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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Annie Zak / Alaska Dispatch News:
Alaska’s largest newspaper, the Alaska Dispatch News, files for Chapter 11, with Alaska Media LLC and local Binkley family working together as possible buyers — Alaska’s largest newspaper filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Saturday evening and new owners — an Alaska family …
Alaska Dispatch News files for bankruptcy; new publishers emerge
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2017/08/12/alaska-dispatch-news-files-for-bankruptcy-new-publishers-emerge/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matthew Hussey / The Next Web:
How Wikitribune’s platform came together in 72 hours to allow journalists, commentators, and readers to interact and collaborate on news stories
Inside peek: Here’s how we built Wikitribune in 72 hours
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/08/12/built-newspaper-72-hours/#.tnw_6nAmetE4
“The business models for journalism are a real challenge,” Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia told us.
“In particular, the advertising-only business model has been devastating for journalism, as it pushes in the direction of a race to the bottom for clicks with tempting headlines and vapid content.”
As it becomes easier to disseminate information, so the pressure to generate more of it at a faster rate grows. One result of that conundrum has been the rise of ‘fake news’.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
GoDaddy tells neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer it violated its ToS and to find a new domain provider, after it posted an obscene article about Charlottesville victim — White supremacist site the
GoDaddy tells white supremacist site Daily Stormer to find a new domain provider
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/13/godaddy-tells-white-supremacist-site-daily-stormer-to-find-a-new-domain-provider/
White supremacist site the Daily Stormer needs to find another domain provider after getting the boot from GoDaddy. In a tweet, the company said “We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mădălina Ciobanu / Journalism.co.uk:
A new European news site called NewsMavens gathers team of female editors to see how they will curate stories differently from the typical mass media narrative
Through curation, NewsMavens aims to create a front page put together by women in newsrooms
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/through-curation-newsmavens-aims-to-create-a-front-page-put-together-by-women-in-newsrooms/s2/a708459/
Focused on European news, the curators will choose the news items they think are most relevant
Would a news agenda and front page put together entirely by female editors differ from the standard mass media narrative? Would readers still see reporting about the same issues, and would articles be given the same prominence on the homepage?
A new initiative called NewsMavens, spearheaded by Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza with support from Google’s Digital News Initiative Fund, wants to find out by bringing together a group of women editors from newspapers all around Europe to curate stories produced by their newsrooms about European issues and news events.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tommy Christopher / IJR:
Reporter April Ryan criticizes Trump over decision to include her in an attack ad which denounced journalists as “enemies”, in wake of Charlottesville
Black Journalist of the Year Slams Trump for Attacking Her in Time of Racial Hate
http://ijr.com/the-response/2017/08/946827-black-journalist-year-slams-trump-attacking-time-racial-hate/
The morning after Donald Trump’s despicable reaction to the white supremacist terror that struck Charlottesville, Virginia, his presidential campaign released a video ad that attacks Trump’s “enemies,” which include National Association of Black Journalists Journalist of the Year winner April Ryan.
The ad pits Trump against “enemies” in the media who “don’t want him to succeed” and features a collage of news figures that includes Ryan
Tomi Engdahl says:
NPR’s solar eclipse coverage includes 22 videographers, kid reporters and local newsrooms
http://www.poynter.org/2017/nprs-solar-eclipse-coverage-includes-22-videographers-kid-reporters-and-local-newsrooms/470017/
Geoff Brumfiel, NPR’s science editor, figures people will only remember two things from 2017: “Trump and the total solar eclipse,” he said. “So you might as well go big on the solar eclipse.”
Like a lot of national news organizations, NPR is going big with a plan for covering the Aug. 21st event on all platforms with help from member stations around the country.
NPR already has collaborative groups of member stations covering energy and the environment, state government, the military and veterans, education and health, but this is the first time NPR member stations have come together around a celestial event. Last month, Brumfiel and Ken Barcus, NPR’s Midwest bureau chief, put out the call for story pitches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Salvador Rodriguez / Reuters:
US judge orders LinkedIn to remove any tech stopping hiQ Labs from scraping public profile data, after LinkedIn sent cease and desist letter in May
U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling-idUSKCN1AU2BV
A U.S. federal judge on Monday ruled that Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) LinkedIn unit cannot prevent a startup from accessing public profile data, in a test of how much control a social media site can wield over information its users have deemed to be public.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public profiles.
The case is considered to have implications beyond LinkedIn and hiQ Labs and could dictate just how much control companies have over publicly available data that is hosted on their services.
“To the extent LinkedIn has already put in place technology to prevent hiQ from accessing these public profiles, it is ordered to remove any such barriers,” Chen’s order reads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trump Can Block People On Twitter If He Wants, Administration Says
https://politics.slashdot.org/story/17/08/14/2134212/trump-can-block-people-on-twitter-if-he-wants-administration-says
The administration of President Donald Trump is scoffing at a lawsuit by Twitter users who claim in a federal lawsuit that their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle. “It would send the First Amendment deep into uncharted waters to hold that a president’s choices about whom to follow, and whom to block, on Twitter — a privately run website that, as a central feature of its social-media platform, enables all users to block particular individuals from viewing posts — violate the Constitution.”
“To the extent that the President’s management of his Twitter account constitutes state action, it is unquestionably action that lies within his discretion as Chief Executive; it is therefore outside the scope of judicial enforcement,” Baer wrote. (PDF) Baer added that an order telling Trump how to manage his Twitter feed “would raise profound separation-of-powers concerns by intruding directly into the president’s chosen means of communicating to millions of Americans.”
Trump can block people on Twitter if he wants, administration says
As president, Trump can use Twitter however he sees fit, Justice Department says.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/trump-can-block-people-on-twitter-if-he-wants-administration-says/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
In the wake of a killing after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, tech firms are setting aside content neutrality in the fight against online hate
Charlottesville is reshaping the fight against online hate
Content-neutrality concerns take a back seat after a killing at a white nationalist rally
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16151740/charlottesville-daily-stormer-ban-neo-nazi-facebook-censorship
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chap behind Godwin’s law suspends his own rule for Charlottesville fascists: ‘By all means, compare them to Nazis’
We did Nazi that coming
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/14/godwins_law_creator_rescinds_ruling_after_nazis_march_in_charlottesville/
Mike Godwin, creator of Godwin’s law, has rescinded his own rule for those outraged by vile fascists marching the streets of Virginia, USA, at the weekend.
