Topic: Media
Facebook is on a big listening tour for local media — and publishers are actually happy – Mashable (Mar 6, 2017)
When Facebook announced its Journalism Project a few weeks ago (and hired Campbell Brown to take a leadership role within it), it said all the right words about wanting to partner with news organizations and help them be successful. But the problem with platforms like Facebook and Google is those promising words have often rung hollow as they’ve subsequently pursued initiatives and products which ended up threatening rather than helping the media industry, and news sites in particular. It’s heartening, then, to see that Facebook seems to be engaging in a fairly genuine way with news organizations, and actually listening to them and their concerns. This article also suggests that these organizations are responding positively to some of the new ad options Facebook is introducing (though of course it remains to be seen how Facebook users respond to things like a higher ad load in Instant Articles and mid-roll video ads). It’s early days still, but there are at least some signs that Facebook means what it says about partnering in healthier ways with content partners.
via Mashable
Facebook has started to flag fake news stories – Recode (Mar 6, 2017)
This was part of Facebook’s plan for dealing with fake news, announced back in December, so there’s no huge surprise here. But Recode picks up on several points worth noting, most importantly that because Facebook is relying on third party fact checkers, vetting fake news stories can often take quite some time, even when they come from a publication known to publish only false news stories. That’s problematic because by the time the “disputed” label is attached, many people will have seen and believed the story, and attaching it a week after it first surfaces will likely have little impact, especially on a high profile and popular story. It really feels like Facebook needs a separate label for entire fake news publications which is applied automatically to its links – that would be straightforward and far more useful, and could still be done in cooperation with fact checking organizations. But if Snopes and Politifact are going to be really useful, they have to move much faster on this stuff. Here’s hoping Facebook becomes less hesitant and pushes its partners to act more quickly, so that this tool can become really useful.
via Recode
BuzzFeed Debuts a Tool for Helping Readers See Other Perspectives (Feb 17, 2017)
This is a great idea, and I hope we’ll see a lot more of this kind of innovation around news – we need it. One of the things I’m most struck by almost daily is the different universes that I’m a part of on Twitter and Facebook – during the day, I’m surrounded by mostly very liberal perspectives among the coastal tech people I follow on Twitter, and in the evenings at weekend I spend more time on Facebook, where the people I’m connected to tend to be more conservative. But I suspect many of us inhabit mostly one or other of these worlds, or tend to shut out those perspectives which are different from our own on social media, tending to reinforce our perceptions and prejudices. Not everyone will go for this kind of experiment – some may choose to continue to see a narrower view of the world, but we could all benefit from putting ourselves in others’ shoes and seeing the news through other lenses than our own.
via BuzzFeed
Google makes it easier to see and share publishers’ real URLs from AMP pages – Search Engine Land (Feb 6, 2017)
One of the biggest frustrations publishers have had with Google’s AMP format is that it takes over the URL of the site where the content originates. Given that many URLs are shared in shortened form in Twitter clients and similar venues, this often means all the viewer sees is a google.com domain, which can be confusing. This tweak to the AMP settings doesn’t solve the fundamental problem that AMP pages use Google URLs, but offers a workaround of sorts allowing users to share the canonical original URL for the publication instead. That’s a start, but the domain issue and other reasons not to like AMP and other similar formats like Facebook Instant Articles remain.
Google and Facebook to help French newsrooms combat ‘fake news’ ahead of presidential election – VentureBeat (Feb 6, 2017)
If only these companies had made such a concerted effort to combat fake news in the US a year ago rather than only really springing into action in the very late stages of last year’s presidential campaign (and in Facebook’s case, mostly after it was over). It appears both companies are taking their duty to put accuracy above ad revenue a bit more seriously in France than they did in the US, a sign of increased realism about the power that each company has in shaping the news people see.
via VentureBeat
This Is What Facebook’s Filter Bubble Actually Looks Like – BuzzFeed (Feb 3, 2017)
The topic of fake news and the related topic of filter bubbles has been one BuzzFeed has been particularly strong on in recent months (abuse on Twitter is another). This analysis is fascinating, and shows how even the experience of watching video on Facebook can be colored by the outlets a user chooses to follow. This isn’t quite the same as Facebook’s algorithms showing users different things – in this experiment, the user consciously chose to watch either a Fox News or Fusion live video stream. But it’s a great illustration of how users on Facebook can have completely different experiences even when engaging with the same underlying content.
