Is Facebook Ready to Be the World’s Live News Network? | Hacker News Reader

Is Facebook Ready to Be the World’s Live News Network?

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48 pointspetethomas67 comments

What's nice about Facebook Live (and Periscope) is that in tense situations, the authorities could confiscate the phone but the video has already been sent server side, so there's no way to suppress the footage. With the recent streamed shooting in Minnesota, transparency into such events has just been opened up a little more for all of us.

While a lot of the HN crowd hates on Facebook, the Minnesota shooting and Dallas shooting have been eye opening and it's easy to see streaming video as the next great equalizer.

Obviously Facebook could start suppressing contentious video, but so far they've seemed to be pretty liberal and that's probably a separate issue. At least the technology is in place so that people can open up to the possibilities and other parallel platforms can be built if Facebook drops the ball on content policy.

Afaik they did censure pretty much any of those relevant videos. Also Twitter offers the very same technologie except it does not fail on higher load. Twitter is also not known for censoring critical things.

We really have to be careful here. Implementing the idea that Facebook as central news portal isn't so bad is going to backfire soon enough.

Think about it, some random news guys may are reading HN right now to get some "technical perspectives".

Facebook just publicly said they will not censor these videos.

They did censure completely unreasoned before and lied several times about different relevant things, who cares what they say now.

Also please source if you make such claims.

Edit:// They are also breaking the law constantly (Their terms are not valid in many parts of europe, they still enforce it, they do not hand over complete data when asked (tried several times) and they also do not remove accounts when removed), so seriously who cares what they claim?

> They did censure completely unreasoned before and lied several times about different relevant things, who cares what they say now.

Please source if you make such claims

I expected this :)

> did censure completely unreasoned

recent one: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/07/08/did-police-...

big ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook#United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook#Germany

A few more cases here http://www.facebookcensorship.com/

> lied several times

* The oculus thing. http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/06/14/facebook-allegedly-l...

* PRISM may be something a lot remember: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337863/PRISM-Google... to that also zucks statement: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631 plus some actual numbers: https://govtrequests.facebook.com/country/United%20States/20...

* There may is more, but probably they didnt lie that often like i made it sound. Its way easier to find articles about situations where facebook forgot to mention relevant details, other than lying.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Facebook#Germany

> In July 2011, authorities in Germany began to discuss the prohibition of events organized on Facebook.

Wait, your evidence that Facebook engages in censorship includes the fact that the authorities discussed it?

Agreed its written a little distanced on wikipedia. I cant really find english media reporting about it tho.

http://www.neopresse.com/politik/dach/bertelsmann-facebook-h...

Maybe this one, but they make it sound rather reasonable

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/germany-springs-...

Still facebook is not required to do this, they complied to censor after will of a private(?) germany agency.

Totally agree. I love the idea in concept, I'm just quite wary of Facebook being the place that implements it.

It's a hard problem. If you prioritize everything, say some decentralized source, it becomes a shit show of junk where it's impossible to discern what is relevant.

If we curate, then we're at the mercy of the curator's judgement and personal interests.

You say that like it's impossible to decentralize curation.

weary - as in you are tired that it is always facebook that implements these things? or wary/leery - in that you are cautious about thinking it is a good thing that facebook is the one implementing this?

That would be the second one! Oops, thanks for your correction, I'm not so sharp all the time :)

On a related note, I'd be all for the #BlackLivesMatter movement to call for the live streaming of all community interactions with law enforcement.

Making every single interaction transparent only serves to improve service. And there's no reason that law enforcement should be the only ones video taping these sessions..

My god, what a bad idea. The concentration of power in controlling what news people see is one of the huge problems of modern times.

Personally, I like following a few diverse news feeds on Gnu Social, and if a story interests me, then go on google news and read a story from a few sources in different countries. I live in the USA and our news is very much controlled/censored.

I also live in the US, but migrated there only 7 years ago. And, the news is one of the things that shocked me the most. They are not news, they are echo-chambers designed to please viewers and sell time slots to ad-publishers.

