7 ms·

Am I the only person who has a problem with this headline, "Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing" am I overreacting here or others feel the same? For me at th

Am I the only person who has a problem with this headline, "Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing" am I overreacting here or others feel the same? For me at the face of it's not incorrect, but it feels to me a certain deliberate wordsmithing is used to create a sense of growing momentum. What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue. I do understand FB will not provide that info, but some real journalism and follow up from said companies could have gathered us the amount this boycott means. After all this suppose to be NYT. They do touch on this number, "smaller businesses that make up the bulk of its eight million advertisers have been considering their options" However, again they are carefully crafting their words in a way that it's not inaccurate but showing a larger problem. Instead of saying "one agency that manages 20 clients", or "we have heard from some advertisers" using "one agency", or "some advertisers" they are saying "advertisers" which to some readers will read as a lot of advertisers or a universal movement among advertisers.

skewart 6y ago
What’s more, the NY Times has a strong business interest in convincing advertisers not to advertise on Facebook. I’m a bit skeptical of anything they publish these days about Facebook, Google, and other companies that could potentially threaten their access to clicks, just given their financial incentives to weaken these companies as much as possible.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  My thoughts exactly, they have a clear conflict of interest when covering this story. Although, to be honest, all of mainstream journalism seems way more biased and blatantly slanted than I recall from 20-30 years ago. Perhaps I am just better at noticing it now?
  - _curious_ 6y ago
    Good to see more people calling out the sensationalism and manipulation tactics that publishers deploy...not just the Times either. I've gotten to a point where if my spidey sense is tingling, I won't even click on link or read the content, the time to reward that behavior has passed.
  - btilly 6y ago
    You are not just better at noticing it. It really is more slanted. Journalism 20-30 years ago was mostly funded on a subscription model. In this model they work hard to maintain their reputation, so that people will trust them as an accurate source of news. Journalism today is mostly funded per click. Which means that the most important thing is a headline that grabs people's attention and causes them to click. The incentive is for the most outrageous and attention grabbing headline possible. With no incentive for being accurate - by the time you realize that the article is junk they've been paid and are looking for another sucker. If you're interested in a book length exposition of how this change in dynamics has changed the news landscape, I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/1591846285 https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... The trends that it discusses have played out for another decade since it was written, but played out along the direction that it described.
    - gms 6y ago
      The NYT operates on an online subscription model, no?
      - avs733 6y ago
        yes, but saying otherwise would hurt the narrative that only tech can critique tech.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        How much of a percentage of revenue is that subscription model vs ads, and how does that hold up to the historical split?
        thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
        i heard somewhere it was 60% subscription 40% ad, though I'm not sure.
      - skewart 6y ago
        Last quarter advertising made up about 27% of their total revenue (digital advertising was 13% of total), according numbers in this recent article - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-t...
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  >the NY Times has a strong business interest in convincing advertisers not to advertise on Facebook. How so?
  - skewart 6y ago
