Zuckerberg Doesn't Care About Publishers; Media Firms That Don't Work With Us Will End Up 'In Hospice': Facebook Executive (theguardian.com) 93
Olivia Solon, writing for The Guardian: A senior Facebook executive told Australian media companies that if they didn't cooperate with the social network, their businesses would die. According to a report by The Australian, Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships, told a group of more than 20 broadcasters and publishers that she wanted to help media companies develop sustainable business models through the platform. "We will help you revitalise journalism ... in a few years the reverse looks like I'll be holding your hands with your dying business like in a hospice," she said, in comments corroborated by five people who attended the meeting in Sydney on Tuesday.
The Australian also reported that Brown said that Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, "doesn't care about publishers but is giving me a lot of leeway and concessions to make these changes," although both Facebook and Brown vehemently deny this comment was made, referring to a transcript they have from the meeting. Facebook would not release the transcript from the meeting.
The Australian also reported that Brown said that Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, "doesn't care about publishers but is giving me a lot of leeway and concessions to make these changes," although both Facebook and Brown vehemently deny this comment was made, referring to a transcript they have from the meeting. Facebook would not release the transcript from the meeting.
Pride comes before the fall. (Score:5, Insightful)
If such remarks don't indicate that Facebook is a cancer on humanity, I don't know what will !
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CEO reveals its meaning: Chief Egotistical Officer.
Zuck's attitude sucks. People have been building up businesses for decades, but somehow his FacePuke can stomp all over that and have "rights" and exe34rcise power over them. Just skip putting their silly logo and silly code in your webpages, exclude and isolate the Zuck.
It is time many countries stood together and just banned and blocked FB. And other giants that don't pay taxes but exploit the populace.
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Welcome to capitalism, a force of pure chaos that is fueled by profit and completely indifferent to humanity's wellbeing. It sees no problem with sacrificing all of our best media companies to feed a giant clickbait-spewing mass surveillance engine, and it strongly disincentivizes the collective practice of freedom of association you propose.
Re:Pride comes before the fall. (Score:4, Insightful)
Many would argue NOTHING of value will be lost. In fact I will argue that. Our society produces entirely to much media. It does so because of artificial market tampering thru long copyrights and hidden subsides. What other industry besides perhaps bio-med enjoys the level of cooperation from law enforcement and regulators protecting its intellectual property; or even actual property for that matter?
We live in a society that produces far greater entertainment media and news media than anyone can consume. We have even for the most part left the realm where one person can be starved for content on a preferred genre or subject.
I think we could even argue that the fact we are not all reading the same books and discussing the same events anymore is harming the social fabric, and retarding the analysis and advance of ideas - rather than facilitating it. The diversity of ideas is now so large there are simply to many to discuss and the truth is most of them are stupid.
I am not sure facebook is the answer by any means but capitalism isn't being chaotic here its potentially purging a mixture of dinosaurs and "clickbait-spewing" crapola we have no need of and might be best compared to an algae bloom. I mass of toxic crap we should all rejoice in dying off and it only exists because we tampered with markets in the first place.
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Or, as my grandfather put it, only cowards threaten others; those confident in themselves don't need to.
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Cowards threaten. People confident in their ability just announce their plans.
On the surface, it seems similar, but in fact, a threat might not be executed.
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If such remarks don't indicate that Facebook is a cancer on humanity, I don't know what will !
C'mon. This reads like a mob shakedown targeting a specific group. Nothing more.
The true cancer is the disease of ignorance and stupidity that feeds shit like Facebook. Blaming the platform is like a fat person blaming the fork.
Not exactly vehemently (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't even convinced me that they've denied saying it. It sounds more like they're arguing about the wording, or if the comment was intended to be anonymous.
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I think the real issue here is the russian flag stuffed up his ass
thats no flag...
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Our media is already dead (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason much of our media is currently functioning, is because Rupert Murdoch keeps it as his propaganda arm. "The Australian" - one of our largest newspapers currently runs a loss of $80 million a year. Meanwhile his other news papers constantly switch from full pages covers: "Australia NEEDS (this candidate)" to the next day, literally photoshopping the oposing candidate into a Nazi.
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If they didn't own the newspapers nobody would have ever written a nice word about any of them.
Re: Our media is already dead (Score:1)
At first I wondered why the Green Bay Packers (football team, USA) owned newspapers in Australia.
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(...) currently runs a loss of $80 million a year. Meanwhile his other news papers constantly switch from full pages covers: "Australia NEEDS (this candidate)" to the next day, literally photoshopping the oposing candidate into a Nazi.
