This is an open letter to Robert Thompson of NewsCorp. There is no link on your webpage on how to contact you so I thought I would write a letter. Sort of “old-school” don’t you think? I recently read Fake News and the Digital Duopoly in the April 5th version of the Wall Street Journal. Found it on a cafe table. Great op-ed, and I agree with everything in it. Clear and crisp writing and the article shed much needed light on lots of things.
Fake News and the Digital Duopoly
Google and Facebook have created a dysfunctional and socially destructive information ecosystem
Robert Thompson – Wall Street Journal
“publishers will routinely and selectively “unpublish” certain views and news.”
Robert Thompson – Fake News and the Digital Duopoly Wall Street Journal
I posted a piece on Facebook that was critical of Facebook and Google, the gist of which was just making sure all my “friends” know that Google and Facebook are private companies and that the space is NOT public and that they gather and mine your intimate personal history starting with – of course your birthday. This post of course disappeared from my history a few months later… never to be found again.
Your business model can’t be based on both intimate, gradual details about users and no clue whatsoever about rather obvious pirate sites.
I hate to tell you Mr. Thompson. Google and YouTube are the pirates. YouTube is one massive landscape of unlimited counterfeit movies and music. That should be the first thing addressed. It is called the revising of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is wishful thinking that this will happen by the sense of goodwill and altruism of YouTube.
Read about it here –
https://sfjournal.net/blog/breaking-news-after-over-8-years-googles-content-id-system-is-still-in-beta/
and