Inside PR 475: Car crashes all the time?

• • Inside PR, Show Notes

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Ev Williams reminds us about what the Internet can and should be. Worth considering. Society & Data issues a report on Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online. Worth Reading. Is Pinterest Shazam for Food? Worth sampling. Facebook struggles with community standard and keeps marching forward in video. Worth a time out? And MP3 is dead. Worth debunking.

Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are together for another episode of the Inside PR podcast.

Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online

Data & Society, the New York-based research institute has published a new study, Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online, which every person interested in today’s media environment should read. Media manipulation techniques are being used by a wide swathe of groups, such as the alt-right, Men’s Rights Activists, gamergaters and trolls. They observe one another, adopt techniques and adapt them to achieve their objectives. The report is well-researched and cites several recent case studies, including Hillary’s Health and Pizzagate. Well worth a couple hours of your time to read.

Pinterest: Shazam for Food?

Do you use Pinterest to share food, recipes and dining experiences? A huge number of people do, including Gini Dietrich. In fact, Pinterest reports over 5 billion food-related saves and searches by US-based users in the past year. And now Pinterest has introduced new tools, including visual Lens discovery, Recipe Pins and search filters to make it easier for users to post, promote and find food and related recipes.

Facebook keeps the focus on video

Three additional Facebook innovations in video are worth noting this week:

Facebook’s community standards guidelines

If every there were doubt that Facebook is operating as a publisher, it was put to rest once and for all by the publication by the Guardian of leaked community standards guidance documents used by Facebook content moderators. As we have argued repeatedly, Facebook is not just a carrier, a dumb pipeline. It is a publisher. And that starts with its algorithms that incorporate the judgments of their creators and it now extends to the increasingly high profile work of their content moderators.

MP3 is dead. Long live MP3

Yep, many tech media outlets were suckered by a self serving corporate position. Yes, the patent on MP3s has expired. Yes, the company that owned the patents no longer will profit from the patent. But that doesn’t mean that MP3 is dead as a standard anymore than JPG is dead as a standard. The patent may have expired on both formats, but they will live on. Why? Because they do the job they are intended to do – and that’s good enough. Sometimes, “good enough” technology is all we need, and its simplicity and widespread adoption will keep it alive indefinitely. So, ignore the stories about the death of MP3. You don’t need a replacement. It’s not going anywhere. And for an intelligent explanation of this, take a look at Marco Arment’s post.

Car crashes all the time

Ignore the clickbait headline in the New York Times. Read the article. Respect for Ev Williams, who embodies the idealism that the Web is built on. We can do better than the ad-driven, clickbaity environment we find ourselves in. Let’s join Ev in not be satisfied until the Web is again a place to create amazing content and to be able to share ideas.

It’s your turn.

Our hashtag is #IPRMustKnow.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on Apple Podcasts

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe on the podcast app of your choice

We’re trying to be wherever you want us to be. So, you can subscribe to Inside PR on the most popular podcast apps.

******************************************************************

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.