Facebook as a news aggregator: backstage project
The influence of Facebook on the situation in the media can be interpreted both positively and negatively. For example, the head of the company, Mark Zuckerberg does not hide the fact that his goal - to make Facebook hardly the main source of news distribution on the Internet.
And for this, it is necessary that the news be selected and distributed promptly, and relevant to the user audience of the social network.
To date, the selection of news is done manually. For this purpose, the company forms special groups of “journalist-curators”. However, some of them began to complain about poor working conditions, excessive secrecy and devaluation of the individual in the employee. In addition, instead of a workplace, they were allocated a conference room.
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Some employees, according to sources of Gizmodo, even had the impression that they were being held as slaves, who were needed just to train a certain mechanism with artificial intelligence — nothing more.
The task of the curators is also to write headlines for each topic and a short preface to the news. Next, for each news you need to find a suitable illustration. Infopovody borrowed from news sites. According to one of the former employees, the headlines should be neutral, and the use of the video is allowed only if the video has previously been uploaded to Facebook by one of the users. However, disputes when choosing news are resolved at your own risk. The company does not provide any mindmaps for such situations.
When choosing news sites it is recommended to refer to such sources as the New York Times , Time , Variety . Sites like World Star Hip Hop , The Blaze and Breitbart are usually ignored. Curators were forbidden to refer to Twitter as a source of news and copy the title and description from there.
Moreover, over time, working conditions became even tougher. Curators began to limit the time of preparation of the publication. The recommended number of posts per day was recorded in the region of 20.
Every 3-6 months, some of them were fired. Specific reasons were not disclosed. Representatives of the company explained this by reducing the department. The company obliged the laid-off employees to hide the information that they worked on Facebook.
The company wants to create the impression that the news is not selected and published by people (who can act in the interests of Facebook), but by impartial robots. Many dismissed curators agree that Facebook is really looking for an opportunity to automate this work.
Representatives of specialized publications can critically assess the quality of the Facebook news service and increase competition for this market, or offer Zuckerberg cooperation.
And for this, it is necessary that the news be selected and distributed promptly, and relevant to the user audience of the social network.
To date, the selection of news is done manually. For this purpose, the company forms special groups of “journalist-curators”. However, some of them began to complain about poor working conditions, excessive secrecy and devaluation of the individual in the employee. In addition, instead of a workplace, they were allocated a conference room.
')
Some employees, according to sources of Gizmodo, even had the impression that they were being held as slaves, who were needed just to train a certain mechanism with artificial intelligence — nothing more.
The task of the curators is also to write headlines for each topic and a short preface to the news. Next, for each news you need to find a suitable illustration. Infopovody borrowed from news sites. According to one of the former employees, the headlines should be neutral, and the use of the video is allowed only if the video has previously been uploaded to Facebook by one of the users. However, disputes when choosing news are resolved at your own risk. The company does not provide any mindmaps for such situations.
When choosing news sites it is recommended to refer to such sources as the New York Times , Time , Variety . Sites like World Star Hip Hop , The Blaze and Breitbart are usually ignored. Curators were forbidden to refer to Twitter as a source of news and copy the title and description from there.
Moreover, over time, working conditions became even tougher. Curators began to limit the time of preparation of the publication. The recommended number of posts per day was recorded in the region of 20.
Every 3-6 months, some of them were fired. Specific reasons were not disclosed. Representatives of the company explained this by reducing the department. The company obliged the laid-off employees to hide the information that they worked on Facebook.
The company wants to create the impression that the news is not selected and published by people (who can act in the interests of Facebook), but by impartial robots. Many dismissed curators agree that Facebook is really looking for an opportunity to automate this work.
Representatives of the company said the publication Gizmodo, they do not comment on rumors and conjectures. Regarding the conditions of work of the news curators, they noted that all employees receive a well-deserved reward and compensation - if the need arises.Anyway, a billion people use Facebook news service. Their opinion on the service to a certain extent will affect whether the company will become a monopolist in the field of news aggregation.
Representatives of specialized publications can critically assess the quality of the Facebook news service and increase competition for this market, or offer Zuckerberg cooperation.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/300588/
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