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.
2,356 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gerry Smith / Bloomberg:
Publishers are letting writers go as they turn to video and try to replicate success of Vice, which is said to be valued at $5.7B or twice that of the NYT — Digital media churns out videos for tech and media giants — Adults to spend 81 minutes a day on digital video: eMarketer
Publishers Are Making More Video—Whether You Want It or Not
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-29/publishers-are-making-more-video-whether-you-want-it-or-not
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kashmir Hill / Gizmodo:
Reporter recounts being pressured by Google and her bosses to take down a Forbes piece in 2011 criticizing Google’s monopolistic practices with Plus and search
Google
Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me
http://gizmodo.com/yes-google-uses-its-power-to-quash-ideas-it-doesn-t-li-1798646437
The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance.
The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record-breaking $2.7 billion fine for privileging its price-comparison service over others in search results. That post was briefly taken down, then republished. Soon afterward, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”
Google denied any role in Lynn’s firing
Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished.
I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, Plus.
The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1″ social buttons to articles on the site
This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and news give it tremendous power over publishers. By tying search results to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to promote its social network.
I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes.
After the meeting, I approached Google’s public relations team as a reporter, told them I’d been in the meeting, and asked if I understood correctly. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button “influences the ranking.” They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google.
With that, I published a story headlined, “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers,”
Google promptly flipped out. This was in 2011, around the same time that a congressional antitrust committee was looking into whether the company was abusing its powers.
Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no such agreement, hadn’t been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.)
It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News.
Given that I’d gone to the Google PR team before publishing, and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up.
But the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all.
It’s possible that Forbes, and not Google, was responsible for scrubbing the cache, but I frankly doubt that anyone at Forbes had the technical know-how to do it
Deliberately manipulating search results to eliminate references to a story that Google doesn’t like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power over information on the internet. I don’t have any hard evidence to prove that that’s what Google did in this instance, but it’s part of why this episode has haunted me for years: The story Google didn’t want people to read swiftly became impossible to find through Google.
the claim that the meeting was covered by a non-disclosure agreement. Again, I identified myself as a journalist and signed no such agreement before attending.
People who paid close attention to the search industry noticed the piece’s disappearance and wrote about it, wondering why it disappeared. Those pieces, at least, are still findable today.
Google still thought it could compete with Facebook on social, it was willing to play hardball to promote the network.
But an entity as powerful as Google doesn’t have to issue ultimatums. It can just nudge organizations and get them to act as it wants, given the influence it wields.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
After documenting botnet attack on ProPublica, DFR Lab faced its own attack from bots and impersonators, who use follows, likes, retweets to intimidate users
Twitter Bots Use Likes, RTs for Intimidation
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/08/twitter-bots-use-likes-rts-for-intimidation/
I awoke this morning to find my account on Twitter (@briankrebs) had attracted almost 12,000 new followers overnight. Then I noticed I’d gained almost as many followers as the number of re-tweets (RTs) earned for a tweet I published on Tuesday. The tweet stated how every time I tweet something related to Russian President Vladimir Putin I get a predictable stream of replies that are in support of President Trump — even in cases when neither Trump nor the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign were mentioned.
Upon further examination, it appears that almost all of my new followers were compliments of a social media botnet that is being used to amplify fake news and to intimidate journalists, activists and researchers. The botnet or botnets appear to be targeting people who are exposing the extent to which sock puppet and bot accounts on social media platforms can be used to influence public opinion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
How publishers’ extreme reliance on various Google services gives Google effective monopoly power, stifles criticism, and sometimes results in unexpected losses
A Serf on Google’s Farm
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm
An unintended effect of Google’s heavy-handed attempt to silence Barry Lynn and his Open Markets program at New America has been to shine a really bright light both on Google’s monopoly power and the unrestrained and unlovely ways they use it. Happily, Lynn’s group has landed on its feet, seemingly with plenty of new funding or maybe even more than it had. I got a press release from them this evening. And this seems to be their new site. I’ve already seen other stories of Google bullying come out of the woodwork. Here’s one.
I think it’s great that all this stuff is coming out. But what is more interesting to me than the instances of bullying are the more workaday and seemingly benign mechanisms of Google’s power. If you have extreme power, when things get dicey, you will tend to abuse that power. It’s not really surprising. It’s human nature. What’s interesting and important is the nature of the power itself and what undergirds it. Don’t get me wrong. The abuses are very important. But extreme concentrations of power will almost always be abused. The temptations are too great.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Snapchat could compete with TV networks rather than Facebook in creating original content
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/31/snapchat-video-facebook-watch.html?recirc=taboolainternal
Snapchat owner Snap Inc could soon take a slice of the video advertising pie by taking on TV networks with original content, according to new research.
“Snapchat could see financial success not by necessarily gaining share from Facebook or Instagram but rather by carving out a space for itself as a mobile-first, youth-focused digital video network,” says Brandon Verblow, an associate forecast analyst at Forrester and author of the research company’s latest social media advertising forecast.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anyone can cherrypick papers to support their own point of view, but virtually all scientists agree on the challenges implicit bias and stereotyping pose.
WHAT JAMES DAMORE GOT WRONG ABOUT GENDER BIAS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
https://www.wired.com/story/what-james-damore-got-wrong-about-gender-bias-in-computer-science?mbid=social_fb
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ian Burrell / The Drum:
NewsWhip research shows Associated Press content generates almost 35M engagements/month on Facebook, beating any single publisher — New research reveals that the bedrock of journalism on Facebook is far more stable than one might have thought of a news environment stigmatised by rampant clickbait and fake stories.
