When reporters engage in shoe-leather journalism—actually talking to people, with their voices—perhaps the risk of confusion is lower.
The fundamental rules of off-the-record scenarios are, for journalists, unimpeachable standards. Yet for news consumers, they can be confusing.
“Reasonable people should understand how ‘off the record’ actually works before trying to invoke it.”
Reporters should always be forthright about the terms surrounding information supplied by their sources, and especially if those sources aren’t experienced press secretaries on Capitol Hill, for example. It’s poor form to publish something from a source who says “off the record,”
“When dealing with individuals who are not experienced in talking with reporters, journalists should make sure ground rules and potential consequences are clear, and then perhaps offer leeway,” Penenberg, the journalism professor, instructs.
Musk, however, is not a novice in the media world.
Whatever the reason, Musk’s reaction is dangerous, particularly in an age of media distrust, in which the president of the United States and his supporters regularly refer to reporters as enemies of the people. An age in which, according to a survey from Gallup and the Knight Foundation, Americans believe that 44 percent of the news they see on television, read in newspapers, or hear on the radio is inaccurate, and 64 percent of the news they encounter on social media—where most people are increasingly getting their news.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jared Schroeder / Columbia Journalism Review:
As Trump threatens new regulations for Google, Facebook, and Twitter, experts say legal precedents show algorithms may be protected under the First Amendment
Press protections might safeguard Google’s algorithms, even from Trump
https://www.cjr.org/covering_trump/press-protections-might-safeguard-googles-algorithms-even-from-trump.php
President Trump indicated last week that the White House is looking into regulating Google, Facebook, and Twitter because they are, he alleges, privileging voices that criticize him while suppressing his supporters’ ideas.
He wrote, in a series of early morning tweets on August 28, that “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation – will be addressed!” Trump’s suggestion that these companies are privileging certain information while suppressing other content followed similar accusations made by Infowars founder Alex Jones and other right-wing figures of bias against conservatives.
How, exactly, would this blanket suggestion to regulate these companies work? When we’re talking about regulating the information that comes up in Google searches or appears in people’s timelines on Facebook or Twitter, we’re really talking about governing algorithms and the decisions they make about which information should be provided and prioritized.
Regulating algorithms might seem like entirely new legal territory, since Google and its cousins are only two decades old.
But a newspaper case from 1974 has quite a bit to say about whether the government can control, under the First Amendment, companies’ algorithms and how they produce and organize information.
In Miami Herald v. Tornillo, the Supreme Court struck down a Florida law that gave political candidates the “right of reply” to criticisms they faced in newspapers. The law required the newspaper to publish a response from the candidate, and to place it, free of charge, in a conspicuous place. The candidate’s lawyers contended that newspapers held near monopolistic roles when it came to reaching audiences and that compelling them to publish responses was the only way to ensure that candidates could have a comparable voice.
Nearly 45 years later, we are hearing a similar argument. Google and Facebook do not face any significant competition.
In the Herald case, the paper refused to comply with the law. Its editors argued the law violated the First Amendment because it allowed the government to compel a newspaper to publish certain information. The Supreme Court resoundingly agreed with the Herald. Justices explained that the government cannot force newspaper editors “to publish that which reason tells them should not be published.”
What’s important in 2018, however, isn’t simply that the law was unconstitutional. Justices used the decision to highlight that the government cannot compel expression.
Justices also emphasized that the information editors select for their audiences is part of a process and that the government has no role in that process. “The choice of material to go into a newspaper,”
Google is not a newspaper and algorithms are not human editors. Should a search engine or social media company’s algorithm-based content decisions be protected in similar ways as those made by newspaper editors? According to two federal court decisions, the answer is yes.
