Month: December 2016

It was a small step, perhaps, but still a noteworthy one. After months of denying that Facebook was a media company, Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a recent one-on-one interview with his COO, Sheryl Sandberg, that the social network is a media company — although not a traditional one.

For years, Zuckerberg has argued that Facebook is just a simple technology platform, one that distributes content created by others, using an impersonal and objective algorithm. In other words, not a media company. And certainly not an “arbiter of truth,” as he put it.

That position has been getting increasingly difficult to defend, however, as Facebook has been paying media companies to create content and planning to fund and develop its own TV-style shows. Not only that, but the social network has also borne part of the blame for the rise of “fake news,” and has recently announced plans to try and help stamp out the problem.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Mark Zuckerberg finally admits Facebook is a media company”

Regardless of what you think of its content or publishing strategies, BuzzFeed is one of the world’s leading new-media entities, with an audience of over half a billion people. So it’s always interesting to hear from BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti about what the future holds.

A memo to BuzzFeed staff that was published at Recode contains a number of interesting elements, including a previously unreleased statistic about the company’s financial health. According to Peretti’s letter, BuzzFeed’s revenue grew by more than 65% this year, which he said continues a trend of more than six years of double-digit revenue growth.

That’s a remarkable track record for a media company, let alone one based on an entirely new model of publishing, a company that initially began as a kind of research project for Peretti, who was also involved in the early days of The Huffington Post.

Earlier this year, there were reports that BuzzFeed had missed its revenue targets for 2015. The Financial Times said the company had made only $170 million instead of $250 million, and that it had “slashed its internal projections” for 2016 to $250 million from $500 million.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “BuzzFeed’s CEO on the future of media: The internet always wins”

How quickly we forget. Just a few months ago, Donald Trump was conducting an unprecedented attack on the mainstream press by keeping them in pens at his rallies, subjecting them to abuse, taking away press passes from newspapers. But now, it seems, all is forgiven.

So what changed? The President-elect — who hasn’t held a traditional press conference since July, it should be noted — offered up the opportunity for an off-the-record chat in a gold-leaf ballroom in his version of Versailles, the Trump Tower. And it seems to have been a fairly friendly get-together between a would-be tyrant and the press he has harassed for months.

This is a strategy that abuse victims understand all too well. First come the punches, then the apologies and flowers. And with each gesture, Trump pulls the media in closer, hoping to blunt the force of any future criticism. Will it work? Or will the press see through the charade?

The arguments for participating in such off-the-record briefings are fairly obvious, just as they were for technology titans like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook, who met with Trump at a tech summit last week in another part of the Trump Tower.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The media needs to challenge Trump, not go off the record with him”

After weeks of denying that the spread of viral “fake news” stories was a problem that it needed to be concerned about, Facebook (FB) has finally announced some concrete measures designed to blunt the force of hoaxes and misinformation, including a partnership with external fact-checking organizations who call out fakes. Now comes the hard part.

Within hours of the announcement on Thursday—which involves making it easier for users to flag fakes, as well as alerting readers when the accuracy of a story has been called into question—conservative outlets were already dismissing the move as a conspiracy of left-leaning partisans, designed to smother alternative sources and protect existing “gatekeepers.”

All of this helps explain why Facebook didn’t want to wade into this issue in the first place, not to mention why it resists being defined as a media company so strenuously (although it clearly is one). Facebook likes things that are neat and tidy, like algorithms—not things that are all muddy and gray and complicated, like defining what constitutes fake news.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Facebook Says it Will Fight Fake News — Now Comes the Hard Part”

Every time the topic comes up, Mark Zuckerberg strenuously denies that his creation is as a media company. “We’re a tech company,” the Facebook CEO protests, waving his hands and pointing at the social network’s algorithm, the way a magician waves a handkerchief to try and distract you.

And yet, the evidence continues to pile up that Facebook not only is a media company — or at least acts a lot like one, and should probably be treated like one — but may be the most powerful media entity in the world.