In other words, it’s OK to call these un-American white supremacists exactly what they are: “By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I’m with you,” Godwin said on Sunday evening.
Godwin’s law states that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” The unofficial extension of this is that the first person to bring up Hitler automatically loses the argument.
Godwin created the aphorism in the early 1990s, when he was the first in-house lawyer for the EFF.
In the wake of white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, which left one protestor dead and 30 injured, Godwin has, at least in this case, suspended his own law – or, rather, granted permission to break it.
“Sir, would you please make a public statement? I’ve noted before that sometimes sheer irony can pierce to the heart of an argument, to deflate the opposing side.”
The attorney’s response was quick and to the point. When talking about white supremacists and their supporters, the four-letter N word is back in play.
By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I’m with you.
— Mike Godwin (@sfmnemonic) August 14, 2017
Tomi Engdahl says:
App Developers Should Charge More If They Want People To Buy Subscriptions, Suggests Report
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/08/15/211216/app-developers-should-charge-more-if-they-want-people-to-buy-subscriptions-suggests-report
A new report from Liftoff, a Silicon Valley-based mobile app marketing and retargeting firm, says that subscription-based apps may do better if developers charge a higher price for services, rather than setting prices too low to lure users in initially.
New report suggests app makers should charge more if they want people to buy subscriptions
Blame the sunk cost fallacy
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16147954/liftoff-report-apple-ios-android-app-subscriptions-conversion-rate-2017
A new report from Liftoff, a Silicon Valley-based mobile app marketing and retargeting firm, says that subscription-based apps may do better if developers charge a higher price for services, rather than setting prices too low to lure users in initially.
The Liftoff report, which analyzed data gathered between June 2016 and June 2017, categorized app subscriptions into low-cost monthly subs ($0.99 to $7), medium ($7 to $20), and high-cost subs ($20 to $50), while also factoring the cost of acquisition per customer. The company found that apps in the medium price range had the highest conversion rate — 7.16 percent — and the lowest cost to acquire a subscriber, at just over $106 dollars. This was five times higher than the rate of people who subscribed to apps when the apps were in the low-cost category.
This may partly be because streaming media apps, like Netflix and Spotify, have already conditioned people to pay around $10 a month for services. But it also might be attributable to the sunk cost fallacy, Liftoff says: the “cognitive bias people have that makes them stay the course because they have already spent time or resources on it.”
The report also examines apps that fulfill “need states,” like dating apps or cloud services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
After sustained pressure, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince says the firm has stopped protecting Daily Stormer from DDoS attacks
The Daily Stormer just lost the most important company defending it
The web provider CloudFlare has decided to drop the neo-Nazi site
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/16/16157710/cloudflare-daily-stormer-drop-russia-hate-white-nationalism
This afternoon, the Russian relaunch of Daily Stormer disappeared, just as the original site disappeared on Tuesday. With that disappearance, the web’s most notorious neo-Nazi website was no longer available anywhere on the conventional web.
The disappearance came after a decision made at CloudFlare, a content distribution network that Stormer has long used as protection from denial-of-service attacks.
Reached by The Verge, CEO Matthew Prince said the decision to drop the site was a difficult one.
“This was my decision, I don’t think it’s CloudFlare’s policy and I think it’s an extremely dangerous decision in a lot of ways,” Prince said. “I think that we as the internet need to have a conversation about where the right place for content restriction is…but there was no way we could have that conversation until we resolved this particular issue.”
CloudFlare never directly hosted the Daily Stormer, but by distributing it through a broader network, the company made it impossible to discover the original host, which made it difficult for activists to take direct action against the site. Without CloudFlare’s network, the Daily Stormer could still serve up the site directly, but doing so would expose their host. The site owners seem to have decided that reveal would be too risky.
Writing on Gab, site founder Andrew Anglin pledged to carry on without the network. “The CloudFlare betrayal adds another layer of super complexity,” Algin wrote. “But we got this.”
The decision comes after sustained pressure on CloudFlare to drop the site, and a long-standing insistence from Prince that the network must remain content neutral.
Still, that neutrality hasn’t always been easy to defend.
Today’s move comes after a wave of companies turning their backs on the Daily Stormer and other white nationalist sites. In the wake of the killing of a protestor in Charlottesville, platforms like Facebook, Discord and GoFundMe have all taken direct steps to ban white nationalist content, often employing far more aggressive measures than had been previously used.
Billboard:
Prompted by Charlottesville reactions, Spotify says it has begun to remove white supremacist music flagged as “hate bands”
Spotify Removes Hate Music as Streaming Companies Struggle to Police Their Tunes
http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7905175/spotify-removes-hate-band-music-streaming
Tomi Engdahl says:
CNN:
White House confirms that Hope Hicks is its interim communications director — STORY HIGHLIGHTS — (CNN)Senior communications adviser Hope Hicks will likely take on the role of White House communications director, according to two sources inside the White House and one outside.
Hope Hicks named interim WH communications director
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/hope-hicks-white-house-communications-director/
Senior communications adviser Hope Hicks has been named as the interim White House communications director, a White House official told pool reporters Wednesday.
The official added in a statement that the administration will “make an announcement on a permanent communications director at the appropriate time.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Conversation:
A look at potential hazards of news outlets increasingly receiving capital from billionaires — On July 28, Apple heiress Laurene Powell Jobs bought a majority stake in The Atlantic. — It’s the latest media purchase by the billionaire class, a group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos …
The slippery slope of the oligarchy media model
http://theconversation.com/the-slippery-slope-of-the-oligarchy-media-model-81931
Private ownership of news organizations is, of course, nothing new.
Since at least the late 19th century, most major U.S. magazines and newspapers have been owned or controlled by wealthy individuals or families.
How benevolent is the billionaire model?
But private ownership is no guarantee of either commercial or professional success. And not all private owners are the same. Today, one of the fastest-growing forms of private media ownership is the investment company, linked to hedge funds or other forms of private equity.
These companies are just as focused on profits as a publicly traded firm – and perhaps even more willing to close down a media outlet when its economic performance is sub-par.
What about the public interest?