Any attempt to regulate Google’s and other corporations’ algorithmic outputs would not only have to overcome the hurdles the Supreme Court put in place in the Herald case regarding compelled speech and editorial decision-making, it would also have to overcome the Citizens United precedent that corporate speech, which would also include a company’s algorithms, is protected by the First Amendment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Siva Vaidhyanathan / New York Times:
Facebook says it deleted 1.3B fake accounts in six months; fake accounts are being created, probably for commercial purposes, faster than Facebook can delete — Sheryl Sandberg’s testimony to Congress revealed that fraudulent pages are being created as fast as the social network can delete them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/facebook-sandberg-congress.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
LinkedIn sucks
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/linkedin-sucks/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
AdChoices
LinkedIn sucks
John Biggs
@johnbiggs / 53 minutes ago
Linkedin Headquarters
I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.
I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seb Joseph / Digiday:
Facebook to debut new brand-safety measures, so advertisers can see where their in-stream video ads appear, including those in Watch and Instant Articles
Facebook introduces new brand-safety measures, but advertisers say it doesn’t go far enough
https://digiday.com/marketing/facebook-introduces-new-brand-safety-measures-advertisers-say-doesnt-go-far-enough/
Facebook is giving advertisers visibility into which publishers their ads might appear on as part of wider push for brand safety on the platform.
“If you block a publisher post-impression, the possible damage has been already done and all you do is limit the reach,” said Christian Dankl, chairman at contextual targeting platform Precise.TV. “To ensure brand relevance and safety, Facebook should offer the ability to create a publisher whitelist and give full control in the hands of advertisers.”
Facebook could let advertisers use whitelists to give them full control over where their ads appear, but then that would limit Facebook’s ability to monetize its video. Instead, the social network is trying to monetize the video it does have across more publishers while it amasses more video inventory. Formats like pre-roll and mid-roll are critical for Facebook’s play for brand dollars, whereas direct response-focused brands in the news feed may not care as much. Facebook doesn’t have enough video in-stream inventory to profit from whitelist targeting, according to four media executives interviewed for this article.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Christopher A. Bail / New York Times:
Researcher, citing a study he co-authored, says that forcing Twitter users to encounter political views they disagree with can increase political polarization
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/opinion/sunday/twitter-political-polarization.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to tell a Russian troll from a regular person
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/article/How-to-tell-a-Russian-troll-from-a-regular-person-13205901.php
As information warfare becomes more common, agents of various governments are manipulating social media – and therefore people’s thinking, political actions and democracy. Regular people need to know a lot more about what information warriors are doing and how they exert their influence.
One group, a Russian government-sponsored troll farm called the Internet Research Agency, was the subject of a federal indictment issued in February, stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian activities aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
That finding fits with other research showing that Internet Research Agency trolls infiltrated and exerted influence in online communities with both left- and right-leaning political views. That helped them muddy the waters on both sides, stirring discord across the political spectrum.
Distinctive behavior
We also found that these troll-farm accounts behaved differently from regular people online. For example, when declaring their locations, they listed a country, but not any particular city in that country. That’s unusual: Most Twitter users tend to be more specific, listing a state or town
Tomi Engdahl says:
Daniel Funke / Poynter:
How several fact-checking sites around the world approach harassment and death threats following partnerships with Facebook to stem misinformation
These fact-checkers were attacked online after partnering with Facebook
https://www.poynter.org/news/these-fact-checkers-were-attacked-online-after-partnering-facebook
The PDF file is 299 pages long. It has a table of contents, infographics and a statement of intent. And it has extensive details on 40 journalists in Brazil — including archived links and screenshots from each person’s various social media profiles.
Then, it uses all of that as evidence to classify how leftist each journalist is.
“It was very well done,” said Cristina Tardáguila, director of Brazilian fact-checking project Agência Lupa. “Graphically speaking, somebody spent a lot of time doing it.”
The document went viral among right-wing groups on WhatsApp, which has 120 million users in a country of 200 million people. Tardáguila said it racked up countless of shares, and that she alone received it at least 20 times from different friends, colleagues and family members. They wanted her to know she was in it.
The backlash was in response to an announcement on May 10 that Lupa, along with fellow fact-checking organization Aos Fatos, would work with Facebook to limit the spread of misinformation ahead of October’s presidential election. The project lets fact-checkers flag fake images and news stories in the News Feed, limiting their future reach by up to 80 percent.
