When Mark Zuckerberg’s project first went live in 2004, it pitched itself as “an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.” By 2007, its mission was to provide “a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” In 2010, it had been revised to “giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Only in 2012, as Facebook went public, did it add “to discover what’s going on in the world” to its mission statement. But at that point, it was merely catching up to reality — that same year, social media surpassed newspapers (print and digital) as the main news source for young Americans.
By any of these conceptions of Facebook’s mission, Zuckerberg’s dorm room experiment has no doubt succeeded. Since those early days at Harvard, Facebook has captured the hearts, minds, and clicks of billions, in the process gaining immense control over the world’s information. Thus far, users have embraced this system, feeding it with data and dollars. But if Facebook’s history is any indication, users should be wary of whether Facebook is truly leading news in the right direction.
The Birth of News Feed
When Facebook first launched, it was essentially a glorified directory (a “facebook,” after all, originally referred to the physical class booklets Harvard handed out to students). Posts would be seen by the handful who specifically visited a profile, and beyond viewing others’ pages, there was little for users to do. It was a network, but it was hardly social.
It took one unassuming 2006 blog post for Facebook to forever change the history of the internet. When users logged on, it explained, they would be greeted with a new feature: News Feed, a constantly updating trickle of recent activity. It was a way to see “when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites or when your crush is single again.” And it fundamentally changed how people used the website: the users who had gone to bed with an audience of a few woke up with a potential audience of thousands. “By turning a series of lonely events into something like a story,” wrote Farhad Manjoo in Slate, “by combining all your friends’ actions into a community, or even a conversation, on your home page — news feed gave Facebook a soul.”
But Facebook soon ran into a problem: as the network grew, the digital trickle risked becoming a tsunami. To deal with this glut of information, Facebook increasingly turned to algorithms to curate the feed, selecting what it thought users wanted to see. The algorithms — which originally utilized a set of hard-coded standards, and were later based almost entirely on impersonal machine learning — soon came to rule the experience. Whether Facebook expected it or not, as it grew, these two decisions — collecting relevant information in one place and picking what gets shown — effectively anointed it the publisher and editor of the world’s information.
Despite some initial resistance, users ratified this arrangement, flocking to News Feed in droves. This trend was not short-lived: Indeed, News Feed remains the core of the Facebook experience even today. And, fittingly enough, one of the most important parts of News Feed came from its moniker: news. As users shared journalistic content and publishers reoriented their strategies for breaking into users’ feeds, fewer Britney Spears updates and more current affairs and breaking headlines took hold. Facebook grew to embrace its role as a purveyor of news with great enthusiasm: In a 2014 Q&A at Facebook headquarters, Zuckerberg declared that Facebook even surpassed traditional newspapers. Making News Feed the central part of the user experience was not just a business decision, but a “philosophical” desire to build the “perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world.”
Overcoming an Initial Dislike
Almost as soon as News Feed launched, however, journalists began to sound the alarm. Facebook’s power to choose what was shown meant that publishers no longer had control over their own information, and many charged that the feature failed to reward good content while punishing those who ran afoul of unprinted rules. Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Mathew Ingram attributed this to Facebook’s efforts to “move the goalposts” of its “all-powerful (and completely mysterious) algorithm.” When BuzzFeed News’s bet of making content specifically for a Facebook audience failed to pay off, it had no choice but to lay off over 100 staffers. When Facebook tweaked the parameters of its algorithm, Slate saw its Facebook traffic fall by 87 percent. Other digital outlets were not so lucky and went belly-up entirely.
The content that did succeed on Facebook all too often was not high-quality news but misinformation. A 2018 study concluded that during the 2016 presidential election, “Facebook played a central role in spreading content from untrustworthy websites relative to other platforms.” And when real content managed to break through, the social networks and not the publishers were often the ones reaping the financial benefit. As TechCrunch Editor-at-Large Josh Constine wrote, “Opportunities to fall in love with the publisher are few and far between. They’re just another ranch producing meat for Facebook’s sausage factory.”
It might have been surprising, then, when Facebook’s latest forays into the news industry were met with industry support. In October 2019, to “applause and laughs from a crowd of media industry executives,” Zuckerberg announced Facebook News, the biggest change to news delivery since News Feed. A new stand-alone tab promised to elevate quality content, and plans to pay some publishers were seen as a “peace offering.” Facebook once again presented a philosophical mandate: As a company press release declared, “Journalism plays a critical role in our democracy. When news is deeply-reported and well-sourced it gives people information they can rely on. When it’s not, we lose an essential tool for making good decisions.”
Painful Memories and Lasting Skepticism
The press release read as if it were written with the three main criticisms of Facebook’s prior attempts at news — that it had problems with content quality, that it lacked transparency, and that it was unfair to publishers — in mind. Stories, users were told, would be curated by a team of journalists trained in elevating quality content and avoiding misinformation. The initial selection of publishers was determined by surveying what users wanted. And some publishers would be paid for their content. On the surface, Facebook appeared to have taken past criticism to heart.
