Facebook must decide: Is it for the mob or for democracy? | Monday Note

Post summary: "The crisis in France shows the urgent need for pedagogy. But attempts to explain or educate have no chance to be heard. Political leaders should rethink their approach and Facebook should help."

"Dear news media, consider yourself notified: your posts will have much less reach than they used to. The six largest media organizations in France had a cumulative daily reach of 12 million users, 41 percent of Facebook’s audience. The largest mainstream outlet in France is Le Figaro with 2.27 million unique daily visitors in October; Le Monde has 1.7 million daily uniques, not even 6 percent of Facebook’s audience. But even these figures are misleading: while users will spend more than 50 minutes per day on Facebook, they will allocate just a few minutes to news media. In reality, we are talking single-digit percentage reach for newsrooms that do their best to provide accurate and balanced views of events.
This imbalance of social vs. media also explains the inability to steer the debate toward reason."

Facebook must decide: Is it for the mob or for democracy? | Monday Note