In fact, The Atlantic and the Washington Post are the bright and shiny faces of an increasingly oligarchic media system in the U.S. The oligarchs’ values and priorities, however, may not align with democratic objectives. Their business model – and definition of journalistic success – tends to exclude audiences or issues that cannot be monetized. High-end advertisers favor content that appeals to high-earning demographics, which can skew coverage away from concerns of the working class and poor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wil S. Hylton / The New York Times:
Breitbart has quietly shifted the tone of its news coverage in recent months, as it tries to lure mainstream talent and act more like a “legitimate” news org
Down the Breitbart Hole
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/magazine/breitbart-alt-right-steve-bannon.html
Steve Bannon once said it was the
platform for the alt-right. Its current
editors disagree. Is the incendiary
media company at the nerve center
of Donald Trump’s America simply
provocative — or dangerous?
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Daniszewski / Associated Press:
AP’s VP for Standards, John Daniszewski, says the news organization should avoid the term “alt-right” as it is a euphemism disguising racist aims
How to describe extremists who rallied in Charlottesville
https://blog.ap.org/behind-the-news/how-to-describe-extremists-who-rallied-in-charlottesville
UPDATED Aug. 16: We are adding “anti-Semitism” to the definition of “alt-right;” noting that the antifa movement that has been recently in the news actually has antecedents back to the 1930s; and adding some guidance on spelling and punctuation on the recently coined term “alt-left.” The post below includes these updates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nieman Reports:
Interview with three veteran journalists on what reporters can learn from the civil rights era and what’s lacking in coverage of racism and hate groups
“Charlottesville is a reminder to us … that we have to ramp up our game”
http://niemanreports.org/articles/charlottesville-is-a-reminder-to-us-that-we-have-to-ramp-up-our-game/
Three veteran journalists on what can be learned from coverage of the civil rights movement and the level of reporting current events demand
Tomi Engdahl says:
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
After Charlottesville, the false-equivalency president has doubled down, and journalists are seeing the problems with “both sides” framing — He’s the false-equivalency president. — During the 2016 presidential campaign, the national news media’s misguided sense …
This week should put the nail in the coffin for ‘both sides’ journalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/this-week-should-put-the-nail-in-the-coffin-for-both-sides-journalism/2017/08/16/77c6668a-8292-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.3b3c190da252
He’s the false-equivalency president.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the national news media’s misguided sense of fairness helped equate the serious flaws of Hillary Clinton with the disqualifying evils of Donald Trump.
“But her emails . . .” goes the ironic line that aptly summarizes too much of the media’s coverage of the candidates. In short: Clinton’s misuse of a private email server was inflated to keep up with Trump’s racism, sexism and unbalanced narcissism — all in the name of seeming evenhanded.
In a devastating post-election report, Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center concluded that media treatment was rife with false equivalency: “On topics relating to the candidates’ fitness for office, Clinton and Trump’s coverage was virtually identical in terms of its negative tone.”
That was a factor — one of many — that helped to put Trump in the Oval Office.
Elected with the help of false equivalency, Trump is now creating some of his own.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fixing cities
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/29/fixing-cities/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Local information is a mess, but tech and journalism are joining forces to help
Incremental changes happening across tech, local news and local government are finally making the world around you transparent.
This isn’t some “smart cities” concept fantasy, like those corporate marketing videos you see from time to time.
The last big pieces are just now falling into place, with tech companies finally pushing major improvements in two areas:
Local distribution: Google, Facebook, Nextdoor and other companies with local-facing products are increasingly trying to surface the most relevant data points, articles and other information to their users.
Local data: Yelp, Foursquare, Trulia and many other local-category tech companies are opening up and analyzing their data for everyone
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eben Novy-Williams / Bloomberg:
Nielsen is launching a new division, Nielsen Esports, to quantify the rapidly growing industry for teams, sponsors, advertisers, and publishers
How Big Is Esports Really? Nielsen Attempts to Figure It Out
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/how-big-is-esports-really-nielsen-attempts-to-figure-it-out
Professional video gaming is the next big thing. How big that is, though, is hard to say. Some estimates pegged it as a $493 million industry in 2016, others said it was nearly twice as big. As for the audience, some say it’s 85 percent male, others say it’s 56 percent male. No one really knows.
Nielsen is ready to figure it out. The audience-measurement company is launching a new division, Nielsen Esports, to quantify the rapidly growing industry for teams, sponsors, advertisers and publishers.
“Nielsen knows sports, Nielsen knows games, and we obviously know audience,” said Nicole Pike, vice president of Nielsen Games, who will co-lead the new division. “To us that’s the perfect confluence of expertise to enter esports.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
When internet intermediaries like GoDaddy, Google, and CloudFlare bar neo-Nazis, dangerous precedent is set for silencing legitimate voices
Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/fighting-neo-nazis-future-free-expression
In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflare’s CEO: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.”
We agree. Even for free speech advocates, this situation is deeply fraught with emotional, logistical, and legal twists and turns. All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. But we must also recognize that on the Internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with.
Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t.
Content Removal At the Very Top of The Internet
Domain registrars are one of many types of companies in the chain of online content distribution—the Internet intermediaries positioned between the writer or poster of speech and the reader of that speech. Other intermediaries include the ISP that delivers a website’s content to end users, the certificate authority (such as EFF’s Let’s Encrypt) that issues an SSL certificate to the website, the content delivery network that optimizes the availability and performance of the website, the web hosting company that provides server space for the website, and even communications platforms—such as email providers and social media companies—that allow the website’s URLs to be easily shared. EFF has a handy chart of some of those key links between speakers and their audience here.
Domain name companies also have little claim to be publishers, or speakers in their own right, with respect to the contents of websites.
If the entities that run the domain name system started choosing who could access or add to them based on political considerations, we might well face a world where every government and powerful body would see itself as an equal or more legitimate invoker of that power. That makes the domain name system unsuitable as a mechanism for taking down specific illegal content as the law sometimes requires, and a perennially attractive central location for nation-states and others to exercise much broader takedown powers.
Another lever that states and malicious actors often reach for when seeking to censor legitimate voices is through denial-of-service attacks. States and criminals alike use this to silence voices, and the Net’s defenses against such actions are not well-developed. Services like Cloudflare can protect against these attacks, but not if they also face direct pressure from governments and other actors to pick and choose their clients. Content delivery networks are not wired into the infrastructure of the Net in the way that the domain name system is, but at this point, they may as well be.
These are parts of the Net that are most sensitive to pervasive censorship: they are free speech’s weakest links. It’s the reason why millions of net neutrality advocates are concerned about ISPs censoring their feeds.