Reading what you said as someone who knows little about the Australian media and literary scene, my first deduction is not that newspaper cannot make money as an industry. Rather, if above statement isn't an exaggeration then it may just mean that number of people who would pay to receive Propaganda is low. Personally, if someone in the mall is trying to shove me a "newspaper" with covers of political candidates photoshopped as Hitler with other low-brow attack slogans, you can't beg me to take your rag hom
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Grr... (Score:4, Insightful)
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A palliative care hospice.
Gov't mandate may be needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I like libertarian ideas as much as the next guy, but this seems to be one of those cases where gov't mandating open access may be needed.
A comparable situation I believe was when then the gov't mandated that phone carriers allow customers to take their phone numbers with them when they switched to a different company. This was because consumers found it extremely difficult to switch while the greedy phone company was holding their phone number hostage. And I think it worked out well, it's one of those instances where a consumer protection law worked in the public interest.
Facebook is evil and greedy and a detriment to the public good, I think most people will agree. It would be a good idea to develop open standards and protocols for social networks so that anyone on one social networking platform can exchange posts and info with people on any other social network. And pass a consumer protection law requiring that all social networks follow this rule. It would not be any more draconian or authoritarian than requiring all automobile manufacturers to comply with current (and arbitrary) crash safety and smog guidelines.
Re:Gov't mandate may be needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Facebook is important because people have made it so. I agree that the site is of no value and that everything it offers can be done better by other means, but the fact that so many people use it has put Facebook in a very powerful position to control information flow. This makes it a danger to our society and therefore intervention is necessary.
Unfortunately, I don't think governments would handle that intervention well. The EU's solution to monopolistic technology firms is to issue huge fines, which do
Re:Gov't mandate may be needed (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is nothing like the phone company. There are a ton of alternatives to Facebook (including no social media at all). Facebook is just an entertainment/data mining web site. It's not important.
The first part of what you say is true. But to deny it's important seems at odds with reality. It's one of the richest and most influential companies in the world right now. It's important alright, arguable for stupid reasons, but important nonetheless.
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It's not important.
It's as important as society makes it. When there are people whose only contact information you know is via Facebook it's important. When there's events that only advertise over Facebook it's important. When there are items for sale only on Facebook it's important.
For me, Facebook is quite important, not posting my information on it, but rather the ability to browse it.
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"It's not important."
Oh, so they regularly call CEOs of not-so-important companies to sit for days of Congressional testimony?
Believe me I wish Fuckbook didn't have the Vulcan Idiot Grip hold on the ignorant masses, but it does. Hell, that fucking platform was the epicenter of political conspiracy for the last election. Says a lot when you're competing against Russia on that kind of shit.
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Agreed - except the Facebook managers didn't get the memo. They think they're the centre of everyone's world and so if you're not part of that, you're on the way downwards.
Ultimately, they're playing a bluff game here. They're talking tough because what they say might be true (or mostly/partly true, at least in the minds of the people they're talking to). What they really want is "design in" so that they can slow down their own descent into obscurity. Clever on their part, although a bit too easy to see thr
Re:Gov't mandate may be needed (Score:4)
I ran a Chrome extension ("Social Book Post Manager") that used the FB Activity Log to uncomment, unpost, unlike everything I've ever done on FB. (I've downloaded all the data first.) I've made my FB account effectively stateless -- all that is left is my contact list without losing any of the benefits of FB.
I'll admit I don't know what exactly that accomplishes but it feels like I have taken leverage away from FB. They can't hold me hostage through my data since it's gone. I don't care if I lose my account, I can recreate my contact list from a new account if I need to. The deleted data is probably not accessible to 3rd parties, and I will look for a way to autogenerate tons of posts that I'll delete in the same way. A script that uploads photos of generic faces and tags me in them, then deletes everything would be next.
So maybe I can use the service without being the product. And if everyone does it and that kills the service -- good riddance.
Re:Gov't mandate may be needed (Score:5, Interesting)
I ran a Chrome extension ("Social Book Post Manager") that used the FB Activity Log to uncomment, unpost, unlike everything I've ever done on FB. (I've downloaded all the data first.) I've made my FB account effectively stateless -- all that is left is my contact list without losing any of the benefits of FB.
I'll admit I don't know what exactly that accomplishes but it feels like I have taken leverage away from FB. They can't hold me hostage through my data since it's gone. I don't care if I lose my account, I can recreate my contact list from a new account if I need to. The deleted data is probably not accessible to 3rd parties, and I will look for a way to autogenerate tons of posts that I'll delete in the same way. A script that uploads photos of generic faces and tags me in them, then deletes everything would be next.
