[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Technology set journalism free, now new platforms are in control

[michael gurstein]

According to this article below our civil society free speech warriors who
are so concerned to keep governments at bay may just be missing the bigger
picture, but I'm sure they will have an excellent chance to be brought up to
speed in their multistakeholder NMI canoodling with the likes of Facebook
and Twitter.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2014 5:51 AM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Technology set journalism free, now new platforms are
in control

Technology set journalism free, now new platforms are in control By  Mathew
Ingram Nov 22 2014
<https://gigaom.com/2014/11/22/technology-set-journalism-free-now-new-platfo
rms-are-in-control/>

Emily Bell, the former Guardian digital editor who now runs the Tow Center
for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, gave a speech recently at the
Reuters Institute in the UK about the crossroads at which journalism finds
itself today. It's a place where media and journalism - and in fact speech
of all kinds - has never been more free, but also paradoxically one in which
speech is increasingly controlled by privately-run platforms like Twitter
and Facebook.

I was glad to see Emily addressing this issue, because it's something I've
written about a number of times - both in the context of Twitter'scommitment
to being the "free speech wing of the free-speech party," and also in the
context of Facebook's dominance of the news and how its algorithm can
distort that news in ways we still don't really appreciate or understand,
because it is a black box.

"Today. we have reached a point of transition where news spaces are no
longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free
press and has lost control of the main conduits through which stories reach
audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private
companies, based in Silicon Valley."

Free speech vs. profit

As Emily pointed out, it's a serious issue not just for journalists or the
media but for society as a whole to have "our free speech standards, our
reporting tools and publishing rules set by unaccountable software
companies." Although these platforms often say they are in favor of free
speech and other principles, as Twitter does, at the end of the day they are
profit-oriented public companies who must pursue certain ends in order to
generate revenue.

There's also a certain tendency on the part of these platforms and their
executives to deny that they act in any kind of editorial role or perform
any kind of journalistic function, when they clearly do. In an interview
with the New York Times, the Facebook executive in charge of the main news
feed said he doesn't think of himself as an editor - and yet, algorithms
involve editorial choices of what to include and what to leave out, even if
Facebook and other companies don't want to admit it.

"No other single branded platform in the history of journalism has had the
concentration of power and attention that Facebook enjoys. If one believes
the numbers attached to Facebook, then the world's most powerful news
executive is Greg Marra, the product manager for the Facebook News Feed. He
is 26."

This power is often exercised in disturbing ways: Facebook repeatedly
removes content that doesn't meet its standards, but often doesn't say why -
and in some cases this can affect the historical record of important events,
such as the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons against its own
people, as the investigative blogger Brown Moses has described a number of
times.

[snip]

Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>

 


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