From there, the trolling snowballed.
Several online influencers wrote about the PDF, Tardáguila said. One right-wing newspaper published a column about how fact-checkers are trying to censor information on the internet ahead of October’s contentious presidential election. A blatantly misogynistic cartoon portraying the directors of all three fact-checking organizations as pets of investor George Soros made the rounds on WhatsApp.
Then came the death threats.
“We were being threatened for real,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kim Hart / Axios:
Study of US teen internet usage: 81% say they use social media but only 15% say they use Facebook, compared to 68% in 2012, and 89% have their own smartphone — Today’s teens prefer texting over in-person communication, use social media multiple times a day, and admit that digital distractions interfere …
Devices dominate teenagers’ social lives
https://www.axios.com/social-media-dominates-teenagers-social-lives-1536351933-b6f8b26e-13c7-4ba4-ba54-e27527d2a968.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seb Joseph / Digiday:
Facebook to debut new brand-safety measures, so advertisers can see where their in-stream video ads appear, including those in Watch and Instant Articles
Facebook introduces new brand-safety measures, but advertisers say it doesn’t go far enough
https://digiday.com/marketing/facebook-introduces-new-brand-safety-measures-advertisers-say-doesnt-go-far-enough/
Facebook is giving advertisers visibility into which publishers their ads might appear on as part of wider push for brand safety on the platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Evan Osnos / New Yorker:
Profile of Mark Zuckerberg, who is at the center of a debate about the moral character of Silicon Valley, as he tries to fix Facebook before it breaks democracy — The most famous entrepreneur of his generation is facing a public reckoning with the power of Big Tech.
Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy?currentPage=all
The most famous entrepreneur of his generation is facing a public reckoning with the power of Big Tech.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is better prepared to fight election interference, catalogs the steps the company has taken to prevent a repeat of 2016 — SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg began the year by promising to make Facebook safer from election interference around the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/technology/facebook-elections-mark-zuckerberg.html
Antonia Woodford / Facebook:
Facebook expands fact-checking efforts to photos and videos, targeting those that are manipulated, out of context, or presented with false audio or text —
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/09/expanding-fact-checking/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Starts “Fact Checking” Photos And Videos Using AI
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-13/facebook-starts-fact-checking-photos-and-videos-using-ai
Facebook on Thursday announced the expansion of their fact-checking army to send “photos and videos to all of our 27 partners in 17 countries around the world,” after using an artificial intelligence which will use “various engagement signals, including feedback from people on Facebook, to identify potentially false content.”
The company says that because people share millions of photos and videos on Facebook each day, it creates an “easy opportunity for manipulation by bad actors.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Caroline O’Donovan / BuzzFeed News:
Sources: a list of seven employees who quit Google over Dragonfly, including some engineers with up to 11 years tenure, is circulating inside Google — A list that names seven employees who say they quit their jobs at Google over a lack of corporate transparency is circulating within the company’s ranks.
Google Employees Are Quitting Over The Company’s Secretive China Search Project
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/google-project-dragonfly-employees-quitting
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Breitbart’s leaked Google all-hands video, while innocuous, is another example of employee dissatisfaction on public display, following James Damore and others — What the leak of a video says about this moment at Alphabet — It’s an unhappy time at Google.
Google’s internal political battles keep spilling out into the public
What the leak of a video says about this moment at Alphabet
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/13/17853192/google-leaked-video-breitbart-2016-election-politics
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 critical points from Zuckerberg’s epic security manifesto
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/zuckerberg-strikes-back/
Tomi Engdahl says:
20 Logical Fallacies That Dumb People Use To Win Arguments, And How To Spot Them
https://www.boredpanda.com/bad-argument-false-fallacies-dummies/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=BPFacebook
A fallacy is an error in reasoning, created either unintentionally during a debate or argument, or sometimes intentionally in order to deceive someone. They are good to know as we spend more and more time arguing with strangers on the internet, it is more than likely tat you have been guilty of one of these common fallacies at some stage!
