7 ms·

Maybe I'm reading too much into your tone here, but this seems a pretty disingenuous take, and I'm disappointed it's the top comment. You're making it seem like

Maybe I'm reading too much into your tone here, but this seems a pretty disingenuous take, and I'm disappointed it's the top comment. You're making it seem like the press is circling Facebook out of some undue desire to turn non stories into breaking news but that's far from the truth. This isn't TMZ following around a philandering star. There is, as you so aptly put, blood in the water here, because when you're a company with the size and reach of Facebook, what you do MATTERS. Facebook counts it's user base in the billions, it holds personally identifying information on even more than that. It arguably has the influence to swing elections and shape public discourse (you can debate how much but at this point it's pretty apparent that it has a measurable effect). It's similar to how politicians are public figures simply by nature of their position. When you hold that much power and influence, your actions, good or bad, are and should be a matter of public record. And it has always been the press' job to hold powerful figures and companies accountable to the public. Facebook has been, especially over the past few years, at best an amoral actor. That has to be news. It has to be. Where ever you fall on the social economic political spectrum, it has to be news worthy when Facebook does something that implies they are trying to manipulate or evade accountability because more so than anyone else that is something we cannot allow the powerful (individual or organization) to do.

pasabagi 8y ago
I'm no Facebook fan, but the chronology seems remarkable here. Facebook were irritating Rupert Murdoch, and traditional media in general, by refusing to pay fees for articles that appeared in people's feeds. About a month before everybody started running hit-pieces on Facebook, the negotiations broke down, with Facebook telling the news guys to go take a hike. Suddenly, everybody is absolutely horrified by the fact that Facebook is selling people's data. Despite the fact that it's always been their explicit business model. Facebook is absolutely a horrible idea, but the news are hardly being impartial. It's incumbent publishers trying to knock out a new rival, using their reputation and power to get the newcomer dragged through the mud by politicians. Nobody should be surprised that the most news-sensitive, not the most privacy-sensitive governments were the ones to attack Facebook most directly. The UK, for instance, is perhaps the most invasive surveillance state west of China - and yet, they've been leading the charge against Facebook. Despite the fact that the same government has floated ideas about monetizing government data about its own citizens!
- dcole2929 8y ago
  I mean that's just revisionist history. Yes everyone knew Facebook was selling your data. That's always been clear, but just since 2016 I can think of numerous legitimate stories: 1. Russian interference in the election and the fact that FB knew about it and did nothing. 2. FB running psychological experiments in the newsfeed not only to see if they can make you spend more time there (questionably ok) but also to see if they could affect your mood (definitely not ok). 3. Facebook censoring news in the newsfeed based on political leanings. 4. FB tracking you even after you log out. 5. Zuck lying on capital hill about what he knew and when. 6. FB hiring a pr firm to right negative articles about an investor. Also to be clear, even if Murdoch was the catalyst for the media turning a critical eye on FB, which is at best unsubstantiated conjecture, it is undeniable that very valid, very concerning stories have been revealed as result of the media's renewed scrutiny.
  - chii 8y ago
    > also to see if they could affect your mood (definitely not ok). Why is it ok for a bakery to spray the smell of fresh baked goods to affect your mood, but not ok for Facebook to attempt the same?
    - dcole2929 8y ago
      I don't know, ethics? Why is it not ok for me to forcibly shoot you up with psychedelics anytime you come into my store? Probably because you didn't consent to it and it's potentially dangerous. There is a reason why you have to sign wavers before participating in most studies.
    - wholinator2 8y ago
      Scope and direction. The bakery can do everything in its power and still only effect a small subset of people in a certain location. Facebook using everything in its power can arguably effect a significant portion of living humans at the same time. Second direction of effect. A baker can spray scent to make you think about food, positive or at best neutral effects. Facebook can manipulate what your see to induce rage, fear, hate, xenophobia, anything it wants if it is effective. Again, I think it really just comes down to scope. Regardless of what precedent there is for corporate interactions with the populace, we are at an unprecedented time with regards to the reach, immediacy, and ubiquity a corporate entity can exert on its users. And when you have a company whose product incentivises immense social pressure on others to join you can end up with huge amounts of influence in a very short time. Again, looking at it from the precedents of the past you can say there's nothing wrong or different about it but we do not live in the past and these entities are having large and possibly damaging effects on our societies and the precedent with regards to that is to attempt to eliminate it, either through media shaming or governmental regulation.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
