Media and Facebook, what will happen in the future?

By Franklin Four

Mark Zuckerberg moved quickly, and in a while it caused a big confusion.

It has shaken the world of journalism, radically reducing the value of digital advertising, which already depends on survival of information tools. It has profoundly influenced the reading habits of its readers, the cavians of its great experiment lab, constantly manipulating them and feeding them a constant flow of <x0 accounts”, to make them stay more on the page. In a way, it also damaged democracy in the United States, making as if nothing was happening, while a foreign enemy used his platform to create an efficient instrument to spread political lies and propaganda. And now, with the decision to remove a good piece of news from the news, it has decided to confuse its site.

This radical transformation is an admission of defeat. At a certain social networking point, which has more than two billion users, Zuckerberg must have received a revelation: at this point, Facebook is the world's largest publisher. At first, it was clear to all but to Feysbuk, who may have supposedly failed to understand. The company is described as a simple instrument and insists that there is no role in organizing newscasts as if it wasn't imposing its value on newsrooms, was it not imposing a hierarchy for what it wanted to show? This position, which wanted to emphasize the neutrality of Feysbuk, cannot stand in front of a attentive analysis. And after Donald Trump's election, there's been a lot of tests like this.

But Zuckerberg has always used the capacity to transform the site when it's time. Immediately after the elections, in the face of very strong criticism, Facebook changed its strategy. He started acting as if he wanted to take responsibility, and he was believed to change his algorithms to select more carefully the contents he would display. It would start by sharing false news from reality.

It was a recommended change in his policies. False news is a real wound, so it made sense that Facebook was taken seriously. But there was a risk of an episode in that Facebook acted like a newspaper. Facebook publishes the opinions of its users, and it is not simple to judge opinions objectively. No one wants to believe that I am spreading false news. And Facebook has no interest in telling its loyal users that their political voices are based on lies and nonsense.

But Facebook had another problem. The company says its mission is to increase world communication. The fact is, the world is full of authoritarian states. If he began to select opinion and remove content on the basis of faithfulness, he would lose his primary defense against pressure from dictatorships. Governments would like Facebook to end some dangerous conversations. But Facebook resisted these pressures on behalf of neutrality. A change in his policies, taking on new responsibilities, would give the worst heads of state in the world the chance to ask for Feysbuk to eliminate “lies” that are spread by dissidents.

There's no way to erase the damage Facebook has done in recent years. And yet, Mark Zuckerberg has made a decision: to restore his company to origin, a social network without journalistic content and political propaganda. Facebook will return to take over, with the suffering that provokes the habitality of our vacation, the relative mediocrity of our sons, and will move us to share more and more private information. But the social cost of anxiety that Facebook causes is lower than the political cost stemming from an filtered information.

Zuckerberg will consider it unfair, so he doesn't get all the pleasants he thinks he deserves. On the next day will be the target of information tools. Many will condemn the charismatic act of his decision. And some of these criticisms will contain some of the truth.

Facebook has encouraged information tools to be suspended by the platform. When it was proposed that they use Instant Articles, they did. When he encouraged them to produce videos, they did so, using money for that purpose. And now, after using their faith, Facebook turns away. Giving less space to journalism in newsfeed would significantly reduce traffic and money towards information tools.

For the media it's gonna be a big hit, but it's gonna be a good thing. And in a sense, the press is conscious. The hostile coverage of Silicon Valley in recent months is the reflection of a kind of psychodrame. For years, all newspapers have been addicted to Facebook and Google without showing too much regret. With Trump's choice, all the anger that was long oriented in newspapers found a vent. Suddenly, it was acceptable to rush Facebook and Google.

But instead of jumping against Feysbuk again, the information tools should thank him. Facebook just did a big favor. He forced them to accept the fact that advertising and online traffic will never keep journalism, above all, if that traffic comes from companies that want to keep all the money coming from advertising. Newspapers cannot change this reality, but they do not want to make the efforts that stem from this transition. And they have a hard time giving up the idea of using Feysbuk to get more visibility. Now Zuckerberg also reversed this by releasing information tools from an illusion from which they should have given up long ago. / Source: The Atlantic é The world..