How a 171-year-old news agency is the hidden mainstay of news on Facebook
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2017/08/31/how-171-year-old-news-agency-the-hidden-mainstay-news-facebook
New research reveals that the bedrock of journalism on Facebook is far more stable than one might have thought of a news environment stigmatised by rampant clickbait and fake stories.
It turns out that the biggest provider of stories by far on the world’s biggest social media platform is the world’s oldest news agency, Associated Press.
A study by news analytics company NewsWhip found that the AP – set up in 1846 by a group of New York dailies to provide coverage of the Mexican-American War – is generating almost 35m engagements a month on Facebook, a fact disguised by the agency’s comparative anonymity, masked by the brands of its members and clients in the news industry. This huge number of engagements (likes, comments etc) can’t be matched by any single news publisher, even the phenomenal Mail Online, which currently leads the chasing pack with 27m interactions.
The AP’s most popular content is its breaking news, its political coverage, and its celebrity and “odd” stories.
Headlines have never been as important as they are now in this mobile-first media era, and every client of the AP can create its own alluring title for the same agency article.
The agency, while maintaining its age-old reporting practices, is determined to respond quickly to changes in news consumption by investing heavily in data analytics and automated news gathering.
News editors will be drawn to headlines that suggest a piece will be widely shared and drive traffic numbers. So AP, which is primarily a B2B business, increasingly tinkers with its own headlines to grab the attention of the professional journalists in its client base.
Of course, AP’s clients often don’t stick to the original headlines.
The AP produces a lot of news. The NewsWhip study found that AP’s 30m-plus monthly Facebook engagements were coming from between 1.25m-1.35m content matches detected each month. Two-thirds of the Top 10 Facebook publishers are AP members or clients.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reuters:
North Korean court sentences two South Korean journalists and their publishers to death for their reviews of book, “North Korea Confidential” — SEOUL (Reuters) – A North Korean court sentenced two South Korean journalists and their publishers to death for “seriously insulting the dignity” …
North Korea sentences South Korean reporters to death over review of book about country
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-southkorea-media-threat/north-korea-sentences-south-korean-reporters-to-death-over-review-of-book-about-country-idUSKCN1BB2J0
A North Korean court sentenced two South Korean journalists and their publishers to death for “seriously insulting the dignity” of the country by reviewing and interviewing the British authors of a book about life in the North, its state media said on Thursday.
North Korea has previously issued harshly worded accusations against South Korean entities and individuals for allegedly violating its dignity, by slandering its leadership and its political system.
The South Korean journalists who reviewed the book “committed a hideous crime of seriously insulting the dignity of the DPRK with the use of dishonest contents” carried by “North Korea Confidential”, the court spokesman said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab:
ProPublica creates its first Facebook Messenger bot, to collect readers’ stories about hate speech on Facebook — Can a Facebook Messenger bot used to collect stories from readers also double as a new form of storytelling? ProPublica thinks so. — The big tech companies have long clung …
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/08/with-its-first-facebook-messenger-bot-propublica-is-collecting-reader-stories-about-hate-speech/
With its first Facebook Messenger bot, ProPublica is collecting reader stories about hate speech
Can a Facebook Messenger bot used to collect stories from readers also double as a new form of storytelling? ProPublica thinks so.
Back in June, ProPublica published an in-depth investigation into the algorithms that Facebook uses to determine what it considers “hate speech” on its platform. The findings, which were part of ProPublica’s coverage of what it calls “algorithmic injustice,” were clear, if a little disheartening: Facebook’s rules were being inconsistently applied, creating issues both for people abused without recourse and people whose posts had been taken down with little explanation or room for appeal.
ProPublica, eager to learn more about these secret algorithms, is using its own technology to help. Earlier this week, the organization released its first Facebook Messenger bot, which is designed to collect stories about people’s experiences with hate speech on Facebook. Using Messenger’s conversational interface, the bot asks users questions such as “Did you experience hate speech” and “Did Facebook delete the post?” Users are also able to share the exact wording of the comments in question and direct screenshots.
“The goal here is to figure out how are these rules actually being implemented,”
The use of Facebook, too, was important to the experiment. While news organizations looking to collect stories from readers en masse have always had the option of using tools from SurveyMonkey or Google Forms, ProPublica wanted to use Facebook for this experiment because it was the best place to collect stories about people’s experiences with the platform. “If you’re looking to talk to a community, it’s more powerful if you can go right where they already are,”
The bot, the first of its kind for ProPublica, came with a handful of new challenges and questions for the organization.
ProPublica is considering more messaging-based projects this year, with plans to experiment with other chat apps as well as SMS. One of the big open questions is how much any of these experiments will entice readers, both in the initial phases and once the novelty factor of the conversational interface wears off.
And then there are the trolls. Giving some users the opportunity to share their stories with readers opens up the door for troublemakers to do the same. But so far, ProPublica hasn’t seen much of it
Tomi Engdahl says:
TechRepublic: Mozilla ‘Is Desperately Needed to Save the Web’
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/09/02/2147239/techrepublic-mozilla-is-desperately-needed-to-save-the-web
“I can’t remember the last time I cared about Mozilla,” writes Matt Asay at TechRepublic. “I also can’t remember a time when we needed it more.”
Mozilla’s Firefox is almost a rounding error in desktop market share, and nonexistent in mobile browser market share.
As Python guru Matt Harrison put it, “Vendors control the default browser which 99.9% of people use.” Those vendors are happy to sell us access to information. Nothing about it is free. You are most definitely the product.
On mobile, where the majority of the world’s content is now consumed, Google and Facebook own eight of the top 10 apps, with apps devouring 87% of our time spent on smartphones and tablets, according to new comScore data. For that remaining 13% of time spent on the mobile web, Google and Apple offer the two dominant browsers… the majority of our time online is now mediated by just a few megacorporations,
Mozilla is desperately needed to save the web, but does it stand a chance?