Every single story has to be sensational, has to be "crazy", or "unbelievable". Everything has to be a show with music, sound effects and cool teasers.

Where did you migrate from? And what was the news like there?

I migrated from Western Europe. The main difference I see is that there is no breaks to show TV-ads in the middle of the news. Traditionally the news is from 8pm to 8.40pm, uninterrupted, followed by 5 to 10 minutes dedicated to the weather, and then a 90 to 120min movie with one break in the middle.

Nowadays, there are more options: some news program air earlier (7pm for example), some are shorter (20minutes), etc. But the key is that there is no ads either in the middle or around the program. From my point of view, this is the difference that is driving this race to the sensational.

PBS would be the equivalent here but as you said, no where near as interesting to watch.

Interesting. So there are no 24/7 news channels?

Depends on the country in Europe.

I know about BBC News in the UK, and in France, there are now 4, and soon, 5 (BFMtv, ITele, LCI, France 24, France Info).

They started doing it yeah. But I believe that there are still very little commercials. The reason being that they are part of all the standard channels everybody gets, so they get money regardless of the viewer count and don't rely on ad-income.

That's interesting, I never thought about what news might be like elsewhere. It's better in other countries? I guess I just kind of assume it's like this everywhere. (this may make me sound like an ignorant American, but honestly I've no idea what the news is like everywhere else, I barely follow it here for dudul's exact reasons)

Try this : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio

You don't have images, but you'd surprised how many things happen in the world at once...

Agreed. BBC World News is also available on some cable networks apparently (https://bbcnewschannelfinder.com/).

(Live streams also exist, both "unofficially", and legally but geo-restricted on Livestation, apparently.)

PBS and NPR are the only American sources on TV I considered fairly comparable in tone and depth to news programs in other countries.

Switzerland represent. Our news are just boring news. Yes i've seen a news report about a cat beeing in a tree. I've also seen a news report about kids painting their mofas. If nothing interesting happens right now, that is the kind of content we get to see.

Currently there is a lot "lulz Trump", "wtf hillary" and "trololo brexit" in between. So it is a bit more sensationalized then else.

When I moved to the US I was shocked that the news cycle is so editorialized. Only a few main stories surface in the media, usually things that have some commercial interest. Brazil has one of the worst national media anywhere, but at least they allow more variety of views and you can make your mind about what matters or not.

The other poster was correct when he recommended BBC world news. That is basically what news is like in Norway as well - less sensationalized, and not nearly as much like a grab-your-attention-with-gimicks show. And there is a much larger section to international news, and that part is much broader than I'd get from a channel in the states. Folks are much more aware - to the point that a taco place advertises it as "so Mexican, Trump would build a wall around it", and that is funny to folks here. Brexit is obviously a big story right now.

For another example, listen to news on your local NPR station. You might get a feel for the presenter's opinion, but most of the information is simply information. That is much more near the 'flavor' of news here.

A French news TV, with livestreams in French, Arabic, and English: http://www.france24.com/en/livefeed

The main news channel in France: http://www.bfmtv.com/mediaplayer/live-video/

The stream of Pokemon Go packages masquerading as news on local news programs has been mind blowing this week.

The written news is even worse, a gigantic live feed of what every idiot on Twitter thinks mixed in with exploding popup ads that capture your click if you're not perfectly precise 'Here's what @TotallyNotAPaidShill had to say about the latest political scandal' [Click Here to see 9 ways you can lose weight with Prolexitroll]

You're absolutely right. Our news media is terrible.

We have reporters on "respected" shows sensationalizing flooding in canoes! [1]

They love to divide us based on race, sex, whatever, but the data doesn't support their claims of crisis. And we gobble it up.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgm3_jzcNm4

> My god, what a bad idea. The concentration of power in controlling what news people see is one of the huge problems of modern times.

Which is one of the reasons I do not use Twitter. They wield a great deal of power, including the explicit disallowing of archives of deleted tweets[0], aka they will block you from using their service if you attempt to (publicly) archive information transmitted across it.

It's like erasing logs from a program that has side-effects, or heck, even the "right" to be forgotten[1]. I dislike the idea that such power to destroy information is granted explicitly to any entity.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/12/an-interview-with-the-anon...