Tomi Engdahl says:
There is no clear benefit to the social network
LinkedIn sucks
https://tcrn.ch/2NfPlTq
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.mediagavel.com/?facebook
Mediagavel is a website where you can rate news publishers and news articles.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LEAKED VIDEO: Google Leadership’s Dismayed Reaction to Trump Election
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/
A video recorded by Google shortly after the 2016 presidential election reveals an atmosphere of panic and dismay amongst the tech giant’s leadership
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Oremus / Slate:
Study: Facebook engagement for sites identified as publishing fake news dropped by 50%+ between 2016 election and July 2018, while shares on Twitter kept rising
Facebook’s Crackdown on Misinformation Might Actually Be Working
https://slate.com/technology/2018/09/facebook-fake-news-getting-better-study.html
A new study finds that suspected hoax and propaganda sites have been getting less engagement on Facebook since the 2016 election—and getting more on Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bootnotes
Trump shouldn’t criticise the news media, says Amazon’s Jeff Bezos
Who happens to own The Washington Post newspaper
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/14/trump_shouldnt_criticise_news_media_says_amazons_bezos/
Jeff Bezos, owner of the US Washington Post newspaper, has opined that it is “dangerous” for America’s mop-haired 45th president Donald Trump to criticise the media.
Bezos, the world’s richest man and gros fromage of the sprawling Amazon online services empire, had a pop at The Donald after one of the latter’s wearyingly frequent outbursts at the American journos for writing down what he says and publishing it.
What Trump “should say (of criticism) is, ‘This is right, this is good. I am glad I am being scrutinized,’ and that would be so secure and confident,”
Bezos added: “But it is really dangerous to demonize the media. It is dangerous to call the media lowlifes, it is dangerous to say that they are the enemy of the people.”
The irony here is that Amazon itself is hypersensitive to media criticism, with The Times’ science correspondent Tom Whipple famously saying: “Amazon have the most unpleasant press office in journalism. I used to deal with the Tamil Tiger press office, and they kidnapped me. Amazon are worse.”
Your correspondent, on writing something a little while ago calling its voice-recognition powered search thingy Alexa a creepy always-on surveillance device prompted the kind of PR response
Tomi Engdahl says:
Karolle Rabarison / Online Journalism Awards:
2018 Online Journalism Awards winners include The Washington Post, ProPublica, The Marshall Project, and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting
https://awards.journalists.org/2018/09/16/2018-online-journalism-awards-winners/
Superlative reporting on gun violence, government accountability and endangered wildlife led coverage that garnered top honors for 28 media organizations Saturday night at the 2018 Online Journalism Awards, which closed the Online News Association Conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lydia DePillis / CNNMoney:
During a talk, Jeff Bezos says, “it’s a mistake for any elected official to attack media and journalists” and that demonizing the media is dangerous
Jeff Bezos: Trump should welcome media scrutiny
https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/13/technology/bezos-trump-press/
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who typically tries to stay out of the political fray, mounted a vigorous defense of press freedom on Thursday evening, saying President Donald Trump should be glad to face media scrutiny.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
By handing off power of fact-checking to third parties and providing no guidance, Facebook opens the door to battles like ThinkProgress vs The Weekly Standard
With liberal and conservative outlets fighting, Facebook’s fact-checking program shows more cracks
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/09/with-liberal-and-conservative-outlets-fighting-facebooks-fact-checking-program-shows-more-cracks/
Should one partisan news outlet be able to wield power over another, using Facebook as the cudgel?
Facebook’s other fact-checking partners are the Associated Press, PolitiFact, Snopes, and Factcheck.org. The Weekly Standard is the only one that explicitly associates itself with a political stance. When it uses its Facebook-given power to demote a liberal outlet, that feels troublesome.