Mozilla used to be our bulwark against the the closure of the web. Can it muster a defense again?
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/mozilla-is-desperately-needed-to-save-the-web-but-does-it-stand-a-chance/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Risks of Demonizing Silicon Valley
https://www.wired.com/story/risks-of-demonizing-silicon-valley
or years, the ascent of tech has broadly been viewed as positive, heralding an era of increased productivity and greater communication. But recently, the litany of corporate missteps and a general sense of power accreting to a few extraordinarily rich and powerful companies and the men–yes, largely men–who lead them has triggered a wave of criticisms of the once-Teflon culture of the Valley.
With this in mind, a few weeks ago I suggested to my editors at WIRED I write a piece about the notable change in public attitudes towards Silicon Valley over the past year, from largely laudatory to increasingly damning.
And then a story broke about a noted Washington think tank, New America. The foundation, which has received millions of dollars in funding from Google over the years, decided to part ways with a noted thought-leader, Barry Lynn, who has long been warning of the monopolistic dangers in tech behemoths like Google amassing too much innovation, too much capital, and too much of the web. Lynn’s ouster was widely, though in my view, not correctly, characterized as “Google Pushes Out Critics at Google-Funded Think Tank.”
And scrutiny of the Valley and its issues is long overdue. People should push against the arrogance that “our way is the right way and the only way” and the intolerance of ideas that don’t accord with the Valley’s groupthink. People should be alarmed that incredible wealth is concentrated in a few hands. They should question the industry’s sexism. They should pay attention to the industry’s ideas on social issues ranging from privacy to regulation and the government’s role.
The challenge is how to balance legitimate criticisms without descending into demonization. This is not a challenge unique to Silicon Valley. The same argument could be made about government and the financial world.
We humans tend to fail at balance. We either adore or revile; trust or suspect. Holding two or more contradictory truths is often beyond our collective capacities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If a Hillary-endorsed media platform is tech’s best solution for ‘fake news’ then we’re screwed
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/04/if-a-hillary-backed-media-platform-is-techs-best-solution-to-fake-news-then-were-screwed/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Social media sites have had a pretty interesting year when it comes to approaching filter bubbles and echo chambers and the real world effects that come when they effect something like a national election. Verrit is a fledgling media startup that’s aiming to provide a platform for Hillary supporters to look at infographics with quotes on them about stuff they agree with.
Verrit got a big boost yesterday when Hillary herself tweeted out an endorsement of the platform to her nearly 18 million Twitter followers.
For Clinton supporters the site aims “to become their trusted source of political information and analysis; to provide them (and anyone like-minded) sanctuary in a chaotic media environment; to center their shared principles; and to do so with an unwavering commitment to truth and facts,” according to a blog post.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t Kick Nazis Off the Internet
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-05/don-t-kick-nazis-off-the-internet
Corporations shouldn’t arbitrate public debate.
Editorial Board
Don’t Kick Nazis Off the Internet
Corporations shouldn’t arbitrate public debate.
By The Editors
8
5. syyskuuta 2017 klo 17.00 UTC+3
Facebook
Twitter
Email
Print
Share
The right way to do it. Photographer: Salwan Georges/Washington Post
Neo-Nazis are having a hard time doing business these days. After a white-supremacist rally in Virginia ended in violence last month, a pressure campaign has induced a lengthening list of companies to shut down accounts used by the participants and their fellow travelers. From dating apps to ride-sharing services, seemingly every right-thinking company is joining in the crackdown.
That may seem like a triumph for simple decency. In fact, it risks setting a dangerous precedent.
So much the better for the internet, you might say. But it isn’t so simple. Cloudflare, for one, had second thoughts. “It doesn’t sit right to have a private company, invisible but ubiquitous, making editorial decisions about what can and cannot be online,” wrote Matthew Prince, the company’s co-founder.
He’s right. Such companies are perfectly entitled to drop odious customers. But expecting them to arbitrate public discourse is fraught with risks.
“The pre-internet analogy would be if Ma Bell listened in on phone calls and could terminate your line if it didn’t like what you were talking about,”
Practical problems also abound. Exactly what content should they accept and what should they ban?
Remember, too, that the pressure won’t end with Nazis. Some right-wing groups are already asking whether companies plan to ban Black Lives Matter activists. In polarized times, such calls — however ludicrous — are likely to expand and intensify.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t Kick Nazis Off the Internet
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-05/don-t-kick-nazis-off-the-internet
Corporations shouldn’t arbitrate public debate.
Neo-Nazis are having a hard time doing business these days. After a white-supremacist rally in Virginia ended in violence last month, a pressure campaign has induced a lengthening list of companies to shut down accounts used by the participants and their fellow travelers. From dating apps to ride-sharing services, seemingly every right-thinking company is joining in the crackdown.
That may seem like a triumph for simple decency. In fact, it risks setting a dangerous precedent.
So much the better for the internet, you might say. But it isn’t so simple. Cloudflare, for one, had second thoughts. “It doesn’t sit right to have a private company, invisible but ubiquitous, making editorial decisions about what can and cannot be online,” wrote Matthew Prince, the company’s co-founder.
He’s right. Such companies are perfectly entitled to drop odious customers. But expecting them to arbitrate public discourse is fraught with risks.
“The pre-internet analogy would be if Ma Bell listened in on phone calls and could terminate your line if it didn’t like what you were talking about,”
Practical problems also abound. Exactly what content should they accept and what should they ban?
