What we’re reading: Facebook edition
Facebook is making changes to the newsfeed: what should the rest of us do now?
Under pressure from its role in spreading “fake news,” Facebook has been made a dizzying flurry of announcements in recent weeks about how it’s changing its newsfeed algorithims.
A recap, viaNieman Lab, in one tweet:
This news has inspired much thoughtful commentary:
Author Noam Cohen in The New York Times, on whether we should rely on Facebook to engineer solutions: “The public faces the unsatisfying question: Is it better to suffer an engineer’s neglect or an engineer’s concern?”
Emily Bell, in The Guardian, on why these Facebook’s decisions matter globally: “Facebook’s retreat from news, and the complexities of taking responsibility for the type of content circulating on its platform, has many implications for press organisations in the US and Europe, but at least in rich, western democracies, its actions can be mitigated by other strategies. In countries such as the Philippines, Myanmar and South Sudan and emerging democracies such Bolivia and Serbia, it is not ethical to plead platform neutrality or to set up the promise of a functioning news ecosystem and then simply withdraw at a whim. Facebook knows this, and the hope has to be that its recalibration of news is not just an attempt to turn down the controversial or difficult noise, but instead become part of a fundamental rethink of how it translates its responsibilities in the future.”
Entrepreneur John Battelle, in NewCo Shift, thinks Facebook should stick to engineering flexible platforms: “What if the company dedicated itself to a set of stable policies that encouraged other companies to tap into its social graph, its vast identity database, its remarkable engagement machinery? Instead of squeezing everyone through the monolithic orifice of News Feed, what if Facebook changed the narrative completely, and reshaped itself as a service anyone could tap to create new kinds of value? Facebook could set the rules, take its cut, and watch tens of thousands (millions?!) of applications bloom. More than a few of them, I’d wager, would be extraordinary new interpretations of the News Feed — and because they’d compete in the marketplace of ideas, with individual citizens deciding which of them they’ve decided to consume, Facebook would be off the hook as the sole provider of society’s informational nutrition.”
Frederic Filloux in the Monday Note, on why publishers should come to terms with the fact that Facebook just isn’t that into them. “[T]he industry will realize that this is not such bad news after all. It is time to regroup and refocus on the basics….all the resources that were diverted to feed the Facebook machine, can be focused on developing news products that directly impact the company’s activity — finding, retaining and converting loyal readers — as opposed to pursuing elusive cohorts who can’t remember the name of the news brand. The quest for quality readership will prevail over the mirage of a mass audience once promised by Facebook.”
Let us know what you think. Leave a comment below or tweet at #knightcomm.
