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Friday, February 2, 2018
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The Atlantic is killing its comments in favor of a new Letters section to showcase reader feedback“Design-wise, comments are treated as an afterthought. We wanted to find a way to elevate the best ideas from our readers.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
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In Italy, at least, Facebook will let fact-checkers “go hunting” for fake newsPlus: Skepticism about this Biz Stone–backed fake-news-fighting startup may be warranted. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Here’s how Arc’s cautious quest to become the go-to publishing system for news organizations is going“The amount of effort we'd have to invest into doing these things is completely outweighed by effort it would take for us to just do it with Arc.” By Shan Wang. |
What We’re Reading
The Guardian / Paul Lewis
‘Fiction is outperforming reality’: how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth →
“Much has been written about Facebook and Twitter's impact on politics, but in recent months academics have speculated that YouTube's algorithms may have been instrumental in fueling disinformation during the 2016 presidential election.”
Digit
“In fact, we’ll go so far as to say the promise of chatbots is dead” →
“That is, if the potential we envisioned for them was ever truly alive. The technology to make AI-powered assistants truly useful is still far out of reach, and people shouldn’t have to close that gap by adapting their behavior. Which is why, after years of being told chatbots are the future, there’s still no killer app to prove it.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Brown
More than half of Facebook Instant Articles partners may have abandoned it →
“Of 72 publishers that Facebook identified as original partners in May and October 2015, our analysis of 2,308 links posted to their Facebook pages on January 17, 2018, finds that 38 publications did not post a single Instant Article—the platform's fast-loading, native format.”
The New York Times / Graham Roberts
The New York Times will soon add augmented reality to its stories →
The new features will debut next week in an article about the Winter Olympics.
AdExchanger / Alessandro De Zanche
A publisher’s paywall strategy is about more than the bottom line →
“The view that adding a paywall to request payment in exchange for user access to content as simply a new revenue opportunity would be misleading and dangerous. Before publishers can decide which paywall model makes the most sense for their business, they must examine their own identity and audience. These factors are, in my opinion, the root causes of the bumpy road that many publishers find themselves traveling.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Flipboard cozies up to Facebook-weary publishers →
Flipboard’s audience is a blip compared to Facebook’s, but the app has seen some success in its attempts to charm publishers looking for a new referral traffic source.
Washington Post / Bernhard Clemm
Facebook wants its users to drive out fake news. Here’s the problem with that. →
There are two big problems with Facebook’s new “trusted sources metric: Users tend to equate “trusted sources” with names they recognize, and there is strong chance that partisan bias will skew the results.