Study Hall Digest 10/21/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Facebook, facing backlash for its role in misinformation campaigns and resisting threats to break up the company, is doubling down on its hands-off approach. Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown defending Facebook (which, never forget, originated as a means of ranking women on campus at Harvard) as a beacon of free expression and “voice,” some ill-defined jargon pedaled by Facebook that essentially means “people saying and doing things.” The Zuck cast those who would regulate Facebook’s content as dangerous censors akin to the Chinese government. Facebook has refused to take down political ads that contain lies, most recently coming to blows with Biden over an ad from the Trump campaign claiming the candidate had illegal dealings with Ukraine.

At the core of Facebook’s defense strategy is a refusal to acknowledge the power it wields, but also a refusal to acknowledge that it is effectively a publisher and not just a tech platform, though this is a facade it has let drop in the past. Last year, while defending the company against a lawsuit from an app startup claiming a scheme to exploit user data and unfairly trounce competition, attorneys for the company compared Facebook to a newspaper while defending its First Amendment right to free speech. Zuckerberg used the First Amendment to defend Facebook this past week, but this time casting Facebook as a neutral defender of the free speech for those who use the platform. There is an internal confusion and inconsistency over what exactly Facebook is — a mere conduit for content or an editorial entity.

Of course, Facebook does not indiscriminately allow the publication of anything and everything — it banned Alex Jones a few months ago and has been forced to reevaluate its policy on hate speech. Furthermore, TechCrunch points out, the speech you see on Facebook is determined by an algorithm to optimize engagement, which tends to favor the manufacturing of outrage. There is a practical reason Facebook has so stubbornly resisted being seen as a publisher — that would come with an increased responsibility for the content it shares, which could open it up to more criticism and calls for regulation, which it is already resisting. Still, if Facebook wants to make a convincing case for why it should stay intact and unregulated, it should probably be able to make a satisfying case for what it is and how it operates.

Everyone on Media Twitter this past week was talking about the ethics of attribution, thanks once again to — guess who? — our friends at the New York Times. It all started when Slate reporter April Glaser put the paper of record on blast for essentially re-reporting her story on Kickstarter’s union-busting efforts and the impact on morale, with no mention of her reporting (the Times soon updated the story to credit Glaser — that’s the power of Twitter/the blue check for you).

But Glaser’s initial accusation took off because she was not bemoaning an isolated incident, but the latest in an established pattern at the Times. it’s a running joke among media workers that getting ripped off by the Times is something of a rite of passage. Vice spoke to anonymous staffers at the paper who expressed frustration over the perpetual failure to hyperlink, and dredged up instances in which the Times failed to properly credit Vice. The habit seems to stem from a sense of entitlement. “In my opinion the more insidious thing is the idea that it’s not a story until the Times does it. Not everyone thinks this but from my vantage that still emanates from higher-ups at this place,” said one staffer.

The Times will always get more shit because it’s the Times, and that seems fair, but other publications are guilty of not properly crediting too. Writer Emily Guendelsberger also took to Twitter to share her experience of speaking to New Yorker writer Charles Duhigg about a subject on which she wrote an entire book, only to watch him use the information provided by her as unattributed background, which seems more intentional and gross than not linking.

But there is a lot of content, and it is not at all unusual for several writers across several outlets to cover the same subject. The Times, in its exchange with Vice, expressed exasperation at a need to credit EVERYONE who had the story first — but it is also very easy to hyperlink to previous reporting and give credit where it’s due.

Often this error is likely due to an honest oversight on a writer’s part, and reaching out privately does the trick; but when it’s an established pattern from a prestige publication, it’s far more difficult to give the benefit of the doubt.

Longread of the Week: Lisa Miller at The Cut wrote a wrenching account of a celebrated Mt. Sinai doctor’s pattern of abuse, which targeted poor women of color and was finally brought to an end by patient Aja Newman’s refusal to back down.

Everything Else

— Check us out!! The Guardian syndicated our essay “The Writer as Influencer,” a look at the increasingly porous line between the work of writing and the promotion of a public persona.

— Speaking of which: Andrea Long Chu, a celebrated critic who has personally hurt my feelings by being 26-years-old, is the subject of a very “Writers as Influencers” Vulture profile complete with a glam photo shoot. She’s sharp, sad, darkly funny and, as previously stated, 26-years-old. 🙂

— Lauren Duca once again batted down claims she is a grifter seeking attention in a WNYC interview, claiming if that were the case she would be posting bikini pictures on Instagram. Check mate, haters.

— You know that thing where a journalist gets in trouble because someone did a deep dive on their social media history and found something…bad? Twitter is apparently considering solutions to that, product lead Kayvon Beykpour tells The Verge. The solution suggested is ephemerality — having Tweets delete or go private after a certain amount of time — which is in keeping with trends across social media. Increased ephemerality has also been touted by Facebook as a future strategy, picking up on the popularity of Snapchat and Instagram stories.

— To “do voices” or not to “do voices,” that is the question for authors of audiobooks…particularly audiobooks with such heavy subject matter as Ronan Farrow’s “Catch and Kill,” a book about powerful sexual predators. Farrow opted for “do voices,” which understandably baffled some listeners.

— Ashley Feinberg at Slate uncovered a secret Twitter account run by Mitt Romney, which is used to defend and champion Mitt Romney. The name? Pierre Delecto. An alias so fantastic I’m speechless.

— Aesthetic trends come and go, and right now the aesthetic du jour, Mathew Schneier points out, is “30lb. independent London fashion biannual with an 80%-volunteer staff.”

— Oh, you filed a reported piece and now you think your job is done? THINK AGAIN. Your editor has JUST A FEW QUESTIONS.