> You're making it seem like the press is circling Facebook out of some undue desire to turn non stories into breaking news but that's far from the truth. When I worked in television, for 10 years in the 70s, the news reporters were former newspaper journalists who were hired for their news gathering abilities and not their good looks. In network television, the news department was a separate, independent division from the entertainment division and did not fear marketing or ratings for the stories they wrote. None of the above has been true for a long time and television "news" is as much about selling advertising and appeasing sponsors as any entertainment you see on television today. Does the press turn non-stories into stories and circle them like shark? Absolutely they do! And having a conversation with my nephews fiance who works for one of those network television "news" divisions disheartens me even more. Today one needs to do what newspapers and televisions in the past did themselves. Vet the information and use stories that matter. It is now we the people who have to do the vetting and editing to find who and what we will believe but there are far, far too sources making it far too much work and most people will just rely on the most entertaining. Popular magazines and fun TV anchors.
- dcole2929 8y ago
  If media outlets were reporting on Zuck's love life or just rehashing known stories with inflammatory headlines you'd have a point. But even the stories on FB's interpersonal drama has been of significance. Take for instance the stories on the departures of the heads of What's App . That easily could have been played for cheap entertainment value but instead serious journalism was done to show the public that these people who agreed to billion dollar exits selling to Facebook left money on the table because the company was no longer an organization they wanted to be apart of. I don't disagree with you that the drama at FB plays, but that doesn't make it any less valid journalism. There is more media today than there has ever been. It's not all up to the same standard. But the reason FB can't manage to get out of the spotlight is their own fault. Maybe they close ranks and right the ship eventually but there is something going on at the highest levels of that company that is off and the media is going to keep investigating until they get to the bottom of it because that's the whole point of the profession. Yes it absolutely plays, but there is also a whole lot of substance to it.
smokeyj 8y ago
Nice and friendly comments always rise to the top about FB because Zuck pays for PR. Why wouldn’t he game HN too.
- what_ever 8y ago
  It's possible but I think you are vastly overestimating how much rest of the world cares about HN.
philwelch 8y ago
> It arguably has the influence to swing elections and shape public discourse This used to be a power that was held only by a small oligopoly of mass media corporations. > And it has always been the press' job to hold powerful figures and companies accountable to the public. The question is, "who watches the watchers?". Prior to the explosion of the internet, the narrative consensus established by the mass media was the truth, as far as most people knew. The voice of Walter Cronkite might have well been the voice of God. The press, itself, was seldom held accountable to the public, save from a few propagandists or, at best, contrarians like Noam Chomsky who usually had some particular ideological axe to grind and some biases of their own. (Chomsky himself was very self-aware about his place in the world at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) Now we live in a world where there are a million Noam Chomskys for each Walter Cronkite, and the Cronkites are getting scared. Instead of the seemingly benign and well-hidden biases of the mainstream media, we are bombarded with obvious, radicalized biases from a plethora of outlets, all with varying levels of honesty. > Facebook has been, especially over the past few years, at best an amoral actor. That has to be news. It has to be. Facebook built a platform for disseminating media. It's a platform where propaganda can be disseminated to people at a very high level of granularity and precision. It's a platform that lives in a place where national borders have less meaning, enabling bad actors to cross these borders. Facebook talks about making the world more open and connected. It turns out that the world is a terrible place and there were good reasons to be closed off and disconnected from certain parts of it! The issues discussed above arise because Facebook optimized for easily measured and monetized things like engagement, and discovered some unintended consequences, so now they're being called on to address those consequences. Maybe they and other social media companies should block fake news, or incitements to violence, or political advertising, or female-presenting nipples, or whatever. The problem is, Facebook is a monopoly, and if you have a mass media monopoly acting as the arbiter of truth and social harm, you've just made matters much, much, much worse. This solution also doesn't appease the legacy mass media, which themselves used to be the arbiters of truth, and are loath to relinquish that power to some nerds in San Francisco.
thecleaner 8y ago
To be fair if people's opinions can be swung by what they read on ome single platform, people are not being too smart here. This is different from the usual "you cant trust the internet" rhetoric. You can, you but you just need to ensemble your information sources. Treating websites individually as a weak source of information can prevent the bubble effect. And if people get swung by FB then those people are morons.