    For one thing, Facebook competes with the NYT for advertising dollars. If Facebook and Instagram are less appealing places to run adds for a company then maybe that company will spend more of its advertising budget on NYT ads instead. More broadly though, they have an incentive to weaken companies like Facebook and Google, which are effectively gatekeepers for a lot of traffic to NYT articles. Clicking on an article shared on Facebook, or clicking through to an article in a Google search result are very common ways for people to land on the NYT website. Not only is this traffic valuable to the NYT for ad revenue it's also very valuable for selling subscriptions - people are more likely to subscribe if they have been seeing and reading free articles. I think it's safe to assume the people running the NYT are aware of this dependency on search and social media platforms and are eager to do anything they can to minimize it. I have no idea how much bias, if any, actually creeps into reporting - hopefully it's none! But the business incentives are enough to make me approach any article from almost any media company about Google or FB with a dose of healthy skepticism.
- netcan 6y ago
  That's kind of a skepticism conundrum. If media can't be trusted about media... I mean, I agree with you. They're vested. Even if it wasn't financial, journalists must have an insider's set of opinions about good & evil in the media industry.
  - skewart 6y ago
    Yeah, it is a bit of a conundrum, but I don't think I'd say they can't be trusted entirely. I mean, I doubt they're printing outright lies - unlike some media outlets. I think the bias would creep in more in the fact that they run this story at all (while potentially interesting, it's hardly world-changing news), and also in descriptive words used here and there. As long as one is aware of their inherent motivations I think it's possible to get worthwhile info from their stories on their competitors. Of course, who knows what stories about media they're choosing not to cover.
- dingdingdang 6y ago
  And not only is that strong business interest, its also mixed with strong political agenda that's pushed on Facebook despite recent pointers* that FB internally moderates in favour of Democrats already. * https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1275606793327173633 https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/12756067933271736...
methehack 6y ago
Do you prefer "Ad Boycott of Facebook Kind of Growing"? Or "Ad Boycott of Facebook Growing Slowly"? Or "Ad Boycott of Facebook: The Details" It is growing, the details are accurate in the article, and I can't think of a headline that has zero editorial information in it. If they don't run any story, then they risk the opposite criticism: why didn't you tell us?! You should worry more about the media that philosophically rejects the notion of objective reality.
- _curious_ 6y ago
  "why didn't you tell us?!" Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content? "You should worry more about the media that philosophically rejects the notion of objective reality. " And...there is no such thing as objectivity in media, never was or will be. The act of deciding what stories to publish or not is a subjective decision in and of itself.
  - rising-sky 6y ago
    > Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content? I would. Because this "news" will eventually get out, and I would wonder why it was not covered by the MSM. I've seen a lot of anecdotal stories about things not being covered in the MSM, so yes, people will wonder why there was no news coverage about a boycott, instigated by prominent civil rights groups like the Anti Defamation League, the NAACP, and supported by well known companies like Patagonia, REI et al against a well known company and platform like Facebook.
  - methehack 6y ago
    Yes, humans are biased. Sigh/Yawn. Still, there is a world of difference between trying to be objective and not trying to be objective at all. I think, generally, the Times is trying a lot more than most organizations and I respect that. Just because humans are biased doesn't mean all journalism is equally biased. And yes, story selection is editorializing. Sigh/Yawn. I think choosing to run this story is a legitimate editorial decision as I believe enough people care about it -- in fact, I care about it. I think there's only a case of bad journalism here if you catch the Time in a misrepresentation. The existence of the story is not, in itself, a misrepresentation.
jasonv 6y ago
It’s a spark, of the sort that didn’t exist a while ago. Could turn into a real fire. I hope it’s not an overstated headline, and I’m willing to wait, and help if I can, make it a firestorm.
nisten 6y ago