Remember, too, that the pressure won’t end with Nazis. Some right-wing groups are already asking whether companies plan to ban Black Lives Matter activists. In polarized times, such calls — however ludicrous — are likely to expand and intensify.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s official: Users navigate flat UI designs 22 per cent slower
Put in some chrome and shade
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/05/flat_uis_designs_are_22_per_cent_slower_official/
The mania for “flat” user interfaces is costing publishers and ecommerce sites billions in lost revenue.
A “flat” design removes the distinction between navigation controls and content. Historically, navigation controls such as buttons were shaded, or given 3D relief, to distinguish them from the application or web page’s content.
The mania is credited to Microsoft with its minimalistic Zune player, an iPod clone, which was developed into the Windows Phone Series UX, which in turn became the design for Windows from Windows 8 in 2012 onwards. But Steve Jobs is also to blame. The typography-besotted Apple founder was fascinated by WP’s “magazine-style” Metro design, and it was posthumously incorporated into iOS7 in 2013. Once blessed by Apple, flat designs spread to electronic programme guides on telly, games consoles and even car interfaces. And of course web sites.
Flat designs looked “cleaner” and more “modern” (Microsoft’s subsequent portmanteau term for its Metro design), but there was a price to pay.
The consequence is that users find navigation harder, and so spend more time on a page. Now research by the Nielsen Norman Group has measured by how much. The company wired up 71 users, and gave them nine sites to use, tracking their eye movement and recording the time spent on content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How One Writer Is Battling Tech-Induced Attention Disorder
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/09/05/2130242/how-one-writer-is-battling-tech-induced-attention-disorder
Katie Hafner has spent the last 23 days in rehab. Not for alcoholism or gambling, but for a self-inflicted case of episodic partial attention thanks to her iPhone. On Backchannel, Hafner writes about the detrimental effect the constant stream of pings has had on her, and how her life has come to resemble a computer screen. “I sense a constant agitation when I’m doing something,” she says, “as if there is something else out there, beckoning — demanding — my attention. And nothing needs to be deferred.”
“I blame electronics for my affliction,” writes Hafner, who says the devices in her life “teem with squirrels.” “If I pick up my iPhone to send a text, damned if I don’t get knocked off task within a couple of seconds by an alert about Trump’s latest tweet. And my guess is that if you have allowed your mind to be as tyrannized by the demands of your devices as I have, you too suffer to some degree from this condition.”
My iPhone Turned Me Into a Squirrel-Chasing Dog
https://www.wired.com/story/my-iphone-turned-me-into-a-squirrel-chasing-dog/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking
By Ernesto on September 5, 2017
https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-faces-48-million-piracy-damages-and-isp-blocking-170905/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+(Torrentfreak)
Breaking
Sci-Hub, which is regularly referred to as the “Pirate Bay of science,” faces another setback in a US federal court. After the site’s operator failed to respond, the American Chemical Society now requests a default judgment of $4.8 million for alleged copyright infringement. In addition, the publisher wants a broad injunction which would require search engines and ISPs to block the site.
Tomi Engdahl says:
My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil
https://vivaldi.com/blog/google-return-to-not-being-evil/
A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jason Schwartz / Politico:
Facebook is undermining its fact checking efforts by withholding data from its media partners, citing user privacy, such as which false stories are most popular
Facebook undermines its own effort to fight fake news
A once-touted plan to fact-check stories is being hindered by the company’s refusal to share information.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/07/facebook-fake-news-social-media-242407
The fact-checkers enlisted by Facebook to help clear the site of “fake news” say the social media giant’s refusal to share information is hurting their efforts.
In December, Facebook promised to address the spread of misinformation on its platform, in part by working with outside fact-checking groups. But because the company has declined to share any internal data from the project, the fact-checkers say they have no way of determining whether the “disputed” tags they’re affixing to “fake news” articles slow — or perhaps even accelerate — the stories’ spread. They also say they’re lacking information that would allow them to prioritize the most important stories out of the hundreds possible to fact-check at any given moment.
Some fact-checkers are growing frustrated, saying the lack of information is undermining Facebook’s efforts to combat false news reports.
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Meyer / Fortune:
Facebook says ad reach estimates from Adverts Manager are based on how many could see the ad, not an area’s population, explaining discrepancy with census data
Facebook’s Ad Metrics Come Under Scrutiny Yet Again
http://fortune.com/2017/09/06/facebooks-ad-metrics-census-pivotal/
Facebook’s advertising metrics have again been called into question, after Pivotal Research Group senior analyst Brian Wieser pointed out a large discrepancy between U.S. census data and the potential reach that the social network promises advertisers.
On Tuesday, Wieser issued a note pointing out that Facebook’s Adverts Manager tool promises a potential reach of 41 million 18-24 year-olds in the U.S., while recent census data said there only 31 million people living in the U.S. within that age range.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Federal judge dismisses libel suit against Techdirt from Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims he invented email, due to difficulty in defining email; appeal planned — Judge: Techdirt articles were opinionated and hyperbolic, but not libel. — A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed …
Judge dismisses Shiva “I Invented EMAIL” Ayyadurai’s libel lawsuit against Techdirt
Judge: Techdirt articles were opinionated and hyperbolic, but not libel.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/judge-dismisses-libel-lawsuit-filed-by-self-proclaimed-e-mail-inventor/
A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed earlier this year against tech news website Techdirt.
The claim was brought by Shiva Ayyadurai, who has controversially claimed that he invented e-mail in the late 1970s. Techdirt (and its founder and CEO, Mike Masnick) has been a longtime critic of Ayyadurai and institutions that have bought into his claims. “How The Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email,” reads one Techdirt headline from 2012.
One of Techdirt’s commenters dubbed Ayyadurai a “liar” and a “charlatan,” which partially fueled Ayyadurai’s January 2017 libel lawsuit.
