read | Chris Aldrich

👓 Why 2016 Was the Year of the Algorithmic Timeline | Motherboard

Read Why 2016 Was the Year of the Algorithmic Timeline (Motherboard)

2016 was the year that the likes of Instagram and Twitter decided they knew better than you what content you wanted to see in your feeds.

use algorithms to decide on what individual users most wanted to see. Depending on our friendships and actions, the system might deliver old news, biased news, or news which had already been disproven.

2016 was the year of politicians telling us what we should believe, but it was also the year of machines telling us what we should want.

The only way to insure your posts gain notice is to bombard the feed and hope that some stick, which risks comprising on quality and annoying people.

Sreekumar added: “Interestingly enough, the change was made after Instagram opened the doors to brands to run ads.” But even once they pay for visibility, a brand under pressure to remain engaging: “Playing devil’s advocate for a second here: All the money in the world cannot transform shitty content into good content.”

Artificially limiting reach of large accounts to then turn around and demand extortion money? It’s the social media mafia!

It disorients the reader, and distracts them with endless, timeless content.

👓 A Close Look at How Facebook’s Retreat From the News Has Hurt One Particular Website—Ours | Slate

Read A Close Look at How Facebook’s Retreat From the News Has Hurt One Particular Website—Ours by Will Oremus (Slate Magazine)

New data shows the impact of Facebook’s pullback from an industry it had dominated (and distorted).

(Roose, who has since deleted his tweet as part of a routine purge of tweets older than 30 days, told me it was intended simply as an observation, not a full analysis of the trends.)

Another example of someone regularly deleting their tweets at regular intervals. I’ve seem a few examples of this in academia.

It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between NewsWhip’s engagement stats, which are public, and referrals—that is, people actually clicking on stories and visiting publishers’ sites. The two have generally correlated, historically, and Facebook told me that its own data suggests that continues to be the case. But two social media professionals interviewed for this story, including one who consults for a number of different publications, told me that the engagement on Facebook posts has led to less relative traffic. This means publications could theoretically be seeing less ad revenue from Facebook even if their public engagement stats are holding steady.

From Slate’s perspective, a comment on a Slate story you see on Facebook is great, but it does nothing for the site’s bottom line.

(Remember when every news site published the piece, “What Time Is the Super Bowl?”)

This is a great instance for Google’s box that simply provides the factual answer instead of requiring a click through.

fickle audiences available on social platforms.

Here’s where feed readers without algorithms could provide more stability for news.

👓 How Facebook Punked and then Gut Punched the News Biz | TPM

Read How Facebook Punked and then Gut Punched the News Biz by Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo)

In the digital publishing world, there’s been a buzz about this article in Slate in which slate staffer Will Oremus detailed the impact on the publication of Facebook’s dramatic retreat from the news business. The numbers are stark but not surprising for people in the industry. Indeed, Oremus makes the point that most news organizations are not willing to release these numbers. (We’ll come back to that point in a moment.) In January 2017 Slate had 28.33 million referrals from Facebook to Slate. By last month that number had dropped to 3.63 million. In other words, a near total collapse.

Read The New York Times Develops a WordPress Collaboration Plugin for Editors (WPMU DEV Blog)

Earlier this year, the New York Times released a WordPress plugin that will help sites that use editors to proofread and edit others’ posts or sites where writers collaborate on the same post. The plugin, called Integrated Content Editor (or ICE), allows changes to a post to be tracked and then accepted or rejected, much like the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word. Here’s a glimpse of the plugin in action: In an interview with Poynter.org, Chief Technology Officer Marc Frons from the Times explained why the paper first had the tool developed for their own use.

Looks like development on this has died though…

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Father and Son, Forced Apart at the Border | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Father and Son, Forced Apart at the Border by Michael Barbaro from New York Times

A 5-year-old boy named José and his father fled the violence in Honduras and headed to the United States. They were separated at the border. What has happened to them in the weeks since?

On today’s episode:

• Miriam Jordan, who covers immigration for The New York Times.

Background reading:

• Many children who have been taken from their parents as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy end up in shelters or foster homes.
• Federal criminal prosecutions of migrants have skyrocketed, and the volume of cases has prompted rapid-fire hearings in which multiple defendants — in one instance, 40 people — are brought into the courtroom at once.
• Republicans in the House and the Senate voiced their intention to halt the practice of separating families at the border — but clashed over how to proceed.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: How Separating Migrant Families Became U.S. Policy | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: How Separating Migrant Families Became U.S. Policy by Michael Barbaro, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Michael D. Shear from nytimes.com

President Trump has blamed Democrats for his administration’s practice of taking children from their parents at the border. Why is one of his top aides, Stephen Miller, claiming credit?

