Last month, when terms of Apple’s new deal for journalism were announced, I warned that it looked like a bad deal for publishers. The company was asking for 50 percent of all revenue, and planned to pay on the basis of how frequently readers consumed a publisher’s articles. And just as on Facebook and Google News before it, publishers would get no control over the placement of their stories, or direct relationship with their subscribers. It was one more algorithm standing in between journalists and their audiences — and at a time when digital media companies are rapidly shedding jobs, Apple’s offer looked truly grim.
It was all the more surprising when, in the days leading up to today’s announcement, it was reported that the Wall Street Journal would be part of Apple’s $9.99 monthly bundle. An annual subscription to the Journal costs hundreds of dollars — why would the company undercut itself so steeply?
Today we learned the answer: it would not. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that, according to an internal Journal memo, Apple News+ subscribers would get access to “a curated collection of general interest news.” More Journal articles may be available inside the app — but the idea seems to be that they will basically be impossible to find, Journal reporter Amol Sharma reported. Apple News+ subscribers will see a cordoned-off Journal zone of commodity general-interest news, and the publisher seems to expect that most users won’t seek much beyond that.
As described, it’s an odd arrangement. On one hand, the Journal is giving away hundreds of dollars worth of stories for some unknown, varying fraction of $9.99 a month. On the other hand, the company betting — and not without reason — that no actual Journal user wants to read the newspaper this way. And with a billion active iOS device users now available to them with a couple of taps, anyone who opts in is basically free money.
This is also the logic that leads magazine publishers to include themselves in such bundles, and many of them have been doing it for a long time. In addition to Texture, the subscription magazine service that Apple acquired to build News+, Scribd has offered magazines as part of its bundle since last year. Apple said today that 300 magazines will be part of Apple News+, including ones you might actually want to read, such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Vogue.
I care about how news gets funded and distributed because the quality of our information sphere is connected directly to the health of our democracy. When publishers are too weak to negotiate deals that will pay for the cost of their journalism, we all suffer. That Apple has more than $200 billion in cash on hand adds insult to injury.
And yet when I look at the Journal’s deal with Apple ... I don’t hate it? Sure, 50 percent is a ludicrous tax to put on a publisher, particularly one that publishes the caliber of news that the Journal does. But I think you can argue fairly that any revenue earned from this program is found money, and will not cannibalize Journal subscriptions. If casual readers like what they see, it may even generate a few new ones.
What I don’t understand about the Journal deal is the paper’s bet that it will generate way more than a few. In Bloomberg, Gerry Smith reported that the company is hiring 50 more journalists, some of whom may produce Apple-exclusive content. That’s an entire newsroom’s worth of new reporters, and they will cost millions of dollars.
The publisher will hire about 50 more journalists to write articles, some of which could run exclusively on Apple’s service, Lewis said. They’ll focus on nonfinancial beats, like sports, politics, culture and lifestyle. The Journal will likely expand its sports coverage specifically for the service and hire more political reporters, he said.
That’s a much bigger bet than I would make — but Rupert Murdoch has historically been more successful in creating media businesses than I have. (On the other hand, one of those was The Daily, an iPad-exclusive publication that died a quick death when not enough people subscribed to it.)
And as for the publishers who held their nose at Apple’s offer — with the New York Times and the Washington Post leading the way — I don’t hate that, either. Both of those publications have seen a huge spike in subscription revenue in the Trump era, empowering them to resist offers like Apple’s in the name of cultivating their own direct relationships with subscribers. Not everyone will thrive in the subscription-revenue era of journalism, but surely the Times and the Post are two of the best positioned to do so. (Here I’ll disclose that The Verge’s parent company, Vox Media, has an offering in the Apple News+ bundle.)
Ultimately, I think all publishers are better served building their own audiences than fending for Apple’s crumbs. The collapse in Facebook traffic to journalism, with its attendant job losses, should be too fresh a memory for anyone want to relive the experience so soon. But if you’re going to fight for scraps, you might as well do it the way the Journal is: giving away the thing anyone could already get elsewhere for free, in exchange for money you never expected to get anyway.
Democracy
Michael Powell on big tech and antitrust
Cat Zakrzewski talks to former Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell about why we have no meaningful antitrust regulation in the United States. “Almost all of our regulation is ancient legacy,” he says.
I would argue the regulatory environment is just an accident of history. It’s not rational, intentional decisions about what the optimal public interest is. It’s just a whole bunch of atomistic pieces, that don’t go together in any whole, and people game the systems.
Are [tech companies] my enemy? No. But I think bad public policy is always my enemy, and right now no one can say we have an intentional set of national public policies around how to regulate the digital information industry. It is a hodgepodge of kind of one-off stuff that you would be hard-pressed to weave a thread through in a logical way. I think it’s a task we’ll eventually have to take on.
