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The NY Times is an "old" media company. Facebook is a "new" media company. They are both chasing the same customers (advertisers) with the aim of lightening the

The NY Times is an "old" media company. Facebook is a "new" media company. They are both chasing the same customers (advertisers) with the aim of lightening their customers pockets in return for putting their customers' brands in front of their audiences' eyeballs. Every old media company story about new media companies is potentially rife with conflicts of interest. Keep this in mind at all times.

actuator 6y ago
It seems there is disagreement on this but to me it seems like a perfectly valid disclaimer to give, given the vested interest.
- igravious 6y ago
  You and me both buddy :)
- Barrin92 6y ago
  my guess is because it's really just conjecture about the motivation of journalists or media and entirely unecessary. Also it kind of misunderstands how newspapers work, there is a huge firewall between the newsroom and ad business. Also this kind of scrutiny is rarely applied to tech sector content being posted here. Given the libertarian anti-regulatory bent that most of them have you could just dismiss it based on conflict of interest.
  - igravious 6y ago
    > Also this kind of scrutiny is rarely applied to tech sector content being posted here. My observation cuts both ways obviously. Presumably corporations have fixed advertising budgets. If they stop spending in one media space they'll reallocate spending to another. Am I being too cynical? Perhaps. Firewall or not, by way off analogy: Tesla is Volkswagen's competition and Facebook is the New York Times's competition.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      >Am I being too cynical? Perhaps. Firewall or not, by way off analogy: Tesla is Volkswagen's competition and Facebook is the New York Times's competition. it doens't make sense at all to compare journalistic work to the competition between two companies who build cars. This is just projecting techs broken culture on journalism. Carreyrou at the WSJ was investigating and in fact more or less brought down Theranos despite the fact that Murdoch was one of the largest investors in the company. Don't take techs lack of ethics and mindless growth culture and assume everyone else operates in the same way.
      - manfredo 6y ago
        Ignoring the conflict of interest between social media and traditional media is not wise. What does Theranos have to do with this? The Wall Street Journal isn't competing with Theranos in the blood testing space. There's no conflict of interest in its reporting on Theranos from the perspective of the journalists. Carreyrou doesn't care about Ruper Murdoch's stock portfolio. But they definitely are competing with Facebook, YouTube, etc. for viewers. Journalists know that time spent watching YouTube or reading Reddit means less opportunity for their own pieces to get attention. And their coverage of said platforms and people on those platforms in the past has often ranged from intellectually dishonest to outright dishonest. It's extremely hard to think that this conflict of interest isn't affecting their reporting.
- diffeomorphism 6y ago
  There is difference between putting a disclaimer and screaming fake news!1! There also is a difference between criticizing a newspaper and saying all "old media" are not to be trusted.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
This is true, but I wish it were not. Once Facebook introduced the news panel, I stopped using it because everyone started hating each-other on facebook instead of just sharing pictures.
- igravious 6y ago
  I'm not on Facebook, but I do frequent the Twitter-verse, there's a lot of hate there too recently. (A friend of mine who is a longtime hardcore Twitter user says that it wasn't like that in the old days.) Maybe there's just a lot of hate out there at the moment regardless of the platform? I don't even really know what the news panel is to be honest. Do Facebook do their own journalism now or do they curate news stories like Google News?
  - Shared404 6y ago
    At least HN is better about hate overall. Aside from this, and other smaller networks I would agree about the hate on all platforms.
marcandre 6y ago
The NY Times gets 2/3rd of its revenue from subscribers; advertisers are not their prime customers. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/new-york-times-ad-revenue-to-fall-at-least-50percent-in-the-second-quarter.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/new-york-times-ad-revenue-to...
- actuator 6y ago
  They are not just competing for ads but even eyeballs or user loyalty. The traditional consumption for news was through you reading a single newspaper/magazine. In a way you were tied to it, digitally this would work if you come and consume it from the media house itself. But platforms like FB/Twitter disrupt this. You have suddenly news from all different sources and this might lead to lack of attachment to a particular media house. So a user might not bother subscribing or might cancel his existing subscription finding that he consumes the news anyway from different sources. This is scary for media houses as this makes them a commodity and FB/Twitter takes place of the central distribution source which they so happily sat at. I would agree with OP in that there is a big conflict of interest.
- manfredo 6y ago
  Because the internet gutted its ad revenue. Back in 2000 the paper's strength was in its advertising: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/14/business/times-co-profit-is-up-35-on-strength-in-advertising.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/14/business/times-co-profit-... Over the course of the 2000s, the stock price of the NYT would drop to less than one quarter of what it was in 2000, and only start to climb back up in late 2016 and early 2017.
- igravious 6y ago
  I get the impression that you volunteer this information to provide a counterpoint to my observation whereas (when you think about it) from another perspective this could buttress it.
DevKoala 6y ago
You are right. The NYT has stopped being an impartial source of information. https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter PS: I am not a Facebook employee, and I don’t use their services. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t use information provided by the NYT to make a case against a direct competitor.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

actuator 6y ago

It seems there is disagreement on this but to me it seems like a perfectly valid disclaimer to give, given the vested interest.

