I think that if you share a news article people will see it, but they are less likely to see articles published by news organizations which haven't been shared by a friend.
Facebook doesn't give a shit about building communities. It cares about selling ads. To the extent that third party news in people's feeds prevents it doing that, for instance by turning people away from the platform, then it will do less of that. But this change isn't going to stop "peddlers of misinformation", because people will still like and share "hyperpartisan pages, misinformation, and fake news" misinformation, because that's what people like and share with their friends. There's a reason those clickbaity ads at the bottom of website articles are so terrible, and it's because that's what people click on.
Somebody showed me the information that the ad buyers see, and it's totally terrifying.
My automatic response to any FB shenanigans these days is, eminent domain the fuckers.
2 is right. The added benefit is that this time the surviving newspapers get savaged as the ~90% of their traffic that comes from Facebook collapses.
So, the trending box on my feed included a story about some nutters trying to secede from California. It's not "fake" but it's also not "news."
It's not 90% but it is a lot: when they trialled this in six small countries, some papers found their traffic dropped by 60%; in any case, the real problem is that all the ad dollars go to fb and google directly. So even if traffic comes to us from fb, there may be nothing much to sell against it because FB can offer much more finely grained demographic targeting. The newspapers do their best. I clicked most recently on an Observer story about a "meme factory" -- essentially an advertising agency and publishing business aimed at the generation which won't or can't follow an argument. There were 34 trackers on it. But that pales against the kind of information fb offers: few newspapers let you advertise to eg white women aged 30-35 with a specified income and between 0 and 2 kids. In this country it's only the Daily Mail, but that has other readers as well so it doesn't allow such narrow targeting
2: is of course entirely right. "hate", outrage, and bollocks of every kind are what people click on, and what they share. Doesn't matter where it comes from, that's what entertains them.
Finally, but always worth remembering, Jeff Jarvis is a pompous pile of shit who has no clue why people might pay money, or time, to read anything.
6: Yes. That kind of thing is always a journalistic temptation, especially when you're a foreign correspondent. Since hardly any readers know the background to the story, they can't judge whether it ought to matter. It was interesting to watch this happen to religious news on the web, when suddenly the Vatican was just another web site, same as J Random Nutter with his prophecies of the apocalypse. Except he would have a more engaging site.
I had some fun running the numbers for that nutjob NewCalifornia thing (one of their proponents is a Sandy Hook denier with a website "Agenda 21 Radio"). Their envisioned California free of their hated coasts would have... gone for Clinton by a 10-point margin.
the Vatican was just another web site, same as J Random Nutter with his prophecies of the apocalypse.
J Random Nutter would be an awesome pseud.
I could not figure out from that Buzzfeed article what specifically Facebook is changing. Vague takes are the new hot take.
7.1: 60%? Interesting. I got to 90% from what I saw in a bunch of different articles when I was still paying attention several years ago, that is, ~80% and creeping upwards. Are things different in the UK? Has there been a rebound in non-FB traffic?
I am just dropping by to say I will miss The Awl. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/40517329/the-awl-is-shutting-down-and-it-will-be-sorely-missed
60% is what the slovaks reported. I can't tell from where I am what a typical figure for a thrusting, dynamic, global newspaper would be, but we do have metrics, obviously. The 86% I know is the share of new ad spending taken up by Google and Facebook last year.
Even if it were only 50% it would still be a huge stranglehold.
And even if it's only 60% of referral traffic it's bad news for publishers.
I would feel sorrier for our local media if one paper wasn't previously owned by the guy who paid for the Whitewater nonsense and the other taking Martin Luther King Day to publish an editorial about the real racism is calling people racist just because they say racist things repeatedly over the course of their entire lives and act in ways in that indicate they feel other races are inferior to white people.