I don't know the best way to put this, but for me the anectodal evidence i've seen, consisting mainly of tech articles and Elon Musk tweets, seems to point in this direction. Albeit facebook's data might probably show that their ad use is growing despite these setbacks. In my opinion this all stems what I think is a lack of "emotional intelligence" on the part of facebook's CEO. They clearly don't have the ability to judge correctly how people will feel about many of their decisions, nor do they seem to have any remorse from damages they cause ( i.e. how facebook was used during the genocide in Burma) They have a superb ability to predict changes at scale on the technical side and I think their role in the company should be restricted to this.
tech-historian 6y ago
Keep in mind, the author of the article is usually not the same person that writes the headline. An editor was looking for a punchy title for the piece.
swebs 6y ago
I think the 2016 election broke the NY Times. They shifted from a mostly neutral, reputable news source to quasi-propaganda fairly quickly.
- adamsea 6y ago
  What exactly is the propaganda part? Can you provide a specific example, so folks have something concrete to agree or disagree with? And, do you mean with their news reporting, as opposed to their editorials?
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Most people, including people on HN, don't grok that there's a difference between news and editorials. Especially with everything getting mashed together in endless digital news scrolling apps. 2020: If it's something they agree with, it's news. If there's something they disagree with, it's propaganda. It's not entirely new, though. When I worked in television news years ago, the average person didn't know the difference between the news and the entertainment programs. I was introduced to this one day standing in the supermarket checkout line and two women were talking about something they saw "on the news." They were talking about the Maury Povich Show.
  - ingsoc79 6y ago
    While the NYT has always had its share of bias claims, since Trump's election it appears that even the facade of balanced reporting is taking a back seat to their editorial agenda. You have editorialized headlines[1] that incorporate common liberal phrases to invoke outrage. Other "How to Raise an Anti-Racist Kid" Any story that mentions Trump will have a negative headline, even mundane stories about disaster declarations and normal government business. The line between editorial and news content has grown increasingly blurry: scrolling through their app you'll need a second look to determine whether a storing is news or opinion - they're mixed together, often without delineation. For example in the app today you'll find an opinion piece calling for slavery reparations sandwiched between an analysis on Trump's reelection campaign and a story about a problem police officer. As a long-time subscriber (and no fan of Trump), it's both frustrating and worrying to see the "paper of record" of my country begin to parrot leftist talking points in their daily reporting. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/health/trump-health-care-transgender-rights.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/health/trump-health-care-...
reaperducer 6y ago
What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue. Does it matter? If two advertisers quit on Monday, and four more quit on Tuesday, and six more quit on Wednesday, that is growing momentum. Is there a codified percentage of revenue where a newspaper is suddenly allowed (by Facebook?) to write about things? Can you provide a link? HN-types like to jump on the mass media for not noticing trends soon enough. Then they jump on the mass media for noticing trends too soon. Make up your hive mind.
- dingaling 6y ago
  > If two advertisers quit on Monday, and four more quit on Tuesday, and six more quit on Wednesday, that is growing momentum. Unless of course 10 joined on Thursday. Which the article carefully avoids investigating.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - beepbop4441 6y ago
    The article isn’t analyzing net advertisers, it doesn’t matter if 10 new ones join that’s not relevant to the statement that the number leaving is increasing. “carefully avoids investigating” give me a break
RNCTX 6y ago
Related: check out @nyt_diff on twitter.
bennesvig 6y ago
Ben & Jerry's spent less than $5k on Facebook and Instagram ads last month. They'll get more publicity value from joining the boycott vs. paying to run ads for a month or two.
bobdole12345 6y ago
So, what you're saying doesn't really matter does it? If you add another boycott participant, it's growing. The headline is completely factual, and you're too busy missing the point because you're bringing assumptions to the table.

