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Facebook: Now an unmoderated space, except for if you report on what Facebook is saying. Or criticize the actual social hierarchy in any way.
They follow the musk twitter handbook to the letter
Seems like they watch Twitter and how they get away with being next level scummy and want to make this the new normal.
There's not even a good rival to Facebook. It's a shitshow and people use it anyway.
That's how a lot of companies do stuff, though. They see what competitors get away with, figure out how moving the Overton window a little more will benefit them, and if the payoff is more than the risk they do it. That's how advertising has become so ubiquitous, that's how selling user data became so common: Wait for someone else to take the heat, make preparations while the controversy is happening, and when it dies down take the next step in that direction.
They have a moat/stickiness because of their immense user count. It’s unfortunately ubiquitous in too many lives.
I have to wonder if there's anyone left who actually likes it and isn't just there to keep in touch with someone...
tbh it's where i get a lot of my memes. there are still a lot of good pages and groups run by funny people. generally i view it as bad for me in the same way it's always been bad for me, too much easy dopamine or whatever. Misinformation is out there and censorship is out there, but that's why i don't rely on FB for news.
As far as I know, 404 Media is using Threads. If I am right , it would be interesting to know whether they consider stop using it.
i mean, they are on Facebook too. If you are a journalist or a publication, you have to go to where the people are to spread the word about your articles, even if the people are on a platform you do not like. I've had mixed feelings about this lately with regards to X (a neo-nazi platform) and artists that continue to use that platform. But at the end of the day, unless you are a large organization with lots of influence, you need to be on social media to survive.
They're not posting to Facebook because they need to. From the article:
The silver lining here is that Facebook was already increasingly a waste of our time. The only reason we’re able to share our stories via our official Facebook page is that we’ve fully automated that process, because it is not actually worth our time to post our stories there organically. Since before we started 404 Media, we knew there was very little chance that Facebook would help us reach people, grow our audience, and make the case that people should support our journalism, so in a way we lost nothing because there’s nothing to lose.
Fair point. Evidently I didn't read 100% of the article.
I strongly disagree. The case we have here is a good example why. You become too dependent on centralized services. What you need to do is using decentralized tools enabling you to control your own content and processes. If you follow tools like Facebook, Threads, Tiktok, Twitter, etc., you are on the wrong track.
What we see in this story is something like a soft version of Chinese censorship (and censorship will become stronger the more powerful these centralized platforms become).
sure, but what is 404 Media supposed to do about that? If they stopped sharing their stories on these services, they would have no way to reach new audiences, and so they would slowly start dying off. You could argue that a larger publication like NYT could certainly take a stand like this, but traditional media isn't exactly in a strong position right now. Decentralized platforms are useless to these publications if nobody is using them.
Media outlets will have to develop their own audiences over time by using decentralized digital services. It may (seem to) take longer than using centralized services, but it's the only way to avoid censorship and make independent decisions in their strategy and operations.
Basically, media outlets will grow their own audiences like in the old days, just now they do with the digital help.
This is, as we all know, what the internet was supposed to be in the beginning: a decentralized network.
They do that, too. They're on Mastodon as well. They're just doing POSSE. These social media platforms are basically just where they advertise their articles and sometimes get tips for new stories from readers. That's outside of how they use them for investigating stories about those platforms.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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