A Small Group of Journalists Control and Decide What Should Trend On Facebook (gizmodo.com) 90
An anonymous reader writes: According to five former members of Facebook's trending news team, "news curators" as they're known internally, Zuckerberg and company take a downright dim view of the media industry and its talent. In interviews with Gizmodo, these former curators described grueling work conditions, humiliating treatment, and a secretive, imperious culture in which they were treated as disposable outsiders. After doing a tour in Facebook's news trenches, almost all of them came to believe that they were there not to work, but to serve as training modules for Facebook's algorithm." "We choose what's trending," said one former news curator. From personal experience I can share a similar incident. An Indian outlet extensively wrote about flaws in Facebook's Free Basics. Few days later, "Ban [that outlet's name]" was trending on Facebook. Clicking on it, for the first few hours, literally didn't return any relevant result, as nobody was talking about it, and no media outlet had written about it. It was after more than a day or so after this fabricated item kept trending that some other outlets started to write about it. (That's common in the media industry: writing about trending topics.) In the past, we've also seen Facebook employees ask whether the company should do anything to stop Donald Trump from becoming the president.
And any of this is a surprise? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, a bunch of "news curators" (journalists???) take a job with Facebook and fail to understand who and what Facebook is, which is not a purportedly "unbiased" news source or service such as a major newspaper or other news gathering entity, and after discovering what just about everyone with a brain understands about Facebook, they are now but-hurt? As far as âoean Indian outletâ that pissed Facebook off, well, you know? Facebook is a company that can do what they want with their product.
After doing a tour in Facebook's news trenches, almost all of them came to believe that they were there not to work, but to serve as training modules for Facebook's algorithm."
Well, ye
Re:Fuck Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know that it's even possible for a venue to avoid influencing the discussion. Who you market your "town square" to determines who shows up. How you deal with abusive users matters (and there's always some people who really do need to be kicked out). Whether you focus on small groups of people talking to each other, or whether you hand out microphones; whether there's a stage for people to get up on, and what's the process for letting people onto it, all that stuff can really impact what people hear.
The bigger you are, the more outsiders you'll have who want to do whatever's possible to spread their own messages on your platform, and basically every single policy you make is going to impact who gets heard and who doesn't.
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This. Facebook is not a place where people are free to say what is on their mind. They are only free to do so as long as the public accepts it.
One cannot freely express their opinions on Facebook if they happen to deviate from what are otherwise considered socially acceptable norms.
While most people appear to be capable of ignoring the views of people that they don't agree with, there are some that... well.... don't. And sometimes it can lead to a person who did nothing more than express an unpopula
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I don't know that it's even possible for a venue to avoid influencing the discussion. Who you market your "town square" to determines who shows up. How you deal with abusive users matters (and there's always some people who really do need to be kicked out).
Facebook is a social network. They don't need to curate, they can let the users do that for themselves. That there's anybody deciding what is "trending" is ridiculous.
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You think driving ad revenue, which is their business model, is ridiculous? Please. Disingenuous, for certain, but far from ridiculous. You think the "trending" feature on Netflix which ALWAYS shows the Netflix original content is accurate? Why would Facebook be any different? They are a business. They are driving ad revenue with the nonsense "trending" tags. the fact that they use it for anything else shouldn't be that surprising considering how vocal Zuckerberg is about his pet projects.
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If somebody paid for a "trending" spot, then it should be labeled as sponsored. That's probably a legal requirement under current FCC regulations, at least in the United States.
For anything else, it may not be surprising that they fuck with stuff, but their isn't any justification other than that they're fucks.
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I don't know that it's even possible for a venue to avoid influencing the discussion.
It's possible to try. And trying makes a difference.
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I am not a Trump support and will not be voting for him in any election. However Facebook should stay away from trying to shut him down as the institution.
For one this guy is fueled by hate. So an active attempt to stop him, will just fall under his narrative, sure he will lie if needed, but if there is truth on his side, he will use it to his full advantage.
The problem is silencing such people is only effective for a short time, but their anger will just build up further. It is better to have them out in
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I am not a Trump support and will not be voting for him in any election. However Facebook should stay away from trying to shut him down as the institution.
For one this guy is fueled by hate.
I'm so tired of this slur. You know who's *really* fueled by hate? Bernie Sanders. His followers' extreme envy of anybody who makes more than minimum wage is true hatred - and you can easily see where it leads with the extreme "protests" that they exhibit.
Re:I wonder what their political bent happens to b (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno man. I'm a Bernie supporter because I make six figures and I'm tired of being the main safety net for my friends and relatives. It's a burden on me that I think the government could organize better and more efficiently with my tax dollars than I could...yeah, call efficient government a joke all you want, but it's time consuming as hell to do it myself, and local organized charities don't serve everyone.
Higher minimum wage means a lot more peace of mind for me personally, even though it won't impact my own wages.
I've got pretty good health insurance, but it's an utter travesty that when friends run into medical trouble, they need to open a GoFundMe to survive.