[1]: I understand this is a contentious topic, but I think that society should accept that people are capable of change, rather than having us whitewash our pasts to appear as if we were always however we currently are. Those who forget their pasts are doomed to not respect or appreciate how both individuals and society can radically alter their courses of actions and ideals over time. It truly is as bad as erasing the bad things groups of people have done in the past.

Writing a scraper for this is trivial and it's not like you're going to get caught if you're just scraping a few big name people. I definitely think this would be a good idea for political candidates and such, who the public should really have this sort of information about...

A quick script that could do this with a few people and store the info locally might be a good idea, then we'd take this out of the hands of Twitter. Maybe a little PyQt GUI that can sit in your tray and scrape twitter accounts or watch via their websocket API and notify you when a tweet is deleted.

> The concentration of power in controlling what news people see is one of the huge problems of modern times.

Not that the traditional news media is any better. Brexit would never have happened without News International. And in Italy Berlusconi was his own media support.

Remain camp also had a large support on media (John Oliver's LN just to mention one). So I asume Brexit could potentially had a lopsided victory without media support for pro EU. Anyway, back on main topic, having more options is always a good thing. Facebook could actually help make content streaming more accessible to many people.

People don't watch John Oliver in the UK.

Do you have any reliable data that shows that none of the 1M+ average youtube viewers of its show are indeed non british?

I'm sure a small number of British people watch John Oliver on youtube, but most British people don't know who he is. He certainly doesn't have a big influence on British politics.

Also this: http://www.nytimes.com/live/eu-referendum/britain-television...

That is why we need to decentralize social. It is not easy but we built the platform to do just that, the way Wordpress decentralized blogs and now powers 20% of the web:

http://qbix.com/platform

PS: is that WP figure still accurate or has it gone up?

How would a closed platform fit into this?

Everytime i happen to land on a facebook link literally half of the screen is used by some penetrant ad that suggests that i should register for facebook and does not let me close it, and thats just the public links, most links are not even public so i just see a login screen.

I don't see how such a closed environment would have any meaning for news.

Edit:// Looking at the article the example makes it even worse. Wasnt that video censored away not even 24 hours after it happened? Again how would such a platform fit the phrase "news" in any way?

Most people have Facebook accounts, so they wouldn't see the login screen that you see.

Seriously? i was not aware of that.

Over a billion daily active users, 1.65 billion monthly. That's not including users who have an account but are not actively using it. Odds are very good that if someone has internet access, they also have a Facebook account.

https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

thats not even a fourth of humanity. if we exclude china who can not visit any of our news outlets anyway its still less than the half.

Do you seriously suggest that all these people should create facebook accounts, including all the privacy issues, just so they can consume news without the half screen dedicated to forcing them to create a account?

seriously?

> thats not even a fourth of humanity.

And only 40% of humanity has an internet connection [0]. If we subtract the 22% from China, then yes, more than 50% of people who are able to access www.facebook.com have an account and visit it at least once a month.

These internet statistics also include all ages with access to internet, so infants and children too. You need to be 13 to have a FB account (as if that stops anyone), so that excludes an additional ~17% [1] of internet users.

[0] http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/

[1] http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worl...

I also managed to find a site claiming that FB had 158.4 million users in the United States in 2015, but with nothing to back that number up.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-faceb...

> Do you seriously suggest that all these people should create facebook accounts, including all the privacy issues, just so they can consume news without the half screen dedicated to forcing them to create a account? seriously?

No, I don't. I never said that and don't know why you're trying to argue this against me. Seriously? I'm not saying whether or not they should, just that they already have.

According this number http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/

your claim that "most" or pretty much anyone who has internet has facebook is wrong as well. Again its less than the half.

Actually about half of the internet uses use Facebook every single month. If you include the number of people with a Facebook account that do not use it monthly, that total number is obviously higher, not lower.

Since your link estimates 3.4 billion users (half of which is 1.7 billion), and 1.65 billion use it every month, that's almost exactly half. Again, this is only monthly active users, and not total users.

total users also is no relevant messurement tho. I have had about 10-20 accounts so far (as you need this shit for everything) but never actually _used_ facebook. But i see your point.