Zuckerberg et al would like to pretend that Facebook is just a platform, agnostic about content, just distributing whatever its users want, and run by an impartial algorithm. But the reality is that the site routinely removes content for its own purposes (often without saying why), and more recently it has begun funding, buying and developing its own content, specifically video.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Facebook’s claim that it isn’t a media company is getting harder to swallow”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially scoffed at the idea that hoaxes, misinformation and “fake news” were a problem on the social network, or that they may have influenced the election of Donald Trump. But now, the company finally seems to be taking some responsibility for the role it plays in spreading that kind of content — and it’s about time.

In a blog post, Facebook announced that it is implementing a series of steps aimed at stamping out the problem of hoaxes and fake news, including a) the ability for users to more easily report fakes, b) a co-operative effort with third-party verification organizations such as Politifact and Snopes that will alert readers when a story’s accuracy is disputed, and c) cracking down on sites that pretend to be legitimate news outlets.

These moves are not going to solve the problem entirely, of course — in part because the term “fake news” includes a host of different kinds of content, from outright fakes and wholly manufactured stories to news reports from reputable outlets that make poorly-supported claims or haven’t been independently verified. But they are an important first step at rooting out what Facebook calls “the worst of the worst.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Facebook is finally starting to take some responsibility for fake news”

There was a flurry of interest recently in a lawsuit launched by some Facebook shareholders, who apparently believe that they got the short end of the stick in the company’s recent share restructuring. Here’s a news flash for them: You always had the short end of the stick.

The lawsuit relates to the changes that CEO Mark Zuckerberg made earlier this year, in which he issued a new class of stock that will allow him to maintain control over the company even if he sells or gives away most of his shares.

The plaintiffs argue this could be damaging to their interests, since their shares might drop in value. And the lawsuit alleges that Silicon Valley venture capitalist and board member Marc Andreessen was personally advising Zuckerberg, while also sitting on a supposedly impartial advisory committee overseeing the restructuring maneuver.

As titillating as it might be to read Andreessen’s text messages to Zuckerberg, however — in which the former quotes from a 1950’s movie with Burt Lancaster, and says “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river” — the whole thing feels like a bit of a sideshow.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Zuckerberg’s control over Facebook is absolute, lawsuit or no lawsuit”

The media world continues to undergo an unprecedented amount of upheaval, with continents slamming into each other, vast chasms suddenly appearing under our feet, and glaciers melting at hyper-speed. But one thing remains largely unchanged, and that is the 800-pound gorilla whose shadow continues to loom over the landscape — a gorilla named Facebook.

The social network’s dominant position at the top of the media food-chain is something that most publishers have already become accustomed to, whether they like it or not. But that dominance was reinforced with the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States, an outcome that many believe Facebook played a role in, thanks to its distribution of so-called “fake news.”

This phenomenon was like a one-two punch to the solar plexus of the media industry. On the one hand, it drove home just how big a role Facebook plays in the news consumption of large numbers of people. But at the same time, it also made it abundantly clear how little the social network really cares about the news it distributes. So much power, and yet so little responsibility.

As a former Facebook staffer described it, all the network really cares about is whether users find the content in their feeds engaging or not, and “bullshit is really engaging.” The question of whether or not the stories those users share are accurate or not is largely irrelevant.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Prediction for 2017: The media’s Faustian dance with Facebook continues”

A new survey commissioned by BuzzFeed found that most people believed the “fake news” stories they got through Facebook. But the survey also showed something else interesting: Namely, that the vast majority of people don’t remember the news they get from Facebook at all, real or fake.

The survey, which was done by Ipsos, asked more than 3,000 people whether they recalled seeing a random selection of six real and fake headlines. The stories chosen included one about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump (untrue), one about the former head of the CIA endorsing Hillary Clinton (true) and nine other selected stories, both fake and real.

Those who took part in the survey included a mix of Clinton and Trump voters, as well as those who said they didn’t vote. They were asked first if they remembered either seeing or hearing about a specific headline, and then whether they believed it was true or not.

The headline on the subsequent BuzzFeed story by media editor Craig Silverman was “Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Real or fake, most people don’t remember the news on Facebook”