Meta threatens to pull news from Facebook in response to Congress bill.

Same as when Facebook tried it in Australia, apparantly they are not getting the message...
 
I can't help but think this is ass backwards.

How do news organizations make money?

Through their ads either in their paper newspapers, on their TV channels or on their websites.

If social media sites took the content and hosted it without the source organizations ads, then that would be one thing, and they should compensate the news organizations, but if all we are talking about is providing links to the news sources, then the news sources should be thanking them for giving them more traffic and thus growing their revenues.

In the latter scenario, if anyone should be compensating anyone, it should be the news orgs that compensate Facebook for the referrals.
 
^ I tried singing that using the original melody, but "eyeballs" is too many syllables so it didn't quite fit. "Balls" would work though, lyrically and rhythmically.
 
Youn said:
^ I tried singing that using the original melody, but "eyeballs" is too many syllables so it didn't quite fit. "Balls" would work though, lyrically and rhythmically.
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I changed it to Base
 
Yeah I don't see how this is a threat either. Please pull the news. Please.
 
Armenius said:
It's just weird to me that they're fighting the bill in the US, but they capitulated to the Australian government on a similar law.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/...cebook-google-pay-news-has-worked-2022-12-02/
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My guess would be revenue draw and tracking. In Australia laws they already had in place limited what information Facebook could get there anyways. In the US probably much fewer protections so they can harvest more data from who is clicking and it probably has a larger effect on their data gathering operations to a significant degree.
 
ohno.jpg
 
On one had I couldn't care for local news industry, but on the other hand I couldn't care for Facebook. My lack of caring is being pulled into 2 directions and I've never had to deal with this problem before. So I'm just not gonna care.
 
I am filled with apathy. Being forced to contribute to the conversation or solution would be the only disagreeable outcome for me.
 
pendragon1 said:
fuckity fuck fuck, in before soapbox. fascbook should never have been a news source.
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But that's exactly it. They aren't a news source. I havent monitored their every press release, but I don't think they've never tried to be a news source. They don't report on news. All they do is host a service that allows people to - as part of their posts - link to news stories that users want to share with each other.

If that is the definition of a news source, then the HardForums are a news source as well. As is Reddit, and Twitter, and even 4 chan and Youtube for that matter.

The news source in this case is the organization that has done the research and reporting that they are linking to, not Facebook themselves.
 
lawmakers are considering adding the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act to a must-pass annual defense bill
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This is the biggest rage moment of this whole story IMO. "Earmarks" really should not be allowed for making laws, all too often they're used as a way to swing votes on something that lawmakers ordinarily wouldn't vote on. But this is a whole different argument and does venture into political/off topic speech, so not gonna do it :)
 
DukenukemX said:
On one had I couldn't care for local news industry, but on the other hand I couldn't care for Facebook. My lack of caring is being pulled into 2 directions and I've never had to deal with this problem before. So I'm just not gonna care.
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Local news is extremely important, but sadly in the last couple of decades it has devolved into ambulance chasing and reposts. Local news used to actually cover local politics and government initiatives, something that is extremely important for local governance to work and be effective.

All the corruption and other horrible things in local governance that was present and previously reported on. It hasn't gone away, but now due to shrinking journalism staff, shrinking ad revenues and a changed focus, it goes completely unaddressed. Local governments can do whatever they want because no one knows about it.

In my town the town council is trying to railroad this big initiative on everyone, declaring war on drivers, trying to mandate car pooling, public transit and riding bicycles, and it is going almost completely unchallenged, because most people don't even know it is happening. Sure they post town meetings and talk about it there, but only a small minority of people go to those, and the reporting is infrequent and of poor quality.

The news model for the internet era needs to be figured out such that the population is informed and has multiple points of view in order to decide what they believe and how to vote, but in most cases that news source is gone, and what little is left has the oxygen sucked out of the room by national reporting on the culture wars. Only very few very large cities have any real level of local reporting left. The industry is in a crisis, and the result is that local democracy is in crisis. heck, people are barely interested in voting in local elections, because in most cases it's just aname on a paper. THey know nothing about wha tis going on, what policies the person is pursuing, or anyhting like that.

I disagree that facebook should pay for linking news stories, but it is important that something change such that local news can be profitable, otherwise we all may wake up in a town or city we barely recognize as special interests railroad initiative after initiative on us that no one wants.

