What if facebook isnt trying to get rid of the media? What if that is actually users being sick of it?<p>Mind you facebook has driven me to the point I stopped using it entirely.
I don't know if this is necessarily the right thing to do, I understand that Facebook (and others) were really effectively weaponized by malicious foreign actors, but conceding by not participating in journalism feels wrong to me.<p>This is indicative of a larger question that I think we, as the tech industry, need to really ask ourselves: to what degree are the platforms responsible for fixing the ills of the connections between users. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. are all Western businesses operating at international scales. Is it "right" for them to impose western approaches to journalism, "truth", civic engagement, digital literacy, etc. to the rest of the world?<p>If the answer is yes, we must come to the realization that these platforms cannot be impartial, if the answer is no, we must accept that we, as an industry, are going to complicit in the systematic harm of societies and must accept that as table stakes.<p>Now I don't think this is necessarily a zero-sum situation, Salesforce probably doesn't have the same kind of civic obligations that FB, Twitter, Google have; but the clear lines of engagement in the spectrum of SAAS companies needs to be discussed.
I wonder, given the grilling that Zuckerberg got the last year, if Google would rather avoid replacing them in the near-monopoly position of news gatekeeper. On the other hand, Twitter seems to be fine with it, since the Facebook pivot away from news might be what it is using to reverse its decline.
I can't read that article because I have booked all cookies from slate.com, and it's using a cookie to store that I have consented to being tracked with cookies...<p>I do not consent to being tracked, but I do want to read the article.
Google Cached version for all the EU members whom get the GDPR warning, with no option to opt out of anything.<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qvSt11OAA0QJ:https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/facebooks-retreat-from-the-news-has-painful-for-publishers-including-slate.html" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qvSt11...</a>
Interesting. Maybe Facebook didn't like being dragged through the mud by news organizations. Maybe Facebook is hurting them back by asphyxiating them. I can't say I'd feel very bad about that if that were the case.