The most dangerous person in the world!
Mark Zuckerberg!
No kidding! There are two long articles on the head of Facebook buried* (p.A14, WTF!) in today's Post.
One has to do with a potentially vast scheme to compensate some newspaper publishers for how many clicks their stories get on their Facebook listings. This could mean the rescue of journalists large and not-so-large. (Small newsmedia are doomed.) "Clickbait" was never so important!
Ponder this potentially huge shift in media:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/25/facebook-will-begin-paying-some-outlets-their-content-it-introduces-its-news-tab/
Initially only 200 newsmedia -- including the rabble-rousing Breitbart News (formerly run by Trumpie Steve Bannon) -- are to be paid for their content. For now, only some 200,000 Facebook users in the U.S. will be used as the basis to calculate the media's compensation.
The other article is more ominous: as Zuckerberg recently testified on the Hill, Facebook refuses to fact-check political ads it publishes. Russians or political liars (hey, that's virtually ALL of them!) will be welcome to say any fucking thing they want:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/25/facebook-will-begin-paying-some-outlets-their-content-it-introduces-its-news-tab/
This stunning neutrality in on-line publishing has its rationale in a U.S. law passed at the dawn of the Web-content industry. The prevailing philosophy was that active users should be free to post whatever they wished to put out there. Ergo, passive users had to look out for themselves. But the gatekeepers -- not least search engines like Google -- could not be sued for whatever their users did.
And compensation for popular items ("clickbait," again) has long featured in Web activity. You Tube fostered an entire industry of self-created content, making some popular video producers rich -- and famous!
A Google spokeswoman was quoted: "for many years, we [worked] to be a collaborative and supportive technology and advertising partner to publishers worldwide." They brag about sending more than 24 billion clicks A MONTH to said publishers' Websites. Publishers "USING GOOGLE'S TOOLS [my emphasis] to monetize content received 70% of ad revenue** and 85-95% of subscription revenue..."
According to newspaper publishers (represented by NMA, the News Media Alliance), Google alone "reaped an estimated $4.7 billion of revenue in 2018 from scraping news publishers' content -- without paying** the publishers for that use."
And don't you just love the jargon, "scraping" content?
Anyhow, it is crystal-clear to me that the already super-rich Zuckerberg is gonna be super-dangerous politically and as a publisher in his own right! Press magnates like Hearst and the Sulzbergers were politico-social arbiters of their day (early 20th century). "Follow the money," anyone?
Whiz-kids like Zuckerberg are positioning themselves to out-do those powerful press barons from a century ago. Thinking of "Citizen Kane," I wonder what Mark's "rosebud" might be...
______________
* Could this be due to the Post's (and the NYTimes, etc.) significant financial interest in making Zuckerberg's scheme HAPPEN? At the very least, the daily press becomes an ally of Facebook in redressing the virtual looting of newspapers by electronic media.
** Google is saying they already pay source media, but NMA argues that at least some Web players use content "without paying the publishers for that use." Clearly, Facebook is igniting a huge row with Google and many other "quote factories."
No kidding! There are two long articles on the head of Facebook buried* (p.A14, WTF!) in today's Post.
One has to do with a potentially vast scheme to compensate some newspaper publishers for how many clicks their stories get on their Facebook listings. This could mean the rescue of journalists large and not-so-large. (Small newsmedia are doomed.) "Clickbait" was never so important!
Ponder this potentially huge shift in media:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/25/facebook-will-begin-paying-some-outlets-their-content-it-introduces-its-news-tab/
Initially only 200 newsmedia -- including the rabble-rousing Breitbart News (formerly run by Trumpie Steve Bannon) -- are to be paid for their content. For now, only some 200,000 Facebook users in the U.S. will be used as the basis to calculate the media's compensation.
The other article is more ominous: as Zuckerberg recently testified on the Hill, Facebook refuses to fact-check political ads it publishes. Russians or political liars (hey, that's virtually ALL of them!) will be welcome to say any fucking thing they want:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/25/facebook-will-begin-paying-some-outlets-their-content-it-introduces-its-news-tab/
This stunning neutrality in on-line publishing has its rationale in a U.S. law passed at the dawn of the Web-content industry. The prevailing philosophy was that active users should be free to post whatever they wished to put out there. Ergo, passive users had to look out for themselves. But the gatekeepers -- not least search engines like Google -- could not be sued for whatever their users did.
And compensation for popular items ("clickbait," again) has long featured in Web activity. You Tube fostered an entire industry of self-created content, making some popular video producers rich -- and famous!
A Google spokeswoman was quoted: "for many years, we [worked] to be a collaborative and supportive technology and advertising partner to publishers worldwide." They brag about sending more than 24 billion clicks A MONTH to said publishers' Websites. Publishers "USING GOOGLE'S TOOLS [my emphasis] to monetize content received 70% of ad revenue** and 85-95% of subscription revenue..."
According to newspaper publishers (represented by NMA, the News Media Alliance), Google alone "reaped an estimated $4.7 billion of revenue in 2018 from scraping news publishers' content -- without paying** the publishers for that use."
And don't you just love the jargon, "scraping" content?
Anyhow, it is crystal-clear to me that the already super-rich Zuckerberg is gonna be super-dangerous politically and as a publisher in his own right! Press magnates like Hearst and the Sulzbergers were politico-social arbiters of their day (early 20th century). "Follow the money," anyone?
Whiz-kids like Zuckerberg are positioning themselves to out-do those powerful press barons from a century ago. Thinking of "Citizen Kane," I wonder what Mark's "rosebud" might be...
______________
* Could this be due to the Post's (and the NYTimes, etc.) significant financial interest in making Zuckerberg's scheme HAPPEN? At the very least, the daily press becomes an ally of Facebook in redressing the virtual looting of newspapers by electronic media.
** Google is saying they already pay source media, but NMA argues that at least some Web players use content "without paying the publishers for that use." Clearly, Facebook is igniting a huge row with Google and many other "quote factories."