A recent article on Wired by Julia Greenberg outlines the symbiotic relationship that currently exists between Facebook and news content creators. In recent years, Facebook has become a major content outlet for news companies, and with good reason—as the article states, "600 million people see a news story on Facebook each week." However, Greenberg claims that Facebook is misleading news content creators regarding the benefits of targeting their vast online audience, and that it is using its current market dominance to acquire this rich content: "It's false hope, or at its worst, a threat."
Media companies feel compelled to put their content on Facebook because of the site's astounding membership numbers. But who does this best serve? It certainly benefits Facebook, as their users' are exposed to experiential, engaging content that Facebook does not have to create. Facebook is currently capitalizing on the potential of such news content, and has developed the following initiatives to do so:
- Instant Articles: decreases loading time on users' phones
- Live: allows users to interact with content subjects in real time
- 360 Degree Video: allows users to experience news content as if they were there
- API: allows users to communicate with a "newsbot" in Facebook Messenger
These programs greatly enhance user experience. Yet Greenberg argues that Facebook has used these programs to become a "crucial distribution platform" for news companies, and has thus made itself indispensable to these companies—and in turn made them dependent upon Facebook to reach their audiences. To me, this sounds familiar—Google has similarly used its dominance of the online search market to ensure that companies have to go through their system (and pay them) to get business. Essentially, Facebook has leveraged its power and insured that the relationship between itself (as distributor) and news companies (as content creators) is inherently unequal.
This unequal distribution of power in turn ensures that Facebook has control over the content that is created—after all, they need not disseminate what they do not approve of, and can refuse to promote content that goes against their own ends. For example, Greenberg cites the creation of the above Facebook programs as being responsible for the decisions that news content creators are making—their content is conceived and structured to cater to these programs.
To me, this is a concerning development. Greenberg argues that the problem here is that news companies must use up valuable financial and human resources to develop suitable content. I, on the other hand, am more concerned with the ethical implications of the issue. Facebook's apparent power over the creation of news content is just one more element that biases news content creators away from what is "relevant" and "true" towards what is palatable to one company. Of course, a plethora of other business, political, and religious biases already plague the ideal of unadulterated news content. It is for this reason, however, that one more influencing factor is, in my opinion, distinctly unwelcome.
Greenberg, Julia. "Facebook Has Seized the Media, and That's Bad News for Everyone But Facebook." Wired. 13 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2016.
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