Topic: News
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 tests product similar to Snapchat Discover – USA Today (Jan 11, 2017)
Though the narrative about Facebook copying Snapchat is generally fairly accurate, and Facebook has largely used Instagram as its vehicle for this cloning recently, this doesn’t feel like part of that narrative. Yes, there’s a carousel of sorts within Snapchat’s Discover section, but that’s really where the similarity ends. This is news- and importantly article-centric, while most of the Discover content is lifestyle-centric and highly visual (video and photos). And this is about bundling content from a single news publisher, potentially around a topic, which also feels quite distinct. This is also all directly related to Facebook’s other announcement today about news, which explicitly referenced this testing.
via Facebook tests product similar to Snapchat Discover – USA Today
Facebook says it’s going to try to help journalism ‘thrive’ – Recode (Jan 11, 2017)
This news (FB’s own blog post here) should obviously be taken together with the hiring of Campbell Brown as head of news partnerships at Facebook, announced last week. It’s easy to see this as being about the whole fake news story, and there’s an element of that, but this goes much further than that. What’s interesting is the number of value judgments in Facebook’s own post about this – it isn’t neutral here when it comes to fostering news sites, and local news in particular. That’s clearly in its interests, but it goes further than that too. It’s also very sensibly looking at business models beyond display ads for monetizing news content on Facebook, something the industry needs as Facebook becomes the place where many of their readers consume their content.
via Facebook says it’s going to try to help journalism ‘thrive’ – Recode
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
Trump claims Google and Facebook are suppressing Clinton email news – Business Insider (Oct 30, 2016)
Having already taken aim at both Apple and Amazon during the campaign, Trump began attacking Google and Facebook over perceived suppression of news about Hillary Clinton’s email servers and the various on-again, off-again investigations into them by the FBI.
via Business Insider
Facebook CEO says group will not become a media company | Reuters (Aug 29, 2016)
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in general have long strenuously resisted the media company label, not least because media companies are valued much lower than tech companies. And yet Facebook has become arguably the most influential media company in the world over the past few years, a fact that’s only become clearer as 2016 has gone on. This identity crisis also makes it harder for Facebook to make smart decisions about how to manage problems like fake news on the site – the sooner it reaches some conclusions, the better.
via Facebook CEO says group will not become a media company | Reuters
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News – Gizmodo (May 9, 2016)
The article has several statements from Facebook itself at the end, which deny the main points of the article. However, this article helped feed a narrative which was already emerging, that Facebook was deliberately or otherwise suppressing trending topics with a conservative bent. It also played into the larger narrative that Facebook has too much power over what its users read and see of the world, a narrative that gained a lot of steam in 2016.
via Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
Donald Trump Attacks Amazon and Jeff Bezos on Twitter (Dec 7, 2015)
This was the first of several attacks by candidate Donald Trump aimed at Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos, which appear to have been inspired at least in part by Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, which in turn had been critical of Trump’s candidacy (along with the rest of the liberal media and much of the rest too) in editorials. The threats issued as possible retaliation were never specified in any detail, but as with his threats against Apple during the campaign, he kept them up throughout.
via Twitter