That’s ultimately the more interesting question here. Should one news outlet be able to wield power over another news outlet via Facebook in this way — such that if the offending news outlet changes a word in its headline, the other news outlet, the one with with more fact-checking power, un-flags it on Facebook’s fact-checking dashboard, thus freeing the article to be seen (possibly) by more people
The problem is that Facebook has set up a fact-checking system that, by handing off moderation power to third parties, throws the door open to conflicts like this
A Facebook spokeswoman told me that, once a fact-checker rates a story as false, the story in question is automatically demoted. “If another fact-checker were to rate the story true (and we now have one true rating, one false rating) we’ll optimize for true and we won’t demote the content in question, but we will still show the Related Articles unit below the story, which displays explainer articles from both fact-checkers, so people have all of that context available,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal:
After receiving “increased level of interest”, DOJ has invited a bipartisan group of 24 state AGs to upcoming meeting on alleged speech stifling by tech firms
More States to Join Justice Department’s Discussion on Social Media Concerns
https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-states-to-join-justice-departments-discussion-on-social-media-concerns-1536887369
Late-September meeting, announced last week, to focus on antitrust issues and stifling of conservative speech
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Oremus / Slate:
Study: Facebook engagement for sites identified as publishing fake news dropped by 50%+ between 2016 election and July 2018, while shares on Twitter kept rising — Facebook’s efforts to reduce misinformation in its news feed since the 2016 election have opened the company to all manner of criticism …
Facebook’s Crackdown on Misinformation Might Actually Be Working
https://slate.com/technology/2018/09/facebook-fake-news-getting-better-study.html
A new study finds that suspected hoax and propaganda sites have been getting less engagement on Facebook since the 2016 election—and getting more on Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Investigation: North Korean operatives are evading US sanctions and earning millions by using fake identities on services like Github, Slack, and Paypal
Tech’s New Problem: North Korea
https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-koreans-exploit-social-medias-vulnerabilities-to-dodge-sanctions-1536944018
Hiding behind social-media fake profiles, a group linked to Pyongyang solicited technology work to send hard currency back home
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danah Boyd / Data & Society:
How extremists exploit tech’s respect of “free speech” and media’s bias to cover “both sides” to amplify fringe messages and get into mainstream conversation
Media Manipulation, Strategic Amplification, and Responsible Journalism
https://points.datasociety.net/media-manipulation-strategic-amplification-and-responsible-journalism-95f4d611f462?gi=3195c2f7c061
In early September 2018, Facebook and Twitter were accused during a Congressional hearing of having anti-conservative bias. This should sound familiar to many of you in this room as you too have been accused for political purposes of being the “liberal media.” The core of this narrative is a stunt, architected by media manipulators, designed to trigger outrage among conservatives and pressure news and social media to react.
It works. Over the last two years, both social media and news media organizations have desperately tried to prove that they aren’t biased. What’s at stake is not whether these organizations are restricting discussions concerning free-market economics or failing to allow conservative perspectives to be heard. What’s at stake is how fringe groups can pervert the logics of media to spread conspiratorial and hateful messages under their false flag of conservatism.
Accusations of anti-conservative bias are not evaluated through evidence because reality doesn’t matter to them. This is what makes this stunt so effective. News organizations and tech companies have no way to “prove” their innocence. What makes conspiratorial messages work is how they pervert evidence. The simplest technique is to conflate correlation and causation. Conspiracy makers point to the data that suggests that both journalists and Silicon Valley engineers are more likely to vote for candidates from the Democratic party. Or that they have higher levels of education than the average American and are more likely to live in Blue states.
As my colleague Francesca Tripodi points out, accusing tech of anti-conservative bias also leverages and reinforces a misunderstanding of how search engines and social media work.
How did we get here? The stark reality is that we all got played. And we’re continuing to get played.
Freedom of Speech
In the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution is sacrosanct.
Congress shall not pass laws curtailing the freedom of speech. Congress shall not pass laws curbing the freedom of the press.
Of course, in the public imaginary, the First Amendment has turned into the colloquial notion that no one — not news media, not social media, not teachers, not conference organizers, not universities — should engage in any act that in any way limits someone else’s ability to speak. As a result, it’s common for someone to accuse someone else for violating their first amendment, even though that’s absurd.
This misinterpretation of the First Amendment becomes unoperationizable fast.