igravious 6y ago
You and me both buddy :)
Barrin92 6y ago
my guess is because it's really just conjecture about the motivation of journalists or media and entirely unecessary. Also it kind of misunderstands how newspapers work, there is a huge firewall between the newsroom and ad business. Also this kind of scrutiny is rarely applied to tech sector content being posted here. Given the libertarian anti-regulatory bent that most of them have you could just dismiss it based on conflict of interest.
- igravious 6y ago
  > Also this kind of scrutiny is rarely applied to tech sector content being posted here. My observation cuts both ways obviously. Presumably corporations have fixed advertising budgets. If they stop spending in one media space they'll reallocate spending to another. Am I being too cynical? Perhaps. Firewall or not, by way off analogy: Tesla is Volkswagen's competition and Facebook is the New York Times's competition.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >Am I being too cynical? Perhaps. Firewall or not, by way off analogy: Tesla is Volkswagen's competition and Facebook is the New York Times's competition. it doens't make sense at all to compare journalistic work to the competition between two companies who build cars. This is just projecting techs broken culture on journalism. Carreyrou at the WSJ was investigating and in fact more or less brought down Theranos despite the fact that Murdoch was one of the largest investors in the company. Don't take techs lack of ethics and mindless growth culture and assume everyone else operates in the same way.
    - manfredo 6y ago
      Ignoring the conflict of interest between social media and traditional media is not wise. What does Theranos have to do with this? The Wall Street Journal isn't competing with Theranos in the blood testing space. There's no conflict of interest in its reporting on Theranos from the perspective of the journalists. Carreyrou doesn't care about Ruper Murdoch's stock portfolio. But they definitely are competing with Facebook, YouTube, etc. for viewers. Journalists know that time spent watching YouTube or reading Reddit means less opportunity for their own pieces to get attention. And their coverage of said platforms and people on those platforms in the past has often ranged from intellectually dishonest to outright dishonest. It's extremely hard to think that this conflict of interest isn't affecting their reporting.
diffeomorphism 6y ago
There is difference between putting a disclaimer and screaming fake news!1! There also is a difference between criticizing a newspaper and saying all "old media" are not to be trusted.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

This is true, but I wish it were not. Once Facebook introduced the news panel, I stopped using it because everyone started hating each-other on facebook instead of just sharing pictures.

igravious 6y ago
I'm not on Facebook, but I do frequent the Twitter-verse, there's a lot of hate there too recently. (A friend of mine who is a longtime hardcore Twitter user says that it wasn't like that in the old days.) Maybe there's just a lot of hate out there at the moment regardless of the platform? I don't even really know what the news panel is to be honest. Do Facebook do their own journalism now or do they curate news stories like Google News?
- Shared404 6y ago
  At least HN is better about hate overall. Aside from this, and other smaller networks I would agree about the hate on all platforms.

marcandre 6y ago

The NY Times gets 2/3rd of its revenue from subscribers; advertisers are not their prime customers. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/new-york-times-ad-revenue-to-fall-at-least-50percent-in-the-second-quarter.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/new-york-times-ad-revenue-to...

actuator 6y ago
They are not just competing for ads but even eyeballs or user loyalty. The traditional consumption for news was through you reading a single newspaper/magazine. In a way you were tied to it, digitally this would work if you come and consume it from the media house itself. But platforms like FB/Twitter disrupt this. You have suddenly news from all different sources and this might lead to lack of attachment to a particular media house. So a user might not bother subscribing or might cancel his existing subscription finding that he consumes the news anyway from different sources. This is scary for media houses as this makes them a commodity and FB/Twitter takes place of the central distribution source which they so happily sat at. I would agree with OP in that there is a big conflict of interest.
manfredo 6y ago
Because the internet gutted its ad revenue. Back in 2000 the paper's strength was in its advertising: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/14/business/times-co-profit-is-up-35-on-strength-in-advertising.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/14/business/times-co-profit-... Over the course of the 2000s, the stock price of the NYT would drop to less than one quarter of what it was in 2000, and only start to climb back up in late 2016 and early 2017.
igravious 6y ago
I get the impression that you volunteer this information to provide a counterpoint to my observation whereas (when you think about it) from another perspective this could buttress it.

DevKoala 6y ago

You are right. The NYT has stopped being an impartial source of information. https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter PS: I am not a Facebook employee, and I don’t use their services. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t use information provided by the NYT to make a case against a direct competitor.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]