How Twitter’s algorithm is amplifying extreme political rhetoric
Oliver Darcy has a good story on how Twitter began showing users tweets from folks they don’t follow, based on the amount of engagement they were getting elsewhere. Anyone who has read this newsletter for more than one day can probably guess what happened next:
Relying on an algorithm to insert politically-oriented tweets into the feed of users, however, appears to come with unintended consequences. Some tweets contain extreme political rhetoric and/or advance conspiracy theories. And they are regularly posted by media or internet personalities who hold fringe views (many are also verified, giving them an added sense of credibility to people who may not be familiar with them), exposing users on the platform to radical content they may otherwise have not encountered.
In effect, the practice means Twitter may at times end up amplifying inflammatory political rhetoric, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and flat out lies to its users. This comes at a time when other platforms, like YouTube, are facing intense criticism for using algorithms to suggest content to users. It’s been documented, for instance, that YouTube’s algorithm has exposed users to fringe content and helped radicalize them online. YouTube has pledged to address the problem.
Pentagon Says All of Google’s Work on Drones Is Exempt From the Freedom of Information Act
Information about what work Google did for the Pentagon is being withheld from the public on national-security grounds, Sam Biddle reports:
All 5,000 pages of documents about Google’s work on the drone effort, known as Project Maven, are barred from public disclosure, because they constitute “critical infrastructure security information.”
One government transparency advocate said the memo is part of a recent wave of federal decisions that keep sensitive documents secret on that same basis — thus allowing agencies to quickly deny document requests.
Conspiracy Theories Can’t Be Stopped
Maggie Koerth-Baker reports that conspiracy theories, however vexing, seem to be a naturally occurring phenomenon in any society:
Conspiracy theories appear to have become a major part of how we, as a society, process the news. It might be harder to think of an emotionally tinged event that didn’t provoke a conspiracy theory than it is to rattle off a list of the ones that did.
The ubiquity — and risks — of all these conspiracies has caught the attention of scientists. For years, the potentially dangerous consequences of conspiracy led many researchers to approach belief in conspiracies as a pathology in need of a cure. But that train of thought tended to awkwardly clash against some of the facts. The more we learn about conspiracy beliefs, the more normal they look — and the more some scientists worry that trying to prevent them could present its own dangers.
Anti-Muslim Hate Has Been Rampant on Reddit Since the New Zealand Shooting
Ali Breland finds lots of hate speech on Reddit in the wake of the Christchurch massacre:
Such posts are just a sampling of the vast amounts of content justifying the murders and bigotry on the two subreddits. Mother Jones reviewed at least a dozen other examples of such hate, and advocates on Reddit’s r/AgainstHateSubreddits discussion board, which has been critical of r/CringeAnarchy and r/The_Donald, catalogued many similar posts. Other examples reviewed by Mother Jones included messages calling Islam a “death cult” and “religious fascism,” posts calling for the religion to be eradicated, and others suggesting that violence against Muslims in western countries is justified.
The posts are extreme, but are a part of a consistent pattern of hate speech posted to both groups.
Digital Hype Aside, Report Says Political Campaigns Are Mostly Analog Affairs
“On average,” Kevin Roose reports, “candidates in the 2018 midterm races spent no more than 5 percent of their overall media budgets on digital advertising.”
In all, the group estimates, campaigns and outside groups spent $623 million on digital advertising before the midterm elections, with $284 million going toward Facebook ads and $90 million going to Google ads.
Political campaigns’ hesitation contrasts sharply with the private sector’s approach to digital advertising, where corporate ad budgets have shifted quickly from traditional media to digital platforms. Companies in the United States will spend an estimated 54 cents of every advertising dollar online this year, according to the research firm eMarketer.
Elsewhere
He Tried to Bilk Google and Facebook Out of $100 Million With Fake Invoices
I’m always saying that email is the future, and it would seem that Evaldas Rimasauskas, agrees with me:
A Lithuanian man and his associates found a bold way to steal from Facebook and Google, according to his guilty plea last week: They asked for money via email.
More specifically, they sent fraudulent invoices to the California-based tech giants. The invoices were apparently good enough to persuade Google, which is owned by Alphabet, and Facebook to wire a total of more than $100 million for them from 2013 to 2015, according to the Justice Department.
After Facebook said it would stop promoting anti-vaccine content, Daniel Funke finds that medical misinformation is still regularly going viral:
According to BuzzSumo, an audience metrics tool, hoaxes claiming to solve specific medical ailments are getting massive reach on Facebook. These false claims are posted in a variety of formats, but can be as simple as a text post from a regular user. And, because they’re often “zombie claims” — or misinformation that doesn’t die out after it’s been debunked — they often continue getting shared for years after first being published.
