Journalists who cover Facebook and bristle at their haughty disdain and/or patronizing condescension, consider this illustrative example from Daniel Ellsberg, discussing a conversation he had with Kissinger. The problem is with asymmetric information.https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge/ …
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Unlike Kissinger though, the journalists are never getting clearances. FB does a uniquely bad job at conveying their view, and journalists aren't really incentivized to understand it anyhow. They're as captive to the media cycle as anyone, despite collectively creating it.pic.twitter.com/z5Prp5Odjy
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The full impact of Facebook, or really the mass adoption of socially-connected smartphones, will only be understood decades from now. I suspect much contemporary coverage will seem silly in retrospect, but so will many of FB's actions.
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Personally, I try to ignore the fleeting hangups of the FB commentariat (e.g. Cambridge Analytica), and focus on the bigger technology shifts. Take the recent example of WhatsApp, which differs markedly from core FB, and yet has caused much turmoil.https://www.wired.com/story/why-whatsapp-became-a-hotbed-for-rumors-and-lies-in-brazil/ …
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You don't need to be an insider to 'see inside' Facebook. Anyone who's spent a day running an ad campaign on the platforms understands the issues better than most journalists who have written about it.
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Yes, this is true. Baseline FB coverage would improve dramatically in quality if journalists just sat down and tried to make FB ads work for a small ecommerce site. Seems pretty clear most haven't.
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As someone who has hands-on experience with creating an ad on Facebook and has spoke to someone on the Facebook's Public Policy team, there are also people *within* FB who don't know how their ads work (FYI - I don't blame those individuals). This too is a problem.
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Hi there is your unroll: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1059506874951774208.html … Talk to you soon.
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This was very evident during Zuck's testimony before Congress. The Congressmen being the public...
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