Opinion: Is FB guilty of news paywalls?

1 points by franciscojgo 5 years ago | 1 comment

FB has become the main source of news as everyone is on the platform 24/7 and everyone follows news sites on FB.

Now, FB doesn't revshare (to my understanding) on page posts, only on videos.

This has caused news organizations and quality journalism to lose valuable page views and with that, ad revenue.

It's crazy and sad seeing how quality content MIT, NYT, etc. is paywalled.

Isn't FB guilty of this? Shouldn't FB rev share? They are basically profiting off of other organizations hard work and journalism, while they are simply "the comment section".

We all talk about free college education and how we should strive for that and I believe journalism is just that. It's crazy seeing good news sources not available to the general public freely.

Rant over.

giantg2 5 years ago |

"We all talk about free college education and how we should strive for that ..."

We don't all talk about or strive for that. But that's a bit off topic.

"It's crazy seeing good news sources not available to the general public freely."

Why is this crazy? This has been the norm. Want a newspaper? Have to buy one. Radio and TV emerged as a news source and are still "free" today. Quality papers on the internet have typically been paywalled all the time (think Elsevier etc).

I don't think Facebook is a major news source for everyone. I see local stuff come up often, but it's not the stuff that would typically make the papers. I don't see very much national stuff come up on Facebook. When it does, it's usually low quality, one sided, stuff that someone is using to support a political opinion.