Journalism (and more): "Facebook is eating the world" (FB)

And it is not good.
As noted in the intro to last November's "Intimacy and Facebook Creepiness (FB)"

We know Facebook's ultimate strategy is to convince their users that it is the internet, that there is no need to go anywhere else, and hey, why are you leaving so soon, but along the way it seems they also want to convince users that it is human.
Yuck...

Seriously, who has the time for a world that's Zucks?

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

SOMETHING REALLY DRAMATIC is happening to our media landscape, the public sphere, and our journalism industry, almost without us noticing and certainly without the level of public examination and debate it deserves. Our news ecosystem has changed more dramatically in the past five years than perhaps at any time in the past five hundred. We are seeing huge leaps in technical capability—virtual reality, live video, artificially intelligent news bots, instant messaging, and chat apps. We are seeing massive changes in control, and finance, putting the future of our publishing ecosystem into the hands of a few, who now control the destiny of many.

Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything. It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security. The phone in our pocket is our portal to the world. I think in many ways this heralds enormously exciting opportunities for education, information, and connection, but it brings with it a host of contingent existential risks.

Journalism is a small subsidiary activity of the main business of social platforms, but one of central interest to citizens.

The internet and the social Web enable journalists to do powerful work, while at the same time helping to make the business of publishing journalism an uneconomic venture.

Two significant things have already happened that we have not paid enough attention to:

First, news publishers have lost control over distribution.

Social media and platform companies took over what publishers couldn’t have built even if they wanted to. Now the news is filtered through algorithms and platforms which are opaque and unpredictable. The news business is embracing this trend, and digital native entrants like BuzzFeed, Vox and Fusion have built their presence on the premise that they are working within this system, not against it.

Second, the inevitable outcome of this is the increase in power of social media companies.....MORE

HT: The Big Picture although he doesn't say where he saw it so I can't do a HT chain.

Related:
Content Wars: Publishing’s future is Facebook’s past.
"UPDATED--Journalism: Facebook Is About To Jump Into Content, Big Time".
Disintermediation and Reintermediation: "Life on the post-Facebook internet"
"Facebook Would Like a Monopoly on Your Entire Life" (FB; GOOG)
CJR: "The most concerning element of Facebook’s potential new power" (FB)
"Can Silicon Valley disrupt journalism if journalists hate being disrupted?"
Facebook To Decide Which News Sites Live, Which News Sites Die
On the web no one can hear you scream. 
"Guess what, journalism companies? Facebook is going to be your biggest competitor in the long run"
"May the Ox of Journalism Always Be Yoked To the Cart of Commerce."
and quite a few more, use the search blog box if interested.