pasabagi 8y ago

I'm no Facebook fan, but the chronology seems remarkable here. Facebook were irritating Rupert Murdoch, and traditional media in general, by refusing to pay fees for articles that appeared in people's feeds. About a month before everybody started running hit-pieces on Facebook, the negotiations broke down, with Facebook telling the news guys to go take a hike. Suddenly, everybody is absolutely horrified by the fact that Facebook is selling people's data. Despite the fact that it's always been their explicit business model. Facebook is absolutely a horrible idea, but the news are hardly being impartial. It's incumbent publishers trying to knock out a new rival, using their reputation and power to get the newcomer dragged through the mud by politicians. Nobody should be surprised that the most news-sensitive, not the most privacy-sensitive governments were the ones to attack Facebook most directly. The UK, for instance, is perhaps the most invasive surveillance state west of China - and yet, they've been leading the charge against Facebook. Despite the fact that the same government has floated ideas about monetizing government data about its own citizens!

dcole2929 8y ago
I mean that's just revisionist history. Yes everyone knew Facebook was selling your data. That's always been clear, but just since 2016 I can think of numerous legitimate stories: 1. Russian interference in the election and the fact that FB knew about it and did nothing. 2. FB running psychological experiments in the newsfeed not only to see if they can make you spend more time there (questionably ok) but also to see if they could affect your mood (definitely not ok). 3. Facebook censoring news in the newsfeed based on political leanings. 4. FB tracking you even after you log out. 5. Zuck lying on capital hill about what he knew and when. 6. FB hiring a pr firm to right negative articles about an investor. Also to be clear, even if Murdoch was the catalyst for the media turning a critical eye on FB, which is at best unsubstantiated conjecture, it is undeniable that very valid, very concerning stories have been revealed as result of the media's renewed scrutiny.
- chii 8y ago
  > also to see if they could affect your mood (definitely not ok). Why is it ok for a bakery to spray the smell of fresh baked goods to affect your mood, but not ok for Facebook to attempt the same?
  - dcole2929 8y ago
    I don't know, ethics? Why is it not ok for me to forcibly shoot you up with psychedelics anytime you come into my store? Probably because you didn't consent to it and it's potentially dangerous. There is a reason why you have to sign wavers before participating in most studies.
  - wholinator2 8y ago
    Scope and direction. The bakery can do everything in its power and still only effect a small subset of people in a certain location. Facebook using everything in its power can arguably effect a significant portion of living humans at the same time. Second direction of effect. A baker can spray scent to make you think about food, positive or at best neutral effects. Facebook can manipulate what your see to induce rage, fear, hate, xenophobia, anything it wants if it is effective. Again, I think it really just comes down to scope. Regardless of what precedent there is for corporate interactions with the populace, we are at an unprecedented time with regards to the reach, immediacy, and ubiquity a corporate entity can exert on its users. And when you have a company whose product incentivises immense social pressure on others to join you can end up with huge amounts of influence in a very short time. Again, looking at it from the precedents of the past you can say there's nothing wrong or different about it but we do not live in the past and these entities are having large and possibly damaging effects on our societies and the precedent with regards to that is to attempt to eliminate it, either through media shaming or governmental regulation.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