skewart 6y ago

What’s more, the NY Times has a strong business interest in convincing advertisers not to advertise on Facebook. I’m a bit skeptical of anything they publish these days about Facebook, Google, and other companies that could potentially threaten their access to clicks, just given their financial incentives to weaken these companies as much as possible.

rossdavidh 6y ago
My thoughts exactly, they have a clear conflict of interest when covering this story. Although, to be honest, all of mainstream journalism seems way more biased and blatantly slanted than I recall from 20-30 years ago. Perhaps I am just better at noticing it now?
- _curious_ 6y ago
  Good to see more people calling out the sensationalism and manipulation tactics that publishers deploy...not just the Times either. I've gotten to a point where if my spidey sense is tingling, I won't even click on link or read the content, the time to reward that behavior has passed.
- btilly 6y ago
  You are not just better at noticing it. It really is more slanted. Journalism 20-30 years ago was mostly funded on a subscription model. In this model they work hard to maintain their reputation, so that people will trust them as an accurate source of news. Journalism today is mostly funded per click. Which means that the most important thing is a headline that grabs people's attention and causes them to click. The incentive is for the most outrageous and attention grabbing headline possible. With no incentive for being accurate - by the time you realize that the article is junk they've been paid and are looking for another sucker. If you're interested in a book length exposition of how this change in dynamics has changed the news landscape, I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/1591846285 https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato.... The trends that it discusses have played out for another decade since it was written, but played out along the direction that it described.
  - gms 6y ago
    The NYT operates on an online subscription model, no?
    - avs733 6y ago
      yes, but saying otherwise would hurt the narrative that only tech can critique tech.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      How much of a percentage of revenue is that subscription model vs ads, and how does that hold up to the historical split?
      - thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
        i heard somewhere it was 60% subscription 40% ad, though I'm not sure.
    - skewart 6y ago
      Last quarter advertising made up about 27% of their total revenue (digital advertising was 13% of total), according numbers in this recent article - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-t...
three_seagrass 6y ago
>the NY Times has a strong business interest in convincing advertisers not to advertise on Facebook. How so?
- skewart 6y ago
  For one thing, Facebook competes with the NYT for advertising dollars. If Facebook and Instagram are less appealing places to run adds for a company then maybe that company will spend more of its advertising budget on NYT ads instead. More broadly though, they have an incentive to weaken companies like Facebook and Google, which are effectively gatekeepers for a lot of traffic to NYT articles. Clicking on an article shared on Facebook, or clicking through to an article in a Google search result are very common ways for people to land on the NYT website. Not only is this traffic valuable to the NYT for ad revenue it's also very valuable for selling subscriptions - people are more likely to subscribe if they have been seeing and reading free articles. I think it's safe to assume the people running the NYT are aware of this dependency on search and social media platforms and are eager to do anything they can to minimize it. I have no idea how much bias, if any, actually creeps into reporting - hopefully it's none! But the business incentives are enough to make me approach any article from almost any media company about Google or FB with a dose of healthy skepticism.
netcan 6y ago
That's kind of a skepticism conundrum. If media can't be trusted about media... I mean, I agree with you. They're vested. Even if it wasn't financial, journalists must have an insider's set of opinions about good & evil in the media industry.
- skewart 6y ago
  Yeah, it is a bit of a conundrum, but I don't think I'd say they can't be trusted entirely. I mean, I doubt they're printing outright lies - unlike some media outlets. I think the bias would creep in more in the fact that they run this story at all (while potentially interesting, it's hardly world-changing news), and also in descriptive words used here and there. As long as one is aware of their inherent motivations I think it's possible to get worthwhile info from their stories on their competitors. Of course, who knows what stories about media they're choosing not to cover.
dingdingdang 6y ago
And not only is that strong business interest, its also mixed with strong political agenda that's pushed on Facebook despite recent pointers* that FB internally moderates in favour of Democrats already. * https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1275606793327173633 https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/12756067933271736...

methehack 6y ago

Do you prefer "Ad Boycott of Facebook Kind of Growing"? Or "Ad Boycott of Facebook Growing Slowly"? Or "Ad Boycott of Facebook: The Details" It is growing, the details are accurate in the article, and I can't think of a headline that has zero editorial information in it. If they don't run any story, then they risk the opposite criticism: why didn't you tell us?! You should worry more about the media that philosophically rejects the notion of objective reality.

_curious_ 6y ago
"why didn't you tell us?!" Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content? "You should worry more about the media that philosophically rejects the notion of objective reality. " And...there is no such thing as objectivity in media, never was or will be. The act of deciding what stories to publish or not is a subjective decision in and of itself.
- rising-sky 6y ago
  > Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content? I would. Because this "news" will eventually get out, and I would wonder why it was not covered by the MSM. I've seen a lot of anecdotal stories about things not being covered in the MSM, so yes, people will wonder why there was no news coverage about a boycott, instigated by prominent civil rights groups like the Anti Defamation League, the NAACP, and supported by well known companies like Patagonia, REI et al against a well known company and platform like Facebook.
- methehack 6y ago
  Yes, humans are biased. Sigh/Yawn. Still, there is a world of difference between trying to be objective and not trying to be objective at all. I think, generally, the Times is trying a lot more than most organizations and I respect that. Just because humans are biased doesn't mean all journalism is equally biased. And yes, story selection is editorializing. Sigh/Yawn. I think choosing to run this story is a legitimate editorial decision as I believe enough people care about it -- in fact, I care about it. I think there's only a case of bad journalism here if you catch the Time in a misrepresentation. The existence of the story is not, in itself, a misrepresentation.

