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 founder Mark Zuckerberg has set up a book club on the social networking site, attracting more than 120,000 likes in three days. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The sudden death has been announced of Irish bookseller John McNamee, president of the European Booksellers Federation from 2005 to 2014. McNamee is understood to have suffered a heart attack at the weekend. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A book club started by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has already had almost 140,000 "likes". Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2015-01-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Martin Clarke is a busy man. He serves as both editor-in-chief and publisher of DailyMail.com, while splitting his time between London and New York, with regular trips to Sydney thrown in. Last week marked a significant milestone in the celebr ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2014-12-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bustle CEO Bryan Goldberg just raised another $15.5 million in venture capital for his women's interest site, and says, no, there is no publishing bubble. The post Bustle CEO: Depending on Facebook is a mistake appeared first on Digiday. Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2014-12-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Media regulator highlights ‘generation gap’ as people aged 16-24 move away from traditional platforms for online activitiesRead the full Ofcom report: Public Service Content in a Connected SocietyYounger people are switching off TV and radio in their droves in favour of online pursuits such as... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-12-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook keeps coming up with ways to reduce the amount of bloat in people's news feeds. But while recent efforts have angered those putting out that bloat -- advertisers and social gaming firms -- Facebook's latest move seems intended to pre-empt any pushback.Facebook unveiled a few new tools... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2014-12-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook's new search feature will give users a more active role in media discovery, and likely change how brands and publishers use the platform. The post What Facebook’s search feature means for brands, publishers appeared first on Digiday. Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2014-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Tim Cook published an open letter in September to address iCloud privacy and security concerns, he said free online services treat you, the consumers, as product. Even newcomer Ello, which is dubbed the anti-Facebook, has a manifesto that ends w... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2014-12-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Schlimm, author of 'The Ultimate Beer Lover's Happy Hour' (Sourcebooks, 9781402296321), will appear on 'Watch What Happens: Live' on Monday, December 1. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mapping company Lovell Johns has been bought out by its management, with plans to develop its publishing business, Maps International. David Stephens and Liz Murray, the management team at the company, bought it out from Times Media Group, one of South Africa's largest newspaper and magazine... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-11-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Regional newspaper publishers pool ad space to compete with tech companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and Google Continue reading... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-11-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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"Stop making Facebook the center of your relationship marketing efforts," says Nate Elliott, VP and principal analyst at Forrester.Today market research firm Forrester published a report for brands titled "Social Relationship Strategies That Work."Read Full Story Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2014-11-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook wants to compete with YouTube in the premium video space, so it's asking for a little help from its media company friends -- and even a few YouTube stars. The post Facebook courts publishers in looming YouTube battle appeared first on Digiday. Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2014-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Security firm AVG has published a new report looking at online privacy which shows the considerable amount of regret admitted by some teenagers when it comes to things they have posted online -- and the fact that seven in ten teens don’t know everyone they have befriended on social media. The... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2014-11-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Students at MIT, Stanford, and elsewhere are learning to build technology products with user well-being in mind.Facebook sparked outrage this summer when it published results of a study conducted on unwitting users. The study looked at whether people who were shown more positive or negative... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2014-11-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The social network seems to have decided to host content itself rather than send users to other websites Continue reading... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-11-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook is making it easier for users to unfollow brand and publisher pages, which will have a polarizing effect on distribution. The post What Facebook’s new unfollow feature means for brands, publishers appeared first on Digiday. Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2014-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Nosy Crow has published a picture book based on the John Lewis Christmas advertisement for the third time. Monty’s Christmas is a rhyming hardback picture book that tells the story of the advert, in which a young boy finds his a soulmate for his penguin. The advert... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-11-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Requests for Facebook user information from law enforcement are up 24% since 2013.Tech companies like Facebook and Twitter siphon up untold gigabytes of user data, which makes them obvious targets for governments and law enforcement agencies looking to gather evidence. This week in a bid for... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2014-11-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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