Despite employing a small army of contractors to monitor posts, it’s clear the company is no longer fit for purposeWay back in the 1950s, a pioneering British cybernetician, W Ross Ashby, proposed a fundamental law of dynamic systems. In his book An Introduction to Cybernetics, he formulated his law of requisite variety, which defines “the minimum number of states necessary for a controller to control a system of a given number of states”. In plain English, it boils down to this: for a system to be viable, it has to be able to absorb or cope with the complexity of its environment. And there are basically only two ways of achieving viability in those terms: either the system manages to control (or reduce) the variety of its environment, or it has to increase its internal capacity (its “variety”) to match what is being thrown at it from the environment.Sounds abstruse, I know, but it has a contemporary resonance. Specifically, it provides a way of understanding some of the current internal turmoil in Facebook as it grapples with the problem of keeping unacceptable, hateful or psychotic content off its platform. Two weeks ago, the New York Times was leaked 1,400 pages from the rulebooks that the company’s moderators are trying to follow as they police the stuff that flows through its servers. According to the paper, the leak came from an employee who said he “feared that the company was exercising too much power, with too little oversight – and making too many mistakes”.... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook is all powerful and it knows it. Publishers have little choice but to play by its rules. At Digiday’s Publishing Summit in Nice we asked publishers what their biggest challenge with Facebook was: unclear metrics, murky routes to monetization and unpredictable priorities were among... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook will be promoting Live through television ads, billboards, and even buses. Facebook will be promoting Live through television ads, billboards, and even buses.Since the launch of Facebook Live last April, there have been broadcasts shot on all seven continents and... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2016-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Years ago, brands like Viral Nova, Distractify and Diply rode the power of Facebook influencer traffic to relevance with advertisers. Today, hundreds of publishers have dipped their toes in the water, and companies like The Social Edge drive well over 100 million pageviews every month for them.... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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You no longer have to wait patiently for your favorite superstars to share a link for their Facebook Live streams. Facebook is introducing scheduling to Live, letting publishers queue up streams so that you can tune in the moment the event starts. Th... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2016-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Elton John may soon be trading his piano keyboard for a computer keyboard with news that the legendary recording artist is writing his autobiography for publication in 2019. Publisher Henry Holt & Co., a division of Macmillan, has acquired the rights to John’s autobiography, according to a... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-10-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Sun has been aggressively scaling its audience since it dropped its paywall last November. And coming from a place of zero search equity, Facebook has been the platform that's helped the publisher scale its audience fast. And it has clearly worked: The Sun has 20 million monthly visitors,... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bleacher Report is wading into live sports by broadcasting three top high-school football games on Facebook Live this fall. It’s a big production for the Turner-owned publisher, which will have 20 to 25 crew members involved in the production. While not the first publisher to stream a full game... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sceptre has acquired a book by Central St. Martins lecturer and artist Rod Judkins described as "future-proofing for thinkers". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-10-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Don’t count out the power of the “What time does the Super Bowl” and other SEO tricks just yet. Facebook may have been all the rage these past few years, but now there's a renewed focus by publishers on Google search. Facebook has turned out to be a fickle partner, and Google's own shifting... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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According to an ACLU blog post published on Tuesday, law enforcement officials implemented a far-reaching surveillance program to track protesters in both Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD during their recent uprisings and relied on special feeds of use... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2016-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hours after the Washington Post published a video of Donald Trump in 2005 stating, among other things, that "And when you're a star, they let you do it...You can do anything. Grab them by the p---y," the candidate issued a video response that went ou... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2016-10-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A memoir from Elton John and a graphic novel from Oscar-winner Jim Broadbent are among the hottest as-yet-unsigned properties from UK agents heading into the Frankfurt Book Fair. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-10-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A year after Facebook launched Instant Articles, 100 or so publishers were on board the fast-loading mobile article feature, which has its pros and cons. Perhaps that's why there have been some notable holdouts. Bloomberg Media, The Wall Street Journal and Vice News are among those that have all... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Verizon and Comcast are not the first to try and build streaming video platforms for the best short-form web content -- AOL and Yahoo have already failed at it. Unlike digital publishers that dip their toes into video, these companies are willing to spend serious money on content. But money... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The International News Media Association (INMA) released a survey of large publishers last week that captured their complicated relationship with Facebook. These five charts document publishers’ perception of various Facebook features, their mixed feelings about Instant Articles, changes in... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook's measurement problem goes beyond video. The social giant's data sharing practices as a whole are a sticking point with publishers. The chief things they want Facebook to share are more data on Instant Articles; how content performs by subject matter; and information on live video... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Marriott made its first foray into Facebook Messenger in March 2016, it was a complete disaster. The hotel brand took its dynamic product ads to people’s Facebook inboxes, initiating automated conversations that asked them if they still wanted to book a room at the Courtyard Marriott... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Are publishers cooling on Facebook Instant Articles? An analysis by Newswhip says that several publishers are posting very little to the fast-loading articles format or appear to be pulling back. Instant Articles has been controversial since Facebook launched it a little over a year ago because... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society was unveiled today by Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft. Indeed, that's quite a name and quite a list of companies. Their chief mission is to promote public understanding of AI while developing standards and... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2016-09-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook wants users of its Facebook Live streaming service, including media publishers, to "go live frequently," so as to maintain a steady stream of offerings and grow a base of consistent viewers, as encouraged in an online "tips" page. But just how often to really use Facebook Live is a... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2016-09-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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