The firmest, most consistent, defense these potential weak links can take is to simply decline all attempts to use them as a control point. They can act to defend their role as a conduit, rather than a publisher.
Have A Process, Don’t Act on the Headlines
It might seem unlikely now that Internet companies would turn against sites supporting racial justice or other controversial issues. But if there is a single reason why so many individuals and companies are acting together now to unite against neo-Nazis, it is because a future that seemed unlikely a few years ago—that white nationalists and Nazis now have significant power and influence in our society—now seems possible. We would be making a mistake if we assumed that these sorts of censorship decisions would never turn against causes we love.
Part of the work for all of us now is to push back against such dangerous decisions with our own voices and actions.
Another part of our work must be to seek to shore up the weakest parts of the Internet’s infrastructure so it cannot be easily toppled if matters take a turn for the (even) worse. These actions are not in opposition; they are to the same ends.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News Feed FYI: Taking Action Against Video Clickbait
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/08/news-feed-fyi-taking-action-against-video-clickbait/
As part of our ongoing efforts to fight clickbait and improve the integrity of information on Facebook, we are announcing today two updates that will limit the spread of stories in News Feed that feature either fake video play buttons embedded in their imagery or videos of only a static image.
People want to see accurate information on Facebook, and so do we. When people click on an image in their News Feed featuring a play button, they expect a video to start playing. Spammers often use fake play buttons to trick people into clicking links to low quality websites.
Similarly, these deceptive spammers also use static images disguised as videos to trick people into clicking on a low quality experience. To limit this, during the coming weeks we will begin demoting stories that feature fake video play buttons and static images disguised as videos in News Feed.
How Will This Impact My Page?
Publishers that rely on these intentionally deceptive practices should expect the distribution of those clickbait stories to markedly decrease. Most Pages won’t see significant changes to their distribution in News Feed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Google is testing new tools with NYT and FT to boost subscriptions for publishers; tools may include changes to “first click free”, payment, targeting options
Google Tests Subscription Tool for Publishers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-18/google-like-facebook-unfurls-subscription-tool-for-publishers
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is developing new tools designed to boost subscriptions for news publishers. It follows a similar olive branch from Facebook Inc. to an industry that has seen the digital behemoths take over the online advertising market.
Google’s latest foray arrives on three fronts. The first is a revamp of its feature, called “first click free,” that allows readers to access articles from subscription publications through search. Google is also exploring publishers’ tools around online payments and targeting potential subscribers. It’s all part of Google’s broader effort to keep consumers and content-makers returning to the web, the lifeblood of its ads business.
Initially, Google is testing the tools with New York Times Co. and the Financial Times.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ken Schwencke / ProPublica:
The Daily Stormer receives DDoS protection from CDN service BitMitigate, whose founder says he believes in free speech, and wants to promote his company
Spurned by Major Companies, The Daily Stormer Returns to the Web With Help From a Startup
https://www.propublica.org/article/spurned-by-major-companies-the-daily-stormer-returns-to-the-web
The 20-year-old founder of BitMitigate said he had taken on the neo-Nazi website because he believes in free speech and because, “I thought it would really get my service out there.”
The neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer was back online Friday with help from a small company whose founder said he wanted to defend free speech and raise the commercial profile of his new venture.
The Daily Stormer was dumped by several internet service providers this week after it posted a story mocking the appearance of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed on Saturday in Charlottesville. By mid-week, it was accessible only through what is known as the dark web, a corner of the internet that is not easily accessible to ordinary users.
Nick Lim, the 20-year-old founder of the company BitMitigate, said he offered his services to Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin because he believes in free speech, but also to get the word out about his company, which protects websites from so-called denial of services attacks that overwhelm internet servers.
“People should be given the right to express their ideas,” he said, adding: “I thought it would really get my service out there.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla Joins George Soros’s Efforts In Launching A Strike Against “Fake News”
http://www.activistpost.com/2017/08/mozilla-joins-george-soross-efforts-launching-strike-fake-news.html
Mozilla, the non-profit organization which runs the Firefox internet browser, said Wednesday it was launching an effort against “fake news,” as fact-checking software backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and George Soros got its first run-out in public to shape our Orwellian nightmare of future truth arbiters.
“Mozilla Information Trust Initiative,” or MITI for short, Business Insider reported.
They further stated the “internet’s ability to power democratic society suffers greatly” because of fabricated stories
Mozilla’s innovations director, Katharina Borchert, told AFP that the organization was working on tools for Firefox and better online education with media groups, universities, and tech activists.
The organization stated its software is “capable” of spotting lies in real-time and was used to fact-check a live debate at the House of Commons. How that objective was achieved isn’t clear since it’s likely automated A.I., but algorithms are not 100% accurate.
“You only have to look at the number of initiatives that have risen up to address this challenge, either by tech companies or other organizations to see how worrying this phenomenon is to so many,” Borchert added.
I worry more about those who want to act as fact checkers, blatantly ignoring propaganda and fake news by the MSM while targeting alternative media and dictating what is and isn’t important for public consumption.
Then you have Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, planning to launch a crowd-funded news service called Wikitribune to help combat fake news.
So you have all these people, some of whom have even once advocated for a free and open Internet, now advocating for controlling the flow of information under the moniker of “fake news.”
How about all the fake news spread by the CIA and intelligence services called planted propaganda usually for pushing war?
Putting the future of what we believe in anyone’s hands, let alone artificial intelligence, seems reckless; but a system backed by Soros and Omidyar seems like a dangerously stupid idea
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Daily Stormer was back online for a quick second
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/20/the-daily-stormer-was-back-online-for-a-quick-second/
Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer is running out of options to stay online. There has been a public outcry against tech companies helping websites, such as The Daily Stormer. On August 18th, the team behind The Daily Stormer found a way to put the website back online. But now that NameCheap has taken down the website’s new domain name, it is back offline for most people.
If you want to host a controversial website, you need a server to host your website, a protection service against denial-of-service attacks and a domain name to make your site reachable.
While The Daily Stormer used to rely on DigitalOcean and DreamHost (at least until 2014) to run its server, both companies have stopped working with the website. DigitalOcean cited a violation of the company’s terms of service.
But it’s not that hard to host a website in your attic without doing business with anyone. All you need is a computer and an internet connection. The only issue is that you need a content delivery network to cache your website around the world so that people can actually load pages.