Not every voice — or every perspective — can possibly be represented. The same is true for the front page of a newspaper. Editors must make curatorial decisions. Choosing what to amplify is not the same as curtailing someone’s ability to speak.
Aiming for Search
In early August, major technology platforms finally accepted that they needed to ban a well-known conspiracy theorist who was strategically, intentionally, and flagrantly violating their terms of service. Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube removed numerous podcast and video channels he operated. These sites had previously given him warnings for violating community guidelines, but he didn’t care.
News outlets have been quick to highlight that the ban cost him significant revenue, which is true. But that wasn’t his priority. His goal is to produce stunts that motivate people to see the media as a tool of censorship.
Media manipulators have developed a strategy with three parts that rely on how the current media ecosystem is structure:
1. Create spectacle, using social media to get news media coverage.
2. Frame the spectacle through phrases that drive new audiences to find your frames through search engines.
3. Become a “digital martyr” to help radicalize others.
These steps rely on the relationship between social media, news media, and search engines.
Proselytizing Conspiracy Theories
It’s not clear who first asked whether or not the massacre at Sandy Hook was a hoax, but that notion was circulating on talk radio among well-established conspiracy theorists within days of the mass shooting. The conspiracy connected multiple well-trodden frames
they devised a term to dismiss the people who appeared on TV. They called these people “crisis actors.”
Some had a political agenda; others simply wanted to mock the media for its “grief tourism.” But collectively, they wanted to seed doubt in the public about the honesty of the media’s reporting.
Phrases like “crisis actor” don’t spread naturally through word-of-mouth networks, even on social media. To get them into the public lexicon, media manipulators must convince major media amplifiers to work on their behalf.
Algorithmic systems aren’t their target. Journalists are the real target of their digital shenanigans.
Viewers may not believe everything, but they are initiated into frames that they’ve never considered. And that’s the point of triggering people to search.
“data void.” When people search for a phrase that does not have natural informative results, it’s easy for manipulators to control the results.
Google and Bing rely heavily on legitimate news content to cover up data voids about breaking topics. But YouTube is a disaster.
Through the use of comments, linking, and strategic cross-participation, those who are curious to self-investigate follow breadcrumbs that were designed to promote conspiracy and hate.
Unfortunately, most media making organizations don’t think about the networked nature of video or the importance of creating high quality, easily findable content on YouTube.
In addition to playing with algorithmic systems, media manipulators exploit a psychological process known as “apophenia.” By creating connections between random ideas, manipulators warp the cultural imaginary. By inviting people to see artificial patterns, they engage potential recruits to see reality in their terms.
Digital Martyrdom
Martyrdom exists in most ancient religions. People have died violently and symbolically for their faith so that others could pursue the religious ideals that the martyr believed. In modern times, martyrdom has become more complicated.
They’ve learned that the key to their success is to become newsworthy in your minds.
Media manipulators know how to exploit the edges. And they know to argue that tech companies aren’t supporting free speech when they do get banned. More importantly, they’ve learned that the key to their success is to become newsworthy in your minds.
Journalistic Idealism
I’ve never met a journalist who entered the profession for nefarious reasons. Hell, I’ve never met a journalist who entered the field to make money either. Like educators, most journalists are passionate about giving people access to information. Most espouse the ideals of journalism in a democracy. And let’s be honest, that idealism is essential for surviving the constant flood of attacks.
The downside to embracing idealism is that it’s hard to be reflexive, hear criticism, or be challenged. This is why accusing journalists and engineers of anti-conservative bias is so effective
Understanding the vulnerabilities in news media that manipulators see can help you strengthen your approach.
ROI Capitalism and Journalism
Given this, we need to talk about capitalism. In this country, we are socialized into a narrative of capitalism that no longer exists. The capitalism of yore emphasizes how efficient markets can enable innovation and growth, while yielding all sorts of social benefits. Capitalism always required people to take financial risks, but over the last 40 years, we’ve seen the rise of a new set of financial instruments that are divorced from the services and products that are being produced. The finance sector has become an increasingly extractive instrument enabling a new genre of capitalism that emphasizes short term return on investment. This version of capitalism is corrosive and, without proper checks and balances, it has shaped every sector in society.