via BuzzFeed
Facebook Improves Transparency and Deepens Partnerships Around Metrics (Jan 31, 2017)
The other bit of news from Facebook today addresses the recent problems it’s had with unreliable metrics for advertisers and publishers. Some of this is just about providing more metrics for measuring performance on Facebook across various channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network within its own products can be compared with TV and/or print data from wider campaigns), but there’s also news on the third party verification front, which advertisers have been asking for. It now has deeper partnerships with Nielsen and ComScore, and is deepening its viewability measurement tools, as well as adding some additional partnerships. There’s lots here, the detail of which won’t be all that interesting unless you’re directly involved in this stuff, but Facebook is showing some promising willingness to open up more to outside measurement platforms its partners trust as a way of offsetting the embarrassing errors which turned up late last year.
via Facebook
New Signals to Show You More Authentic and Timely Stories – Facebook (Jan 31, 2017)
This is one of two bits of news from Facebook today (the other concerns metrics), this one about dealing with fake news (though that’s a term Facebook continues to eschew in favor of talking about genuineness and authentic communication). Facebook is tweaking its algorithms again to provide better feeds with fewer sensationalist or inaccurate news reports, for example. It looks like this is mostly about ordering within the feed rather than whether something appears there at all, however, which is a nice way of avoiding perceptions of outright censorship, though of course the lower something appears in the feed, the less likely people are to see it. It’s good to see that Facebook continues to tweak its strategy for dealing with fake news, and as with previous moves around news it’ll be very interesting to see how it’s perceived by users and publications.
via Facebook
Digital media fell in love with Snapchat, and now Snapchat loves TV – Mashable (Jan 28, 2017)
This is a great bit of reporting on how Snapchat’s Discover feature has evolved since it first launched, and how Snap’s relationship with publishers and content providers has evolved with it. Discover continues to be the most obvious place for Snap to deliver growth in ad revenue, and having quality content is a big part of achieving that goal. Snap is also putting more emphasis on competing with TV for millennial viewers, an audience which is both overrepresented on Snapchat and underrepresented in traditional TV viewership. There are lots of good comments in this piece from publishers who have worked with Snap and seen good results, some of them driving decent profits from their channels and others merely experimenting with a new format. Well worth reading the whole thing.
via Mashable
Continuing Our Updates to Trending – Facebook (Jan 25, 2017)
It’s a big day for Facebook news – I’ve already covered the new Facebook Stories feature and ads in Messenger, both of which are being tested. This is the only one that’s been publicly announced by Facebook, however, and it concerns Trending Topics, which appear on the desktop site. The changes are subtle but important – each topic will now come with a headline and a base URL such as foxnews.com, topics will be identified based on broad engagement by multiple publications and not just one, and the same topics will be shown to everyone in the same region rather than personalized. Though Facebook doesn’t explicitly say so (perhaps because it fears a backlash, perhaps because it would be a further acknowledgement of a thorny issue), but all of these can be seen as partial solutions to the fake news issue. Citing specific headlines and publications allows users to see the source and make a judgment about whether it’s a reliable one, prioritizing broad engagement will surface those stories that are widely covered rather than being promoted by a single biased source, and showing the same topics to all users could be seen as an attempt to break through the filter bubble. These all seem like smart changes, assuming Facebook can deliver better on these promises than some of its abortive previous changes to Trending Topics.
via Facebook (more on Techmeme)
DCN report shows publisher revenue from Google, Facebook, Snapchat – Business Insider (Jan 24, 2017)
This article (and the report it’s based on) frustratingly focuses on average numbers across a range of very different publishers, rather than providing something more detailed, which limits the usefulness of the data, but there’s some interesting stuff in here regardless. For one, this reinforces the sense that publishers are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to supporting the major new content platforms – on the one hand, they feel they can’t afford to be absent, and on the other systems like Facebook Instant Articles and Google’s AMP don’t seem to allow them to monetize as they do on their own sites. One surprising finding is how strongly Snapchat shows here relative to its overall share of ad revenue. The picture is muddied by the fact that the report covers both video and news content, and so YouTube makes a very strong showing overall too. The key takeaway for me is that these companies continue to tread a difficult and dangerous path as they work with these platforms, ceding a lot of control to them and potentially seeing less revenue as a result.
Update: the actual report is now available here in full.
via Business Insider
How Facebook actually isolates us – CNN (Jan 23, 2017)
This isn’t a new idea – it’s been around at least since Eli Pariser’s Filter Bubble was published in 2012. But this study dives a little deeper and provides a scientific foundation for the claims made. However, it also demonstrates how much of the filtering and bubble behavior on sites like Facebook is really tapping into deeper human tendencies like confirmation bias, of which content shared through the mechanism of a social network is a massive enabler. Though the article doesn’t mention Facebook once beyond the headline, the study itself was focused on Facebook, so these findings are specifically about that specific network, though the patterns would largely apply to others too. Because so many of these features are grounded in fundamental human behaviors, they’re very tough to change too, so although Facebook may share some blame for enabling rather than challenging those tendencies, it’s going to be very tough to change them unless Facebook makes a very deliberate attempt to break up the filter bubbles and actively challenge users with new information that contradicts their existing views, which seems very unlikely.
