5 ms·

So the other shoe has finally dropped: If it hasn't been apparent to everyone yet, the vast majority of "anti-tech"/anti-FB articles has been the dying gasps of

So the other shoe has finally dropped: If it hasn't been apparent to everyone yet, the vast majority of "anti-tech"/anti-FB articles has been the dying gasps of attempted relevance from an antiquated media ecosystem. Old media is upset and angry that they no longer have a monopoly on controlling the narrative. They're scared that their business model is no longer viable. They're worried about their loss of credibility (of their own making). This is just the latest attempt (as blatant as it may be) to wrangle the state to help them survive. Let's see if it'll work.

Barrin92 6y ago
While it's true that this is the reason for companies like Murdoch, the small and mid-sized ad and journalism industry suffers from this consolidation and market power as well and just brushing the issue off by appealing to unsympathetic entities like Murdoch is just as wrong. It's not at all wrong to be concerned about the diversity of the news and ad ecosystem and what Facebooks or others role is in vacuuming up economic rents due to sheer size.
baryphonic 6y ago
I sometimes thought I was a singleton set of people who believed this. I'd add that the old media is also in a vicious cycle wherein they can only attempt to gain dwindling share of attention by reducing their credibility. At the micro level, (e.g. on Twitter, where a pan-outlet collection of journalists "mutually discover" the preferred narrative) this sometimes looks a bit like fixed point iteration about a circular firing squad. I would predict that in this case, Facebook is probably right that news content could be excised from Australia without much cost to the company. It may hasten the demise of the old media in Australia.
- ehnto 6y ago
  While I will celebrate the fall of NewsCorp, old media does include a swath of local television and print media that are doing good work for the communities they're part of. I often hear that concern met with unsympathetic calls to get with the times, but making a media company purely out of social media isn't profitable either. We'll be left with nothing but social media if we're not careful.
  - baryphonic 6y ago
    I somewhat agree (though I do think local TV news often makes Anchorman look more like a documentary than a farce), but some of the local papers really are more of a community institution. In my experience, most of their problems involve inability to have reliable operations, e.g. setting up billing accurately or delivering the paper accurately and on time, which angers subscribers.
ehsankia 6y ago
It's not even really about controlling the narrative though, they still do to some extent. They're angry that they don't have a monopoly on advertisement anymore.
ehnto 6y ago
I don't believe that's entirely true. There is a lot of anti-facebook/social-media that's mostly stemmed from the tangible negative influence it's had on society. We can disparge Facebook and News Corp in the same breath, as it seems to me that they were cut from the same cloth all along.
agakshat 6y ago
I agree that the old media is worried about losing control of the narrative. However, i think that sweeping all negative coverage of Facebook under this rug is not helpful either. There is a real loss to the community if newspapers don’t have the money to pay journalists to do real, investigative journalism - and it’s tough to argue that Facebook has not accelerated the decline of newspapers.
- forgingahead 6y ago
  Unfortunately it seems like the vast majority of content churned out by newspapers is not "real, investigative journalism", but rather clickbait that seeks to heighten anxiety and inflame tribal relations within a population. I love and want more real, solid pieces of reporting. But it's not there enough to make it worth defending the whole lot of them.
  - agakshat 6y ago
    The issue is that this clickbait anxiety is what Facebook et al. are good at anyway. But investigative reporting has mostly been done by established news orgs. So by losing the news media, we would still have more than enough crappy clickbait articles, but lose the good parts.
spinach 6y ago
What kind of new media can replace the value old media had? Good journalism and investigative journalism is needed for a healthy democracy and is also costly. It's almost a pillar that holds it up. What is this new media you speak of? Clickbait articles that consist of a bit of text with embedded tweets? It was a Wall Street Journal (owned by Murdoch) investigative journalist that led to Theranos being exposed.
goatinaboat 6y ago
Old media is upset and angry that they no longer have a monopoly on controlling the narrative But they do: Facebook doesn’t produce any original content. It has its own narrative that it want to push of course but it has to get the raw materials from somewhere.
thosewhoteach 6y ago
It's very simple. All you need to do is pretend the following never happened, and you will "see the light" and change your mind and see Facebook for what it really is: a savior. - the "friendly fraud" case, aka stealing money from little kids - genocide which happened in Myanmar - "mood manipulation" experiments, which I am sure are just hilaaaarious, until you are its subject - the person who wrote this comment was just a "bad apple" and may not truly represent FB's actual views: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321420 - a founder who called his users "dumb fucks" when he was a teenager, and apparently stopped saying it once he "turned into a mature adult". Except the small detail which the FB fans don't want to acknowledge. He just keeps behaving as if he still believes it is true. Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22185196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22185196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179068 I can list more things, but if you haven't registered the actual reason for the hate yet, it is possible your livelihood depends on not understanding what is actually going on (e.g. you are a FB employee), or you just have a very short attention span and a very poor memory, both of which are a problem if you are going to start a comment with "So the other shoe has finally dropped: If it hasn't been apparent to everyone yet"