But has Facebook truly changed? Mathew Ingram, the Columbia Journalism Review writer who criticized Facebook’s past efforts, remains unconvinced. “I just don’t think a social network is a great home for journalism,” he told the HPR, adding that he is skeptical of any effort that Facebook would make in the news industry. To him, Facebook’s motivations are too divorced from the industry’s interest: “The platform is driven by emotional and psychological forces that have nothing to do with accuracy or factual content. It’s fundamentally at odds with what journalism is … trying to do.”
If the rollout of Facebook News so far is any sign, then the questions of content quality might not be fully resolved. Among the around 200 partners at launch, according to reports, was Breitbart News — an organization which then-executive chairman Steve Bannon described as “the platform for the alt-right.” Given the company’s history of elevating unreliable news, such a decision is hardly reassuring. Though left-wing industry watchdog Media Matters for America called the decision “reflexive pandering to conservative pundits, right-wing extremists, and white nationalists,” Zuckerberg doubled down, saying that in order to be a trusted source, Facebook News needs a “diversity of … views.”
This commitment to balance, however, remains unproven, hinting at another familiar problem: a lack of transparency. As part of the initial launch and planned expansions into video and opinion, Facebook has yet to bring several of the most popular leftist outlets on board, including Jacobin, Current Affairs, In These Times, and The Young Turks, representatives of those publications confirmed to the HPR — some of whom said they would likely participate if asked. Whether such exclusions are flukes or examples of a broader problem is currently unclear. Despite calls to release the list of approved outlets, Facebook has so far refused to make that information public. “No, we haven’t released the list,” a company spokesperson told the HPR. “The list will be dynamic as publishers become eligible for News and as publishers are removed if they fail to meet any of our criteria at any time.” One of the criticisms of News Feed was that it was a mystery how content was selected — a concern newly manifesting in Facebook News’ secrecy over what content it makes available.
It is also unclear whether Facebook will truly be able to mend relationships with publishers. Facebook has certainly tried to appeal to the industry with News, which a company spokesperson described to the HPR as representing “a multiyear commitment that should give publishers the confidence to plan ahead.” For some, these steps were enough: at its launch, NewsCorp CEO Robert Thompson declared that “Mark deserves genuine credit for this.” Others, however, believe that whatever Facebook’s present promises, the company’s history should give the industry pause. Facebook, suggested Constine to the HPR, has a record of giving partners “platform whiplash,” in which it “announces initiatives, leads partners to invest and change their business to adapt to it, but then cancels or changes the initiative, leaving partners high and dry.” To him, there is not enough reason to suggest that this time might turn out differently.
A Bug Versus a Feature
Facebook had a chance, with this new announcement, to reset its engagement with news. And yet, problems that dogged prior attempts — the quality of the content, the lack of transparency, and the strained relationships with publishers — seem to be left unresolved. Are these issues just flaws in the system, or is there a problem with the system itself? Are these problems bugs or features?
Matt Stoller, an antitrust scholar at the Open Markets Institute, explained to the HPR that he sees Facebook as embodying the characteristics of a monopoly. As a result of its market power, it oversees the allocation of advertising revenue, the selection of what people see, the direct financing of news, and more — a position that he describes as “too powerful and too dangerous.” Such power can have worrisome implications for the media ecosystem as a whole: “These are autocratic institutions,” he said. “When you place control of our public discourse in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg or any private, unaccountable actor, it’s not a democracy.”
The tendency of the modern economy towards monopolization or the concentration of economic power within the hands of a few select companies is, of course, a trend across markets, far from the doing of any one company. Local news was declining and ownership of national news was becoming increasingly centralized before the website came to be. And yet, in forcing what remains through the same funnel, Facebook has hardly been a bystander in this process. When it comes to news, Facebook holds immense power, having acquired the ability to shape not only how we read, but also what we read, when we read, and why we read.
This power revolves around a central truth — that what users truly desire is their own “perfect personalized newspaper.” This may or may not be an inherent fact. After all, “non-personalized” publications, in which readers all share the same stream of information, were the norm for the industry’s entire history, and some studies have cast doubt on whether consumers actually appreciate digital content personalization. Regardless of whether Facebook’s vision of news is a logical evolution of the industry or an engineered outcome, it has very much taken hold. As a result, Facebook holds great control over information itself.
If Facebook had a history of interrogating its own power and constantly refining its approach, an announcement that perpetuated its control over the media ecosystem might be less cause for concern. But when it comes to some core questions, the opposite has happened. Of the three key questions that confronted Facebook as it launched Facebook News — content quality, transparency, and publisher relationships — none has been substantively addressed. Thus far, in the absence of other choices, users have accepted Facebook’s inertia. But for its project to prove successful in the long run, Facebook needs to properly grapple with the critical questions that it faces. Because if it will not — or if it cannot — then users might begin to doubt the foundations upon which the kingdom stands.
Image Credit: Quartz / Newspick
