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    Opinion: Facebook and Twitter are in a Race to Destroy Journalism

    There’s been a lot of media attention on Twitter lately, due to the turmoil following the recent acquisition of the platform by the second richest man in the world. And while the daily drama coming out of Twitter HQ has certainly been an interesting and time-consuming distraction, it’s important to also take stock of just how drastically both of the major social media platforms are harming journalism as they kick and flail and sputter.

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    In the most timeliness of these news updates, Twitter just announced yesterday that it would be shuttering Revue, the newsletter platform it acquired in 2021. Revue was pitched as a tool for publishers and writers to create and monetize newsletter content, not dissimilar to tools offered by platforms like Substack and Medium.

    Now, users have just one month to find an alternate platform to utilize. While those alternatives do exist, the shift away from long form publishing appears to be just one more example of these social media companies steering users away from off-platform functionality in order to maximize profits. Casinos are designed to keep you inside the casino for as long as possible, and similarly, social media platforms do not want you exiting for other services either.

    Since the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter, journalists have been in the CEO’s crosshairs. As a Vox article from December 2 points out, Musk has said that journalists will lose their verification status as trusted accounts. Meanwhile, Musk has overseen the unbanning of suspended accounts, some of which have previously threatened journalists. The Trust and Safety Council that was formed to help protect Twitter users from death threats and stalkers was dissolved on Tuesday, opening journalists — and everyone else for that matter — to new waves of targeted harassment campaigns.

    If users start to abandon Twitter en masse, then the end result is no good either. The platform has long been a valuable tool for journalists to conduct research, host discussions and establish contacts for stories — especially in foreign countries where public dissent is illegal and internet access is much more difficult. But many journalists are feeling unable to improve the situation at this point, as Twitter’s recent turmoil has been solely due to the actions — and inactions — of a CEO that The Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel has labeled as a Far-Right Activist.

    But Wait, Facebook is Even Worse

    Most of the news about Facebook/Meta this year has been about CEO Mark Zuckerberg wasting $36 billion building out the Metaverse (that’s billion with a B), despite very little public interest in donning expensive VR headsets to log into virtual Zoom meetings. These missteps with the Metaverse appear to have contributed to Facebook’s stock losing over 64% of its value in 2022 — the equivalent of $700 billion in losses, according to reports back in October.

    But Facebook isn’t done with bad publicity for 2022 just yet — because it’s now threatening to ban news altogether from its platform. This comes in response to proposed federal legislation that would make it easier for news publications to bargain for payouts from digital corporations like Meta and Alphabet (Google’s parent company).

    What’s known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act has been heralded as a “lifeline” by Axios. For years, the duopoly of Facebook and Google has absorbed over 50% of all digital advertising revenue, much of which has been chipped away from news organizations, large and small. And while those numbers have been slipping a bit in 2022, the damage to the news industry has already eroded their ability to pay for local journalism. Companies from CNN to NPR to Gannett (parent company of The Columbus Dispatch) are all laying off journalists right now, according to a December roundup from Vanity Fair.

    And while Facebook’s threat to ban all journalism in America may sound pretty extreme, they’ve already executed the same plan in Australia back in early 2021. When the Australian government was considering legislation that would require tech companies like Facebook to pay media outlets a portion of their profits generated from news content, the Aussie government called their bluff and pushed the bill forward. But Facebook wasn’t bluffing and Australian Facebook users watched all news vanish overnight from the platform.

    The ban only lasted a couple of days as both parties came to the table to reach a new agreement that was more more friendly with Facebook’s terms, but this demonstration of power by large tech firms over government regulation should still be sounding alarm bells here in America. We’ve allowed a nefarious corporate gatekeeper to hold U.S. citizens hostage in an information standoff over whether or not journalists should be compensated for their work, and there’s not a lot of winners to be found with the outcomes of these kinds of situations.

