Facebook: WORK WITH US OR DIE Threatens Press saying: ‘Work with us or end up in a hospice’
WORK WITH US OR DIE Facebook threatens Press saying:
‘Work with us or end up in a hospice’
Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships, is
said to have told a group of Australian media executives that their businesses
would die without their help
By Natasha Clark 14th August 2018, 3:36 pm
FACEBOOK has been accused of threatening media firms into
working with them by saying their businesses would end up "in a
hospice" if they didn't.
Campbell Brown, Facebook's global head of news
partnerships, is said to have told a group of Australian media executives that
their businesses would die without their help, and that Mark Zuckerberg
"doesn't care" about publishers.
According to The Australian, as part of a four-hour
closed-door meeting with Ms Brown, the top exec for the social media giant
said: "We will help you revitalise journalism … in a few years the reverse
looks like I’ll be holding your hands with your dying business like in a
hospice."
Five sources present at the meeting confirmed the
comments.
She was also reported to have said: "Mark Zuckerberg
doesn't care about publishers but is giving me a lot of leeway and concessions
to make these changes".
She added: "“We are not interested in talking to you
about your traffic and referrals anymore. That is the old world and there is no
going back – Mark wouldn’t agree to this.”
Facebook strongly denies the reports and said the quotes
were "not accurate" and have been "taken out of context."
But they have not released transcripts of the meeting.
The social media firm has been under fire to do more to
tackle fake news, as reports show that most people get their news from sites
like Facebook.
A House of Commons probe recently said the tech giants
must do more to root out harmful content and dodgy adverts.
And they've spent millions publishing adverts showing the
public how to spot false stories.
But Facebook's top bosses have said its not their
responsibility to do so.
Samidh Chakrabarti said that the firm "don't want to
be the arbiters of truth" even if their site lets fake stories get shared.
All the while under-pressure newspapers are fighting to
stay in business - and 40 locals closed in 2017.
Ms Brown added in response to the reports: "These
quotes are simply not accurate and don’t reflect the discussion we had in the
meeting.
"We know there’s much more to do, but our goal at
Facebook — what the team works on every day with publishers and reporters
around the world — is to help journalism succeed and thrive, both on our
platform and off.
"That means a new focus on building sustainable
business models, and that’s what the discussion was about."
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