Sunday, September 22, 2019

"Facebook and Google are currently playing their toxic Endgame" (FB; GOOG; TWTR)

From theChive:
By taking it all, the Duopoly actually wins twice. Not only do they kill publishers and take their money, what’s left of the publishers who hang on will have no choice but to attach their skeleton crew to Facebook and Google for life support. Facebook will actually have the balls to play savior by creating, say, a ‘preferred publisher program’, anointing a handful of publishers as partners who will get traffic from FB and just enough ad revenue to survive. Then Facebook’s algorithm will only show you articles from those publishers that their algorithm thinks you want to see. Your entire internet consumption, as well as how you think and feel, will be dictated to you.....
....MUCH MORE

I'm not sure if the facts of the story live up to the headline but on September 20 RT said: 
"Not a free speech platform: Facebook declares it’s a ‘publisher’ & can censor whomever it wants, walking into legal trap"
For years the companies have had it both ways, platform when that furthered their goals, publisher when that suited their rapacious lust for money and power.
Of course in 2018 The Guardian reported the same thing in a different lawsuit:
Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes
But now it seems people are taking notice of the duplicity these companies are founded on.