In order for this system of ours to work, every dinky little podunk town in America needs coverage from at least two different publications with opposing views, otherwise the busy public has no chance of keeping up and making informed decisions and the special interests win. And the quality of the reporting needs to be GOOD so people actually read it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Local news is extremely important, but sadly in the last couple of decades it has devolved into ambulance chasing and reposts. Local news used to actually cover local politics and government initiatives, something that is extremely important for local governance to work and be effective.

All the corruption and other horrible things in local governance that was present and previously reported on. It hasn't gone away, but now due to shrinking journalism staff, shrinking ad revenues and a changed focus, it goes completely unaddressed. Local governments can do whatever they want because no one knows about it.

In my town the town council is trying to railroad this big initiative on everyone, declaring war on drivers, trying to mandate car pooling, public transit and riding bicycles, and it is going almost completely unchallenged, because most people don't even know it is happening. Sure they post town meetings and talk about it there, but only a small minority of people go to those, and the reporting is infrequent and of poor quality.

The news model for the internet era needs to be figured out such that the population is informed and has multiple points of view in order to decide what they believe and how to vote, but in most cases that news source is gone, and what little is left has the oxygen sucked out of the room by national reporting on the culture wars. Only very few very large cities have any real level of local reporting left. The industry is in a crisis, and the result is that local democracy is in crisis. heck, people are barely interested in voting in local elections, because in most cases it's just aname on a paper. THey know nothing about wha tis going on, what policies the person is pursuing, or anyhting like that.

I disagree that facebook should pay for linking news stories, but it is important that something change such that local news can be profitable, otherwise we all may wake up in a town or city we barely recognize as special interests railroad initiative after initiative on us that no one wants.

In order for this system of ours to work, every dinky little podunk town in America needs coverage from at least two different publications with opposing views, otherwise the busy public has no chance of keeping up and making informed decisions and the special interests win. And the quality of the reporting needs to be GOOD so people actually read it.
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Local news would survive if they focused on reporting local issues instead of regurgitating the press releases from their masters. My local news these days is reporting on some petty crime, the weather, and the national press releases. I'd rather them talk more about what my city council is up to, rather than me need to go out and look for meeting notes and such myself on a regular basis. I'd honestly be amazed if more than 10% of my city's population were informed with what the city council is up to.
 
Armenius said:
Local news would survive if they focused on reporting local issues instead of regurgitating the press releases from their masters. My local news these days is reporting on some petty crime, the weather, and the national press releases. I'd rather them talk more about what my city council is up to, rather than me need to go out and look for meeting notes and such myself on a regular basis. I'd honestly be amazed if more than 10% of my city's population were informed with what the city council is up to.
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Could not agree more...but 95% of what the city council does is procedural and uninteresting to the masses. Changes in liquor licensing that make it easier or harder for one business to monopolize booze sales in your town don't draw clicks like Kanye's latest nonsense bullshit, even though how much I pay for my beers is much more important to me.
 
Armenius said:
Local news would survive if they focused on reporting local issues instead of regurgitating the press releases from their masters. My local news these days is reporting on some petty crime, the weather, and the national press releases. I'd rather them talk more about what my city council is up to, rather than me need to go out and look for meeting notes and such myself on a regular basis. I'd honestly be amazed if more than 10% of my city's population were informed with what the city council is up to.
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Agreed.

The reason that has happened is twofold though.

At some point they figured out that it is sensationalism that sells, thus all the crime and ambulance chasing.

For a few decades after ambulance chasing became commonplace in local news, the real reporting still stuck around, but as ad revenue started shrinking in the internet age, they had to cut costs, and local muckraking journalists and their thoroughly researched stories that can take months are really expensive.

The pretty faces that can zoom up in a news van and show you the latest old person to press the wrong pedal in their car and drive through an Apple store are comparatively cheap.

Guess who got to stay?

Even relatively large local news organizations have slashed their journalism. The Boston Globe's local news room is a fraction of what it once was. The irony is that today, something like the Boston Globe's Spotlight team's story which uncovered the Catholic Priest Abuse scandal likely would never have happened, and the public would have been none the wiser.
 
I am not sure if people are serious here, what is being described seem the only possible way to survive, actual news not financed by the state tend to be a loss leader for some rich entity like a strange windows on tv or an odity possible by the jobs-sell-resell section of local news paper.