via How Facebook actually isolates us – CNN
Facebook temporarily blocked RT — and Moscow isn’t happy – The Washington Post (Jan 19, 2017)
This is the latest in a string of occasions when Facebook has blocked specific content or an entire account on the basis of a supposed violation of its terms, only to reverse itself. But in this case, it’s a bit different – RT is a highly controversial Russian state-funded news outlet at a time when Russian interference in the US electoral process is a hot topic. The account’s privileges were quickly reinstated in this case, but there now appears to have been no legitimate reason to withdraw them in the first place, raising questions about who at Facebook made the decision to suspend the account and why. At a time when Facebook is trying to be more responsible about policing fake news and also working more closely with news organizations, this kind of thing won’t inspire a lot of confidence either among news organizations or among those inclined to belief Facebook’s fake news clampdown has a partisan bent.
via Facebook temporarily blocked RT — and Moscow isn’t happy – The Washington Post
Facebook Hires Campbell Brown to Lead News Partnerships Team – The New York Times (Jan 6, 2017)
This is yet another step in Facebook’s evolving vision of its identity. Campbell Brown isn’t going to be producing news for Facebook, but rather working with news organizations that use Facebook, but it’s a recognition that news is a huge content category on the service, and that many people get their news through Facebook. It will be very interesting to see how this role pans out in detail, and whether it feels Facebook is really helping news organizations, especially when set against recent moves to combat fake news.
via Facebook Hires Campbell Brown to Lead News Partnerships Team – The New York Times
Mark Zuckerberg’s 2017 resolution: Meet more Americans – USA Today (Jan 3, 2017)
Although Zuckerberg sets himself a personal goal every year, this one feels like a more corporate one than those he’s set in the past, and it’s hard not to read it as an attempt to understand and assuage concerns about Facebook’s increasing power and its role in our lives. I’m curious to see how Zuck goes about connecting with ordinary people and what he hears from them (and who else will be present to hear that feedback). It’s hard to tell at the outset whether this will be more of a stunt or PR exercise or a true listening tour, but Facebook and Zuckerberg definitely need to do more of the latter.
via Mark Zuckerberg’s 2017 resolution: Meet more Americans
2016: The Year We Stopped Listening To Big Tech’s Favorite Excuse – BuzzFeed News (Dec 30, 2016)
This is a fantastic post about how tech companies hide behind that identity, and shouldn’t. Facebook is the obvious example that springs to mind, and does seem to be coming around on this point, but it applies to others too. Many tech companies abdicate responsibility, because responsibility means an imperative to act and self-examine, and most importantly to question the assumption tech is always a force for good. We need more of that questioning in 2017.
via 2016: The Year We Stopped Listening To Big Tech’s Favorite Excuse – BuzzFeed News
2016 was the year we figured out Facebook’s empire is dangerous – Mashable (Dec 29, 2016)
This is a narrative that gained significant steam during the course of 2016 – the idea that Facebook is becoming incredibly powerful as a filter through which people experience the Internet and the world, and that this much power is dangerous. That danger is arguably heightened by the incredible power Mark Zuckerberg still has as CEO to single-handedly shape policy for the company. I suspect we’ll see a lot more of this kind of thing in 2017.
via 2016 was the year we figured out Facebook’s empire is dangerous
Twitter Embraces Its Role As A Media Company – BuzzFeed News (Dec 28, 2016)
Facebook has notoriously struggled with its identity, resisting until very recently the temptation to call itself a media company, and with good reason – media companies command far lower valuations than tech ones. But Twitter seems to be embracing its future as a media player, with a focus on news (or “live”) and video. This piece cites several new hires the company is planning to make as evidence of this shift in strategy and perhaps identity.
via Twitter Embraces Its Role As A Media Company – BuzzFeed News
Mark Zuckerberg’s Take on What Facebook is Evolves | Josh Constine on Twitter (Dec 23, 2016)
Ever since the US presidential election, Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been grappling with what kind of company Facebook is, and its role in the modern world. Zuckerberg’s initial reaction to claims Facebook affected the election was dismissive, but his views seem to be evolving, which is a good thing. Facebook is enormously influential, and needs to recognize that.
Mark Zuckerberg says it’s ‘extremely unlikely’ fake news on Facebook changed the election outcome – Recode (Nov 13, 2016)
Mark Zuckerberg has continued to resist calls for Facebook to see itself as a media company, and to accept the editorial responsibilities that come with this role. This puts him in conflict with not only much of the rest of the industry and its commentariat but many users too, and it’s a tension that can only be resolved as Zuckerberg and Facebook recognize the product’s evolution and take steps to improve the user experience while reassuring users Facebook won’t abuse its power. That’s a really tough line to walk.