Hasta La Vista News. Et Tu Facebook?
July 26, 2022
Many Internet users use Facebook as their main news platform. One of the problems of using Facebook is that it builds a confirmation bias, conspiracy theory, and misinformation trap. Facebook has garnered a lot of bad press as a news purveyor throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Nieman Lab explains that Facebook might be done sharing the news: “Facebook Looks Ready To Divorce The News Industry, And I Doubt Couples Counseling Will Help.”
Facebook could never officially divorce itself from the news, but the social media platform is moving as far away from the news as possible. Facebook pays news outlets millions of dollars each year to post stories in its “News” feature that users can access for free. Facebook had three-year contracts with many news outlets that will soon expire. Facebook is interested in reinvesting the news fees into short video producers like TikTok.
Speaking of TikTok, Facebook has informed its workers to make the platform resemble TikTok. Facebook will now prioritize posts on feeds regardless of their origin, instead of posts users follow. Facebook’s app will continue to feature content from people, then show items recommended by its discovery engine.
The breakup might be mutual:
“So on one hand, Facebook might stop writing checks to news publishers, having found they don’t make its PR problems go away. And on the other, Facebook wants to demote what little news still remains in its primary feed, having found that it doesn’t keep users engaged as much as an algorithm-generated stream of random videos.
This is what a breakup looks like. Facebook was not originally intended to be the world’s largest distributor of human attention to news stories. It became that, circa 2015. But that responsibility became a nuisance, and it’s spent the past seven years walking away from it.”
Maybe this will be the end of conspiracy theorists with a megaphone.
Whitney Grace, July 26, 2022
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