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Re:I wonder what their political bent happens to b (Score:5, Interesting)
Joking aside, it's a lot easier to say "You have a leg infection? Good thing basic medical care is free through my taxes" than "Okay, let's figure out how much that costs and I'll pay it myself, keeping in mind that a doctor will charge you more than they would charge my insurance company in the first place because of negotiated prices".
And both of them are a lot cheaper than "You have a leg infection, and can't pay for it? Well, just wait until it's bad enough that you need to go to the ER, where the hospital will amputate it, pass the much higher cost on to taxpayers or other patients, and remove you from the workforce". That's something I've seen actually happen--and it's one reason why I think I'd still come out ahead by paying higher taxes to help other people out.
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Nine times out of ten the better answer is to go to a farm/fish supply store, buy some antibiotics, and handle it yourself.
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A fine way to breed drug resistant bacteria, it's so lovely that you're sharing this excellent way of reducing global life expectancy and promoting a return to the medical outcomes so familiar at the start of the last century.
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If you're not a retard, you're doing no more harm than a doctor prescribing the same exact drug. You're likely doing less harm if you're actually dosing yourself properly based on body weight. A typical formulary has 1, maybe 2 strengths available, and your doctor picks one and a pill count/frequency based on your body weight to kinda of match.
In most cases doctors guess at an infection and treat with a wide spectrum antibiotic. If it responds, great. If not, switch antibiotics.
Sometimes they do a lab c
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If you're not a retard, you're doing no more harm than a doctor prescribing the same exact drug.
You've skipped the part where the doctor would determine first that antibiotics are the appropriate response.
Of course, I'm skipping the part where some doctors are retards handing out antibiotics like candy where it wont add any benefit except a small placebo effect and a large contribution to the doctor's profits.
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Doctors rarely determine that. At best, they guess that you need antibiotics and then guess at what kind of infection you have.
I'll say it again: Never in my life have I had to wait for a lab result to get the antibiotics/antivirals. A swab is taken, blood is drawn, or whatever, and I'm given a prescription. I have never heard anything back in my life. Every time I've called to check on the results of the lab tests, they won't tell me. From strep to shingles I only get the runaround. I assume they're
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This is perhaps the thing that outsiders looking at the US find the hardest to understand. Universal health car is a given in every other first world country.
When I travelled the US back in 2008 I stayed at a B&B in Nakatosh, LA. The owner of the B&B had a mate of his working there in exchange for free accommodation and a little bit of money because his mate had a growth in his elbow that prevented him from working as a carpenter and was too expensive for him to get sorted. He was madly trying to
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Do you mean Natchitoches?
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Thats the one. Sorry, phonetic spelling is bad. It used to be the French capital town but then the Mississippi changed course as they pulled the logs out and it got left on a siding.
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Re:I wonder what their political bent happens to b (Score:5, Informative)
I live in a society where we have guaranteed medical care for everyone. I am also a relatively high income earner and my effective tax rate doesn't exceed 30%.
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Higher minimum wage means a lot more peace of mind for me personally, even though it won't impact my own wages.
Aha, sure. Let's see, we now have to pay the proles more, so it's either we fire a lot of them or we reduce the wages for others in order to have the money to meet the new minimum.
Want a better analogy? Think of the dumbing down of education in order to let the idiots..., erm, intelectually challenged, make grade.
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I am wealthy, I support Bernie. Normally I wouldn't bother to state such an uninteresting combination of 2 facts, or with trying to list the various aspects of objective reality that contradict your ridiculous, uninformed and, well, hateful description of a group of 'others' (gee, where have I heard such rhetoric recently?), but you wrote your argument so poorly that this simple statement seems to QED the whole show, so...thanks for saving me some time I guess?
Congrats, there are a few of you. From what I see on my facebook wall you're 1) really bad with math and 2) really naive about government. I could also throw in 3) never heard of Venezuela, but I'd be a dick at that point.
Most of Bernie's supporters are the standard left-wingers who are envious of anybody who's "made it". If you think they won't turn on you in a heartbeat you're even more naive than I'm assuming above.
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Most of everyone's supporters are uninformed reactionaries who get angry pretty easy and are jealous of whatever they don't have. That's just American politics (okay, all politics). It's easy to say "The crazies in my own group are just a vocal minority, but look how many and how loud they are in everyone else's party!"
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From what I see on my facebook wall
This is your bellwether for sociological conclusions? Most people at least pretend they are informing their arguments in less idiotic ways but, again, thank you for making this time-efficient for me.
1) really bad with math and 2) really naive about government. I could also throw in 3) never heard of Venezuela
Please. That is some weak-ass strawman shit. I might be tempted to actually respond to these if they weren't so painfully facile. Are you (and all Trump supporters) that guy screaming 'go to fucking Auschwitz!' outside a Trump rally? No? Then do me a favor and try to hold that thought and the transitive propert
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There are more than a few of us and I'm actually a Libertarian. I am not a Randian but I am a Libertarian. In fact, I've been with the party since about 1978. One of the many reasons I support Sanders is because his policies will be less expensive, overall, for the entirety.
