Discussion
  • Read More
    zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzMelissa Cronin
    5/21/16 12:44pm

    I cannot muster a single fuck about how Facebook curates their”trending news” because I assume everything on Facebook is an advertisement, including everything written by all my “friends".

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      Jerry-Netherlandzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
      5/21/16 1:13pm

      Why would anyone trust any site’s “trending topics”? It’s hardly a new thing. Whatever email server you use, especially the older legacy addresses Yahoo and AOL, but Gmail as well, have trending topics on their homepages and they are all clearly publicist-promoted clickbait. So much nonsense; this whole story has been custom made for some grand political posturing (and method acting steam-out-the-ears outrage).

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzJerry-Netherland
      5/21/16 1:14pm

      Breaking news: woman eager to meet singles in your town actually does not live in your town!!

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    robertogreenMelissa Cronin
    5/21/16 1:39pm

    yes melissa, this actual journalism, unlike Gizmodo’s, gives us a real look at the issue at hand. gizmodo played right into a right wing meme, and not only got played, but managed to explode that meme worldwide due to mediocre reporting and feckless editing. i love gawker most of the time but when you do this shit you are no better than rolling stone.

    i could cite chapter and verse about how the right has been “working the refs” on news dissemenation going back to the 70s (though mark hertsgaard’s work should suffice) but if you are going to have reporters work stories like this, and they are too young or clueless to know what’s happening to them, you are doing your readers, and “our” team (insofar as gawker is on a team) a major disservice.

    last: if you are going to post this story, you MIGHT want to mea culpa it a bit?

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      Jerry-Netherlandrobertogreen
      5/21/16 1:48pm

      Amen! Gizmodo was played, but the damage has been done, as the right picked up that story (even better that it came from a Gawker Media website) and, predictably, will never let the NY Times correction of the facts get in the way of the truth.

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      Jerry-NetherlandJerry-Netherland
      5/21/16 2:15pm

      Meant to say: ...let the truth get in the way of the meme.

      (Damn Kinja editing window!)

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    lJN9yQQDBepFiMelissa Cronin
    5/21/16 1:07pm

    Meanwhile Gawker intentionally slants their coverage on political issues and the naive readers also confuse that nonsense as objective coverage.

    The primary difference is that Gawker doesn’t even try to be objective.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      You might be wrong.lJN9yQQDBepFi
      5/21/16 1:13pm

      Can you cite any examples of people describing Gawker’s coverage as objective?

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      lJN9yQQDBepFiYou might be wrong.
      5/21/16 1:40pm

      Sure.

      There are way too many readers who believe the exceptionally biased anti-self-defense nonsense.

      In fact, some people now actually believe that there is an “epidemic of gun violence” when it had actually PLUNGED 50% over the past 20 years.

      For some reason, Gawker chooses to omit that coverage to fit their deceptive agenda.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    Sid and FinancyMelissa Cronin
    5/21/16 2:26pm

    I am still mortified thinking about that time my mother caught me massaging the algorithm.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      Mr.Spaghetti! The Gentildouche YearsSid and Financy
      5/21/16 3:03pm

      The algorithm wants what the algorithm wants!

      Reply
      <
    • Read More
      Maxine Floeffler, Super DelegateMr.Spaghetti! The Gentildouche Years
      5/21/16 7:25pm

      That’s why he’s called “Woody” Allen.

      Reply
      <
  • Read More
    gramercypoliceMelissa Cronin
    5/21/16 12:55pm

    Doesn’t this Times piece give the lie to the Gizmodo “scoop” about how FB was said to be telling staff to intentionally bury trending topics that might be of interest to conservative readers?

    Given everything we’ve learned since then, I’m still wondering how that Giz piece got through any kind of editing process. And I both like Gizmodo and hate Facebook, and I even wish the story was true, just to make FB executives’ lives more difficult. But this piece seems to indicate the Gizmodo post was simply wrong and overblown in its claims and assertions.

    Reply
    <
    • Read More
      HerniaSandersMelissa Cronin
      5/21/16 12:45pm

      AKA delete anything that isn’t liberal propaganda, just like wikipedia

      Reply
      <
      • Read More
        laceandcombatbootsHerniaSanders
        5/21/16 1:33pm

        So, what was deleted exactly?

        Reply
        <
    • Read More
      IAmNotADamnWriterMelissa Cronin
      5/21/16 1:19pm

      “...Trending Topics was a fledgling, ill-managed group — made up largely of recent college graduates with little work experience — where individual judgment of news was encouraged.”

      “Facebook enlisted a set of 20-somethings as curators, copy editors and team leads, charged with sifting through the material the algorithms unearthed. They were crucial, they were told, to improving Facebook’s ability to discern, over time, what constitutes news.”

      “Workers were incentivized to compete against one another to clear the most trends from their queue, former employees said. Top performers were given “points” that could be spent on Facebook paraphernalia like T-shirts.”

      This doesn’t exactly strike me as some devious plan to restrict Conservative-oriented news on Facebook. I even suppose it’s fine for twenty-somethings who worked on Trending Topics to select “news” stories that were of interest ... to twenty-somethings (“news” of Kardashians being an exception, of course).

      But I’m not a twenty-something while I am a Facebook account holder, and my tastes and views of what’s news are different (having been a journalist, editor, writer, copy editor, reporter, watcher of news programs etc). I’m glad these people were paid in the mid-to-high $50K salary range, it’s apparently the bare minimum “living wage” in NYC (if you believe that).

      But I doubt Facebook had contrived to keep right-wing news off the page.

      But all this is why I have disregarded entirely the Trending Topics part of Facebook. As they say, it’s just not “relevant” to me. And I suppose might mean to these editors (“copy editors,” ha ha ha) that there are a lot of irrelevant people using Facebook.

      Reply
      <
      • Read More
        TRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)Melissa Cronin
        5/21/16 1:10pm

        Sturgeon’s law: 90% of everything is crap. All this story implies is that Facebook could, conceivably, be even worse.

        Reply
        <
        • Read More
          OMG!PONIES!Melissa Cronin
          5/21/16 3:03pm

          Museums and galleries are curated.

          What Facebook does is "jigger the news to advance an agenda."

          Reply
          <
          • Read More
            Schmoopie'sGhostMelissa Cronin
            5/21/16 12:55pm

            “Reality has a liberal bias"

            Reply
            <