[seedig] Food for thought for next SEEDIG

Thu Nov 16 17:09:54 CET 2017

Statistic is a miracle, sooner or later must be something unusual… Do not warry Dusan, everybody understood it who saw my mail

Pozdrav/regards

Nenad

From: Dusan Stojicevic [mailto:dusan at dukes.in.rs] 
Sent: Thursday, 16 November, 2017 15:50
To: 'Nenad Marinkovic'; 'Dušan Caf'; seedig at rnids.rs
Subject: RE: [seedig] Food for thought for next SEEDIG

Dear all,

Just to answer about Zuckerberg on the mailing list – I have responded with “reply all” and you received this mail.

It’s probably some goblins in your mail client, but mailing list is not doing any censorship on mails J

Cheers,

Dusan

From: seedig [mailto:seedig-bounces at lists.rnids.rs] On Behalf Of Nenad Marinkovic
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2017 10:32 AM
To: 'Dušan Caf' <dusan.caf at gmail.com>; seedig at rnids.rs
Subject: Re: [seedig] Food for thought for next SEEDIG

I tried to use as usual, “reply all” option but did not get seedig address in “to” field, only Dušan? Maybe some Zuckerberger turned me off?

I would prefer to consider this issue like statistical thing, because for FB statistics are main issue. Maybe Serbia is chosen for test because there are lot of FB subscribers? Maybe it is a compliment that feedback from Serbia is relevant  for global statistics? 

When you dig own garden, nobody ask where to dig apple, grape or corn or flower….

My children (students) told me that trend is to move posts from FB to Instagram and other social networks and services, children run away from parents on social networks, so there is still lot of space for public influence and freedom without  FB, economy will follow this trend also…

Pozdrav/regards

Nenad

From: seedig [mailto:seedig-bounces at lists.rnids.rs] On Behalf Of Dušan Caf via seedig
Sent: Thursday, 16 November, 2017 09:36
To: 
Subject: Re: [seedig] Food for thought for next SEEDIG

Dear Valentina, all,

The article written by the editor in chief of KRIK points to a very important issue. Giant social networks have gained a monopoly power worldwide and are here to stay. More importantly, we shouldn’t consider them merely as “private” technical platforms but rather focus on how technologies such as algorithms and machine learning are affecting communities and societies. In order to understand the broader impact of algorithms we should look at them holistically and consider them in a larger context of power relationships between people as well as between industries or individual businesses.

Opposite to Domen’s opinion (i.e. »Betting on a private digital network of a private American company and thinking it's public is just “bad business”«), for a growing number of news organisations investing in social platforms is the only prospect for a sustainable future. We are witnessing their increasing dependency on these platforms. As there is no viable alternative (yet), it is important to discuss their impact on communities and societies.

The platforms have successfully grown in the environment of pre-internet laws, free of any regulation faced e.g. by the media industry or several other industries. They have now become giant monopolies and expanded into areas where their collaboration with governments and other stakeholders is critical. 

I agree that SEEDIG is a good place for conversations on regulation of social networks and other platforms.

Best regards,

Dušan

On 16 Nov 2017, at 08:33, valentina hvale pellizzer <valentina at oneworldplatform.net> wrote:

Would love to talk more on this, regardless of our personal thinking on specific journalists :) 

the experiment in itself is frightening, the lack of debate in our own communities should be addressed and reflected upon, it call for a reflection on access, knowledge and power, where the countries targeted are targeted also because of their "less relevance"= power to contest / resists / respond ...

SEEDIG is a good place for a conversation on the ethics and the respect of Human rights by corporation, there is a debate going on and developments :

https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/council-of-europe-partners-with-leading-technology-companies-to-promote-respect-for-human-rights

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22163 <http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22163&LangID=E> &LangID=E

best, hvale

On 11/16/2017 08:10 AM, Domen Savič wrote:

I love Stevan but I think he's dead wrong on this one. Bettting on a private digital network of a private American company and thinking it's public is just "bad business". 

On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 7:09 AM, valentina hvale pellizzer <valentina at oneworldplatform.net> wrote:

It's horrific, sharing a text by one of the best journalist and alternative media from Serbia

hvale

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/opinion/serbia-facebook-explore-feed.html

On 11/15/2017 07:01 PM, Nenad Marinkovic wrote:

It’s a thin line between private and public internet or free of charge and quality is never on the same side 

Pozdrav/regards

Nenad

From: seedig [mailto:seedig-bounces at lists.rnids.rs] On Behalf Of Andrea Beccalli via seedig
Sent: Wednesday, 15 November, 2017 14:24
To: seedig at rnids.rs
Subject: [seedig] Food for thought for next SEEDIG

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/opinion/serbia-facebook-explore-feed.html#story-continues-1

Best, 

Andrea 

-- 

Andrea Beccalli

Director Stakeholder Engagement, Europe

ICANN

Hey, Mark Zuckerberg: My Democracy Isn’t Your Laboratory

By STEVAN DOJCINOVICNOV. 15, 2017

Continue reading the main story <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/opinion/serbia-facebook-explore-feed.html#story-continues-1> Share This Page

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CreditDale Edwin Murray

BELGRADE, Serbia — My country, Serbia, has become an unwilling laboratory for Facebook’s experiments on user behavior — and the independent, nonprofit investigative journalism organization where I am the editor in chief is one of the unfortunate lab rats.

