The gall of FB mentioning the importance of news in a democratic society. They have arguably done irreversible net bad for democracies. Let em bow out.
It benefits them by reducing their exposure to online echo chambers reinforced by fake or extremely biased news that are endemic to Facebook. It benefits them by forcing them to get their news directly from the source rather than wrapped in a context Facebook decides upon. It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news.
And yes I did read it. And I thought critically about it :)
I'd say it's wishful thinking that you believe a majority of the population is going to visit all their news sources directly rather than simply ignore they exist.
News publishers were voluntarily posting on FB themselves to generate traffic to their own sites, it's some warped tough love view to think removing their ability to share content is somehow for their own benefit.
> It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news.
Never stated anything remotely close to infer this false assumption, ironic that in the same breath you're lambasting FB for spreading misinformation.
People won't stop consuming news and they will go where they need to to get it. With FB out of the running I think that means they will likely end up on some mixed diet like a forum (like HN) and getting it from various sources (local,national,etc.) Essentially, I'm less worried about people being uninformed than I am about them being misinformed and I'm afraid that FB has shown to enable misinformation at unprecedented scale thus far. If we can't agree that FB has uniquely played a large role in that then our discussion is rather moot I'm afraid.
Also, that's why I said it "sounds like". I was inferring while being fully aware of your ability to clarify.
