Another dumb story accusing Facebook

Watching NBC News puff up minor issues about Facebook into a ‘story’ about how the company put profits over country. Repeated references to ‘these insiders’ as though this is revelatory. I have 2 large problems with this story, other than its sensationalism in the tabloid style. First, it’s only because a big deal has been made about Russian advertising that this has become an issue. Facebook wouldn’t know that would happen. Second, the other half is that Russian advertising was meaningless in quantity compared to the number of ads Facebook runs, and there is literally no evidence it had any effect whatsoever on anyone. So Facebook is being criticized because people ignore the 2nd reason to make the 1st reason bigger. Is there an issue with a corporation maximizing profit too much? Yeah, that’s true with many corporations. The choice NBC is making is to portray this private company as though it needs to be regulated like a common public utility. Is that sensible? Is that good for Facebook? What if Facebook can’t do well because it’s held to these standards … and people move to another company that’s not held to those standards? The sensationalism has one obvious goal: to make the story better for NBC, but I’d argue the standards applied to them should include not-sensationalizing stories by ignoring part 2 to make part 1 seem bigger. I know it’s a different media but the NYT runs ads about ‘the truth’, but of course it’s their truth, carefully edited to present the side of things they want to highlight. It’s certainly not the whole truth. No one – at least I don’t – expect adherence to courtroom standards of truth, where the threat of punishment is more immediately real, but when you say you’re the standard for news, do you mean ‘crappy news, sensationalistic news’ or, as the absurd Fox News motto has said, ‘fair and balanced’ without being fair and balanced?