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Friday, September 22, 2017
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Stop giving photoshoots and admiring profiles to bros who make AdSense cash writing fake news“Disinfobros.” Also: Snopes gets fact-checked about its own history, and Mark Zuckerberg is transformed by a meeting with a Waco minister. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Samantha Power
Why foreign propaganda is more dangerous now →
“The debate in the United States about foreign interference concentrates on who did what to influence last year's election and the need for democracies to strengthen their cybersecurity for emails, critical infrastructure and voting platforms. But we need to pay far more attention to another vulnerability: our adversaries' attempts to subvert our democratic processes by aiming falsehoods at ripe subsets of our population — and not only during elections.”
CNN / Jennifer Agiesta
CNN poll: 54% say Russia-backed content on social media moved 2016 election →
Responses were highly partisan: 15% of Republicans said it’s likely that Russia-backed content affected the election results, compared with to 82% of Democrats.
CNET / Shara Tibken
For the German election, no fake news is good news →
“There was definitely a lot of misinformation, which had an impact [in the US]. So we said, maybe we should be prepared in Germany,” said Jutta Kramm, head of fact checking at Correctiv.
Axios / David McCabe
Why regulating Google and Facebook like utilities is a long shot →
“Utility-style regulation of online platforms isn’t possible without an act of Congress designating the service as a common carrier — and lawmakers don’t appear interested in going down that path. Currently no regulatory agency has jurisdiction to fully regulate online platforms the way, for example, the FCC regulates the phone industry.”
Digiday / Max Willens
‘Social is a black hole’: Commerce-focused publishers have a Facebook problem →
"The intent of the [Facebook] user is so low. Performance marketing is terrible,” said one exec.
Washington Post
With iOS 11, The Washington Post plans to illustrate more stories with augmented reality →
Quartz and The Wall Street Journal are doing the same.
Columbia Journalism Review / Ariel Stulberg
In paywall age, free content remains king for newspaper sites →
“Despite what seems like widespread optimism about the prospect of digital subscriptions buttressing the industry, a full 10 sites, 40 percent of the outlets we looked at, focused on ad revenue exclusively, eschewing paywalls.”