Ben Smith reports in the New York Times that Facebook has a policy of blocking posts that show your house—if you complain about it. The intent is to prohibit doxxing, but since the policy has no exceptions it also includes news articles in, say, the New York Post, that report on the $1.4 million house recently purchased by BLM founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors.
Smith is unhappy that Facebook doesn't defer to editorial judgment on these stories, instead simply applying its policy no matter where the reporting originates. It's fine to have an argument about that, but I was more taken by the suggestion that a Facebook block essentially erases news:
On Wednesday, I learned a new way to get a news article erased from much of the internet. [Explanation of Facebook policy follows.]
....“We’ve been thrown into a situation where all you can do is pick your billionaire monopolist,” [Danny] O’Brien said, lamenting “a world in which you get to pick your gatekeeper, rather than the world we were promised — and which technology offers — of not picking a gatekeeper at all.”
Suppose we go back 30 years. If the New York Post ran an article, it would be read by people who buy the New York Post.
Now let's come back to the present. If the New York Post runs an article, it will be read by people who buy the New York Post.
And people who see it online.
And anyone who watches Fox News.
And pretty much anyone who listens to right-wing talk radio.
And anyone who sees a link in Twitter.
And anyone who sees a link in any social media platform not owned by Facebook.
And anyone who reports on the controversy over the Post's whining about how Facebook hates them.
In other words, even without Facebook the audience for this piece is vastly larger than it would have been back in the good old days of print journalism and hard-bitten editors making tough editorial judgments. I understand that lots of people get some of their news from Facebook these days, but being banned from Facebook is hardly the equivalent of Big Brother shoving something down the memory hole. I heard all about the Patrisse Khan-Cullors thing even though I don't read the Post and don't get any of my news from Facebook.
There are legitimate questions to be asked about the control that Facebook and Twitter and Google have over the news we see, but it needs to start with a recognition of just how much Facebook really determines our newsreading habits. That's not an easy thing to measure rigorously, but in the meantime I'd say the evidence we have suggests a relatively small role. Smaller than most people think, anyway.
Maybe eventually we'll get some really solid research on this and it will turn out I'm wrong. But I kinda doubt it.
A lot, but....
There is the news feed itself, then there are the the posts you get from your friends.
For the Follow the Links. Always follow the links." files, having followed the link, it sounds as though it isn't the only property Khan-Cullors has purchased. Given the description of her background it sounds like a toutable rags-to-riches story, modulo optics.
Follow the link:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/19/fact-check-misleading-claim-blm-co-founders-real-estate/7241450002/
Khan-Cullors said in a prepared statement she has been paid a total of $120,000 from the [BLM] organization since 2013 for acting as spokesperson and “political education work,” but she has not been paid since 2019.
Yes, it's a scandal in the NY Post anytime that someone behind a progressive cause breaks their vow of poverty. As the article points out, Khan-Cullors had the audacity to hold "myriad jobs" and author a NYT-bestselling memoir.
I'm trying to figure out why the original story is news. So is the idea that the Post lied to everyone and tried to convince them the if you donate money to a BLM group it will get stolen by a handful of people so they can buy expensive houses? I assume that is what the Post is trying to do? Makeup a fake scenario so they can appeal to the MAGA people? Or is there more to this?
Innuendo. That's about it. Scare off donors and supporters of BLM. But it doesn't appear she was paid much by the group anyway. She had -- as unbelievable as it sounds! -- other sources of income.
Even the idea she was buying "expensive homes" is kind of questionable for L.A. She and her wife own a 3-bedroom home bought in 2016 and a 4-bedroom home bought in 2018. Both are middle-class homes in middle-class neighborhoods. Recently a company she controls bought a 3-bedroom, 2400-sq. ft. house on a .27-acre lot in Topanga for a million-plus. Maybe it's a shock to some, but a million dollars for a smallish home is the going rate in So Cal real estate.
She has several houses already, why did she need another one? And why did she decide to buy in the whitest area of Los Angeles? You'd think she'd want to put her money 'back in the community'.
She's a grifter. A race baiting grifter. And God bless her for it, it's the American way. And so is criticizing grifters.
Remember that time AOC wore some nice shoes? Outrageous!
So, that's $20k a year. Scandalous.
Where's the IRS when you need them?
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
'Fact checking' that doesn't contradict any of the facts. Oh, its 'missing context' . Yeah, whatever.
Optics? That people aren't allowed to be successes unless they're Republicans?
A great many people only get their news from facebook. It's dumb but there it is.
black people having money is a scandal that must be reported. and that reporting must include details that would allow harassment and abuse, otherwise what is the point?
Black people having money???? Nope. Just more dialectical mumbo jumbo by contards. BLM is a racial group in the long sense of the word. Maybe you and the post should stop playing politics so much, nobody would care.
Kevin, why is the racism here?
When Kevin first came here many of his first posts were on immigration and bunch of racists and straight up nazis dominated the comments sections.
That's why I bothered to make and account and start commenting. Some of them have run off now, but sparky is still here.
Whites have the right to object to demographic displacement.
I mean, there are all sorts of other reasons to object to large scale immigration...depressed wages, sprawl, 'density' being forced on small beach towns, environmental damage including globally increased CO2 output, cultural balkanization, traffic, doleful impact on the educational system and our infrastucture (California ranks near the bottom on those scores). But since you guys are going to call every immigrant restrictionist names, well, why not defend the right of a people to control their demographic destiny?
Is criticizing the racialism of BLM racist?
BLM = Great Patriots.
You = LOSER.
I don't recall people being upset about Oprah buying a mountain in Hawaii...they might point out the incongruity of claiming to be oppressed and yet having the resources to buy that mountain...resources she got basically by buying Chicagoland xanie moms' bestest black friend. And a very savvy businesswoman. (I almost said shrewd, but I knew that'd be misconstrued).
First I've heard of it anywhere.
The scandal here might be that there's a $1.4 million house somewhere in Los Angeles. Did she use a time machine to travel back to 2010 prices?
The audience that Facebook commands is still very large. Yes, there are alternative sources if you look for them. Facebook is not a monopoly, but it is large enough that for most purposes we should treat them like one. We wouldn't tolerate our phone carriers blocking calls that mentioned some topics; we shouldn't tolerate Facebook censoring content except for threats and doxxing and the like. The internet should be free and open, even open to fake news.
That said, the New York Post is a Murdoch rag and its reporting is not necessarily reliable or believable. If, as some earlier commentators have suggested, this story is misleading, perhaps even libelous, then Khan-Cullors can and should a) demand a retraction, and b) sue. I suppose the Post might try to raise the public figure defense, but it isn't clear that would fly in this case--she's not very well known to the public at large.
Jason Whitlock upping his racism to try to get back in the good graces of KKKlay Travis at OutKucktheCoverage.
Journalists need to borrow a concept and a term from economists: multiplication factor. Racist rags, unfortunately, have large multiplication factors. The Hearsts and Murdochs have made fortunes exploiting the fact.
The irony of course is that lots of newspaper publishers are furiously objecting to Facebook carrying their news stories at all. The idea of using Facebook as your news aggregator is nuts in the first place.