The idea they didn't try to focuse on reporting local issue or that it would be profitable to seem strange to me, specially when you need to compete with the tsunami of sensational bombastic national level news.

Making actual news/reporting cost a fortune, ads revenue are down, the kijiji-facebook marketplace of the world destroyed the small ads section, people have fun news for free everywhere.
 
Only unbiased news with true investigative reporting will be allowed..... which means..... no more news on facebook.

Can we get others to join in?
 
cjcox said:
Only unbiased news with true investigative reporting will be allowed..... which means..... no more news on facebook.

Can we get others to join in?
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Not sure how that would work but why would the unbiased news with true investigative reporting should not be allowed on facebook ?
 
cjcox said:
Are you new to facebook?
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Not much experience but I do not see/how/why a true investigative reporting should be not allowed to have a facebook account/page like you are suggesting, I could be missing what you mean or what is going on here or for Facebook user/content creator to link to them in their post.
 
LukeTbk said:
Not much experience but I do not see/how/why a true investigative reporting should be not allowed to have a facebook account/page like you are suggesting, I could be missing what you mean or what is going on here or for Facebook user/content creator to link to them in their post.
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Yes, indeed. You are missing what I'm talking about. That is, since when (ever) has Facebook been about anything reasonable? It's just not in their DNA.
 
cjcox said:
Yes, indeed. You are missing what I'm talking about. That is, since when (ever) has Facebook been about anything reasonable? It's just not in their DNA.
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Not sure to get what you mean.

Say we would say Al Jazeera get classed has some unbiased news with true investigative reporting, what do you mean by they should not be allowed on facebook:
Al Jazeera cannot have an account and a facebook page
Facebook user cannot link to an Al Jazeera website ?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Local news is extremely important, but sadly in the last couple of decades it has devolved into ambulance chasing and reposts. Local news used to actually cover local politics and government initiatives, something that is extremely important for local governance to work and be effective.
Click to expand...
If it devolved into hot topics then it's no longer important.
All the corruption and other horrible things in local governance that was present and previously reported on. It hasn't gone away, but now due to shrinking journalism staff, shrinking ad revenues and a changed focus, it goes completely unaddressed. Local governments can do whatever they want because no one knows about it.
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People weren't aware of it before, and that hasn't changed. People are just too busy with their own problems, and they all assume that the people beyind local governments are working in the peoples favor. Also ad revenue is a terrible way to financially support a business model.
In my town the town council is trying to railroad this big initiative on everyone, declaring war on drivers, trying to mandate car pooling, public transit and riding bicycles, and it is going almost completely unchallenged, because most people don't even know it is happening. Sure they post town meetings and talk about it there, but only a small minority of people go to those, and the reporting is infrequent and of poor quality.
Click to expand...
Most people just move. Beware of stupid things in large numbers. I myself have been thinking of moving because NJ has gone nuts with property taxes as well as attacking those who drive certain cars. I already know someone who tried to fight this by trying to get on council and they spent thousands only to lose badly.
The news model for the internet era needs to be figured out such that the population is informed and has multiple points of view in order to decide what they believe and how to vote, but in most cases that news source is gone, and what little is left has the oxygen sucked out of the room by national reporting on the culture wars. Only very few very large cities have any real level of local reporting left. The industry is in a crisis, and the result is that local democracy is in crisis. heck, people are barely interested in voting in local elections, because in most cases it's just aname on a paper. THey know nothing about wha tis going on, what policies the person is pursuing, or anyhting like that.
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If people want to know they'll find the info. You don't need an industry behind it. I prefer not to have an industry behind it honestly because it's always corrupt and trying to sway opinions.
I disagree that facebook should pay for linking news stories, but it is important that something change such that local news can be profitable, otherwise we all may wake up in a town or city we barely recognize as special interests railroad initiative after initiative on us that no one wants.
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Let it die. Communities should start a reddit page and share news there, or something like that.
 
I do love how politicians do crap like this though..

....annual defense bill...
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WTF does news have to do with the defense of a country, they always do this, slip it in something unrelated where they know few people will hopefully see it.

On that note, good, screw facebook.
 
