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 ]
News tagged with:
#plain english
Facebook's algorithm can giveth as well as taketh away, which has some publishers reconsidering its relationship to the platform. Slate, for one, is now measuring itself by a set of reader loyalty metrics as a way to prove its distinctiveness to advertisers. So far this year, the number of... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Facebook miscalculated how it was measuring average watch time on its platform. Agencies claim it’s not affected how they conduct business because they trade based on performance metrics like impressions, 10-second views and completed views -- not average watch time. That said, agencies and... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#post facebook
#conduct business
#performance metrics
#latest signal
#walled gardens
The world of digital advertising might be “mobile first,” but it’s increasingly setting its sights on the physical realm.This week, Facebook introduces a new mobile ad capability that aims to encourage in-store traffic and purchases — while also courting bricks-and-mortar advertisers. The product... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#physical retailers
#digital advertising
#facebook introduces
The social media network was leaving out videos viewed for less than three seconds, which greatly inflated the figures presented to advertisers and publishers. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2016-09-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#videos viewed
#figures presented
Chasing scale has overwhelmingly driven digital publishing, but veteran tech journalist Josh Topolsky believes there's a sustainable digital model for thoughtful journalism that doesn’t require joining the race for scale or doing Facebook’s bidding. For his forthcoming site The Outline, he wants... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#chasing scale
#josh topolsky
Is Facebook friend or foe? That was the question we put to attendees at the Digiday Publishing Summit that kicked off this week in Key Biscayne, Florida. Publishing execs from The Economist, Mic, Vox Media and others said while there are audience benefits to gain from the social network. But... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#facebook friend
#benefit publishers
#post publishers
#key biscayne
#publishing execs
#vox media
The growth of programmatic advertising was supposed to mean the death of the ad network. Facebook is proving that wrong, writes Yuyu Chen this week. If you haven't read it yet it's still news to you. Here's a round up of a few of our best stories for the week ending September 16. The post ICYMI:... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#post icymi
#programmatic advertising
#ad network
Senior reviews editor Peter Cannon recommends 'So, Anyway...' by John Cleese, an autobiography about his childhood, schooling, and early career as a stage performer before the formation of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-09-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#john cleese
#early career
brightcove.createExperiences(); COLOGNE, Germany—While Facebook and Google are dominating digital ad budgets (and increasingly, consumers' time) because they give marketers sophisticated and granular targeting, advertisers are getting squeezed with the amount of data that the... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2016-09-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#flip side
#global head
#giving companies
Facebook Audience Network is growing by rejecting many of the beliefs held sacred by the ad tech world: It doesn't rely on cookies, it doesn't run real-time bidding, and it doesn't serve desktop display ads. As fast growing as it is, FAN is taking ad control away from publishers and advertisers... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#good place
Digital Trends, which was reportedly in talks to sell to Condé Nast for $120 million, has mostly flown under the radar. But the 10-year-old tech review site has become profitable by honing its Google skills while other publishers chase Facebook and video numbers. “We’ve identified the cycles a... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#facebook appeared
#digital trends
#$120 million
#ve identified
Tastemade is a food video giant. And yet, the publisher wants to be known for more than its recipe videos. It’s one of the reasons behind “A Perfect Day in Los Angeles,” the company’s first VR film, which features Ryan Seacrest, Conan O’Brien and social influencers providing a tour of the city.... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#virtual reality
#recipe videos
#perfect day
#test case
The Sun has been experimenting with a Facebook Messenger chatbot for a month, pushing football content. During this time, it published 263 notifications. The frequency increased as the transfer window deadline loomed. On this one day, 43 percent of the subscribers (who number in the low... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#site appeared
#creative potential
#coming weeks
Earlier this year, Facebook's referral traffic to publishers dropped, and those who'd invested heavily in Instant Articles were hardest hit. Some U.K. publishers have naturally been very cautious over how much they commit to it, and are still unsure the trade-offs of publishing directly to... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#uk publishers
#referral traffic
#invested heavily
#hardest hit
#publishing directly
John Murray is publishing Paula McGrath's second novel, A Difficult History: a book about "running away, growing up and finding out who you are". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-09-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#john murray
UPDATE: After this post was published, Facebook said in a statement that it would allow the photo in question to appear on its platform. "Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance," the company said, "the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2016-09-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
In order to extend the reach of their VR content, brands like Google and Jack-In-The-Box are testing an approach of serving teaser content on a major publisher that directs viewers to their 360-degree video experience. And Agency Arnold Worldwide has been testing out the organic reach of new... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-09-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#organic reach
#facebook appeared
#vr content
#major publisher
Facebook is determined to defeat ad blockers. Daniel O'Leary The most aggressive force in ad-blocking technology is pitted against the world's mightiest social network. The stakes have never been higher for both parties. And there seems no end in sight, as Adblock Plus continues to attack... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2016-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#fair marketplace
#adweek magazine
Hachette Books Ireland is publishing Man Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville's "Dublin memoir", Time Pieces, this autumn. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-09-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#john banville
On Sunday, I attended my funeral. It was a short ceremony, held in a small auditorium at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The pastor who led it made note of my professional accomplishments. He also cited my habit of eating straight out of the bulk bins at Sprouts. The ceremony ended with a... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-09-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#facebook posts