Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Facebook is partnering with fact checking organizations to eliminate the scourge of fake news from your feed, only it doesn’t seem like partnering. Aren’t partners supposed to treat each other like equals? Many of the common objections* to journalism by the alt-right center around news being click-bait and rather uninformed discussions of impression-based advertising. The…
This came from an article in yesterday’s Washington Post. Over the next year or two, media — especially prestige print media — will begin thinning out its ranks. The economic forecast, despite temporary spikes in post-election subscriptions, is not good and headcount spots will have to be cleared to make room for all the incoming pro-Trump takes. “Identity politics writers” (read:…
By Adam Mosseri, VP, News Feed A few weeks ago we previewed some of the things we’re working on to address the issue of fake news and hoaxes. We’re committed to doing our part and today we’d like to share some updates we’re testing and starting to roll out. We believe in giving people a…
Begin: WordPress Article Content Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and ABC News will help Facebook make good on four of the six promises Mark Zuckerberg made about fighting fake news without it becoming “the arbiter of truth”. It will make fake news posts less visible, append warnings from fact checkers to fake news in the feed, make…
Facebook, which has long relied on other people to provide it with content, is going to start paying for its own stuff, too. Facebook is starting to talk to TV studios and other video producers about licensing shows, with the hope of boosting the social network’s video efforts. The talks, which include discussions for scripted…
Wanted: Columnists to say nice things about Donald Trump. Must be able to make cogent arguments in favor of the president-elect’s policies, appointees and statements. Experience preferred but not required. It’s not an actual want ad, but it might as well be one. As they discovered during the long campaign season, the nation’s newspapers and…
The media needs to commit to its despised role more than ever. /samchills It was pretty much obvious at the outset of Liz Spayd’s tenure as New York Times public editor that the paper had elevated a dangerous simpleton into a position of influence. And now, with Spayd’s tone-deaf chiding of Times reporters for mostly…
Eric Schmitt-Matzen(Photo: Provided) Last Sunday, the News Sentinel published the story of a Campbell County Santa Claus actor, Eric Schmitt-Matzen, who said a terminally ill child had died in his arms. Immediately, the story went viral. Follow-up interviews and video recordings by local and national television outlets showed a very emotional Schmitt-Matzen retelling the story…
D.C. police detained a gunman on Dec. 4, who had walked into Comet Ping Pong, a popular Northwest Washington restaurant and music venue. Police said no injuries were reported. (Faiz Siddiqui,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) A feedback loop of half-baked rumors and willful misinformation whips a corner of the Internet into such a frenzy that someone…
Despite beating Facebook in the early PR battle against fake news, Google is still indirectly helping fund publishers that intentionally spread misleading information. Google’s digital infrastructure touches nearly everything on the internet, including fake-news websites. So unlike tech companies with less reach, Google requires much more than mere blacklists to block fake news publishers from…