Of course, there's a good chance that you don't know many Libertarians and have a crazy belief about the things most of us stand for. Though, to be fair, we do have some idiots in the party. I dare say that those idiots are not yet the m
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There are more than a few of us and I'm actually a Libertarian. I am not a Randian but I am a Libertarian. In fact, I've been with the party since about 1978. One of the many reasons I support Sanders is because his policies will be less expensive, overall, for the entirety.
Of course, there's a good chance that you don't know many Libertarians and have a crazy belief about the things most of us stand for. Though, to be fair, we do have some idiots in the party. I dare say that those idiots are not yet the majority.
I am a libertarian (small "l"). Yes, I know the platform. Sanders, at best, is Hugo Chavez, but not so ugly and mean.
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LOL Well, I'm not going to argue your qualifications as that of Libertarian. It's not up to me to decide what you self-identify as. I would like you to take a few minutes to think about this - if you want. Okay?
The root of the word is "liberty." That is not the same as freedom, by the way. I like to explain it like this - and I ask that you keep in mind that I'm not trying to lecture nor am I hoping to change your mind, okay? If you can do that then this can be constructive for both of us and for others who
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There is a difference between Anger and Hate.
Sanders is not saying get rid of the Millionaires, but make sure they are playing on fairer ground, and the fact that they seem to have extra advantages, causes anger. However he is not touting kicking out the Millionaires.
Trump on the other hand is campaigning on kicking out people and excluding people not because of any rational slight, but because these people are different and scary.
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> sure they are playing on fairer ground
If you could take everyone's money away, divide it all 100% evenly and give it back to the people so that everyone started 100% equal, it would be unequal again in a week.
Bingo.
danger danger (Score:5, Insightful)
The kind of respected journalism that takes time and effort to research and write, where the journalist/researcher/writer don't have the promise of instant reward, and maybe are facing significant personal risk to find the story that takes down an injustice, powerful person, or entrenched interest.
If you don't watch out diligently, the funneling of our popular consciousness through these most-votes-win, popular-for-today, let's-not-offend-anyone, feel-good-only channels will result in us becoming more and more of a stupidity contest where the fastest, easiest, cheap thrills and sugary taste wins and we have no cultural backbone worth respecting at all.
Re:danger danger (Score:4, Interesting)
That's already pretty much gone. When's the last time you saw/heard a journalist even wanting to ruffle feathers at a presidential press conference?
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https://youtu.be/OM3Z_Kskl_U
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https://youtu.be/OM3Z_Kskl_U
Raw Video: Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoe at Bush
Associated Press
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Should anything be done to stop Mark Zuckerberg (Score:1)
“When news is as fast as everything else on Facebook, people will naturally read a lot more news,” he said in a Q&A last year, adding that he wants Facebook Instant Articles to be the “primary news experience people have.”
Control [twimg.com]
Good salary for libarts major (Score:2)
Welcome to work, where "consistency of product" (e.g., the content you crap out) is key. The average salary for a "content curator" appears to be $43K: not bad for a liberal arts major - beats serving coffee, right?
Ya get a song written about you! (Score:3)
An Indian outlet extensively wrote about flaws in Facebook's Free Basics. Few days later, "Ban [that outlet's name]" was trending on Facebook. Clicking on it, for the first few hours, literally didn't return any relevant result, as nobody was talking about it, and no media outlet had written about it. It was after more than a day or so after this fabricated item kept trending that some other outlets started to write about it.
Emily Kane: Really, Charles. People will think...
Drunk Charles Zuckerberg Kane: ...what I tell them to think!
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Reporter: I'm the one who's got to do the singin'! I'm the one that gets the razzberries! Why don't you leave me alone?
In interviews with Gizmodo (Score:2)
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Some of us read at -1. We see all the posts.
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Check your settings, all of them. I've been reading Slashdot for a very long time and I check the post count on *every* thread that I read - and load all comments when the number is greater than the set amount (250 here). That has never, not one time, happened in any thread that I've read - in many, many years.
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Happens to me constantly. Very often, on a new post, it'll say something like--2 posts, 7 hidden... but nothing shows up. I drop my threshold, hit load all comments, everything I can think of, and some show up, but never the amount quoted. Any ideas?
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That is odd - it's the literal first thing I check when I scroll down. "Do the numbers match?" So far, they match. I check because I need to know if i have to click to show all. I read at -1 and always have. Come to think of it - that might be a difference. Do you read at -1?
If you care, you can easily find news elsewhere (Score:2)
So some more facebook part is fake... (Score:2)
Does that surprise anybody? The whole thing is a commercial simulation of a real social network, aiming at maximized profits and making all its users (and even additional people that never agreed to anything) their product.
I don't get it (Score:2)
Why shouldn't what is "trending" be a strictly statistical and or machine learning data driven result with no humans gumming up the works?