That’s why The Daily Stormer had been using Cloudflare’s CDN. But Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince bowed to public pressure and terminated Cloudflare’s relationship with The Daily Stormer.
Prince also says that this is an exception and there should be a clear framework to address similar issues in the future. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also agrees with this point of view.
So The Daily Stormer is back online then? Not exactly.
A server and a CDN isn’t enough if you don’t have a domain name.
The Daily Stormer had been using GoDaddy to register its original domain name. GoDaddy quickly terminated The Daily Stormer’s account
Google Domains and Tucows (the company behind Hover.com) also both refused to help The Daily Stormer. Even the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor asked Ru-Center to cancel dailystormer.ru after the website tried to relocate to Russia.
And yet, the team successfully registered dailystormer.lol using Namecheap.
But it didn’t last long.
You can still access it through the Tor network
Tomi Engdahl says:
50,000 Users Test New Anti-Censorship Tool TapDance
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/08/20/2222205/50000-users-test-new-anti-censorship-tool-tapdance?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
What if circumventing censorship didn’t rely on some app or service provider that would eventually get blocked but was built into the very core of the internet itself? What if the routers and servers that underpin the internet — infrastructure so important that it would be impractical to block — could also double as one big anti-censorship tool…? After six years in development, three research groups have joined forces to conduct real-world tests.
In fight for free speech, researchers test anti-censorship tool built into the internet’s core
Researchers tested a way to get into blocked websites using the networks of two ISPs
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/tapdance-refraction-networking-decoy-routing-test-usenix-1.4249177
When the Chinese government wanted to keep its users off Facebook and Google, it blocked the entire country’s access to the U.S. companies’ apps and sites. And when citizens started using third-party workarounds — like Tor, proxies and VPNs — to get around those blocks, it moved to quash those, too.
So a handful of researchers came up with a crazy idea: What if circumventing censorship didn’t rely on some app or service provider that would eventually get blocked but was built into the very core of the internet itself? What if the routers and servers that underpin the internet — infrastructure so important that it would be impractical to block — could also double as one big anti-censorship tool?
It turns out, the idea isn’t as crazy as it might seem. After six years in development, three research groups have joined forces to conduct real-world tests of an experimental new technique called “refraction networking.” They call their particular implementation TapDance, and it’s designed to sit within the internet’s core.
The researchers announced the test in a paper presented at the annual USENIX Security conference earlier this week.
“In the long run, we absolutely do want to see refraction networking deployed at as many ISPs that are as deep in the network as possible,”
A secret flag the censor can’t see
The concept of refraction networking — which has also been called decoy routing — has been around since at least 2011
The technique works like this: A user in a country where internet filtering exists uses a special piece of software — in this case, a special test version of the app Psiphon — to browse the web. To access a site that’s otherwise blocked, the software first sends a request to an unblocked site that’s likely to be routed through TapDance along the way.
The user’s circumvention software tags this innocuous request with a little extra data — basically a secret flag the censor can’t see that says “Hey, I actually want this request to go somewhere else.” The TapDance software in an ISP’s infrastructure keeps watch for this secret flag and, when detected, re-routes the user’s connection to the blocked site instead.
The user gets to where they want to go, everything’s taken care of behind the scenes, and the censor is none the wiser — in theory.
“We believe that it is within the capabilities of more powerful censors to detect and block TapDance traffic in its current form,” wrote Bocovich in an email, but nonetheless called the deployment “really exciting news.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Herrman / New York Times:
After wave of neo-Nazi bans, tech firms’ censorship policies were shown again to be arbitrary, not derived from moral awakening or newfound sense of civic duty
How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/magazine/how-hate-groups-forced-online-platforms-to-reveal-their-true-nature.html
White supremacist marchers had not yet lit their torches when the deletions began.
And then, in the hours and days after a participant drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others, internet companies undertook a collective purge.
Facebook banned a range of pages with names like ‘‘Right Wing Death Squad’’ and ‘‘White Nationalists United.’’ Reddit banned, among others, a hard-right community called ‘‘Physical Removal,’’ an organizer of which had called the weekend’s killing ‘‘a morally justified action.’’ Twitter suspended an unknown number of users, including popular accounts associated with 4chan’s openly fascistic Politically Incorrect message board, or /pol/. Discord, a chat app for gamers that doubled as an organizing tool for the event, and where a prominent white supremacist had called for disrupting Heyer’s funeral, rushed to do cleanup.
The clampdown extended beyond the walled gardens of social platforms to a wide array of online services. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site that promoted the march and celebrated its fatal outcome, was banned by the domain registrar and hosting service GoDaddy, then hours later by Google’s hosting service, then lost access to SendGrid, which it had used to deliver its newsletter; PayPal cut off the white nationalist Richard Spencer’s organization, which later lost access to its web host, Squarespace; Airbnb removed the accounts
Spotify was even expunging ‘‘white supremacist’’ music from its library.
The recent rise of all-encompassing internet platforms promised something unprecedented and invigorating: venues that unite all manner of actors — politicians, media, lobbyists, citizens, experts, corporations — under one roof. These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation.
Social platforms tend to refer to their customers in euphemistic, almost democratic terms: as ‘‘users’’ or ‘‘members of a community.’’ Their leaders are prone to statesmanlike posturing, and some, like Mark Zuckerberg, even seem to have statesmanlike ambitions.
In the process of building private communities, these companies had put on the costumes of liberal democracies. They borrowed the language of rights to legitimize arbitrary rules, creating what the technology lawyer Kendra Albert calls ‘‘legal talismans.’’
It is worth noting that the platforms most flamboyantly dedicated to a borrowed idea of free speech and assembly are the same ones that have struggled most intensely with groups of users who seek to organize and disrupt their platforms.
But what gave these trolls power on platforms wasn’t just their willingness to act in bad faith and to break the rules and norms of their environment. It was their understanding that the rules and norms of platforms were self-serving and cynical in the first place.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Too easy to to cut anyone out for any reason?
One Statistics Professor Was Just Banned By Google: Here Is His Story
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-21/one-statistics-professor-was-just-banned-google-here-his-story
Statistics professor Salil Mehta, adjunct professor at Columbia and Georgetown who teaches probability and data science and whose work has appeared on this website on numerous prior occasions, was banned by Google on Friday.
