“The Algorithm Is an Editor” — WSJ

[This article was originally published by The Wall Street Journal » with paywall]

Google, Facebook and other tech companies say they aren’t news organizations, but the claim is becoming increasingly implausible.

By: JEFFREY HERBST. April 13, 2016 6:09 p.m. ET

Social media companies quickly are becoming the dominant news providers for many Americans and citizens across the world. The implications of this revolution are significant for how we understand the information ecosystem and our democracy.

In only a few years, the number of Americans who get their news (as opposed to the latest cute cat videos) from Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter has increased markedly. Four in 10 adults in America now get news from Facebook and one in 10 from Twitter, according to the Pew Research Center. “Among Millennials,” Pew researchers write, “Facebook is far and away the most common source for news and information about government and politics.”

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/IKON IMAGES

Tech companies, seeing the economic promise of this trend, are working hard to become the dominant distributors of news. Facebook’s Instant Articles, which allow news stories to load much faster than before, will be open to all publishers in April. Apple has launched Apple News, Google offers Accelerated Mobile Pages, and Twitter has Moments.

The Washington Post has made all of its daily content available through Facebook’s Instant Articles. For struggling print publications that have yet to fully monetize their digital products, social media platforms are a new source of advertising revenue. For tech companies, the news is just more content that they can use to entice readers to stay on their platforms longer to be exposed to more ads.

But the change is profound. Facebook has implemented algorithms that will determine who sees which Washington Post articles. Two people with very similar interests may get different news, depending on what Facebook’s servers believe is best for each reader. This is an extraordinary change from when a newspaper editor determined what the reader would see either in print or via the paper’s own website.

Tech companies are adamant that they are not news providers but simply distribution networks. In a recent interview with Business Insider, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said, “I think the platform is the core of our product that people use to share and consume media, but we ourselves are not a media company.” Officials I have spoken to at Google, Apple and Twitter similarly insist that they aren’t news companies but simply deliver content that their algorithms find people want or, in the case of Facebook and Twitter, that users’ friends or followers recommend.

This stance reflects Internet companies’ historical role as “pipes” to provide information through search or recommendations. It is also commercially convenient, because it may help them avoid some difficult problems, including libel.

Yet as technology evolves, the tech companies’ position that they are not news organizations becomes increasingly implausible. Simply by presenting articles in a different manner, the tech companies profoundly affect how news is consumed. In addition, they increasingly are inserting themselves and their views into the news stream. Both Apple News and Twitter’s Moments employ human curation to highlight important stories, so an element of editorial selection is obvious. All try to scrub out some types of pornography and expressions of hate speech, thereby immediately exercising editorial control.

Inevitably, as their prominence and ambition grow, the tech companies will be moved to do more. For instance, Facebook recently announced that it would ban private sales of guns on its platform. While this may be a good idea, no one had argued that gun sales were the most pressing problem among the many Facebook posts. Rather, the policy originates in management’s beliefs.

Or consider counterterrorism, where the growing implausibility of solely being a distribution network, neutral to content, is most obvious. Islamic State and other radical groups have become experts at using social media to recruit members. The tech companies have reacted with steps that, while eminently sensible and responsible, seem to contradict their position as simply “pipes.” Twitter has removed tens of thousands of accounts promoting Islamic State. Facebook removes posts that express support for terrorists or condone violent acts. It has also provided free ads to those who provide “counter speech” to extremist groups.

It could be argued that the tech firms are not news companies because they don’t have reporters. However, that 20th-century model does not really apply to modern firms. What the social media companies have is a treasure trove of information about anyone with a smartphone or Internet service and about the choices they make. Information arrived at through data mining, such as the public mood on particular issues, is already making its way into presidential debates and other political discussions. Google is training reporters on how to use its data. It is hard to imagine that the tech companies will resist further exploiting their store of information so that they can remain mere “pipes” in an increasingly competitive market.

As these companies enter further into the news arena they will have to develop an understanding of where their editorial role fits into American and world society and how they see themselves aligning with societal goals. Certainly a fundamental challenge will be to delineate how their for-profit imperative and shareholder demands interact with their role as providers of information.

The legacy media companies addressed this issue by trying, admittedly with varying degrees of success, to establish walls between the departments responsible for editorials, news reporting and advertising. This will be far more difficult in an era where algorithms — not editors — often control the content and ads a person consumes.

An informed citizenry depends on robust sources of news. How technology firms position themselves as news providers, and the choices they make as a result, will have an effect not only on the companies themselves but also on the quality of our democracy.

Mr. Herbst is the president and chief executive officer of the Newseum in Washington, D.C.