    Of course, Facebook’s disdain for news media has been growing for years. Big promises to support news through the $300 million “Facebook Journalism Project” were lauded in 2019, but those funds have been clawed back, programs have been stalled or cancelled, and news content has been de-emphasized from the algorithms that populate what shows up on your feed. The Columbia Journalism Review has an excellent overview and timeline of Facebook’s withdrawal of journalism, including the shuttering of their own Bulletin newsletter service, and the cancellation of the Instant Articles news publisher tool.

    At this point, anyone running a business, nonprofit or otherwise professional “page” on Facebook receives very little functional use from the platform anymore. For example… with over 90,000 followers, our Columbus Underground Facebook page almost always reaches less than 5% of our followers with every update. The insights of a recent news article post show that it reached just 1% of our followers — with the suggestion that we instead pay $4,500 to reach the other 99% (a rate of $14 per 274 people):

    And you thought inflation at the grocery store was out of control!

    You might follow plenty of news outlets on Facebook, but Facebook’s algorithm is designed to hide most of those news updates from your timeline.

    Americans Don’t Even Like Social Media

    The true irony here is that most Americans don’t exactly have many good feelings about Twitter or Facebook or social media in general these days. We’ve all been through a decade of data leaks, election manipulation, hate speech, the propagation of fake news and misinformation, and other general divisiveness. The average user of social media feels tethered to these platforms more than they do any sense of joy that might have first struck in the early days. A new study from the Pew Research Center found that 64% of Americans feel that social media has had a negative impact on democracy.

    So why are all of us still on Facebook and Twitter?

    Force of habit? Daily dopamine rush? A fear of missing out? A fear of losing easy connectivity to friends and acquaintances?

    It’s probably some combination of most of those things. Many of us are just sitting around waiting for a replacement platform to provide us an easy out from Twitter and Facebook, and that just hasn’t happened yet. Snapchat and Instagram and TikTok are all very different things, to say the least.

    So What Can We Do to Change Things?

    I don’t think ragequitting these platforms will really accomplish a whole lot, so don’t be in any rush to delete your Facebook or Twitter accounts (unless you were already planning on it). But scaling back daily usage would certainly be beneficial, both for individual mental health as well freeing time for other online/offline activities.

    What social media algorithms provide in breadth of information, they lack in depth. So stop scrolling the feed and skimming the headlines. Start reading more news directly from the publisher’s website or native app. Read an article on a topic that you might not normally be interested in. Learn something new about your community.

    If you’re a news reader, and you see ways to support a news publisher that you enjoy (usually through a subscription, donation, special events, merch, etc.), then support those publications and journalists with your dollars. A lot of news organizations have great email newsletters (we do too, if you’re interested!) that get news updates delivered straight to you on a dedicated schedule with no algorithms getting in your way.

    And if you’re a business or organization with an advertising budget, consider spending your money in your own community. The “buy local” movement isn’t just about picking where to eat. There are great local advertising services that reach local audiences.

    No matter what you do, just remember that when Twitter and/or Facebook eventually go offline, we’ll still be here for you. And if you took the time to read this piece all the way through, please know that we appreciate you more than one million Musks and Zuckerbergs combined.


    Update (12/16 11am) – Just a few hours after publishing this article, two more events occurred. They’re very unrelated to each other, but both related to this conversation and worthy of a quick addition.

    1. Elon Musk suspended multiple journalists from Twitter for discussing an account related to tracking his private jet using publicly accessible flight record information. Musk stated that these accounts were “doxxing” him, providing his real time location which was a security risk for his wellbeing, although several of the accounts suspended noted that they had only discussed the issue without sharing any realtime data themselves.
    2. Several local reporters working for ThisWeekNews confirmed that the remaining community publications would be ceasing operations on January 26, 2023. ThisWeekNews is owned by Gannett (parent company of The Dispatch), making it the latest casualty of months of layoffs.
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    Walker Evans
    Walker Evanshttps://columbusunderground.com
    Walker Evans is the co-founder of Columbus Underground, along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community.
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