On June 7, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and I interviewed Stephen Miller, President Trump’s senior policy adviser, in his West Wing office about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border, which has led to heartbreaking images of children being forcibly separated from their families. Here are some key points from that interview.

1. The zero-tolerance policy grew out of a desire to end what Mr. Miller calls “crippling loopholes” that attract illegal immigrants into the United States.

From where Mr. Miller sits, illegal immigration is driven by a belief among people outside the United States that those who make it across the border will be allowed to stay indefinitely. “The success rate is the predominant factor that drives illegal migration,” he told us. By instituting a zero-tolerance policy, Mr. Miller said, the administration is sending a message that should reduce the flow of illegal immigration into the country. He conceded that the policy has not reduced the immigration numbers, but said, “It’ll take a few months of sustained effort.”

2. Anything less than zero tolerance at the border creates what Mr. Miller calls “perverse” incentives for lawbreakers.

Mr. Miller used the example of speeding laws in the United States. Imagine, he said, if the police decided that speeding laws didn’t apply to people who have a child in the back seat. “Could you imagine what the consequences of that would be? Well, one thing, a lot more child endangerment,” he said, comparing the situation to the lack of enforcement of illegal border crossings under prior administrations.

3. Continuing policies in place during the Obama administration would cause what Mr. Miller called a “vicious cycle” that would increase illegal immigration.

Mr. Miller said a “giant hemispheric shift in migration patterns” was driving people toward the United States, which he said must respond with tighter borders. He said Obama-era policies would allow the number of immigrants to “spiral upward endlessly.” Using a favorite phrase, Mr. Miller said: “So you have to turn the ship. And so again, it’s a whole-of-government approach.”

4. Zero tolerance at the border will keep out dangerous illegal immigrants who would otherwise “grievously harm innocent Americans,” Mr. Miller said.

Reading from a list of arrests in Philadelphia in May 2017, Mr. Miller recounted the crimes committed by illegal immigrants: murder, child neglect, negligent manslaughter, car theft, prostitution, racketeering, rape. “It is impossible to take moral lectures from people like the mayor of Philadelphia, who dance in jubilant celebration over ‘sanctuary cities,’ when you had innocent Americans, U.S.-born and foreign, who are victimized on a daily basis because of illegal immigration,” Mr. Miller said.

5. Trump administration officials believe Americans will support their zero-tolerance policies over what Mr. Miller calls the “nihilism” of the Democratic agenda.

Mr. Miller said he believed the issue of border security, even with the controversy over family separations, was a “90-10” issue for Mr. Trump and his Republican allies. He predicted that voters in November would reject “the Democrats’ open-borders extremism,” adding that Democrats had adopted “a point of view so radical that it can really only be described as absolute nihilism.”

On today’s episode:

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who covers the White House and immigration for The New York Times.

Background coverage:

President Trump is facing a growing outcry against his administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy, which requires all migrants who enter the United States without authorization to be taken into federal criminal custody, at which point they are separated from their children.

Stephen Miller, a top aide to the president, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — two immigration hard-liners who are shaping Mr. Trump’s approach to immigration — have defended the policy.

As a result of “zero tolerance,” 1,995 children have been separated from adults accompanying them at the border in six weeks.

This episode of “The Daily” includes excerpts from an audio recording from inside a United States Customs and Border Protection facility, where children are heard crying after being separated from their parents. Listen to the full recording on ProPublica.org.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Cracking Down on Leaks | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Cracking Down on Leaks by Michael Barbaro from New York Times

For a year and a half, President Trump has threatened to crack down on leaks and leakers.

The seizure of emails and phone records from a reporter at The New York Times tells a great deal about what that might look like.

On today’s episode:

• Matt Apuzzo, a reporter for The Times in Washington who had his records subpoenaed during the Obama administration.

Background reading:

• Federal prosecutors seized years of email and phone records from Ali Watkins, a New York Times reporter.

• President Trump wants better press, and he’s blaming leaks for not getting it.

• From 2012: The Obama administration used the Espionage Act to pursue leak cases.