“Hey, Guys”: the latest on YouTube, Facebook oversight and more
YouTube is a huge source of news, Facebook gets a hostile oversight board. Just another Tuesday in the digital culture wars.
Are we underestimating YouTube as a news conduit?
As I write this, I'm revising (and revising and revising) my slides for my first two lectures at City this year. All Zoom, of course, with no plans for me to meet this year's cohort in person this side of Christmas. So, it's handy to get some timely research on where people get their news, prior to my session on news video trends. Sadly, COVID-19 plans mean that someone else will be teaching the hands-on video work. I'll be doing the context and theory.
And part of that context is that YouTube often gets forgotten, as it isn't really seen as social media. It's worth remembering that it's arguably the second biggest search engine in the world.
Who oversees the oversight board?
Facebook loves to tell a good story, and then not actually do anything. For example, it set up an independent oversight board — which won't actually go into effect until after the US presidential election, although it might start meeting next month. No rush, eh, Mark?
And so, some of the company's fiercest critics have launched their own alternative oversight board: the Real Facebook Oversight Board. It's going to meet online, publically, once a week. Casey Newton characterises it as an art project or stunt (maybe he's the only one allowed to lead negative coverage of Facebook now? 😇). It feels more like a way of keeping Facebook's missteps firmly in the news, and making it harder for the networking behemoth to move the story on.
It reminds me a little of the Independent SAGE group in the UK, set up as a public-facing alternative to the closed-doors scientific advisory group the government rely on. And that shouldn't be a surprise — the same group, The Citizens, is behind both.
Useful Virtual Event Stuff
There's some useful advice in here — better than most of the generic pablum doing the rounds about online events, certainly.
Quick hits
- 🕵️♀️ The seven habits of successful journalists — a new academic year curtain raiser from Paul Bradshaw
- ⌨ More on the SubStack boom from Axios
- 🇺🇸 The "cockamamie TikTok deal fails on every measure".
- 🇮🇳 Messaging app Telegram is the new misinformation conduit in India.
- 🇬🇧 One perspective on the spat between Twitter campaigners, The Spectator and the Co-op
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