But it's a more open platform than the alternatives, with live posting there are practically no gatekeepers, and it's hard take things back - cell phone videos that aren't published are much more likely to be suppressed, or have their release delayed reducing the sense of public urgency. A few ads on the screen don't change the impact.

I too think that Twitter would fit this niche perfectly with their live stream environment that also works as expected with higher loads and the way that nobody gets forced to register just to consume.

I also don't see how news work where those who post the most (usually those with the weakest quality) are ranked better than anyone else. Their current platform/algo is simply not suiteable for such things.

I don't see how Facebook provides any benefit other than live streaming, what is not exactly rocket science.

News today is such a waste of time. Live news is an even bigger waste.

The reporting, the outrage, the novelty, the opinions are all so over the top one would think, the lack of value produced would actually cause the entire news system to fall apart.

But instead I see more and more people just jumping in to prop these models of outrage, unqualified opinion, celebrity culture and worship up. Its all very sickening.

It does not seem like things will change until the masses (especially those with money and influence) reject such low standards and demand something better. Any ideas? I'm thinking something along the lines of intellectuals and entertainers forming a coalition along some hard-to-define shared interests.

Those interests are so hard to define because success in the modern era depends on such sensationalism.

I think something is required to drive home the point to people who don't know better what a waste of time all this stuff is.

Even sites like hacker news (where you would think things can be different) seem to send a signal that if you don't check us out everyday you are missing stuff.

Nobody really needs to be checking hackernews everyday. Seriously. But for some reason we have this need too. And there is no reason to feed that need. Especially when it wastes everyones time. Even when there is something interesting on here, I feel my time being wasted wading through ever increasing unnecessary commentary. I'd like to see a system that deletes 80% of commentary just like StackOverflow works. If you don't know what you are talking about there should be a separate space for that. Probably IRC or a chat room.

I also don't like these karma and upvote/downvote systems that every news related site seems obligated to implement. The kind of people who fixate on these numbers also turn into the biggest contributors on these sites. And that's artificial and doesn't reflect society at all.

Sites like Hacker News actually do force you to check every day as there is no way to see the content from previous days. Technically the content exists, but it becomes noise as the actual value of the site is the ranking that lets me see what people were interested in, not the raw list of all stories, and the ranking is live and "rots" over time.

This is no longer true. A new feature release [0] now allows you to view page 1 of HN for a given date.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675

I've been wondering: can Facebook prevent news media from rebroadcasting their Facebook Live videos? It seems that currently news outlets can rebroadcast as they like, but if this could changed legally, it seems FB could extract subscription fees from news networks to use their video. This type of scenario would cement FBL as a core service for TV news and could be a nice recurring revenue stream for FB--at least until traditional TV news disappears completely (no tears shed here).

Probably not, unless they add a clause in their ToS saying they have an exclusive licence to whatever is uploaded to Facebook live. I don't think they'll do that though because everyone will be up in arms about it.

Yeah bad bad bad news. Anti trust already have prob regulating media co mergers and media cos are not super smart. FB having this kind of power... shudder

The amount of engineering that has gone into this is incredible.

It's true Facebook is poised to become a huge source of news and information sharing. It would be great if they could release clear guidelines regarding the type of content allowed on Facebook Live, however doing so might reduce their control as they'd have to answer to those very guidelines.

https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards

Completely forgot about those. Thanks

Are news networks ready to change their news reporting format? I am seriously too impatient for it when live to the point news and 10 second to the point snaps are available

Facebook no, Twitter could have been, but they focused on stickers and magic ponies instead of solving discoverability.

>so there's no way to suppress the footage

What? I tried to watch one of the videos through a FB link (linked from HN) and FB returned a page saying the video was gone. FB is not anti-censorship; what makes you think that they are?

Hmm: HN bug. Why did this comment go under the root post instead if the comment I replied to?

The news people I know are all saying this now.

iOS 10 will have immediate direct video transmission built-in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com