The judge continued: “One person may consider a claim to be ‘fake’ if any element of it is not true or if it involves a slight twisting of the facts, while another person may only consider a claim to be ‘fake’ only if no element of it is true.”
While the lawsuit against Masnick has been thrown out, the judge ruled against him on his request to hear the case according to California law.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed:15 minutes ago
Sen. Mark Warner and experts raise idea of regulating political ad spending on Facebook similar to broadcast radio and TV — Sen. Mark Warner suggested that Facebook should disclose the same information about political ads that radio and TV stations are required to.
Facebook’s Russian Ads Disclosure Opens A New Front That Could Lead To Regulation
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/facebooks-russian-ads-disclosure-opens-a-new-front-that?utm_term=.fgMqyW5Akg#.xuppAo0ZPk
Sen. Mark Warner suggested that Facebook should disclose the same information about political ads that radio and TV stations are required to.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pew Research Center:
Pew 2017 study of news use on social media: 55% of US people aged 50+ get news on social sites, up 10% YoY; Twitter users who get news on site up 15% YoY to 74%
News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017
http://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2017/
As of August 2017, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news on social media – with two-in-ten doing so often, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center. This is a modest increase since early 2016, when (during the height of the presidential primaries) 62% of U.S. adults reported getting news from social media.
While a small increase overall, this growth is driven by more substantial increases among Americans who are older, less educated, and nonwhite
For the first time in the Center’s surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 or older report getting news on social media sites.
about three-quarters of nonwhites (74%) get news on social media sites
Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat have grown in share of users who get news on each site
Tomi Engdahl says:
67% of Americans Use Social Media To Get Some of their News
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/09/07/2040241/67-of-americans-use-social-media-to-get-some-of-their-news
Sixty-seven percent of Americans report getting some of their news via social media at some point, according to a Pew Research survey of just under 5,000 U.S. adults conducted last month and published Thursday. That overall percentage is only up slightly from 62 percent in 2016, in the run-up to the November election. But among specific demographics, using social media for news has increased: 74 percent of non-white U.S. adults now get news from social media, up from 64 percent of that group who got news that way in 2016.
67% of Americans use social media to get some of their news; Twitter and Snapchat for news are getting more popular
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/09/67-of-americans-use-social-media-to-get-some-of-their-news-twitter-and-snapchat-for-news-are-getting-more-popular/
Sixty-seven percent of Americans report getting some of their news via social media at some point, according to a Pew Research survey of just under 5,000 U.S. adults conducted last month and published Thursday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017
http://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2017/
As of August 2017, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news on social media – with two-in-ten doing so often, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nectar Gan / South China Morning Post:
Weibo orders users to verify their real names by September 15 following China’s new restrictions on anonymous online conversation
China’s Twitter-like Weibo orders users to register their real names
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2110400/chinas-twitter-weibo-orders-users-register-their-real
Deadline comes as government seeks to tighten its grip on online speech ahead of next month’s Communist Party congress
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Daily Beast:
Theoretically, how many people could Russians reach with $100K in Facebook ads? Up to 70M in the US, if smartly targeted — Russian-funded covert propaganda posts on Facebook were likely seen by a minimum of 23 million people and might have reached as many as 70 million …
Russia’s Facebook Fake News Could Have Reached 70 Million Americans
http://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-facebook-fake-news-could-have-reached-70-million-americans
Facebook acknowledged that Russian propagandists spent $100,000 on election ads. It neglected to mention how many millions of people those ads reached.
Russian-funded covert propaganda posts on Facebook were likely seen by a minimum of 23 million people and might have reached as many as 70 million, according to analysis by an expert on the social-media giant’s complex advertising systems. That means up to 28 percent of American adults were swept in by the campaign.
On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, revealed that Russia had “likely” used 470 fake accounts to buy about $100,000 worth of advertising promoting “divisive social and political messages” to Americans.
There may be a reason for that. On the surface, $100,000 is small change in contemporary national politics, and 3,000 ads sounds like a drop in the pond when Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. But it turns out $100,000 on Facebook can go a surprisingly long way, if it’s used right. On average, Facebook ads run about $6 for 1,000 impressions. By that number, the Kremlin’s $100,000 buy would get its ads seen nearly 17 million times.
But that average hides a lot of complexity, and the actual rate can range from $1 to $100 for 1,000 impressions on an ad with pinpoint targeting. Virality matters, too. Ads that get more shares, likes, and comments are far cheaper than boring ads that nobody likes, and ads that send users to Facebook posts instead of third-party websites enjoy an additional price break.
“If they got a super high engagement rate, they’re not only going to get the traffic that you get from paying, but you get this viral factor that can multiply it,”
Yu said he suspects Russia maximized its impact with a basic strategy practiced by Facebook marketers: Seed a new Facebook post with a tiny buy as low as $1 a day, then watch Facebook’s ad console and see if the post catches fire. If it doesn’t, write it off and start on the next post. But if people begin engaging with the post in a serious way, you go all in.
“One out of every 100 posts, you’re going to get that home run,” said Yu
“Then you’re going to boost the heck out of that sucker. You’re going to put $10,000 on it. And Facebook’s algorithm already knows who to show it to”
“It’s a risk-free lottery. The minimum cost is $1 per day.”
One now-shuttered Facebook page provides evidence Russia was following this strategy. Called SecureBorders, the page positioned itself as the work of a group of Americans concerned about U.S. border security. “America is at risk and we need to protect our country now more than ever, liberal hogwash aside,” read the tagline
It’s unclear how many pages like SecureBorders Russia ran, but that group alone had 133,000 followers before it disappeared last month
Some posts went after undocumented immigrants, implying they cross into the U.S. from Mexico to commit crimes and vote Democratic by the thousands. Syrian refugees were routinely painted as freeloaders who mostly “really hate America.”