What did Salil do to provoke Google? It is not entirely clear, however what is clear is that his repeated attempts at restoring his email, blog and other Google-linked accounts have so far been rejected with a blanket and uniform statement from the search giant.
This doesn’t look good. Now instead of mathematics, reporters have turned to this latest circus nightmare from Google as an example of how they are compounding bad decisions on good people anywhere and at any time.
Can they not differentiate me from an evil person? Can they not see the large and reputable people and institutions that have relied on my work?
There is a lot of energy being spent right now thinking about how this happens to your best customers, just like that. Fear is running wild about who is next and on what other social media platforms.
I have many students, family, coworkers, etc who typically send me e-mails each day and all of it is vanishing with a kicked-back “user doesn’t exist” error. And that’s totally unacceptable.
Again, a math site. An academic site
These are applications of formulas and shouldn’t be subject of limitations of free speech. A lot of great people like it.
Just more of a reflection of how cold a company can treat someone very poorly: without any information, and lack of ability to move forward in their life
We are going to be looking back on this time in Google’s history and those of other social media and know that they have done some very immoral and confusing things, and it has hurt their public reputation with decent people who wanted to grow into the next future with them
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook launched a dedicated tab for Safety Check
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/21/16179530/facebook-safety-check-feature-gets-own-tab
Facebook has made a permanent page for Safety Check, its feature for letting others know that you’re safe during an emergency.
The results are pretty eerie. A promotional photo shows the Safety Check page displaying what’s essentially a news feed of catastrophes — including a collapse, a fire, and a typhoon — and people marking themselves safe. You can even explore disasters “around the world.”
It’s a little unsettling, but Facebook seems to have built it out in recognition of the terrorist attacks and extreme weather events that happen on an unfortunately regular basis.
Still, while the intention might be good, the feature is far from perfect. It sometimes gets activated when there isn’t a real emergency, leading to stressed out friends and relatives prodding you with Safety Check requests.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Malaysia sites hacked after blunder over Indonesian flag
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40996126
ndonesian hackers have claimed to have attacked several Malaysian websites, following a blunder which saw the Indonesian flag printed upside down in a regional sports event’s guidebook.
The mistake prompted fury in Indonesia over the weekend and President Joko Widodo demanded an official apology.
The book was printed for the Southeast Asian Games, which are being held in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian organisers and officials have apologised profusely.
The affected websites display a message in red and white – Indonesia’s flag colours – which says: “My national flag is not a toy!”
At least 27 websites were affected, and were mostly for private businesses, according to Indonesian and Malaysian news outlets.
A BBC check on Monday found that several of the sites have since been taken offline.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Medium will pay writers based on the number of “claps” they get, with funds from subscribers’ $5/month fees, expands who can publish paywalled articles — [Jeb gif] — Medium plans to start letting more and more authors publish paywalled articles.
Medium will now pay writers based on how many claps they get
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/22/16180150/medium-paywall-articles-claps-author-payments
Medium plans to start letting more and more authors publish paywalled articles. And to determine how they get paid, the blogging platform has selected a fairly unorthodox method: claps, which are, basically, Medium’s equivalent of a Like.
A couple weeks ago, Medium replaced its “recommend” feature — a little heart button at the end of each article — with a “clap” button that you can click as many times as you want (much like how Periscope lets you send broadcasters an infinite number of hearts). The site wants people to send authors claps to show how much they enjoy reading each article.
Now, those claps are actually going to mean something. Medium pays authors by dividing up every individual subscriber’s fee between the different articles they’ve read that month. But rather than doing an even division between articles, Medium will weight payments toward whichever articles a subscriber gives the most claps to. It’s not clear exactly how much each individual clap tips the scale, but you can be sure that writers will be asking readers to click that button.
It’s a pretty strange way to implement payments, since it relies on a really arbitrary metric that individual subscribers might use in really different and inconsistent ways. Time spent on page and whether someone shared an article probably would have been useful metrics by which to tell how much a reader enjoyed a piece, but maybe that makes too much sense for a startup in the middle of its second business model pivot. On the positive side, claps can help Medium surface content that people are enjoying and get it in front of more readers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Social VR is evolving, and AltspaceVR paid the price
https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/22/the-apparent-demise-of-altspacevr-shows-how-social-vr-is-changing/
Last month, AltspaceVR, one of the most beloved startups in the burgeoning, albeit struggling, VR consumer industry announced it was shutting its doors due to what they described as “unforeseen financial difficulty”. This is by no means an ordinary player in the VR community. The California-based startup is one of the earliest pioneers in the sector, having raised millions beginning with its seed round back in prehistoric 2014 and, more important, entering the incredibly crucial category of social VR.
There’s not a single person I know in the VR industry who doesn’t nod their heads at the importance of social VR, which may very well end up being the “killer app” experience that establishes mainstream appeal to VR. There are only a handful of others in the space, like Sansar by Linden Lab, High Fidelity, WebVR-based JanusVR, and most recently, Facebook Spaces (more on that in a bit).
It’s social VR that also touches on the underlying vision of immersive computing as the quintessential medium to eventually and inevitably open us up to the Ready Player One sort of “Metaverse” that so many in the industry are deeply invested in seeing created. The building of endlessly expansive virtual worlds is almost literally the holy grail of the industry. So, no wonder that the news of AltspaceVR’s collapse felt like a punch in the stomach!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Weinberger / Business Insider:
LinkedIn starts rolling out video upload support for its Android and iOS apps
This is why LinkedIn is betting big on letting people share videos
http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-opens-video-sharing-2017-8?op=1&r=US&IR=T&IR=T
If you’ve been on LinkedIn recently, you may have noticed that some users are making and sharing videos, basically turning the social network into a more professional version of YouTube or Facebook Live.
Following this initial testing period, video will soon be available to all users. On iOS and Android, the LinkedIn app is getting a “video” button that will let you record a new video or upload one you’ve already taken. The new feature will be available to many users on Tuesday, and the company will roll it out globally over the next few weeks.
There are any number of places to post a video online. A key reason to post it on LinkedIn, though, is to share it with your professional audience, said Peter Roybal, a senior product manager at the company. Just like any other post on LinkedIn, text or otherwise, you would share videos because you want them to be noticed by your professional network.
“Of course [users are] going to share content that is most relevant to the people they’re connected to,” Roybal said.
