Category: Fortune

Online abuse has been a problem ever since the Internet was created, but over the past few years it seems to have escalated, despite the efforts of platforms like Twitter and Facebook to try and control it. And some experts believe it could get worse before it gets better. A new report from the Pew Research Center asked more than 1,500 technologists and academics about this kind of online behavior, and more than 80% of them said that they expect public discourse online will either stay the same or actually get worse over the next decade.

The question asked by the researchers was: “In the next decade, will public discourse online become more or less shaped by bad actors, harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust?” Over 40% said they don’t expect this situation to change much, and another 39% said they could see it actually becoming more of a problem rather than less.

“Trolling will continue, while social platforms, security experts, ethicists, and others will wrangle over the best ways to balance security and privacy, freedom of speech, and user protections,” Susan Etlinger, a technology analyst at the Altimeter Group, told Pew researchers.

Although certain online “safe spaces” may be developed that will be free of trolls and harassment, some of the experts surveyed said that these will be little more than Potemkin villages — that is, attractive facades that hide the true nature of the social web. In some cases, the research report warns, an attempt to control abuse and harassment could actually result in an infringement of personal freedoms including freedom of speech, and could lead to the web becoming less open and more polarized.

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

Continue reading “Believe it or not, online trolling and abuse could get worse”

There’s been a lot of attention focused over the past year on the rise of so-called “fake news,” a term that has even made its way into tweets by President Donald Trump. But the problem has proven to be fiendishly difficult to define, let alone solve.

What exactly qualifies as “fake news?” A story about secret child sexual-abuse rings operating underneath a pizza parlor? A Breitbart News item that suggests billionaire George Soros pays anti-Trump protesters? Or a New York Times report that says something the president doesn’t want people to believe? All of these have been defined as fake news.

After initially poo-poohing the suggestion that it plays a role in the spread of hoaxes and inaccurate information, Facebook has implemented a number of features designed to address the issue, including flagging stories as unverified or questionable. But will this actually correct the overall problem? Social-media researcher danah boyd (who chooses to spell her name using only lower-case letters) argues in a recent essay that it won’t. And the reasons for that have a lot less to do with Facebook and a lot more to do with human nature.

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

Continue reading “Here’s why Facebook and Google can’t fix the problem of fake news”

The rumor mill is buzzing about a potential stock offering next year by BuzzFeed, the digital-first media venture that was started by Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti and is backed by Comcast subsidiary NBCUniversal. But an IPO would likely be far from a moonshot. Some of the more recent IPO talk — fueled in part by a report from Axios writer Mike Allen, whose company shares an investor with BuzzFeed — was likely sparked by the response to Snap Inc.’s recent public offering. The video-messaging company’s shares have faltered somewhat since the issue, but it still managed to sell $3.4 billion worth of stock.

BuzzFeed, however — or at least certain insiders close to the company — have been hinting at a possible share issue since last fall, when Recode and the Wall Street Journal both reported that the company was considering going public next year. There’s no question that some of BuzzFeed’s financial backers would probably like to see the company do a public offering, since that would allow them to book a return on the investments they have made in the company over the past several years.

In its last funding round in November, BuzzFeed raised $200 million from NBCUniversal, an investment that doubled NBC’s stake, giving it about a third of the company (Lerer Hippeau, another of BuzzFeed’s backers and a former investor in Huffington Post, also has a stake in Axios). The hard part for BuzzFeed is that it isn’t a hot social platform like Snap, with a messaging product that is used by hundreds of millions of people daily and revenues that are doubling or tripling every quarter. And so investors are not likely to pay as much for it.

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

Continue reading “Here’s why going public could be a risky move for BuzzFeed”

It could be the sheer volume of Trump-related news, or it might be the fact that Fox News is tuned in to the mood of those who elected him president. Whatever the reason, the conservative-leaning network just turned in the best quarter in cable news history. Fox News closed out the quarter with the highest 24-hour viewership rating ever recorded, according to audience analytics company Nielsen Research. It was number one in the entire cable universe in both prime-time and total day viewership, marking the 61st time it has won both categories.