So maybe I can use the service without being the product. And if everyone does it and that kills the service -- good riddance.
You're doing it wrong. You should be uploading TB of images and videos of unidentifiable road surfaces, strangers in the street, streams and floors. (with the EXIF data scrubbed.)
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Um, try actually uploading a video and re-downloading the highest quality available of the same video. If you uploaded one terabyte of video, you are lucky to get 100-GB back. Facebook applies a very lossy (I assume) compression to whatever you upload (video and photo), and the upload/download process is throttled to boot.
I am all for wasting Facebook's resources, but just as telemarketers' phones are filtered for whistles and sudden loud noises, Facebook has taken basic steps to protect itself.
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Nice business you have there. Shame if anything bad happened to it...
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Facebook is awful, but has absolutely nothing on Rupert Murdoch.
That Packer arsehole is nearly as bad.
Re:...is FB wrong, though? (Score:4)
The only review that will be allowed on social media will be the positive once approve by the studio and the actors.
Write the "wrong" review on social media and expect a ban, shadow ban? Reported?
Re: ...is FB wrong, though? (Score:1)
MSM is dying because it isn't objective, it's political propaganda. Fuck it, let them wither on the vine! They'll soon turn to dust and blow in the winds of obscurity.
Shut 'em down (Score:2)
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I buy Facebook stocks. Because, I know how stupid people are.
Gee, you want to pick a fight with the media? (Score:4)
How many investigative stories chronicling all the privacy invading shit Facebook does will Facebook withstand. Cause it would be trivial to have a month-long news cycle "discovering" and announcing new policies.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Adapt or die. (Score:2)
I'll bet Henry Ford and the Dodge Brothers really wept some tears for buggy whip manufacturers.
Did anyone actually think that Zuckerberg gave two flying shits about publishers to begin with? Why would they be shocked to learn he doesn't?
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But MySpace would grow back to fill in the void.
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/sarcasm You mean like in 2002? :-)
(OK, technically reddit didnâ(TM)t exit until ~2007 but you get the point.)
Sherman Act (Score:5, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Facebook as the model?? (Score:4, Funny)
I have no love of the "big media"/"mainstream media", most of which is horribly slanted, all of which is sensationalist and becoming more absurd each year.
But Facebook, of all organizations, being the one to throw crud at the "mainstream" media, claiming THEIR business model is obsolete and should die.... and that Facebook as the answers..... well, that has to be the funniest thing I have heard in many months.
If Facebook is the alternative to the mainstream big media, then heaven help us all.
Only Proper Response (Score:4, Insightful)
The only right response from all the Australian media companies should be a collective and unanimous PISS OFF to both Zuck and Facebook; and sentence Fuckerman to The Boot.
Or is Piss off too British? Bugger off? Fuck off? Someuntranslatablemumblyword off? :D
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Why are you on Murdoch's side?
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Frankly, they are all cordially invited to fuck off. But in this case, Fuckerberg needed addressing, since if he would pull that shit on a hugh jass organization like that, he would have no qualms adopting such a policy for any organization or business; large or small, that needs an Internet presence to compete.
That is why in this case; he in particular needs to not only fuck off, but piss off, bugger off, and any other rude off you can think of.
Ah, the fuck with it. Those others can do all three as well.
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MyWhatnow?
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The only people who give a fuck are people with an agenda.
With great power... (Score:2)
Comes great temptation.
If Zuck is censoring content, he has some standard, some set of rules, even if they are his instantaneous reaction to the content. Doesn't really matter what those standards or rules are, they exists, and that is enough.
And that puts Facebook in the position of taking responsibility for the content they permit to be published. How contentious content is found and brought to the attention of the censors is a reasonable question, but ultimately it doesn't matter either. Facebook took on
Facebook needs them more (Score:2)
Given your security breaches, selling people's private information, and vector for disseminating what people call "fake news" it is amazing you haven't bee shutdown.
Nationalize Facebook already... (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I know people in Facebook. They are friends of mine. I like those people. Facebook is no friend. Facebook is behaving like the new Fifth Reich.
Can someone just step up, pull back the curtain and the Wizard?
SteveJobs was right about many things. He saw Facebook as a service within an architectural framework. He envisioned it run by adults not an addictive standalone look-book and gaming platform. It has so perverted the utility, function and purpose of the service that it's just embarrassing