DukenukemX said:
People weren't aware of it before, and that hasn't changed. People are just too busy with their own problems, and they all assume that the people beyind local governments are working in the peoples favor. Also ad revenue is a terrible way to financially support a business model.
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The local small ads section was a very nice way for a local journal to finance (what got replaced by ebay, kijiji, facebook marketplace, jobwebsite, etc.. overtime) it was usually people with not much power that did not care about the newspaper content wanting to sales their uses cars or find a cook and was often by far the best somewhat only place for local business-people to use. It created a strange scenario where locals news could work.

For knowing some situation where a big city had barely local news (because they were next to a giant city with excellent media that talked about that one) it made a lot of difference in the amount of corruption.
DukenukemX said:
If people want to know they'll find the info. You don't need an industry behind it. I prefer not to have an industry behind it honestly because it's always corrupt and trying to sway opinions.
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There is a difference between distributing-finding existing news and discovering it, you are right for info people want to know with large and direct effect on them, but people do not necessarily want to know if elected official give a strangely high price for the snow contract to a friend that give them a kick-back, they certainly want to know but not to the point to go check the thousands of possible like this thursdays night for free or necessarily have the ability to do so
 
LukeTbk said:
The local small ads section was a very nice way for a local journal to finance (what got replaced by ebay, kijiji, facebook marketplace, jobwebsite, etc.. overtime) it was usually people with not much power that did not care about the newspaper content wanting to sales their uses cars or find a cook and was often by far the best somewhat only place for local business-people to use. It created a strange scenario where locals news could work.
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The way information flows today made it all obsolete. Not only is it easier to find news but it's also easy to share news.
For knowing some situation where a big city had barely local news (because they were next to a giant city with excellent media that talked about that one) it made a lot of difference in the amount of corruption.
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Corruption won't go away until you democratize everything. We elect people to make decisions, but surprise they don't always make the best decisions in our favor. Just allow people to vote on decisions and remove a lot of politicians in the process. That's what NJ did years ago when they wanted to increase the gas tax, and put it to vote how the money was spent. We voted in favor of the money going to infrastructure repair only. In this day in age I should be able to just go online and vote for or against a decision.
There is a difference between distributing-finding existing news and discovering it, you are right for info people want to know with large and direct effect on them, but people do not necessarily want to know if elected official give a strangely high price for the snow contract to a friend that give them a kick-back, they certainly want to know but not to the point to go check the thousands of possible like this thursdays night for free or necessarily have the ability to do so
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Put it on a reddit page or Facebook page and people can certainly make use of this info. You gotta make it easy enough and accessible enough not to deter people from it. Reddit and Facebook do make it easy enough, and even if Facebook does threaten to remove it, then there's many other choices to go with as an alternative. Facebook is only as useful as the people that freely put effort into it.
 
DukenukemX said:
The way information flows today made it all obsolete. Not only is it easier to find news but it's also easy to share news.
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One need to generate it at the first place at one point, which is in part the issue the difficulty to moneytise that action has like you said once it exist it tend to become free everywhere right away. It make moneytizing commenting and sharing the news possible but not making it and if you are in a mid city, often the news does not exist to begin with to be shared.

DukenukemX said:
Just allow people to vote on decisions and remove a lot of politicians in the process.
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Our world got too complicated for that arguably (to the point that politicians are often not involved and congress become even angry if a court force them to become responsible) and the process of construction questions (and which question are being ask) will have the corruptions happen, count on it.

DukenukemX said:
Put it on a reddit page or Facebook page and people can certainly make use of this info.
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If I spent 7 billions constructing a world wide physical institution with real people working full time over the decades, how do I finance that by putting it on a reddit page ?
 
Since I haven't been on Facebook in 10 years, why don't they just post links to the original source and then the original source makes money off of ad revenue when random user clicks the link? The only one getting screwed is the person wanting to see the article since he is bombarded by two different sets of ads.

Local newspaper especially is a joke anymore. They don't even take the time to edit the articles to make sure they don't have spelling errors.
 
LukeTbk said:
One need to generate it at the first place at one point, which is in part the issue the difficulty to moneytise that action has like you said once it exist it tend to become free everywhere right away. It make moneytizing commenting and sharing the news possible but not making it and if you are in a mid city, often the news does not exist to begin with to be shared.
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How do you generate news? News generates itself. If there's a shooting or politician that was caught steeling money, it'll certainly be generated. Look at this forum where we go by the title of an article and don't even bother reading it to see what actually happened. Most news topics can be broken down into one sentence, with enough information to get a discussion going.