The O’Reilly Factor, the network’s flagship show, also had its highest quarterly ratings ever, and broke all cable industry records for the most-watched show with 4 million viewers in the quarter. But it wasn’t just O’Reilly—in the overall ranking of cable shows, Fox had all 10 of the top 10 most-watched shows, and 11 out of the top 12. The 12th spot went to Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, primarily because of her special on Donald Trump’s taxes.

Fox averaged 1.7 million total day viewers, an increase of 27% and significantly more than CNN—which had 823,000—and MSNBC’s 776,000. Although it came third in the rankings, however, MSNBC showed the most growth in daily viewership, increasing its reach by about 55%.

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

Continue reading “The Trump Factor: Fox News just had the best quarter in cable history”

Now that Gawker Media’s controversial privacy-infringement lawsuit with former wrestler Hulk Hogan is over, and the company has gone through bankruptcy and sold off its assets, is there anything founder Nick Denton regrets about the whole episode? During a panel discussion as part of the South by Southwest Festival’s interactive program, Denton admitted that the Hogan story—which was about a sex tape that the wrestler made with a friend’s ex-wife, and included a short clip from the tape—didn’t have an obvious point to it, apart from embarrassing Hogan. That was a mistake, he said.

“Was it the greatest story?” he said. “No it clearly wasn’t the greatest story. In hindsight, as an editor, if you are going to expose someone to mockery there needs to be a point to it.” Denton went on to say that part of the idea behind the piece was to “put up a mirror to the public,” but that “it was a little too sophisticated a point to be making in a couple lines.” In hindsight, he said, it could have been done with more words and less video. “The meta point is worth making, but I don’t know if that form was the right one.”

Ultimately, the outcome of that mistake was a lawsuit by Hogan—financed by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel—which resulted in a $140-million judgement handed down against Gawker by a Florida court. The company filed for bankruptcy and its assets were bought by Univision for $135 million.

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

Continue reading “Here’s what Nick Denton regrets about that Hulk Hogan story”

There’s no question that Netflix is currently the king of the over-the-top streaming-video providers, with a service that reaches more than 80 million users in over 200 countries, and hit shows that drive millions of those users to “binge watch” entire seasons in a matter of days.

All this has put Netflix in an enviable spot, with enough cash to acquire whatever movie and TV projects it chooses to bid on, and a market cap in the $60 billion range — in the same league as media and entertainment giants like 21st Century Fox and Time Warner. There has even been talk that Apple might want to acquire the company.

As dominant as Netflix is, however, not everyone is convinced that this leadership position is going to last, as more and more competitors move into the streaming space, especially in the U.S.

Count Morningstar Research as one of the skeptics. In a recent research report that took a look at the video-on-demand market, the investment management firm said that while Netflix is the clear winner in the space right now, “we have reservations about its ability to meet or exceed market expectations around future subscriber growth and margin expansion.”

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

Continue reading “Netflix is winning the streaming race, but for how long?”

Repeated attacks by President Donald Trump and his administration on what they call the “dishonest media” appear to have had an unexpected—and very welcome—side effect for some media companies, which have seen record numbers of new subscribers and donations.

One of the most widely reported examples of this “Trump bump” is the New York Times, which added more than 250,000 new subscribers in the final three months of 2016. That was its best quarterly performance since it launched its digital subscription plan in 2011.

But the Times is just one of the more high-profile media outlets that have seen a boost in sign-ups since the election. The Washington Post has also seen a wave of subscriptions, with a record number of new sign-ups in January, and is said to have passed the 300,000-subscriber mark for the first time.

Magazines have also seen a dramatic rise in interest in subscriptions. Mother Jones saw the number of donors to the non-profit magazine jump by more than 150% in January compared with the same month the previous year, according to a report by Poynter, and saw a more than 300% increase in new digital sign-ups.

