Interface
Facebook is a grotesque orgy of resonating petty narcissism and vacuous self-obsession evidently doing something right:
The lion’s share of the mechanism for disseminating information from professional news gatherers to readers is now handled almost entirely by a company with a frustratingly opaque method of operation and interests that don’t necessarily dovetail with news organizations or their readers. Publications haven’t just lost control over their distribution models to a decentralized collective — they’ve effectively ceded it to a 30-year-old Harvard dropout in a gray hoodie.
There might be something that could happen on this planet that would be bad news for journalists and still worthy of criticism on that account — but for the life of me I can’t imagine it. Better the migration of information control to a repulsive socio-technical cancer like Facebook, which pretty much everybody hates already, than a continuation of the smug news-management guild presently in power. Among the best parts of this, everyone gets to hear the super-amplified journalistic squealing as their class privileges drop off the cliff into historical oblivion. The inaudible death of the buggy-whip industry was nothing like this much fun.
One additional comic highlight I simply have to tag on here: “As we come on the midterm elections in November, a time when it is especially important to keep the public informed …” (Don’t these people have any idea at all what they sound like?)
Via Matt Simpson who notes acutely:
Someone's upset they don't control the ink barrel anymore http://t.co/pPuJke3zHa
— Matt Simpson (@themattsimpson) October 21, 2014
… and just one more snippet (it’s irresistible):
In the grand, idealistic sense, there are two core motivations behind a news organization doing political coverage at all. The first is to keep politicians honest. The second is to give the public a better idea of which politicians to vote for.
So the traditional media modestly restricts its ambitions to (1) controlling politicians, and (2) telling the electorate how to vote — but now the evil Internet is taking even this pitiful morsel of social influence away! If you’re not weeping tears of blood by this point, you’re probably beyond hope …
ADDED: Some media bias basics.
ADDED: “Lefties find 78% of news outlets to their taste, presumably because the content is provided by Lefties in the first place.”
Illustration: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-it2HFRUgSK0/VCPxbmTOixI/AAAAAAAACRk/sBrlJR76LAk/s1600/City%2Bof%2Bthe%2BLiving%2BDead%2B10.jpg
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Posted on October 21st, 2014 at 5:18 pm | QuoteSo the cathedral is reorganizing itself to be more efficient and naturally the outdated are complaining about being laid off. Informative, but feels kind of meh.
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Izak Reply:
October 21st, 2014 at 10:43 pm
Yeah, there we go….
I don’t have facebook, so maybe I’m missing something — but from the article, it seems like the distinction between their little feeds and a normal clickbait-style article is miniscule.
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Let’s just say that I can’t voice my honest opinions about journalists on the internet. I’m not a feminist, so I might get prosecuted for them.
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Posted on October 21st, 2014 at 7:53 pm | Quote[…] Source: Outside In […]
Posted on October 21st, 2014 at 8:30 pm | Quote“I’ve seen the future of journalism in America. It’s called Upworthy. It’s exactly what Pontus both demands and deserves.”
-you know who
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Posted on October 21st, 2014 at 11:34 pm | QuoteHigh school English and humanities education relegated to Facebook when
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Posted on October 22nd, 2014 at 1:04 am | QuoteI’ve already linked this twitter back on Sept, but it’s directly linked to your post so you might want to add it (regarding the media wanting to control the facebook news algorithms).
“It is also an editorial issue. Cries of “hold the front page” are no longer necessary, but a group direct message to “tweak the algorithm” must take their place. Platforms that want public trust should be employing many more journalists than they presently do and using their knowledge to imbue automated process with values. The paradigm of “objectivity” is as absurd a concept in software platforms as it was in 20th-century newspapers.”
and
“We can build the internet in space, and robots are taking a central role in our lives. But we need an open conversation about who shapes their values”
Cathedral algorithms and robots with Progressive values. That’s some hyper-Orwell level sh*t right there.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2014/aug/31/tech-giants-facebook-twitter-algorithm-editorial-values
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Posted on October 22nd, 2014 at 3:09 am | Quote“But we need an open conversation”
If the people who said things like this actually meant it, the world would be a very different place.
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Posted on October 22nd, 2014 at 9:38 am | Quote[…] sweet, sweet taste of media tears. Related: The boringness of NYT […]
Posted on October 29th, 2014 at 5:01 am | Quote