jasonv 6y ago

It’s a spark, of the sort that didn’t exist a while ago. Could turn into a real fire. I hope it’s not an overstated headline, and I’m willing to wait, and help if I can, make it a firestorm.

nisten 6y ago

I don't know the best way to put this, but for me the anectodal evidence i've seen, consisting mainly of tech articles and Elon Musk tweets, seems to point in this direction. Albeit facebook's data might probably show that their ad use is growing despite these setbacks. In my opinion this all stems what I think is a lack of "emotional intelligence" on the part of facebook's CEO. They clearly don't have the ability to judge correctly how people will feel about many of their decisions, nor do they seem to have any remorse from damages they cause ( i.e. how facebook was used during the genocide in Burma) They have a superb ability to predict changes at scale on the technical side and I think their role in the company should be restricted to this.

tech-historian 6y ago

Keep in mind, the author of the article is usually not the same person that writes the headline. An editor was looking for a punchy title for the piece.

swebs 6y ago

I think the 2016 election broke the NY Times. They shifted from a mostly neutral, reputable news source to quasi-propaganda fairly quickly.

adamsea 6y ago
What exactly is the propaganda part? Can you provide a specific example, so folks have something concrete to agree or disagree with? And, do you mean with their news reporting, as opposed to their editorials?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Most people, including people on HN, don't grok that there's a difference between news and editorials. Especially with everything getting mashed together in endless digital news scrolling apps. 2020: If it's something they agree with, it's news. If there's something they disagree with, it's propaganda. It's not entirely new, though. When I worked in television news years ago, the average person didn't know the difference between the news and the entertainment programs. I was introduced to this one day standing in the supermarket checkout line and two women were talking about something they saw "on the news." They were talking about the Maury Povich Show.
- ingsoc79 6y ago
  While the NYT has always had its share of bias claims, since Trump's election it appears that even the facade of balanced reporting is taking a back seat to their editorial agenda. You have editorialized headlines[1] that incorporate common liberal phrases to invoke outrage. Other "How to Raise an Anti-Racist Kid" Any story that mentions Trump will have a negative headline, even mundane stories about disaster declarations and normal government business. The line between editorial and news content has grown increasingly blurry: scrolling through their app you'll need a second look to determine whether a storing is news or opinion - they're mixed together, often without delineation. For example in the app today you'll find an opinion piece calling for slavery reparations sandwiched between an analysis on Trump's reelection campaign and a story about a problem police officer. As a long-time subscriber (and no fan of Trump), it's both frustrating and worrying to see the "paper of record" of my country begin to parrot leftist talking points in their daily reporting. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/health/trump-health-care-transgender-rights.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/health/trump-health-care-...

reaperducer 6y ago

What we don't know if these advertisers represent 1%, more or less than x% of Facebook's ad revenue. Does it matter? If two advertisers quit on Monday, and four more quit on Tuesday, and six more quit on Wednesday, that is growing momentum. Is there a codified percentage of revenue where a newspaper is suddenly allowed (by Facebook?) to write about things? Can you provide a link? HN-types like to jump on the mass media for not noticing trends soon enough. Then they jump on the mass media for noticing trends too soon. Make up your hive mind.

dingaling 6y ago
> If two advertisers quit on Monday, and four more quit on Tuesday, and six more quit on Wednesday, that is growing momentum. Unless of course 10 joined on Thursday. Which the article carefully avoids investigating.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- beepbop4441 6y ago
  The article isn’t analyzing net advertisers, it doesn’t matter if 10 new ones join that’s not relevant to the statement that the number leaving is increasing. “carefully avoids investigating” give me a break

RNCTX 6y ago

Related: check out @nyt_diff on twitter.

bennesvig 6y ago

Ben & Jerry's spent less than $5k on Facebook and Instagram ads last month. They'll get more publicity value from joining the boycott vs. paying to run ads for a month or two.

bobdole12345 6y ago

So, what you're saying doesn't really matter does it? If you add another boycott participant, it's growing. The headline is completely factual, and you're too busy missing the point because you're bringing assumptions to the table.