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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As news organisations sign up to publish straight to Facebook with Instant Articles, Trinity Mirror’s decision to cull new formats teams shows how social media is changing publishers’ priorities Asked what are my favourite pieces of digital journalism to emerge from newsrooms over the past few... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-05-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Why would publishers want to jump into bed with their top "frenemy" Facebook? Well, they're not, entirely.Four of the first U.S. publishers to publish mobile articles directly on Facebook through its new Instant Articles program -- The New York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic and NBC News... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Murray is to publish Thing Explainer, the follow-up to Randall Munroe’s What If? In Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, Munroe uses a series of diagrams to show how a variety of things, from a nuclear bomb to a biro, work. He will use just the drawings and a vocabulary of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Facebook on Wednesday unveiled its new Instant Articles feature that allows news organizations to publish directly to the social media platform—and, in the process, set off an avalanche of commentary and speculation about the future of ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Selected out of over 100 print magazines and 270 covers. The post The New Yorker’s “Broken Arch” is ASME’s Cover of the Year appeared first on Folio:. Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2015-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook has reached a deal with New York Times and eight other media outlets to post stories directly to the social network's mobile news feeds, as publishers strive for new ways to expand their reach. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2015-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Major news publishers took full advantage of Facebook's multimedia features in kicking off their first uses of Facebook's new Instant Articles product but missed some chances to tailor their content to mobile users. The New York Times, Atlantic, National Geographic all posted long articles,... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2015-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Reports from the last few weeks hinted it was coming, but the debut of Facebook's Instant Articles sent a shiver down plenty of publisher's spines this morning anyway. And why wouldn't they react in that fashion? One of their chief traffic drivers could suddenly siphon away audiences and ad... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2015-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Nine major domestic and international publishers including The New York Times and BuzzFeed will begin publishing articles and videos directly to Facebook as part of an initiative called Instant Articles, Facebook announced on Wednesday.The highly anticipated partnership will certainly have many... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook aims to speed up the delivery of news on the companys mobile apps with Instant Articles. The New York Times, National Geographic and others will use it to publish interactive articles directly on Facebooks iPhone app.People already share a lot of articles on Facebook, particularly on... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook’s long-rumored plan to directly host articles from news organizations will start on Wednesday, concluding months of delicate negotiations between the Internet giant and publishers that covet its huge audience but fear its growing p ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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New initiative, which also involves BuzzFeed and the New York Times, speeds the process of loading news articles on the social networkBBC News and the Guardian are the first UK media companies to sign up to a new Facebook initiative that will transform the way users read news articles.Facebook... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook has launched Instant Articles, enabling media outlets to publish their stories directly to the social network. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With Instant Articles, Facebook has created a rich, multimedia platform to host publishers' stories, and ensure that you never leave.As social networking has taken over the web, and users no longer visit publishers' homepages to find news, Facebook has become a primary funnel for readers,... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and others are now posting stories straight to Facebook. But how will that affect what news you see? The post Big Publishers Will Now Post Stories Straight to Facebook appeared first on WIRED. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2015-05-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As Facebook looks to turn itself into a bona fide video platform, it's tightening its rules on what publishers can and cannot post. Clips with ads not sold by Facebook are not allowed, something NBC learned the hard way today. Yesterday afternoon, NBC posted a three-minute video from the latest... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2015-05-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook has been criticized for some time for its role in creating a “filter bubble” among its users, a term that comes from a book of the same name by Eli Pariser (who went on to help create viral-content site Upworthy). Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-05-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook study considered the political leanings of news posts by US users before determining which posts were reached via the site’s social algorithmsThe algorithms used by Facebook to filter news posts have an effect on the information seen by users – but not nearly as much as the choices made... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-05-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Meerkat is reducing its dependency on Twitter by integrating address books and letting users post live video streams to Facebook.Installing the updated app now brings up an option to enter your phone number and give Meerkat access to your address book, so it can find other people who are using... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2015-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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