5.10.2016
Good to Know: Is Apple being a little extra? Now may be a good time to back your media all the way up. Otherwise, Apple can and will delete files from your internal hard drive. The files are downloaded to Apple’s database and served back to you when you want to take a listen. It’s all in the iTunes Terms of Use.
THE SKINNY
When Shots Have Been Fired …
Gizmodo just went after the Facebook News curating process. Last week, Gizmodo sounded off on Facebook’s trending news team. Think young journalists groomed by Ivy League schools or private East coast universities.
When A Week Makes A Difference …
This week, Gizmodo went all the way in on Facebook News. The news outlet chatted with a former member of the social media’s trending news team, and the person described the curating process in one word – bias. The anonymous source, who happens to be conservative, piped up and said that most team members lean left on the political spectrum. So naturally, conservative news stories were hard to come by on Facebook news.
When It Doesn’t End There …
The source had things to say about management too. Facebook says its trending topics are based on algorithms that pick up on what people care about on the platform. The source says not so much. As FB tries to compete with Twitter, the source says management would often tell the team to “inject” news stories that weren’t trending at all on FB but were covered by major news publications like CNN, New York Times, BBC, etc (e.g., Black Lives Matter, disappearance of Malaysian Airline MH 370, Charlie Hebdo attacks, etc.) . Oh, and if news about FB popped up, the person claims they were told to keep it moving unless they got approval to include it.
When You’ve Gotta Respond …
FB is denying everything. It put out a statement saying there are rules in place “to ensure consistency and neutrality” with its Trending Topics section. A spokesperson said it also doesn’t suppress political viewpoints. Now, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee that oversees media and consumer issues is like “Facebook, what’s good?” It’s fired off a letter to FB about its practices.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Reclaiming “Basic…”
If you’re known to go off in the comments section on Reddit, you may want to reconsider. Researchers at the University of Southern California say that the longer you comment, the more basic you sound. Apparently any more than an hour, and you run the risk of your posts being “shorter” and “less sophisticated.” They study is specific to Reddit so no word yet on how this goes on Facebook or Twitter.
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THE STREETS ARE TALKIN’
Ripple.co is a new app that says it’s for local journalists and storytellers.
Content publishers want a piece of that Snapchat action. They’re allegedly ponying up some “Benjamins” to get a spot on the app’s Discover feature. Snapchat’s being mum on this.
Uber and Lyft said “nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye” to Austin, Texas. Residents voted against Proposition 1, which was intended to do dial back on some regulatory protections the city put in place last December (2015). Turns out Austin residents do want fingerprint-based background checks for Uber and Lyft drivers. Residents also weren’t feeling the $8.6 million marketing campaign the companies pushed to do away with the regulations. Uber and Lyft say they already use legit background check services and fingerprints aren’t reliable. So for now, they’re done with Austin.
If you build it, they will come. Amazon’s created a new service called Video Direct to go head-to-head with YouTube. Amazon wants content creators to upload their works for its Amazon Prime audience.