According to RBC’s investigation, SecureBorders had bigger hits, like a single post boosted through Facebook ads that was seen by 4 million people, shared 80,000 times, and accrued 300,000 likes.
“You can see the evidence of their testing. They’re putting out a lot of stuff.”
If Russia is following that strategy, the impact could be huge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Max Willens / Digiday:
As push notifications increase, publishers like Bustle, CNN, and The Guardian are increasingly encouraging readers to customize them
As push notifications pile up, publishers look to get more targeted
https://digiday.com/media/push-notifications-pile-publishers-look-get-targeted/
Publishers have had a hard time getting mobile app users to personalize their notifications, so they’re trying new tacks.
In the past six months, publishers ranging from CNN to Bustle to The Guardian have deployed new strategies to get readers involved in their push strategies as competition for home-screen real estate heats up: According to mobile developer Urban Airship, publishers are sending 40 percent more push notifications per month compared to two years ago.
The push craze has heated up because pushes work, and now that mobile visitors now account for a majority of most publishers’ traffic, push notifications have grown from a curiosity into a core component of many publishers’ engagement and retention strategies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trump’s Social Media Director Tweets a Fake Irma Video, Is Fact-Checked by Miami Airport
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/10/trump_s_social_media_director_dan_scavino_jr_tweets_a_fake_irma_video_is.html
Fake images and videos of Hurricane Irma that are making the rounds on social media can fool anyone, including, apparently people who are actually working at tracking the storm. The White House’s own director of social media, Dan Scavino Jr., sent out a tweet that he thought showed massive flooding at the Miami International Airport as a way to demonstrate how President Donald Trump’s administration was keeping track of Irma’s devastation. The problem? The video was not actually of the Miami airport.
Miami International Airport quickly replied to Scavino’s tweet to inform him that the video did not depict the situation at the airport. Scavino thanked the Miami Airport for the information and said he would delete the video. Scavino deleted the tweet about 30 minutes after he posted it without ever publicly admitting that he tweeted out a fake piece of news.
actually footage of flooding at Mexico City’s airport from several weeks ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook tests pre-loaded ‘Instant Videos’
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/facebook-instant-video/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Facebook doesn’t want you to burn through your mobile data plan just to keep watching its videos. That’s why it’s testing a new feature called Instant Videos that downloads and caches Facebook videos to your phone while you’re on Wi-Fi so you can watch them later on the go for free. Users will see lightning bolt icons on pre-loaded videos.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook releases guidelines on ad content, prohibits monetization of violence, porn, drugs, hate, debated social issues, and other content types — Facebook wants content creators to earn money, but not at the expense of the family friendly social network it’s built, or the integrity of its advertising clients.
Facebook bans monetization of violence, porn, drugs, hate
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/13/facebook-monetization-2/
Facebook wants content creators to earn money, but not at the expense of the family friendly social network it’s built, or the integrity of its advertising clients. So today Facebook established formal rules for what kinds of content can’t be monetized with Branded Content, Instant Articles, and mid-roll video Ad Breaks. These include depictions of death or incendiary social issues even as part of news or an awareness campaign.
This is a big deal because it could shape the styles of content created for Facebook Watch, the new original programming hub its launched where publishers earn 55% of ad revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Michel / Extra:
A deep look at Heart of Texas, a Russia-linked Facebook group that promoted Texas succession and had 225K+ members before being taken down in summer of 2017 — When is a Texan not a Texan? — Earlier this week, Facebook announced that they had shuttered almost 500 accounts they believe …
How Russia Created the Most Popular Texas Secession Page on Facebook
When is a Texan not a Texan?
https://extranewsfeed.com/how-russia-created-the-most-popular-texas-secession-page-on-facebook-fd4dfd05ee5c
Earlier this week, Facebook announced that they had shuttered almost 500 accounts they believe were associated with a Russian company that spent some $100,000 on ad buys since June 2015. As a release from Facebook noted, “these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.” Tabbing the accounts as “inauthentic,” Facebook added that the accounts and affiliated ads “focus[ed] on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jason Schwartz / Politico:
Yale study: a “disputed” tag has only a tiny impact on perception of headlines on Facebook as being true or false; Facebook questions methodology
Tagging fake news on Facebook doesn’t work, study says
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/11/facebook-fake-news-fact-checks-242567
A Yale survey of 7,500 people shows little benefit, and possible detriments, to fact-check programs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Watch As Amazon Deletes Hundreds Of One-Star Reviews Of Hillary Clinton’s New Book
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-13/watch-amazon-deletes-hundreds-one-star-reviews-hillary-clintons-new-book
In what many have dubbed a flagrant intervention by Amazon itself to seemingly boost the rating of Hillary Clinton’s new book “What Happened”, the Telegraph first reported, and subsequently many others observed first hand, that Amazon has been monitoring and deleting 1-star reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new book “which was greeted with a torrent of criticism on the day it was released.”
Reviews of What Happened have been mixed
Amazon deletes one-star reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new book
https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazon-steps-trump-supporters-trash-130010734.html
Amazon has been monitoring and deleting reviews after Hillary Clinton’s new book was greeted with a torrent of criticism on the day it was released.
What Happened, which covers the former Secretary of State’s unsuccessful election campaign against Donald Trump, was published on Tuesday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study Finds That Banning Trolls Works, To Some Degree
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/09/13/205213/study-finds-that-banning-trolls-works-to-some-degree
On October 5, 2015, facing mounting criticism about the hate groups proliferating on Reddit, the site banned a slew of offensive subreddits, including r/Coontown and r/fatpeoplehate, which targeted Black people and those with weight issues. But did banning these online groups from Reddit diminish hateful behavior overall, or did the hate just spread to other places? A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, and University of Michigan examines just that
the researchers conclude that the 2015 ban worked.
