The Instant Historian: Facebook Is About To Destroy Us All, Maybe
By Ty Duffy
Facebook is rolling out Instant Articles. Media outlets will publish directly to Facebook. Keeping things within the Facebook ecosystem improves load times on mobile devices. It also, given Facebook’s active user account numbering more than one billion, will give the social network a disturbing amount of control over how much of the world consumes news.
Terming this the “tipping point” would be very pop psychology of us. But, that’s not accurate. “Instant Articles” is just the natural, next change in how we receive information.
Humans are inefficient. Technology, without compunctions, increases efficiency. Once, one had to physically obtain information. Then one had to seek information on the Internet. RSS brought tailored information to the individual. Facebook and Twitter expanded that process exponentially, permitting one to tap tailored networks of hundreds, or thousands of individuals.
Following logic, the next steps would be (a) alleviating our own inadequacy at obtaining what we want through an algorithm and metadata and (b) bringing the information directly. Thus, Facebook is coming out with Instant Articles. Twitter, undoubtedly, will try to monetize something similar.
From a media perspective, this trend is pernicious. We are already seeing some of the effects.
Facebook has the power to censor things directly. It can set arbitrary standards for good taste. It can downplay negative articles about itself. It can provide privileged access to a massive audience. It can shut off said access. We’re supposed to trust a corporation won’t be as self-serving and rapacious as every corporation ever. At least the guy who thought we were dumb fucks is now reading books.
Any third-parties controlling what information we receive is (and should be) terrifying. Third parties can make you buy things one doesn’t need. Third parties can snip revolutions before they flower.
Getting what you want is often not what you need. We learn from being challenged. The more tailored one’s Internet experience, the less that happens. We follow people that agree with us. We follow outlets that affirm our own opinions. That creates a feedback loop. Conflicting noise one doesn’t want gets filtered out. Perspectives calcify. Conflicts and nuances get ironed away.
Our Facebook feeds are filled with political radicals. Our Twitter feeds are inundated with pious, ideologically rigid people on the right or left indisposed to anything resembling moderate, civil discourse. “Debate” on most topics is two extreme poles obliterating straw men for a like-minded audience. The more information gathering gets refined the more intransigent we become.
Instant Articles will entrench the establishment media structure further. Facebook performance has been a product of past Facebook performance, giving larger outlets a distinct advantage. Facebook now has a financial incentive to pump those larger outlets who buy into the system further. Independent, upstart sites will be (and arguably are) a thing of the past, without substantial venture capital funding.
The future for media appears bleak. Fortunately, we have no idea what that will look like. We underestimate the pace of change. We overestimate the status quo’s staying power. Go back two, five, or 10 years. Trying to predict the Internet’s future, you would have missed something that changed everything. Every new development in the past 15 years has heralded the end of media as we know it.
How will young millennials consume media in the future? Probably not the way their parents and extended relatives are now on Facebook, or on a device they have to hold in their hand.
To quote Jack Warner: “Our business is our business.” In the digital age, media has been anything but static and secure.
FOX IS SPORTS BROADCASTING’S BABY GIRAFFE
FOX Sports covered its first U.S. Open. It incited a myriad of complaints from multiple outlets, even from people who appear on FOX Sports 1. Awful camerawork, missed shots, inadequate commentary, poor chemistry, awkward Holly Sonders interviews, unhelpful graphics. We’ll stop there for brevity.
Much of this was a dry run with golf being difficult to broadcast. There’s a lot happening at once. It’s hard to shoot. It’s even harder to fashion everything on the fly into a compelling, logical narrative for TV. Some of this was FOX being spread thin. Rob Stone and others are working the Women’s World Cup. Some of this was FOX being FOX, tone deaf and weird.
Golf fans will be cringing in horror pondering the next 11 years. That may be premature.
FOX also began covering soccer on a serious level the past few years. There have been…growing pains. Soccer fans have dealt with GUS JOHNSON AND ERIC WYNALDA YELLING THROUGH CUP FINALS, Piers Morgan as a studio analyst, Curt Menefee winging it, Brad Friedel’s accent, and inane football vs. futball segments.
But, after years of experimenting and getting yelled at, coverage has improved. None of the worst fears about the Women’s World Cup have materialized. One could quibble about three-person booths, homerism and depth of analysis of smaller teams. But, for the most part, coverage has been seamless and professional. One can now conceive of a Men’s World Cup in 2018 going smoothly.
So, there’s some hope for golf fans. FOX will do its odd things. They will do some things on the cheap (stop recycling the same NFL theme!). The coverage may not satisfy, but, it should at least become tolerable, perhaps after your resistance breaks down.