Barrin92 6y ago

While it's true that this is the reason for companies like Murdoch, the small and mid-sized ad and journalism industry suffers from this consolidation and market power as well and just brushing the issue off by appealing to unsympathetic entities like Murdoch is just as wrong. It's not at all wrong to be concerned about the diversity of the news and ad ecosystem and what Facebooks or others role is in vacuuming up economic rents due to sheer size.

baryphonic 6y ago

I sometimes thought I was a singleton set of people who believed this. I'd add that the old media is also in a vicious cycle wherein they can only attempt to gain dwindling share of attention by reducing their credibility. At the micro level, (e.g. on Twitter, where a pan-outlet collection of journalists "mutually discover" the preferred narrative) this sometimes looks a bit like fixed point iteration about a circular firing squad. I would predict that in this case, Facebook is probably right that news content could be excised from Australia without much cost to the company. It may hasten the demise of the old media in Australia.

ehnto 6y ago
While I will celebrate the fall of NewsCorp, old media does include a swath of local television and print media that are doing good work for the communities they're part of. I often hear that concern met with unsympathetic calls to get with the times, but making a media company purely out of social media isn't profitable either. We'll be left with nothing but social media if we're not careful.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  I somewhat agree (though I do think local TV news often makes Anchorman look more like a documentary than a farce), but some of the local papers really are more of a community institution. In my experience, most of their problems involve inability to have reliable operations, e.g. setting up billing accurately or delivering the paper accurately and on time, which angers subscribers.

ehsankia 6y ago

It's not even really about controlling the narrative though, they still do to some extent. They're angry that they don't have a monopoly on advertisement anymore.

ehnto 6y ago

I don't believe that's entirely true. There is a lot of anti-facebook/social-media that's mostly stemmed from the tangible negative influence it's had on society. We can disparge Facebook and News Corp in the same breath, as it seems to me that they were cut from the same cloth all along.

agakshat 6y ago

I agree that the old media is worried about losing control of the narrative. However, i think that sweeping all negative coverage of Facebook under this rug is not helpful either. There is a real loss to the community if newspapers don’t have the money to pay journalists to do real, investigative journalism - and it’s tough to argue that Facebook has not accelerated the decline of newspapers.

forgingahead 6y ago
Unfortunately it seems like the vast majority of content churned out by newspapers is not "real, investigative journalism", but rather clickbait that seeks to heighten anxiety and inflame tribal relations within a population. I love and want more real, solid pieces of reporting. But it's not there enough to make it worth defending the whole lot of them.
- agakshat 6y ago
  The issue is that this clickbait anxiety is what Facebook et al. are good at anyway. But investigative reporting has mostly been done by established news orgs. So by losing the news media, we would still have more than enough crappy clickbait articles, but lose the good parts.

spinach 6y ago

What kind of new media can replace the value old media had? Good journalism and investigative journalism is needed for a healthy democracy and is also costly. It's almost a pillar that holds it up. What is this new media you speak of? Clickbait articles that consist of a bit of text with embedded tweets? It was a Wall Street Journal (owned by Murdoch) investigative journalist that led to Theranos being exposed.

goatinaboat 6y ago

Old media is upset and angry that they no longer have a monopoly on controlling the narrative But they do: Facebook doesn’t produce any original content. It has its own narrative that it want to push of course but it has to get the raw materials from somewhere.

thosewhoteach 6y ago

It's very simple. All you need to do is pretend the following never happened, and you will "see the light" and change your mind and see Facebook for what it really is: a savior. - the "friendly fraud" case, aka stealing money from little kids - genocide which happened in Myanmar - "mood manipulation" experiments, which I am sure are just hilaaaarious, until you are its subject - the person who wrote this comment was just a "bad apple" and may not truly represent FB's actual views: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321420 - a founder who called his users "dumb fucks" when he was a teenager, and apparently stopped saying it once he "turned into a mature adult". Except the small detail which the FB fans don't want to acknowledge. He just keeps behaving as if he still believes it is true. Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22185196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22185196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179068 I can list more things, but if you haven't registered the actual reason for the hate yet, it is possible your livelihood depends on not understanding what is actually going on (e.g. you are a FB employee), or you just have a very short attention span and a very poor memory, both of which are a problem if you are going to start a comment with "So the other shoe has finally dropped: If it hasn't been apparent to everyone yet"