LinkedIn users have been eager to have access to the video feature, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kim Wall’s disappearance in Denmark shows: female journalists face danger everywhere
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/20/kim-wall-reminder-female-journalists-danger
Kim Wall has reported on stories around the world. But she was to disappear in a country known for gender parity: Denmark
After traveling and reporting in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it was in her native Scandinavia, a supposed bastion of gender parity, in which Kim has disappeared. It’s a chilling reminder that women’s safety can’t be shrugged off as a problem specific to developing countries, as if the west is immune to misogyny.
In the US, an ugly contempt of women has been exposed in recent years under the guise of partisan rancor. In France, where I live, men murdering their wives is given the innocuous title of “marital drama” in the press.
Kim knows this. She doesn’t see the west as morally superior.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spencer Ackerman / The Daily Beast:
Senate intel committee bill would label WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service”; Sen. Wyden opposed move, says label could be used on journalists
Senators Try to Force Trump Admin to Declare WikiLeaks a ‘Hostile’ Spy Service
It’s one of a number of ways the Senate Intelligence Committee is trying to box the White House in on Russia.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/senators-try-to-force-trump-admin-to-declare-wikileaks-a-hostile-spy-service
If the Senate intelligence committee gets its way, America’s spy agencies will have to release a flood of information about Russian threats to the U.S.—the kind of threats that Donald Trump may not want made public.
The committee also wants Congress to declare WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” which would open Julian Assange and the pro-transparency organization – which most of the U.S. government considers a handmaiden of Russian intelligence – to new levels of surveillance.
Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, would have to develop and disclose a strategy to prevent “Russian cyber threats to United States elections,”
Other requirements of the bill include a ban on a “cybersecurity unit or other cyber agreement that is jointly established or otherwise implemented by the Government of the United States and the Government of Russia” unless Coats essentially vouches for it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Betancourt / Columbia Journalism Review:
Boston authorities failed to protect media’s right to cover a newsworthy event by keeping reporters up to 50 yards away from right-wing rally speakers
Boston authorities should not have blocked media from covering protest
https://www.cjr.org/criticism/boston-white-nationalism-protest-media.php
While plenty of media commentators and politicians lauded the efforts of Boston politicians and the Boston Police Department to keep the peace Saturday during an extreme-right-wing rally and massive counter protests, they failed at protecting the media’s right to cover a newsworthy event.
Reporters were not able to actually cover the program of the event because authorities enforced a barrier of up to 50 yards around the speakers’ platform, preventing reporters from entering. Journalists were blocked from witnessing and reporting on the very reason for the massive crowds. The precautions ostensibly were designed for public safety—to keep those participating in the protest and counter protests apart from one another—but statements from law enforcement suggest the nature of the rally played a role.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook really is losing teen users to Instagram and Snapchat
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/facebook-losing-teen-users-faster-to-instagram-and-snapchat-2017-8
It’s true: Teenagers really do think Facebook is less cool than Instagram and Snapchat.
That’s according to a study by eMarketer, which predicted that monthly teen use of Facebook in the US and the UK would decline faster this year than last year.
Monthly users ages 12 to 17 will fall 3.4% to 14.5 million people this year, the study said, an accelerated decline from the 1.2% fall in 2016. It’d be the second year of declining teen use for Facebook, according to eMarketer.
While a slowdown among a coveted, hard-to-please teen userbase is bad news, the flipside for Facebook is that they’re turning to Instagram, which Facebook owns.
They’re also turning to Snapchat. eMarketer even predicted that Snapchat would overtake both Instagram and Facebook in terms of teen users by the end of 2017 – a first.
“We see teens and tweens migrating to Snapchat and Instagram,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
In iOS 11, Safari strips Google AMP links to their original canonical URLs when a story is shared or copy-pasted — Apple is adding a subtle new feature to Safari in iOS 11 that will automatically strip out Google AMP URLs when a webpage is shared or copy and pasted, as spotted by MacStories editor Federico Viticci.
iOS 11 Safari will turn Google AMP links back into regular ones when sharing
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/23/16193584/ios-11-safari-google-amp-sharing-url-scheme
Apple is adding a subtle new feature to Safari in iOS 11 that will automatically strip out Google AMP URLs when a webpage is shared or copy and pasted, as spotted by MacStories editor Federico Viticci.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
YouTube’s policy changes to crack down on extremist content go into effect this week with new restrictions on viewing, sharing, and monetizing videos
Google Begins Biggest Crackdown on Extremist YouTube Videos
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-rolls-out-its-biggest-crackdown-on-youtube-hate-speech
Starting on Thursday, Google will police YouTube like it never has before, adding warnings and disabling advertising on videos that the company determines crosses its new threshold for offensive content.
YouTube isn’t removing the selected videos, but is instead setting new restrictions on viewing, sharing and making money on them.
“These videos will have less engagement and be harder to find,”
The new restrictions, which target what Walker called “inflammatory religious or supremacist content,” are expected to hit a small fraction of videos, according to person familiar with the company. YouTube says it uploads over 400 hours of video a minute. Videos tagged by its new policy won’t be able to run ads or have comments posted, and won’t appear in any recommended lists on the video site. A warning screen will also appear before the videos, which will not be able to play when embedded on external websites. YouTube will let video creators contest the restrictions through an appeals process, a spokeswoman said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
E-Book Revenues Continue To Decline
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenduffer/2017/08/27/e-book-revenues-continue-to-decline/#4d538e0d71e7
E-book revenues dropped during the first quarter of 2017, according to the Association of American Publishers.
The organization, which reports sales data from about 1,200 publishers, says that sales of trade books in the e-book format decreased 5.3% in the first quarter of 2017 over the same period in 2016. This decline is becoming a pattern, though these most recent figures are far less dramatic than those announced regarding the first quarter of 2016. That period saw an e-book revenue decrease of 21.8% over the first quarter of 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fake followers are ruining influencer marketing
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/08/27/influencer-marketing-trouble-fake-followers/
With claimed returns of 6.5 times for every dollar spent, influencer marketing is definitely a bet that brands want to place with high stakes. But, is it really legit?
CNN estimates that approximately 83 million Facebook accounts are fake accounts. Twitter is estimated to follow distantly with more than 20 million fake accounts. Business Insider states eight percent of Instagram accounts to be fake.
