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Friday, September 21, 2018
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Facebook’s attempts to fight fake news seem to be working. (Twitter’s? Not so much.)Plus: How YouTubers spread far-right beliefs (don’t just blame algorithms), and another cry for less both-sides journalism. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The Verge / Russell Brandom
PayPal bans Infowars for promoting hate →
“Infowars had used PayPal to process transactions for its on-site store; the site will have ten days to find new payment processors.”
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
Mic is reportedly running out of money, considering an acquisition offer →
“Mic executives believe that, within the next year, the company will have to sell or consider other options to raise capital or cut expenses, the people said.”
White House Watch / Dan Froomkin
Press coverage of Trump’s tweet fails to explain what’s wrong with it →
“Stories about Trump's tweets shouldn't be simply about the fact that he tweeted them. And they shouldn't just assume that readers can understand what's so wrong about them. Journalism requires context, here more than ever.”
Poynter / Daniel Funke
How The New York Times, Mother Jones, and others are asking readers to help them cover election misinformation →
“What we hope to do in the coming days and weeks is target voters and use Facebook's own technology and use paid promotion to reach voters.”
The New Yorker / Mark O'Connell
The deliberate awfulness of social media →
“Lanier has coined a term for this process: he calls it bummer, which stands for ‘Behaviours of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent.'”
TechCrunch / Eric Peckham
Old media giants turn to VC for their next act →
“Of the traditional media companies that have committed to corporate venturing, there are two distinct strategies: those whose investing seems to be about replacing the historic classifieds section of newspapers and diversifying into a range of consumer-facing marketplaces, and those whose investing is concentrated on capturing an early glimpse (and early equity stake) in startups reshaping media.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
Quartz forges ahead with 360-degree video while others scale back →
“While Quartz has had a 360-degree mobile player in some form for the last two and half years, newer handsets and operating systems have made a big improvement to data-heavy operations like video. It took two engineers and designer spending most of their time over 10 weeks to get the mobile player to the point that Quartz felt comfortable selling it into clients.”
Motherboard / Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler
Facebook is reviewing its policy on white nationalism →
“Leaked internal documents show that Facebook's content moderators are explicitly instructed to allow ‘white separatism’ and ‘white nationalism’ on the platform, but note that ‘white supremacy’ is banned. Facebook makes this distinction because it argues in those documents that white nationalism ‘doesn’t seem to be always associated with racism (at least not explicitly.)'”