> You're making it seem like the press is circling Facebook out of some undue desire to turn non stories into breaking news but that's far from the truth. When I worked in television, for 10 years in the 70s, the news reporters were former newspaper journalists who were hired for their news gathering abilities and not their good looks. In network television, the news department was a separate, independent division from the entertainment division and did not fear marketing or ratings for the stories they wrote. None of the above has been true for a long time and television "news" is as much about selling advertising and appeasing sponsors as any entertainment you see on television today. Does the press turn non-stories into stories and circle them like shark? Absolutely they do! And having a conversation with my nephews fiance who works for one of those network television "news" divisions disheartens me even more. Today one needs to do what newspapers and televisions in the past did themselves. Vet the information and use stories that matter. It is now we the people who have to do the vetting and editing to find who and what we will believe but there are far, far too sources making it far too much work and most people will just rely on the most entertaining. Popular magazines and fun TV anchors.

dcole2929 8y ago
If media outlets were reporting on Zuck's love life or just rehashing known stories with inflammatory headlines you'd have a point. But even the stories on FB's interpersonal drama has been of significance. Take for instance the stories on the departures of the heads of What's App . That easily could have been played for cheap entertainment value but instead serious journalism was done to show the public that these people who agreed to billion dollar exits selling to Facebook left money on the table because the company was no longer an organization they wanted to be apart of. I don't disagree with you that the drama at FB plays, but that doesn't make it any less valid journalism. There is more media today than there has ever been. It's not all up to the same standard. But the reason FB can't manage to get out of the spotlight is their own fault. Maybe they close ranks and right the ship eventually but there is something going on at the highest levels of that company that is off and the media is going to keep investigating until they get to the bottom of it because that's the whole point of the profession. Yes it absolutely plays, but there is also a whole lot of substance to it.

smokeyj 8y ago

Nice and friendly comments always rise to the top about FB because Zuck pays for PR. Why wouldn’t he game HN too.

what_ever 8y ago
It's possible but I think you are vastly overestimating how much rest of the world cares about HN.

philwelch 8y ago

> It arguably has the influence to swing elections and shape public discourse This used to be a power that was held only by a small oligopoly of mass media corporations. > And it has always been the press' job to hold powerful figures and companies accountable to the public. The question is, "who watches the watchers?". Prior to the explosion of the internet, the narrative consensus established by the mass media was the truth, as far as most people knew. The voice of Walter Cronkite might have well been the voice of God. The press, itself, was seldom held accountable to the public, save from a few propagandists or, at best, contrarians like Noam Chomsky who usually had some particular ideological axe to grind and some biases of their own. (Chomsky himself was very self-aware about his place in the world at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) Now we live in a world where there are a million Noam Chomskys for each Walter Cronkite, and the Cronkites are getting scared. Instead of the seemingly benign and well-hidden biases of the mainstream media, we are bombarded with obvious, radicalized biases from a plethora of outlets, all with varying levels of honesty. > Facebook has been, especially over the past few years, at best an amoral actor. That has to be news. It has to be. Facebook built a platform for disseminating media. It's a platform where propaganda can be disseminated to people at a very high level of granularity and precision. It's a platform that lives in a place where national borders have less meaning, enabling bad actors to cross these borders. Facebook talks about making the world more open and connected. It turns out that the world is a terrible place and there were good reasons to be closed off and disconnected from certain parts of it! The issues discussed above arise because Facebook optimized for easily measured and monetized things like engagement, and discovered some unintended consequences, so now they're being called on to address those consequences. Maybe they and other social media companies should block fake news, or incitements to violence, or political advertising, or female-presenting nipples, or whatever. The problem is, Facebook is a monopoly, and if you have a mass media monopoly acting as the arbiter of truth and social harm, you've just made matters much, much, much worse. This solution also doesn't appease the legacy mass media, which themselves used to be the arbiters of truth, and are loath to relinquish that power to some nerds in San Francisco.

thecleaner 8y ago

To be fair if people's opinions can be swung by what they read on ome single platform, people are not being too smart here. This is different from the usual "you cant trust the internet" rhetoric. You can, you but you just need to ensemble your information sources. Treating websites individually as a weak source of information can prevent the bubble effect. And if people get swung by FB then those people are morons.