Let’s face the truth. The massive fan following of our favorite celebrities, politicians and the myriad of social influencers seem to have aren’t legit. Plus, you can always ‘buy’ followers to retweet, like, share or do whatever on social media to make you look popular.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Publishers Are Making More Video — Whether You Want It or Not
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/08/29/1441205/publishers-are-making-more-video—-whether-you-want-it-or-not
Americans are expected to spend 81 minutes a day watching digital video in 2019, up from 61 minutes in 2015, according to projections by research firm eMarketer. Time spent reading a newspaper is expected to drop to 13 minutes a day from 16 minutes during that time. The question is whether those trends will sustain the growing number of outlets flooding social networks with video clips.
Dozens of writers and editors have also been laid off this summer at news outlets like Vocativ, Fox Sports, Vice and MTV News. All of the moves were tied in part to focusing more resources on making videos. Publishers are heading in this direction even though polls show consumers find video ads more irritating than TV commercials. Google and Apple are testing features that let you mute websites with auto-play videos or block them entirely. More young Americans prefer reading the news than watching it, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center. But many publishers have little choice.
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
Digital media churns out videos for tech and media giants
Adults to spend 81 minutes a day on digital video: eMarketer
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kerry Flynn / Mashable:
Facebook says Pages repeatedly sharing articles marked as false by 3rd-party fact-checkers won’t be able to buy ads, but the bans won’t necessarily be permanent
Facebook is going after one of the big ways fake news spreads
http://mashable.com/2017/08/28/facebook-fake-news-advertising-crackdown/#_K9LcvWCPaqJ
Facebook is continuing its crackdown on fake news.
The social network Monday announced Facebook Pages will no longer be able to advertise on the site if they repeatedly share news articles that are marked as false by third-party fact-checking organizations. Page owners can win back the ability to run ads if they later choose to act responsibly.
The move would limit one of the big ways that fake news spreads, since paying to boost posts is a big way for publishers to get stories in front of more people.
“We want people to stay informed on friends, family, and topics they care about on Facebook, and false news damages trust,” said Rob Leathern, product manager at Facebook. “This is mostly about removing incentivizes for the creation of false news.”
Facebook introduced a partnership with third-party fact-checkers, months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg belittled the impact of fake news on the 2016 presidential election. Shortly after the election, Zuckerberg wrote “more than 99% of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ourselves As Others See Us Through The Lens Of Traditional Media
http://hackaday.com/2017/08/29/ourselves-as-others-see-us-through-the-lens-of-traditional-media/
When I presented myself at the SHACamp 2017 info desk bright and early on the first full day of the camp, I was surprised to find that I was to be assigned a volunteer along with my press badge. Because of the way our community is sometimes covered by the traditional media, it was necessary that any journalists touring the site have a helping hand to ensure that they respect the privacy of the attendees, gain permission from people likely to be in any photographs, and generally not be idiots about the whole Hacker thing. I pointed out that I was working for Hackaday and not The Sun, and that as an active hackspace member and former hackspace director I was very much a part of the community attending SHA 2017 who would simply be wasting the valuable time of any volunteer assigned to me.
It’s interesting therefore a few weeks after the event, to investigate how it was portrayed through the eyes of people who aren’t coming as Hackaday is, from within the bubble. To take a look at that disconnect between what we know about our community and its events, and how the traditional media sometimes like to portray us. Are they imagining the set of a Hollywood “hacker” movie
The coverage of the event has been handily summarised on the SHA2017 wiki, and comes from a mix of security and IT publications, traditional news outlets, and Dutch TV.
There seem to have been three broad streams to the coverage, first pieces that give a balanced review of the event, then those that concentrate on a single aspect such as a particular talk, and finally those that disappear down the hacker movie rabbit hole.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fact Check
Was Barack Obama President During Hurricane Katrina?
http://www.snopes.com/barack-obama-katrina/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
Twitter users tried to pin the blame for Katrina relief issues on Obama, though he wasn’t even president when it hit New Orleans.
CLAIM
Barack Obama was president when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005.
RATING: FALSE
Obama — who was a Democratic Party senator representing Illinois when the storm hit — was not elected president until November 2008. However, Obama did meet with Katrina evacuees
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html
In the hours after European antitrust regulators levied a record $2.7 billion fine against Google in late June, an influential Washington think tank learned what can happen when a wealthy tech giant is criticized.
The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left and helped Google shape those debates.
But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Mr. Schmidt, who had been chairman of New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar.
The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later.
“Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings,” Mr. Lynn said. “People are so afraid of Google now.”
New America’s executive vice president, Tyra Mariani, said it was “a mutual decision for Barry to spin out his Open Markets program,” and that the move was not in any way influenced by Google or Mr. Schmidt.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Al Jazeera English:
Al Jazeera English disables comments on its website, finds social media to be the preferred platform for online debate
Why we’re disabling comments on aljazeera.com
https://medium.com/@AJEnglish/why-were-disabling-comments-on-aljazeera-com-a9ffbac61f10
Today, we disabled the ability to comment on stories on aljazeera.com. It’s a decision that we’ve given much thought to, and one that we feel ultimately best serves our audience.
When we first opened up comments on our website, we hoped that it would serve as a forum for thoughtful and intelligent debate that would allow our global audience to engage with each other.
However, the comments section was hijacked by users hiding behind pseudonyms spewing vitriol, bigotry, racism and sectarianism. The possibility of having any form of debate was virtually non-existent.
Also, over time, we found social media to be the preferred platform for our audience to debate the issues that matter the most to them. We encourage our audience to continue to interact with us this way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Caroline Scott / Journalism.co.uk:
How Vox used crowdsourcing to help plan its new six-part Borders documentary series, coming this fall, with audience suggesting locations, activities, more — Vox reporter Johnny Harris has created and maintained a dialogue with his audience as he travels around the world
Why Vox has been crowdsourcing for its latest international documentary series
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/why-vox-has-been-crowdsourcing-for-its-latest-international-documentary-series/s2/a709444/
Vox reporter Johnny Harris has created and maintained a dialogue with his audience as he travels around the world
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nick Cumming-Bruce / New York Times:
UN human rights chief rebukes Trump’s repeated verbal attacks on some media outlets and journalists, says the claims could amount to incitement — GENEVA — The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday that President Trump’s repeated denunciations of some media outlets as …
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/world/europe/trump-press-united-nations.html?mtrref=mediagazer.com&gwh=2E7E657359E7BC45A3B8339C4461B056&gwt=pay