Journalisten nemen ontslag om hun eigen nieuwsbrief te starten

Another factor was just that I’ve been a journalist for 18 years now. The entire time, I’ve been nervous about what’s going on in the ad market. First I saw the web come along and disrupt the print newspapers I was working for. Then the platforms came along and disrupted the digital properties I was working for. Along the way, thousands of really talented journalists lost their jobs. I always wondered if there were alternative business models we could explore, and if they were successful, could we help figure out more sustainable, replicable models for journalists to snap their fingers and create their own jobs?

“What we do is really try to not take a point of view,” the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, told interns during a Q&A on July 7th. “I have a very strong point of view on this president. It’s a personal point of view. It’s one I hold deeply. It’s not one that should enter into my judgments when I’m doing policy changes. … We have to be a neutral platform, and make those decisions coming from a place of rules and principles.”

But that same day, during an all-hands meeting on the release of a multiyear civil rights audit of Facebook, the company’s director of public policy for trust and safety, Neil Potts, told employees just the opposite.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily neutral,” Potts told employees, in response to a question about whether Facebook’s posture of neutrality was “incompatible” with “racial progress.” It was the most upvoted question in an employee poll during the event. Potts responded that Facebook’s commitment to removing hate speech, incitements to violence, and other problematic posts showed that its policies are principled. He noted that the community standards were crafted in consultation with activists and civil society groups around the world. 

“We want to produce a product that is good for our community, and I don’t think that is incompatible with civil rights,” he said.

Uitzondering binnen het Nederlandse beeld is de site van de NOS, met slechts één tracker. Ook andere Europese publiek gefinancierde sites hebben weinig trackers. Hoe meer trackers op een site hoe meer commerciële partijen te weten komen over de internetgangen van bezoekers. In de steekproef hebben het AD.nl, NU.nl, Telegraaf.nl en RTLnieuws.nl er respectievelijk 26, 25, 16 en 25.

We scanned more than 80,000 of the world’s most popular websites with Blacklight and found more than 5,000 were “fingerprinting” users, identifying them even if they block third-party cookies.

We also found more than 12,000 websites loaded scripts that watch and record all user interactions on a page—including scrolls and mouse movements. It’s called “session recording” and we found a higher prevalence of it than researchers had documented before.

More than 200 popular websites used a particularly invasive technique that captures personal information people enter on forms—like names, phone numbers, and passwords—before they hit send. It’s called “key logging” and it’s sometimes done as part of session recording.

Jaron Harambam is socioloog en gepromoveerd op complotdenken. Ook hij denkt niet dat er sprake is van een algehele vertrouwenscrisis, eerder van een vertrouwenskloof: ‘Er heeft door de komst van internet en sociale media een democratisering van de informatievoorziening plaatsgevonden. Doordat mensen makkelijker zelf een mediastation als Café Weltschmerz kunnen opzetten, komt er veel meer en andersluidende informatie in omloop. Je ziet dat een groep mensen daardoor teruggrijpt op traditionele media en die meer gaan vertrouwen, maar ook dat mensen in een aparte bubbel belanden en zo kunnen radicaliseren.’

Costera Meijer: ‘Het ondermijnen van vertrouwen wordt wel een populaire strategie. Dat begon met spinnen in de politiek, maar wordt nu bijvoorbeeld ook overgenomen door boeren die de methoden van het RIVM in twijfel trekken.’

Many Americans remain skeptical toward the news media, questioning not only the quality of journalists’ work but their intentions behind it. For instance, no more than half of U.S. adults have confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public, or think that other Americans have confidence in the institution. And the public is more likely than not to say to say that news organizations do not care about the people they report on.

Most Americans view some level of wariness toward the news media as healthy for a well-functioning society. Overall, 63% of U.S. adults say that, in an ideal world, it is better for society if Americans are skeptical of the news media. Far fewer (36%) say it is better if people are trusting of the news media.