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

Continue reading “The Trump Effect is driving a subscription wave for media companies”

Ever since “fake news” first started to get traction during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, it has been seen by many as primarily a Facebook problem, since so many hoax and fake-news creators use the giant social network as a distribution system. But Google also plays a role in the promotion and dissemination of false information, and in some ways it’s a more disturbing one than Facebook.

While Google was once just a search box followed by a page of blue links, the search giant has been trying hard to become a one-stop provider of answers to common questions. Some of these consist of what it calls “featured snippets” from webpages that deal with those topics, which are highlighted in a box at the top of the search page.

In most cases, these answers — which Google selects from the billions of pages it scans and indexes every day, based on how many people have shared them — are uncontroversial, like the answer to “When is Mother’s Day?” or “What time is the Super Bowl?” Other one-box solutions point to cheap flights to your chosen destination, or supply the answer to a math question.

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

Continue reading “Google’s fake news problem could actually be worse than Facebook’s”

When it comes to finding fans of the newspaper business, financier Warren Buffett is a bit of an odd choice. After all, he is a billionaire known primarily for his interest in making money, not journalism. But he is also a folksy, avuncular old man, and so media companies have clung to his faith in newspapers like a life preserver.

They might want to reconsider that stance, however, given what the “Oracle of Omaha” had to say recently about the newspaper business. In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Buffett said he believes the only papers that are “assured” of a long life are probably the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and possibly the Washington Post.

“If you look, there are 1,300 daily newspapers left,” Buffett said. “There were 1,700 or 1,800 not too long ago. Now, you’ve got the internet. Aside from the ones I mentioned, [most of them] haven’t figured out a way to make the digital model complement the print model.”

This comment is interesting for reasons other than just that Buffett is one of the world’s richest men. Through his holding company Berkshire Hathaway, he is also a large investor in newspapers, particularly small weeklies, as well as some larger titles like the Buffalo News.

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

Continue reading “Warren Buffett says local newspapers, including his own, are doomed”

Twitter has been criticized in the past for focusing more on freedom of speech and anonymity than on curbing those who use the service to abuse and harass. Recently, however, the company has been trying to show that it is listening to such complaints, and on Wednesday it rolled out a new suite of features designed to help do that. The most far-reaching — and probably also the most difficult — of these efforts involves trying to identify abusive behavior before it has been reported by a user.

Over time, Twitter has improved the way that it handles abuse and harassment reports, by removing hurdles and speeding up its response time (although some users argue it is still too difficult). But now, the company says it is focusing on identifying abuse while it is actually occurring, instead of waiting until a user flags it.

According to a blog post by Ed Ho, Twitter’s VP of Engineering, if the service’s algorithm detects that abuse is happening, it will take one of a number of potential steps to reduce the potential harm, including “limiting certain account functionality for a set amount of time.”

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

Continue reading “Twitter is now trying to detect and curb abuse in real time”

Ever since he first declared his candidacy for president, Donald Trump and Twitter have been joined at the hip. Throughout the campaign, the social network provided a window into Trump’s thoughts, and it has continued to do so now that he is the commander-in-chief. It’s an unprecedented real-time look at what he is thinking.

As anyone who has followed the coverage of the Trump administration knows, what the president is thinking often falls into the category of knee-jerk criticism of the “failing media” or of specific Democratic viewpoints, or of those who have a problem with his policies.

There’s also a whole separate category of tweets that involve factual inaccuracies, unproven statements and boasts of various kinds, the kind that often trigger a massive response by traditional media outlets, even if the facts being alleged are of minor importance.

Is this part of a clever strategy of distraction, as some suggest? Or is it simply Trump speaking his mind after watching a TV program or reading something in the news, while he sits alone in the White House residence? There’s plenty of evidence for the latter view, including meticulously documented examples of Trump tweets that appear to have been triggered by specific segments on Fox News and other conservative TV shows.