Our world got too complicated for that arguably (to the point that politicians are often not involved and congress become even angry if a court force them to become responsible) and the process of construction questions (and which question are being ask) will have the corruptions happen, count on it.
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It's complicated on purpose. Should we invest in universal health care? Yes or No? It isn't complicated. Like most things in life, people complicate things in order to justify their jobs. Instead of having people vote for a politician, just have them vote on issues. Politicians are just the middle man to democracy, and like all middle men they're useless.
If I spent 7 billions constructing a world wide physical institution with real people working full time over the decades, how do I finance that by putting it on a reddit page ?
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You don't. You get volunteers to donate their time to local news and moderate them. There's already people who donate their time to this stuff, but the difference is we don't take them serious because they don't have a 7 billion dollar corporation behind them. Facebook is just a cog and a very unimportant one. There's plenty of alternatives and people should choose the platform that's less likely to give them trouble. How many news channels are talking about the Iran women revolution? Like none, which is why as a news source they're terrible.
 
DukenukemX said:
How do you generate news? News generates itself. If there's a shooting or politician that was caught steeling money, it'll certainly be generated. Look at this forum where we go by the title of an article and don't even bother reading it to see what actually happened. Most news topics can be broken down into one sentence, with enough information to get a discussion going.
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Who caught said politicians steeling money, you are completely skipping the step that a team of journalists discover that collusion with their contact inside.

DukenukemX said:
How many news channels are talking about the Iran women revolution? Like none, which is why as a news source they're terrible.
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I imagine they do not focus much on the anti regime force that are less sexy that the WOman feminist movement, but all of them ?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/15/woman-life-freedom/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...linejad-west-feminists-support-iranian-women/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/12/01/martyr-persia-aslan-book-review/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...9455d0-4640-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/27/masih-alinejad-iran-human-rights-macron-west/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/07/politics/iran-women-protest-revolution-what-matters/index.html
,

Google any major news orgnisation with some Iran Women revolution keyword and you will see content. They are getting Time person of the year level of media coverage.

DukenukemX said:
You don't. You get volunteers to donate their time to local news and moderate them
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The world resource of say a NYTimes are really precious, what you describe can work in specific field with a lot of passionate hobbyists or with great click money to be made, but the tenious steps of confirming via many sources that you acquired over decades has an institution is not easy to replace.
 
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LukeTbk said:
I am not sure if people are serious here, what is being described seem the only possible way to survive, actual news not financed by the state tend to be a loss leader for some rich entity like a strange windows on tv or an odity possible by the jobs-sell-resell section of local news paper.

The idea they didn't try to focuse on reporting local issue or that it would be profitable to seem strange to me, specially when you need to compete with the tsunami of sensational bombastic national level news.

Making actual news/reporting cost a fortune, ads revenue are down, the kijiji-facebook marketplace of the world destroyed the small ads section, people have fun news for free everywhere.
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If an industry can't survive on its own, then it deserves to go under. There is more quality journalism coming from independent journalists these days, and that is why the mainstream news industry is dying. Mainstream news is mostly about regurgitating what comes from the AP. There is no such thing as investigative journalism from these companies anymore, which is what put newspapers like The Washington Post on the map in the first place.
 
Armenius said:
If an industry can't survive on its own, then it deserves to go under.
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From my understanding it never did, investigating journalist has been (at least perceived) has a prestige loss leader or a state financed affair, the Suns/Fox news/John Stewart/DailyWire type can survive, thus my question of people were being serious or not, that they should do more of what his not working if they want to financially survive and stay away of the proven cash cow (that tend to be more revenues for no expenses at all).

Armenius said:
There is more quality journalism coming from independent journalists these days,
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But they tend to get their news and content from the news, they do good punditry and commenting on the news, but they usually not have the resources to make it and they tend to need national-international audience and national level explosive subject to work for their business model. How many well trained full time journalist on the ground in Kiew and Moscow can a independent substack person get ? What can of staff they can affort to go through the mammoth waterfall of documentations that are modern trials and laws.

And again can that model work for local news of a mid-tier city, a small one, to cover school boards and the water treatment spending ?

Armenius said:
There is no such thing as investigative journalism from these companies anymore,
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Hyperbole aside obviously there still is:
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/
 
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