The Web is an open platform. Facebook is not some big brother who has power to censor anything. People can type https://nytimes.com to go directly go to the new york times if they want.
From Facebook's point of view, these media sites are nothing more than parasites that try to write sensational articles to mislead the public and get people to fight online.
Users become unhappy because they get into unnecessary arguments with their friends and family about things that ultimately have no right or wrong answer (such as politics), and end up blaming Facebook for facilitating it.
Facebook is unhappy because their users are unhappy.
It's only these short-sighted media companies that "benefit" off of the traffic (but in the long term not so much).
By cutting this party out of the equation, users are happier. Facebook is happier.
And I would say it's a good thing even for the media because essentially they are being cut off of access to the race to the bottom that's killing them. One of the reasons why these publications had to write sensationalism articles and disseminate them onto Facebook was because if they didn't, their competition would.
Now that they are cut off, they are forced to compete in healthier ways. It's kind of hilarious because it's like these self-important media companies are some kids trying to get their hands on a cookie jar and fighting, and one day their mom (Facebook) takes it all away so nobody gets the cookie jar. The kids cry and bitch about it saying it's not fair. But soon something great happens. kids no longer fight because there's nothing to fight over, but go out to earn their own cookie in their own creative ways. They may even share the ones they earned with one another if they're generous.
Anyway this has nothing to do with democracy, they're just doing the thing they've become good at doing--spinning news to fit their interest--like kids crying and complaining about how it's not fair that the free cookie jar is gone.
>And I would say it's a good thing even for the media because essentially they are being cut off of access to the race to the bottom that's killing them.
I would completely agree if it wasn't possible for a media page to pay to have their posts back in the news feed again. Which it is.
If FB was genuinely trying to "make users happy" then I'd be more charitable. But they're not. They're trying to monetise more.
As a publisher affected by this test, it was a nightmare. All our users are on mobile, and use FB as their search engine. We saw a ~75% drop in engagement for the main site affected by it.
Yes, people can type a url into a browser. But they don't. they scroll their newsfeed.
Our choices are: take FB head-on trying to get engagement with our users outside FB, or pay FB to regain our old levels of engagement. Not fun.
Yes, people can type a url into a browser. But they don't. they scroll their newsfeed.
They don't ... for your site.
You know how often I see Hacker News on Facebook? Never. Yet I visit here regularly. Same for reddit and many other sources of news.
You know how often Breitbart links appear in Facebook or Google News? Never. Yet it's the 49th biggest site in the USA according to Alexa.
Our choices are: take FB head-on trying to get engagement with our users outside FB, or pay FB to regain our old levels of engagement. Not fun.
Isn't that cookie-jar thinking, just like cocktailpeanuts says? You got large amounts of free advertising and referral traffic for a long time. Very few businesses benefit from that sort of thing. Now you're back to having to get loyal users the old fashioned way, or you can pay for that traffic in the manner of traditional advertisers.
HN, Reddit and FB are all aggregators, not journalists. They are not sources of news, they merely link to it.
Producing quality journalism is expensive, the business model doesn't work to pay for the journalists and also pay for our traffic.
Having been through this test, our only viable long-term choice here is to gtf off FB. That's going to be extremely painful.
Let's hope a few good news sources survive the pain, eh? Otherwise all you've got left on your lovely FB/HN/Reddit feed is the shite that's cheap to produce and optimised for clicks...
HN/Reddit being aggregators isn't relevant to my point - I derive value from these sites and browse to them directly. If your site was that valuable, people would do the same. Besides, much news in newspapers is also just aggregations of AP/Reuters stories.
The vast majority of news sources are actually worse than "shite that's cheap" and optimised for clicks - they're stuffed with lying, manipulation and nonsense designed to bring about political outcomes preferred by the journalists. See my other post in this thread about the FT. If we end this era with most current journalistic outlets going bankrupt and disappearing, fine! There will always be news. If it comes from other people who see journalism as a way to aggregate timely facts rather than push agendas, so much the better.
Does reading stuff like this make anyone else weep for the future of humanity?
And, since this sort of thinking seems to be quite prevalent on HN: does anyone subscribing to this dystopian view of today's journalism care to provide a single example of a for-profit publisher that they consider high quality?
Because all I can think of when I read about "aggregate[d] timely facts" is the phone book.
> HN/Reddit being aggregators isn't relevant to my point - I derive value from these sites and browse to them directly. If your site was that valuable, people would do the same. Besides, much news in newspapers is also just aggregations of AP/Reuters stories.
It is exactly relevant to your point. You don't derive value from those sites, you derive value from the content those sites link to.
AP/Reuters are also aggregators, they pull stories written elsewhere into a feed that publishers can use.
At some point, somewhere underneath this pile of aggregation, someone needs to actually do some journalism. And get paid for it.
> You know how often Breitbart links appear in Facebook or Google News? Never.
Both Google News and Facebook tailor what you see based on your search history/engagement habits. Just because you've never seen Breitbart in your search results doesn't mean no one's seen it.
From Facebook's point of view, these media sites are nothing more than parasites that try to write sensational articles to mislead the public and get people to fight online.
Users become unhappy because they get into unnecessary arguments with their friends and family about things that ultimately have no right or wrong answer (such as politics), and end up blaming Facebook for facilitating it.
Facebook is unhappy because their users are unhappy.
It's only these short-sighted media companies that "benefit" off of the traffic (but in the long term not so much).
By cutting this party out of the equation, users are happier. Facebook is happier.
And I would say it's a good thing even for the media because essentially they are being cut off of access to the race to the bottom that's killing them. One of the reasons why these publications had to write sensationalism articles and disseminate them onto Facebook was because if they didn't, their competition would.
Now that they are cut off, they are forced to compete in healthier ways. It's kind of hilarious because it's like these self-important media companies are some kids trying to get their hands on a cookie jar and fighting, and one day their mom (Facebook) takes it all away so nobody gets the cookie jar. The kids cry and bitch about it saying it's not fair. But soon something great happens. kids no longer fight because there's nothing to fight over, but go out to earn their own cookie in their own creative ways. They may even share the ones they earned with one another if they're generous.
Anyway this has nothing to do with democracy, they're just doing the thing they've become good at doing--spinning news to fit their interest--like kids crying and complaining about how it's not fair that the free cookie jar is gone.