Study Finds That Banning Trolls Works, to Some Degree
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zm3ez3/study-finds-that-banning-trolls-works-to-some-degree
You Can’t Stay Here: The Efficacy of Reddit’s 2015 Ban
Examined Through Hate Speech
http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Metacert’s Paul Walsh on ICOs, phishing, and the future of fake news
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/14/metacerts-paul-walsh-on-icos-phishing-and-the-future-of-fake-news/?ncid=rss
Metacert is a company that hunts down and kills fake news. Created by Paul Walsh, it can assess whether or not a link is trustworthy and warn you before you click. Further, he’s found great traction with ICO creators who are using the software to keep people from sending their investors to doctored websites.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future of fake news: don’t believe everything you read, see or hear
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/26/fake-news-obama-video-trump-face2face-doctored-content
A new breed of video and audio manipulation tools allow for the creation of realistic looking news footage, like the now infamous fake Obama speech
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yle Beta Day: Media Robots on 1st of September 2017
https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2017/08/01/yle-beta-day-media-robots-1st-september-2017
How is AI going to change the media industry within the next few years? Are messenger services the next generation of social media? How should a media house be present in messengers – as bots or personas?
Media robots are renewing the processes of traditional journalism, enabling reporting in milliseconds and in an unprecedented scale.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Nowak / Facebook:
Facebook launches new Crisis Response center including Safety Check, Community Help, Fundraisers, and links to articles, public videos and photos for more info
A New Center for Crisis Response on Facebook
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/09/a-new-center-for-crisis-response-on-facebook/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook ‘Snooze’ button temporarily hides people in your feed
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/14/facebook-snooze/
Sick of a friend’s non-stop vacation photos? Bored of hearing about some business Page’s big launch? One of your groups won’t shut up about their upcoming get-together? Now Facebook has a Snooze button that lets you temporarily unfollow friends, Pages or Groups for 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.
The Snooze button could deter people from permanently unfollowing, unliking or unfriending things on Facebook while still giving them control over what they see. Facebook benefits from you maintaining a dense social network, whether for ad targeting or just surfacing an important life update from a distant acquaintance. So now when you’re annoyed with someone or something, you can solve the problem without severing the connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s how much social media stars get paid to post ads
Surprise! The biggest celebrities aren’t always the highest paid.
https://www.recode.net/2017/9/14/16290536/social-media-how-much-celebrities-make-ads-advertising-instagram-influencer
Last November, actress Olivia Munn posted a video to her Instagram in preparation for the holidays: She wore green and red pajamas, she cooked a holiday turkey and she lounged on the couch with her two sweater-clad dogs.
She also watched her favorite Christmas movie — thanks to her cable setup from Xfinity. “Happy Holidays! From Olivia Munn + Xfinity,” the video’s tagline read.
Munn may actually love Xfinity, but in this case she was hawking the product for Comcast* to her 1.8 million followers. The video, which was clearly marked with the hashtag #ad, has more than 330,000 views. (A longer version of the video did more than a million views on YouTube.)
Social media posts like this from celebrities like Munn are big business. Social influencer marketing is more than a billion dollar industry, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer. Advertisers spent $570 million on Instagram influencers alone in 2016, eMarketer estimates, and half of them said they planned to increase their influencer budgets in 2017.
The question for advertisers, though, is how to distribute those budgets, and to which influencers.
One marketing agency, HelloSociety, said earlier this year that “micro influencers” — accounts with less than 30,000 followers, but a loyal following — were the way to go. Others have also jumped on the micro-influencer bandwagon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Daniel Funke / Poynter:
With two weeks to go before Germany’s election, two fact checkers say false news has so far failed to gain attention, as trust in media rises
Fake news probably won’t affect the outcome of Germany’s election. Here’s why.
https://www.poynter.org/news/fake-news-probably-wont-affect-outcome-germanys-election-heres-why
Even though Germany is less than two weeks away from its federal election, Jacques Pezet isn’t worried. At least, not yet.
“It’s not really like we’ve been having a lot of fake news,” said the fact-checker for Correctiv, a German nonprofit media group.
Coming off the heels of contentious presidential elections in France and the United States, it would seem natural for massive online misinformation to afflict Germans as well. But it isn’t (at least, not as much), in part due to the country’s current political structure.
Mirijam Trunk, an organizing member of Stimmtdas — an independent German fact-checking platform — said the campaign has been tame compared to the political vitriol of the French and American elections.
“When it comes to general public, I don’t see (fact-checking) to the same extent that it was in the U.S. … it just doesn’t excite them very much,” she said. “Fake news is an issue because people spin the facts, but I don’t think there’s actual fake news like the way Trump spun fake news.”
“As a French (person) living in Germany, this is so different from what I was living a few months ago. The French election was crazy — the whole thing about fake news,”
“The main target of the fake news is always the one who has a big chance to one. In this case, it’s Angela Merkel,” he said. “We know her and there’s not really fake information that you can make about her.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Financial Times:
News execs say Google plans to revise rule that hurt rank of paywalled news sites that did not offer “first click free”; Google says it has nothing to announce
Google set to change free access to news sites
Move would give paywalled publishers more visibility in search results
https://www.ft.com/content/9dee50c8-9946-11e7-a652-cde3f882dd7b
Google is expected to end a policy that allows users to breach newspaper paywalls to read articles for free, but media groups remain concerned
Google’s “first click free” policy allows users to access a limited number of subscription-only articles without a login, a practice that has been described as “toxic” by publishers such as Germany’s Axel Springer and News Corp, which publishes the Wall Street Journal and the UK’s Times.
