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Comment by bhhaskin | Hacker News Reader

I find it fascinating that media companies like news papers have completely tied their success to a 3rd party platform like Facebook. They have essentially given all of the publishing power to Facebook. AMP is another one that comes to mind.

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They didn't do it willingly. Facebook drew the news readers away from the publishers, and the publishers had to follow the readers.

Then they're not publishers anymore. Facebook decides what can be seen, and thus facebook is now the publisher.

Facebook isn't the publisher. They aren't producing the content. They are just another distributor...albeit a very large one.

Distributor is not quite right.

If I run a shop that sells magazines, and I order a four magazines to fill some rack space in the shop the distributor does not decide to send you two and black hole the rest of your order.

They send you what you ordered.

Facebook is not a distributor. They are acting as gatekeepers, too.

Came here to say the same thing, except with me it's more of a facepalm type of thing. To see a major newspaper allow its business model to depend on an arbitrary, self-interested black box... groveling for views... wasting time analyzing it... complaining about it like a typical user (like a bitch, if you'll forgive me) is frustrating to watch.

I have a strong distaste for FB as much as the next HNer, but you have to go to where the potential customers are and an enormous amount happen to be and stay entirely on FB.

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