Last month, I noticed that our stories had stopped appearing on Facebook as usual. I was stunned. Our largest single source of traffic, accounting for more than half of our monthly page views, had been crippled.

Surely, I thought, it was a glitch. It wasn’t.

Facebook had made a small but devastating change. Posts made by “pages” — including those of organizations like mine — had been removed from the regular News Feed, the default screen users see when they log on to the social media site. They were now segregated into a separate section called Explore Feed that users have to select before they can see our stories. (Unsurprisingly, this didn’t apply to paid posts.)

It wasn’t just in Serbia that Facebook decided to try this experiment with keeping pages off the News Feed. Other small countries that seldom appear in Western headlines — Guatemala, Slovakia, Bolivia and Cambodia — were also chosen by Facebook for the trial <https://media.fb.com/2017/10/23/clarifying-recent-tests/> .

Continue reading the main story <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/opinion/serbia-facebook-explore-feed.html#story-continues-1> 

Some tech sites have reported that this feature might eventually be rolled out to Facebook users in the rest of the world, too. But of course no one really has any way of knowing what the social media company is up to. And we don’t have any way to hold it accountable, either, aside from calling it out publicly. Maybe that’s why it has chosen to experiment with this new feature in small countries far removed from the concerns of most Americans.

But for us, changes like this can be disastrous. Attracting viewers to a story relies, above all, on making the process as simple as possible. Even one extra click can make a world of difference. This is an existential threat, not only to my organization and others like it but also to the ability of citizens in all of the countries subject to Facebook’s experimentation to discover the truth about their societies and their leaders.

Serbia is a perfect example of why the political context of Facebook’s experimentation matters. Serbia escaped the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, but it hasn’t developed into a fully functioning democracy <https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/serbia> . One party, led by President Aleksandar Vucic, controls not only the Parliament but also the whole political system <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/opinion/a-serbian-election-erodes-democracy.html?_r=0> . Our country has no tradition of checks and balances. Mr. Vucic now presents himself as progressive and pro-European, but as minister of information in the Milosevic government, he was responsible for censoring news coverage.

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Today, censorship in Serbia takes a softer form. Pliant outlets loyal to the government receive preferential treatment and better funding from local and central budgets. Those that stray out of line find themselves receiving unexpected visits from the tax inspectors.

This isn’t an easy place to be an independent journalist. Since 2015, my investigative nonprofit, KRIK <https://www.krik.rs/en/> , has covered stories the mainstream media won’t touch. In return, we have been spied on and threatened, and have had lurid fabrications about our private lives splashed on the front page of national tabloids <https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/04/serbia-portal-investigative-journalism-became-target-pro-government-tabloid/> .

Last year, KRIK published an investigation <https://www.krik.rs/en/serbia-skeletons-in-the-closet-how-did-the-health-minister-get-an-apartment/>  showing that when he was a young surgeon, Zlatibor Loncar, who is now minister of health, had been contracted by a gang to kill one of its enemies, according to court testimony by protected witnesses. You’d think the story of a future minister administering poison through an IV would make a splash — but the mainstream outlets ignored it.

Going to KRIK’s website is the only way Serbian citizens could learn the truth about that story and many others like it. And until last month, most of our readers went to our site via Facebook.

Facebook allowed us to bypass mainstream channels and bring our stories to hundreds of thousands of readers. But now, even as the social network claims to be cracking down on “fake news,” it is on the verge of ruining us.

That’s why Mark Zuckerberg’s arbitrary experiments are so dangerous. The major TV channels, mainstream newspapers and organized-crime-run outlets will have no trouble buying Facebook ads or finding other ways to reach their audiences. It’s small, alternative organizations like mine that will suffer.

We journalists bear some responsibility for this, too. Using Facebook to reach our readers has always been convenient, so we invested time and effort in building our presence there, helping it become the monster it is today.

But what’s done is done — a private company, accountable to no one, has taken over the world’s media ecosystem. It is now responsible for what happens there. By picking small countries with shaky democratic institutions to be experimental subjects, it is showing a cynical lack of concern for how its decisions affect the most vulnerable.

Now that we’ve seen what Facebook does with its power, we have to figure out how to put it in check. Twitter is Serbia’s second-most-used platform (though a very distant second <http://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/serbia> ). We’ll probably start relying on it more. It may also be time to consider other, more decentralized platforms <https://joinmastodon.org/> .

I’ve always been attracted to alternative scenes. In the 1990s, I ran a small, independent punk magazine. Now, as an investigative editor and reporter, I want to get at the stories the big, timid outlets won’t cover. In a country like Serbia, independent sites like mine, and the few others that survive, are the only places people can learn the truth.

Facebook could be a tool for such alternative spaces to thrive. Instead — at least in Serbia — it risks becoming just another playground for the powerful.

Stevan Dojcinovic (@stevanoccrp <https://twitter.com/stevanoccrp> ) is the editor in chief of KRIK.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion>  and Twitter (@NYTopinion) <http://twitter.com/NYTOpinion> , and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter <http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/opiniontoday/> . 

-- 
valentina pellizzer
President
One World Platform 

https://oneworldplatform.net/

mobile: +387 (0)61 484 038 <tel:+387%2061%20484%20038> 
twitter: @froatosebe

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-- 
valentina pellizzer
President
One World Platform 

https://oneworldplatform.net/

mobile: +387 (0)61 484 038
twitter: @froatosebe

Fingerprint 30AA 9445 D878 A6C9 FE41 E90D 52A5 36A6 B249 EDA9

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