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

Continue reading “Twitter is a window into Trump’s brain, which is both a good and a bad thing”

As media outlets struggle to replace the rapidly disappearing revenue they used to get from traditional advertising, they see Google and Facebook taking the lion’s share of what has come along to replace it. And now some argue that those technology giants should repay some of what they have taken. But would doing so really solve anything?

In a recent opinion piece published in the New York Times, entitled “What Facebook Owes to Journalism,” Steven Waldman — a former senior adviser to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and former visiting scholar at Columbia University — argues that the founders of Facebook, Google and Apple need to donate billions to save journalism.

Waldman notes that Facebook has talked about its role in the media ecosystem, and recently started a Journalism Project aimed at helping local news outlets make use of the platform. Google has a similar venture called Google News Lab. But these are not enough, Waldman says.

“While training, technology and innovation are critical, what journalism needs most now is money, and lots of it — to fund full-time local journalists. What these companies have donated so far is too little given how wealthy they are, how much harm they’re (inadvertently) doing — and how much good they could do.”

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

Continue reading “Is tech funding for journalism a solution, or a Hail Mary pass?”

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to write open letters during times of great import. He wrote one when the company went public, he wrote one to his infant daughter when he became a father, and he has written a new one that was published on Thursday.

So why is now a time that requires an almost 6,000-word essay that touches on world affairs, U.S. politics, the value of high-quality journalism and the crumbling social fabric of America? Because it seems that Zuckerberg has become “woke,” as the kids like to say.

In other words, the Facebook co-founder seems to have awakened to some of the unintended consequences of the mega-platform that he has built.

In the case of the media, for example, Zuckerberg has undergone a significant evolution from his original position just after the election, when he scoffed at the idea that “fake news” distributed on the social network was a problem, and reiterated his position that Facebook is not a media company and therefore is more or less blameless when it comes to such things.

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

Continue reading “Mark Zuckerberg Starts to Take Some Responsibility for Facebook’s Influence”

Roger Ailes hasn’t been chairman of Fox News since last July, but the company continues to deal with issues raised during his tenure at the top of the Murdoch-owned conservative broadcaster, including multiple sexual-harassment claims that helped lead to his departure.

According to new information that emerged on Wednesday, federal investigators may be looking into payments that Fox News made in order to settle some of Ailes’ harassment cases, and whether those payments were disclosed properly.

This revelation came to light during a hearing in New York’s Supreme Court, in an ongoing lawsuit filed by former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros alleging harassment by Ailes. A lawyer for Tantaros said that one of his clients had been served with a subpoena by federal prosecutors investigating the sexual-harassment claims against the former Fox chairman.

Attorney Judd Burstein said he got the subpoena from federal investigators at the Department of Justice’s New York Southern District, and that it requested testimony from his client before a grand jury. Burstein said that he believes the investigation centers around whether Fox News violated securities laws by not reporting harassment settlements.

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

Continue reading “Fox News said to be facing investigation over Ailes harassment cases”

When the term “fake news” burst onto the scene during the presidential election, most of the examples the media referred to came from right-wing sites and networks, alleging all kinds of horrible things done by Hillary Clinton and/or the left — murders, child sex-abuse rings operating underneath pizza parlors, etc.

If Donald Trump was mentioned in these fake stories, it was usually in a complimentary way, like the one about Pope Francis endorsing his campaign, or one that said he sent his private plane to pick up 200 starving Marines.

But liberal sites and networks are no strangers to fabricated news, for the simple reason that the desire to believe something which caters to our existing prejudices isn’t restricted by political ideology. And according to an editor who works for the fact-checking site Snopes, liberal versions of fake news are growing in popularity.

In the latest example, former ** and senior Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal wrote an essay in the highly-regarded London Review of Books, in which he described how Donald Trump’s father Fred had commissioned a couple of racist TV ads during his run for mayor of New York in **.

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

Continue reading “Liberals are just as guilty of falling for fake news as Conservatives”