But it’s not just Facebook that’s beholden to this form of capitalism. The news industry has also been undermined by the financial sector. When you ask most folks about why journalism is currently struggling, they quickly point to the tech industry. There’s no doubt that Craigslist and Google altered the advertising industry or that the internet and mobile phones changed how people consumed information. But the financial precarity of the news industry began long before these changes.
Most Americans do not trust journalism. But this isn’t because of your reporting. It’s because you’re an abstraction. It’s because of the loss of local journalism.
Trying to appease, the industry doubled down on advertising, failing to recognize how the water was starting to boil. So when sweeping changes to advertising happened, it was easy to blame teach for the downfall of journalism. But it wasn’t tech. It wasn’t simply your financial model. It was the entire financial infrastructure that financialized capitalism enabled. While there are ways in which newsrooms can be financially sustainable, the healthy practice of investigative journalism is not compatible with the ROI that the Street expects.
Trust is rooted in networks. If you don’t know a journalist — or know someone who knows a journalist — why should you trust the profession? Thirty years ago, most people knew someone in their community that worked for a newspaper. That is not true today.
Why did TV news develop such great gravitas in the middle of the 20th century? Many Americans felt like they knew Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite. TV anchors came directly into your living room. Psychologists refer to this as parasocial interaction, where the audience feels as though they know someone as real people.
You will only earn the trust of the American public when you once again become a part of the American fabric.
In order to be effective journalists, you need to find a way to be a part of the social fabric of America and you need to knit that fabric together through your connections. That’s the innovation that’s most critical — and most unfamiliar — to those in the news business.
Strategic Amplification
In the meantime, you face another challenge. If manipulators are trying to use you to help polarize American society, how do you not take the bait? How do you not allow the trust problem to worsen?
witter’s trending topics, media manipulators have figured out how to trick you into telling their story. Accept this and outsmart them.
Not all media are created equal. Yes, a blog post can go viral. But when a major news outlet chooses to cover a story that had only received oxygen from bloggers, they amplify the message to wider audience. Mainstream news decisions matter. Even in a world of social media. What you choose to amplify has significant ramifications in what people discuss, share, and self-investigate.
In other words, news organizations already engage in strategic amplification. You regularly choose to cover stories that are too critical, too newsworthy to ignore.
What made amplifying this term newsworthy?
Choosing not to amplify hateful recruiting terms is not censorship. You wouldn’t give your readers a phone number to join the KKK, so why give them a digital calling card?
And the moment that an algorithmic system affects what information people access, someone will work to manipulate that system to achieve their information goals.
You are not algorithms. But you are also not neutral. And because you have the power to amplify messages, people also want to manipulate you. That’s just par for the course. And in today’s day and age, it’s not just corporations, governments, and PR shops that have your number. Just as the US military needed to change tactics to grapple with a tribal, networked, and distributed adversary, so must you. Focus on networks — help connect people to information. Build networks across information and across people. Be an embedded part of the social fabric of this country.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Oxygen of Amplification
Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators
https://datasociety.net/output/oxygen-of-amplification/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Facebook of graphic deaths and child porn: Filipinos earning US$1 an hour filtering out the filth so you don’t have to see it
https://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/2164566/facebook-graphic-deaths-and-child-porn-filipinos-earning-us1
Movie to be shown at Hong Kong’s Human Rights Documentary Film Festival lifts lid on psychological toll taken on content moderators, some of whom see 25,000 disturbing images a day
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook isn’t restricting your News Feed to 25 friends
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/facebook-hoax-claims-social-network-restricting-news-feed-25-friends-2018-8?r=US&IR=T
There’s a viral Facebook post making the rounds that claims the News Feed is restricting what you see to just 25 friends.
Spoiler alert: It’s just not true.
No, Facebook is not restricting the content you see on your News Feed to just 25 or 26 friends.