Comment on Facebook Is Censoring 404 Media Stories About Facebook's Censorship [404 Media]
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 week agoi mean, they are on Facebook too. If you are a journalist or a publication, you have to go to where the people are to spread the word about your articles, even if the people are on a platform you do not like. I’ve had mixed feelings about this lately with regards to X (a neo-nazi platform) and artists that continue to use that platform. But at the end of the day, unless you are a large organization with lots of influence, you need to be on social media to survive.
I strongly disagree. The case we have here is a good example why. You become too dependent on centralized services. What you need to do is using decentralized tools enabling you to control your own content and processes. If you follow tools like Facebook, Threads, Tiktok, Twitter, etc., you are on the wrong track.
What we see in this story is something like a soft version of Chinese censorship (and censorship will become stronger the more powerful these centralized platforms become).
sure, but what is 404 Media supposed to do about that? If they stopped sharing their stories on these services, they would have no way to reach new audiences, and so they would slowly start dying off. You could argue that a larger publication like NYT could certainly take a stand like this, but traditional media isn’t exactly in a strong position right now. Decentralized platforms are useless to these publications if nobody is using them.
Media outlets will have to develop their own audiences over time by using decentralized digital services. It may (seem to) take longer than using centralized services, but it’s the only way to avoid censorship and make independent decisions in their strategy and operations.
Basically, media outlets will grow their own audiences like in the old days, just now they do with the digital help.
This is, as we all know, what the internet was supposed to be in the beginning: a decentralized network.
They do that, too. They’re on Mastodon as well. They’re just doing POSSE. These social media platforms are basically just where they advertise their articles and sometimes get tips for new stories from readers. That’s outside of how they use them for investigating stories about those platforms.
ryper@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
They’re not posting to Facebook because they need to. From the article:
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 week ago
Fair point. Evidently I didn’t read 100% of the article.