Another reminder that the media’s false claims that “fake news” on Facebook is a major crisis is a scam meant to allow the media to rig social media to favor its sites and censor those of its opponents.
Here’s Emily Bell at the Columbia Journalism Review barely dancing around the obvious.
The willingness to develop a higher standard for user-generated content is now universal among technology platforms that promote its creation and recirculation. No technology company is saying they will employ fewer ways of editing and moderating speech and other material that flows through their networks
In short, there will be more censorship. And the goal is to censor even more.
And to essentially become a media company with media types telling it what to “publish”.
Separately, the report argues that the company would benefit from tightening and describing its moderation practices more closely, that it should hire an external board of advisers on what are essentially publishing judgments, and that the company needs both more transparency and a more frequent exchange with investigative journalists and academics.
The obvious problem is that this is not Facebook’s function. Hundreds of millions of people did not create Facebook accounts or spend years on the site so that CJR could tell them what to post. When Facebook accedes to this, it’s betraying their trust.
And the media isn’t just pushing censorship. It wants to rig social media to benefit its own interests.
Absent from both the Reuters Institute report’s suggestions and from Facebook’s current journalism funding scheme is the one thing journalism actually needs: a guarantee that the conditions on the platform will benefit those producing high-quality reporting,
A “guarantee” you say.
How can Facebook guarantee that users will want to share that New York Times piece versus that Daily Caller piece?
One answer is to rig the algorithms.
Media privilege will be used to give its sites a special tier even as media types censor their opponents. But what of Pete in Iowa who wants to share content with his friends? Sorry Pete, the game is rigged. Facebook has decided that you need to see the New York Times piece that you don’t want to see, instead of the things you want to see because Facebook is now an editorial company instead of an interface between you and your friends.
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