Facebook announced Friday that a news service will be called Facebook News and add content means that the platform considers quality to create a kind of page-specific information reliable for its users. Facebook News will come out in evidence only in the united States for the time being. “This is the first time that we form a strong relationship and long-term with the publications,” said the executive director of the platform, Mark Zuckerberg. The New York Times, one of the means that participates in the agreement, called it “a truce” between the platform and the media.
Visually, Facebook News will be a tab within the mobile app of Facebook is dedicated exclusively to news professionals, that are distinct from the News Feed, or stream of publications of all kinds that appear on the main page of Facebook. This is to mix the experience of information ultrapersonalizada of Facebook with the professional information.
The combination of Facebook and journalism has not lived his best years from in 2016, the platform will serve as a vehicle for the spread of lies and misinformation on a massive scale, that it came to influence the elections of the united States. The social network is mired in a crisis of distrust by the public for its demonstrated ability to disseminate harmful information. The platform, moreover, is a key element that explains the disappearance of media of communication all over the world, especially at the local level, to absorb along with Google in a few years most online advertising.
“we Feel a great responsibility, because obviously there’s an awareness of that the Internet has broken the business model of the journalism industry,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a statement to The New York Times. “We’ve invented a new way of doing this that is going to be better and more sustainable.”
The agreement is that Facebook will pay for the content to dozens of publications, among which are the media of Gannett network (USA Today), News Corp (The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post and Fox News. According to the Journal, also involved The los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Condé Nast (The New Yorker, Vanity Fair), NBC, Bloomberg, and ABC. The fees for licensing the content of these publications ranges from hundreds of thousands of dollars for the smallest up to figures of millions for the most important, according to sources cited by the Journal. Facebook has not made public the details of these agreements.
In the group means that are in the agreement includes Breitbart, the web extremist that gave rise to trumpismo and serves still today a tool of combat, informational extremism in north america.
“From a financial point of view, this is the first time that we form a solid relationship and long term with the owners of the publications,” said Zuckerberg in a video presentation on Facebook. It is “commitments for years,” he added. “We believe that this is content that people want to see, so he makes better our service. This is how we benefit us.”
The video presentation was in the format of dialogue with Robert Thompson, executive director of News Corp. Thompson, who recalled the difficult relationship that has taken Facebook to the media said that this is a type of agreement that represents a “precedent-powerful” because “it begins to change the terms” and set the payment for the content, journalistic quality as a new paradigm. “Before, the clickbait was the one that defined the content.”
In the statement, which has launched the news, the announcement of Facebook begins with a pronouncement about the media and their “vital role in our democracy.” “When the news has been researched in depth and have good sources give people information they can trust. When not, we lose an essential tool to make good decisions”, the company says.
The new section gives users “more control over the news they see and the ability to explore a broader scope of news that interest them.” Then, to quote one of the elements that make Facebook News “valuable” and which are basically those to which it aspires any online publishing: stories of the day, personalization, thematic sections, subscriptions, and controls to edit what you don’t want to see.
Facebook also recognizes that a selection of news criteria have to do journalists. The page will be edited with technology that personalizes the information through algorithms, but the main content will be edited by journalists, as the front page of a newspaper. “Missing way to go before it can rely on the technology to give a site for quality news,” the statement said. To distinguish one thing from another, Facebook has some posting rules that penalize misinformation (identified by eds), hate speech, and the so-called clickbait, headlines capciosos without real information behind it.
The company explains that it began its talks with media quality at the beginning of the year and one of the first conclusions was that “journalism itself is more expensive to produce and is easier to recognize by experienced journalists that by algorithms”.