YouTube Bows Out of Hollywood Arms Race With Netflix and Amazon
Bloomberg says YouTube is pulling back on premium original shows. YouTube denied the whole thing to TechCrunch. We’ll see!
Mobile time-spent jumps up: YouTube corners ~40% of the traffic, Facebook less than 10%
YouTube is much bigger than Facebook when it comes to mobile traffic, according to a new report:
A Sandvine study (The Mobile Internet Phenomena Report, Feb 2019) found that YouTube is now responsible for 37% of all mobile internet traffic. Interestingly, Facebook is running neck and neck with Snapchat when it comes to mobile traffic, with both having less than 9%.
Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good
Nellie Bowles has a sharp piece on how there’s a growing class divide over screen time. Rich people are looking for any excuse to stop looking at their phones:
Hey, Pinterest is going public.
The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present
Laura Hazard Owen has a detailed timeline of Medium’s many missteps as it attempts to build a sustainable media business while treating individual journalists as largely disposable. Here’s a good one to bookmark for future reference:
Medium is nearly seven years old. It’s raised $132 million in venture funding, and it is not profitable. It has undergone countless pivots. When I saw that new search for “partners” last week, I started trying to count how many — and then ended up documenting the history of Medium via articles and tweets and Ev Williams statements. Why do that? I don’t know. I guess I was trying to figure the company out in my own head.
Podcast
Facebook’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos on protecting content moderators
My live discussion with Alex Stamos from South by Southwest earlier this month is now available in convenient podcast form. Our aim was to talk so fast that people would have to listen to it at 0.75x speed, and several folks have told me that we succeeded.
Launches
Apple Event 2019: TV plus shows, News, Oprah and biggest announcements
Here’s Natt Garun’s guide to everything Apple announced today. Notably, the company did not announce bundled pricing for any of its new services, and many other questions about pricing and availability remain outstanding.
Takes
Mueller and the Conspiracy Around the Corner
In the wake of the Mueller report’s release Charlie Warzel says that online hot-take machines effectively drown out the truth of whatever has just happened so as to better serve up confirmation bias:
When it comes to the biggest revelations, we care far more about the buildup than any of the actual findings. Perhaps it’s only natural, at a time when conspiracy theories are ascendant, that so much of our media and politics feel programmed by documents and investigations shrouded in secrecy. These documents captivate us most when they’re hypothetical, confidential, or unfinished. Their potential energy — proof of collusion could be just around the corner! — perfectly fit the ‘choose your own reality’ of our times. A Mueller report can be whatever you imagine it to be. It’s only when it’s released that it seems to lose its power.
Molly McKew, a researcher and writer who studies computational propaganda, described this phenomenon to me as “a kind of instinctual information warfare tactic” that’s been ushered in by relentless political polarization of the Trump era. “We are beginning to understand that preparing the battlefield is maybe more important than the battle itself,” she told me. Documents like the Mueller report, McKew argues, “are more powerful as the unknown than the known.”
After New Zealand, is it time for Facebook Live to be shut down?
Jennifer Grygiel, who initially called for a time delay on live broadcasts, now says Facebook Live should simply be eliminated:
That’s why I’m no longer recommending just a livestream delay for adolescent users — it was an appeal to protect children when more major platform changes are unlikely. But all people deserve better and safe social media. I’m now calling on Mark Zuckerberg to shut down Facebook Live in the interest of public health and safety. In my view, that feature should be restored only if the company can prove to the public — and to regulators — that its design is safer.
Handling livestreaming safely includes having more than enough professional content moderators to handle the workload. Those workers also must have appropriate access to mental health support and safe working environments, so that even Facebook employees and contractors are not unduly scarred by brutal violence posted online.
Microsoft President Brad Smith calls for an industry-wide effort to prevent future mass calamities from being broadcast live by terrorists and relentlessly re-uploaded onto every platform:
This is the type of serious challenge that requires broad discussion and collaboration with people in governments and across civil society around the world. It also requires us to expand and deepen industrywide groups focused on these issues, including key partners from outside the industry.
Finally, we hope this will become a moment that brings together leaders from across the tech sector.
And finally ...
Quitting Social Media Will Save Your Life. I Think.
Jason Gay parodies your why-I’m-leaving-Facebook takes:
Fifteen minutes ago, I stopped using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Within seconds, I noticed I am happier, less irritable, more contemplative and balanced. I’m kinder to neighbors and pets. I’m spending more time on activities that matter.
Just in the past two minutes, I’ve said hello to my children, gazed out a window, eaten a raw pepper, looked at a book on my bookshelf and briefly pondered opening it.
With all that free time, you could even open Apple News.
Talk to me
Send me tips, comments, questions, and your favorite Apple event tweets: casey@theverge.com.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/26/18281465/apple-news-wall-street-journal-deal
2019-03-26 10:00:00Z
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