This article was originally published on Medium. This copy is provided for accessibility and archival purposes. The canonical version remains on Medium.

Member-only story

Facebook is the Last Mile of Media Publishing, and Should Act Like it

Jun 3, 2020

Mark Zuckerberg is a smart guy, and from most accounts, tries to do the right thing with his influential platform. Given the newness of social media, it must be challenging to figure out what that right thing is — especially when billions of dollars and the demands of share holders is on the line.

Recently Mr. Zuckerberg was quoted saying that he doesn’t think its Facebook’s job to fact check political speeches. I think he’s probably right, but only in one specific way. Facebook is not in the news media production business — they don’t write the news. But they are an intermediary (the root of the word “media”) just he same. Conceptually, they are at least as influential as any publisher, in choosing which content to show users. Practically, given current trends, they are more influential than any news outlet’s front page — or all of them combined. I’ve written previously about an important (easy to fix) mistake in their curation algorithm which leads to two information silos modeled largely on a reductionist idea of America’s 2 parties— left vs. right, Democratic Party vs. Republican Party. That’s one half of the problem, and they should address it. But they also have some responsibility to promote fact based reporting, and thwart misinformation, just like any other media publisher. They don’t write content, but they certainly do promote it, selectively, to each and every user.