“If you don’t sign up for ‘first click free’, you virtually disappear from a search.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Washington Post’s automated Heliograf tool has written ~850 stories in one year, including 500 on 2016 election that got 500K+ clicks
The Washington Post’s robot reporter has published 850 articles in the past year
https://digiday.com/media/washington-posts-robot-reporter-published-500-articles-last-year/
It’s been a year since The Washington Post started using its homegrown artificial intelligence technology, Heliograf, to spit out around 300 short reports and alerts on the Rio Olympics. Since then, it’s used Heliograf to cover congressional and gubernatorial races on Election Day and D.C.-area high school football games, producing stories like this one and tweets
The Associated Press has used robots to automate earnings coverage, while USA Today has used video software to create short videos. But media executives are more excited about AI’s potential to go beyond rote reporting.
Robots can help reporters
Media outlets using AI say it’s meant to enable journalists to do more high-value work, not take their jobs. The AP estimated that it’s freed up 20 percent of reporters’ time spent covering corporate earnings and that AI is also moving the needle on accuracy. “In the case of automated financial news coverage by AP, the error rate in the copy decreased even as the volume of the output increased more than tenfold,”
All this goes back to the ad-supported — and stressed — pageview model of journalism. Publishers need to get readers or other groups to pay to support their business models. “Right now, automated journalism is about producing volume. Ultimately, media companies will have to figure out how to go beyond the pageview,”
Jury’s out on local news impact …
Robo reporting can serve a lot of niche audiences that, added up, can increase a news outlet’s reach in a meaningful way. That’s the thinking behind the local football coverage. It’s unclear how that approach can be scaled to cover local communities, where the digital news model has fallen short.
… and the economic benefits
Right now, the Post can count the stories and pageviews that Heliograf generated. Quantifying its impact on how much time it gives reporters to do other work and the value of that work is harder. It’s also hard to quantify how much engagement, ad revenue and subscriptions can be attributed to those robo-reported stories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed:
Users’ reactions to “disputed” labels on Facebook are largely irrelevant as those labels are more about reducing reach of false stories and training algorithms
Here’s Why It Doesn’t Matter If People Trust Facebook’s Fake News Label In The News Feed
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/its-all-about-the-data-and-algorithms?utm_term=.aiv24NPxam#.uw2XrD9kVx
The social network is now using the data from fact-checked stories to help its algorithms and other products suppress false information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Facebook and other tech giants are increasingly coming in conflict with governments around the world exerting greater control over the internet
Facebook Navigates an Internet Fractured by Governmental Controls
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government-regulations.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
To Fix Its Toxic Ad Problem, Facebook Must Break Itself
https://www.wired.com/story/to-fix-its-toxic-ad-problem-facebook-must-break-itself
It is a sure sign that Facebook’s algorithms have run amok when they allow anyone to target ads to people with an expressed interest in burning Jews. Likewise, when Russians can sow chaos in American elections by purchasing thousands of phony Facebook ads without Facebook realizing it, the automated systems selling those ads may need some oversight.
Two incidents in recent weeks have highlighted how Facebook’s advertising network—the cornerstone of its half-trillion-dollar valuation—is as susceptible to manipulation and bigotry as its news feed. Facebook addresses each problem as it arises, in isolation. But maybe it’s time for Facebook to acknowledge that it can’t solve these problems alone and to ask for help—before governments offer their own “help.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s data hoarding is like homeopathy. It doesn’t work – study
Boffins find search quality unaffected no matter how much information web giant amasses
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/19/data_hoarding_doesnt_make_search_better/
Data, it has been argued, is the new oil – the fuel for the information economy – but its importance to search engines may be overstated.
In a paper published Monday through the National Bureau of Economic Research, Lesley Chiou, an associate professor at Occidental College, and Catherine Tucker, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, all in the US, argue that retaining search log data doesn’t do much for search quality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook: We don’t always ‘get things right the first time’
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-we-dont-always-get-things-right-the-first-time/
The social network’s head of design talks about people misusing its products. He also fields questions about Snapchat Stories and Alexa.
Facebook has been in hot water lately for people misusing its products. Some have spread false news on the social network’s news feed. Facebook’s ad platform let marketers target anti-Semites. People have used Facebook Live, it’s video streaming service, to broadcast violence.
On Monday, Luke Woods, Facebook’s head of design, acknowledged some of the company’s missteps.
“We’re not always going to get things right the first time,” Woods said during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. “There’s always more work to be done to make things work better.”
Facebook has been in the spotlight as it tries to grapple with its scale and influence. Earlier this month, Facebook disclosed it sold $100,000 worth of ads to inauthentic accounts likely linked to Russia during the 2016 election. On Friday, the company said it’s working with federal investigators as Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team look into alleged Russian meddling into the election.
During the interview, Woods also addressed a few other things related to Facebook’s products and design.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter Suspends 300,000 Accounts Tied To Terrorism In 2017
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/09/19/2120231/twitter-suspends-300000-accounts-tied-to-terrorism-in-2017
According to a new transparency report, Twitter said it suspended nearly 300,000 accounts globally linked to terrorism in the first half of the year.
Twitter Suspends 300,000 Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/twitter-suspends-300-000-accounts-in-2017-for-terrorism-content
Twitter Inc., under pressure from governments around the world to combat online extremism, said that improving automation tools are helping block accounts that promote terrorism and violence.
In the first half of the year, Twitter said it suspended nearly 300,000 accounts globally linked to terrorism. Of those, roughly 95 percent were identified by the company’s spam-fighting automation tools. Meanwhile, the social network said government data requests continued to increase, and that it provided authorities with data on roughly 3,900 accounts from January to June.
Twitter currently has around 328 million users, with monthly active users in the U.S. around 68 million.