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Facebook Media Social Networks The Almighty Buck The Internet News

Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Will Add Subscriptions For News Stories (mashable.com) 57

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: After years of simply forcing news organizations to heel to the almighty algorithm and craft their content for the News Feed, Facebook has added several features in the hopes of winning back the love of publishers. One of the biggest changes to come is subscriptions via Facebook. Here's how it works: Publishers using Instant Articles, Facebook's fast-loading article pages, will be able to have a paywall (certain number of articles per month) or have locked articles (freemium model). For either case, Facebook users will be prompted to subscribe to read more. All payments will be processed directly via publishers' websites, and Facebook will not take a cut -- at least not now. "If people subscribe after seeing news stories on Facebook, the money will go directly publishers who work hard to uncover the truth, and Facebook won't take a cut. We plan to start with a small group of U.S. and European publishers later this year and we'll listen to their feedback," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.
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Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Will Add Subscriptions For News Stories

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  • Who decides which publishers are 'working hard to uncover the truth"? Subscribers?
    • long answer: Truth is a subjective matter, it really depends on your frame of reference, as our experiences and biases form a lens through which we see the world. here at facebook we strive to deliver quality content, and using our vast engineering experience, we've devised a method to determine 'truthiness' of content. We're opening that, and other ground-breaking advancements open to the public at large -- delivering relevant, timely news to the masses.

      short answer: whomever pays us the most.

    • Who decides which publishers are 'working hard to uncover the truth"? Subscribers?

      Clearly, there will be a think tank of Zuckerberg loyalists who will lean toward the good of all mankind as the heart of all their decision-making process. The road to somewhere is paved with these good intentions.

      Nonetheless, the good of all mankind will inevitably benefit some lucky creatures more than, and occasionally at the expense of, some other less fortunate creatures.

      In the grand scheme of things, in the statistically improbable event this system of information delivery is biased, it still may be

    • ... ney.

    • Yes.
  • by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @07:48PM (#55072691)

    Do news and publishing organizations really not understand that they are selling their future revenue streams and future customer base, if not outright their souls, when they cut these deals with Facebook? That's not even a jab at Facebook - just a cold-hearted business analysis.

  • I have stopped using facebook, my feed is full of trump crap and hardly anything about my "friends", Facebook has just become a news portal where you can share what news you like with your friends...
    hardly see aything about my friends... and you know what after i stopped checking facebook everyday.... NOTHING changed... so not wasting my time on that platform anymore.
    • by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

      I unfollowed most of my friends, my feed looks fine now.

      Facebook needs a "don't show me posts with ANY links to ANYTHING" option.

      • You can get there! Facebook does allow you to block an article from any source that shows up in your feed.

        Block them all! I keep a few fun ones but block every "media" on all sides. As a result my wall has returned to things that are typed in directly - not "shared"
        (for the most part). Messages from friends (real ones) are not swept away in a crap flood.

        • That's what Facebook wants you to think... I have a collection of probably 30ish screenshots where I say "Block all from ***page***" and yet they keep coming up...

      • by elistan ( 578864 )
        If I could somehow get a feed that only includes things my friends wrote and none of the things they've liked or shared, I'd be pretty happy.
  • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @07:57PM (#55072737) Journal
    A new look web site with new news everyday.
    Free links, lists under topics and often updated.
    No subscription needed. No payments needed.
    The old www is the new freedom again. Social media goes full paywall.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Thats going to be the future given the bandwidth.
        Social media will be pushing consumers to pay for content.
        Users will find a much better way to internet.
        New brands will have fun as people rediscover the www beyond a social media paywall.
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Can only really be done in hardware ie they generate the required profits to run from selling the hardware and use the free P2P social network created by the hardware as the sales point for the hardware, done in a smart router with expandable storage space. They don't even have to install all that much on your computer, just access the social network system in the router via a web page, much cleaner and safer as far as your hardware is concerned.

  • Really hasn't been a problem.

    Facebook gives me the creeps.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    So why not bypass Facebook, use RSS, free subscriptions?

    Also I guess this is why people were pissed off about FB's FB-only "free ISP" that they wanted to bring to India?

  • Who cares? Mark Z jumped the shark a long time ago.

  • So ... now Facebook wants me to pay them to promote their biases to me as "news"?
  • See, there's your problem.

    I use a subscription for news items. It's called my internet connection.

    FB is so last century.

  • is like getting nutritional tips from cannibals.

    One guess why they want to fatten you up.

  • I've spent a lot of time over the past year meeting with news organizations to talk about how we can work better together. As more people get more of their news from places like Facebook, we have a responsibility to create an informed community and help build common understanding. --Mark Zuckerberg

    I think I need to go take Google's depression survey now, after considering the kind of 'informed community' that could only be created with the people that would let Facebook create an information filter bubble for them.

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