Bonum Certa Men Certa

Facebook Contributed to Death of Online Journalism and What's Left Online Isn't Covering Real Facebook Scandals

Summary: The demise of Facebook and other social control media (or the World Wide Web at large) "won't be televised"; to make matters worse, what prevails on today's Web is clickbait, gossip and SEO noise

MY intention here is not to constantly bash the media, but it's curious that instead of finding actual news about Facebook I mostly find Facebook-connected puff pieces and ridiculous gossip about a "fight" (two sociopaths looking to distract from their commercial failure [2]).

"It's a public holiday in the United States, so news is expected to be slow."I moreover worry that reputable news sites now publish cooking recipes as front page news, resort to webspam (sometimes computer-generated spew), and the Web is dominated by digital tabloids, not journalism. For instance, regarding Facebook, Gizmodo [1-5] and Engadget [6] focus on "news" that's more akin to gossip, including empty claims of parental supervision, just as we noted some hours ago in relation to TikTok. Gizmodo and Engadget also produced a lot of Microsoft webspam earlier this year, faking excitement of hype for some chatbot that's still falsely marketed.

It's a public holiday in the United States, so news is expected to be slow. We continue to wonder aloud how to still pursue actual information and scientific facts. We expect that later this month Microsoft will start another storm of vapourware in the media, days or weeks ahead of mass layoffs being announced again. They're batching it. It's a PR tactic.

"Some (but not all) of the media/press layoffs are the fault of "Web giants" (and no, "link tax" is not the solution!); it means that the very best/potent critics of companies like Facebook no longer have sufficient capacity to do so."Speaking of layoffs, Facebook has had plenty of them recently. But the official number of layoffs does not tell the full story. By forcing workers to come back to the office (needlessly) Facebook convinced many workers to simply resign. They won't count as "layoffs". This is an HR tactic that we've been seeing in other companies too.

Some (but not all) of the media/press layoffs are the fault of "Web giants" (and no, "link tax" is not the solution!); it means that the very best/potent critics of companies like Facebook no longer have sufficient capacity to do so. Facebook is hearsay and it has rapidly reduced the quality of media to its own low standards (or even lower).

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. 2023-06-30 [Older] Meta Reportedly Wants to Pursue Direct App Downloads Through Facebook Ads in Europe
  2. 2023-06-29 [Older] Elon Musk's Parents: Please Don't Let Our Grown Child Fight The Facebook Guy
  3. 2023-06-29 [Older] Meta Offers A Glimpse Into the Black Box of AI Ranking
  4. 2023-06-29 [Older] Oversight Board Tells Facebook to Remove Video of Cambodian Prime Minister Threatening Opponents
  5. 2023-06-27 [Older] Facebook Lets Parents See Who Their Kids Are Talking to on Messenger
  6. 2023-06-27 [Older] Facebook adds parental control tools to Messenger




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