12 Comments

Hail Caesar! Zuckerberg controls the masses by allowing spreading lies with the Daily Wire (and many more pages that steal content, etc.) Why isn't this considered plagiarism?

Idea theft in this form beats the death drum of quality journalism across the board.

The headline on Sign's suicide features a photo of the Clintons. My guess is no photographer got paid for the Daily Wire to use it. Would they have recompense if they sued or would some protection for FB be held in a disclaimer?

You can bet your bippy that ads generated by Daily Wire are making Little Caesar Zuck a lot of money. Therein besides his huge ego, is why this won't change. He rules the kingdom of FB globally. A sad fact is who is going to stop him?

Thank you Judd for at least annoying the hell out of him by throwing a headlight on FB high jinx.

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How is it the original reporting outlets don’t go after the Daily Wire for plagerism?

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Algorithms or not, it still has to be up to us, the general public, to research our news sources. We can blame or shame companies, near and far, but as long as the general public is uneducated about critical thinking, about how to discern truth from falsehood, actually read the constitution for ourselves and understand what rights it guarantees our citizens, falsehood will abound.

For decades we have not educated our children in civics and taught them to think for themselves. We have still the idea that the masses are not to be trusted, that if the common citizen were given their true rights to govern, chaos and havoc would result. Decades ago, white male property owners guaranteed that the majority of citizens would go on about their business, sowing and reaping, toiling and producing and be led like sheep because we lacked the intelligence to understand how to run the country. (See Heather Cox Richardson, today)

Thus the filibuster. Thus the minority rule we experience today.

If we citizens really want to revolt in the purest and most wholesome form, we should learn our civics and stop using "interpretive media" for learning facts. There is a huge difference in an opinion piece and a factual account. The line between them is so blurred (which is what the White Male Property Owners want) right now, it is a great danger to democracy. Heads up folks. Use social media to socialize, not govern. It's tempting to be lazy and let alternative news outlets feed us the pablum of "Feeling Right." Would we rather "feel right" than know the truth, even if truth makes us uncomfortable? Choose truth over falsehood, no matter how "right" we want to feel.

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It's no big surprise that, on top of ginning up the right and alt-right with clickbait headlines, sources like The Daily Wire pilfer their content from actual reporters. With Facebook at their side, I don't know how those of us who value true journalism can beat them.

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Unsurprisingly, this creates an irresistible pressure for local news to similarly misrepresent and spin its content in the race for the Facebook love. It must. (Indeed, it always has, vis supermarket tabloids, the old yellow press, reality TV…).

Facebook’s behavior is different primarily because of its scale. Back when the crust of the earth was still cooling, we editors also searched for that elusive quality that would cause people to tape stories on the refrigerator door or clip and mail them to grandma.

I don’t know what changes this dynamic, but it’s not Facebook per se (horrible as it is).

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Thank you. This was your best piece yet.

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When comparing the numbers for the NYT and feedsites like the Daily Wire, it might be useful to remember that one requires payment to access their articles and the other does not. Of course, one has massive overhead that the other does not, but it's much, much easier for the average person to just use the free service and not think about the long term effects.

Doesn't help that the NYT in particular is overpriced, makes it as difficult as legally possible to unsubscribe and sometimes flat out lies about subscription rates. However, I don't doubt that the numbers aren't any better for for WaPo or any other major paper.

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Unsurprisingly, this creates an irresistible pressure for local news to similarly misrepresent and spin its content in the race for the Facebook love. It must. (Indeed, it always has, vis supermarket tabloids, the old yellow press, reality TV…).

Facebook’s behavior is different primarily because of its scale. Back when the crust of the earth was still cooling, we editors also searched for that elusive quality that would cause people to tape stories on the refrigerator door or clip and mail them to grandma.

I don’t know what changes this dynamic, but it’s not Facebook per se (horrible as it is).

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