PROVIDENCE – In a time of enhanced social media presence, when Facebook and Twitter have replaced most news media as being the place where folks get their daily news flow, ecoRI News has decided to take a two-week hiatus from posting its content on Facebook, unhappy with the platform’s troubling behavior in its refusal to take responsibility for controlling the spread of deliberate lies and misinformation.

Given the triple whammy of the coronavirus pandemic, the massive wave of unemployment and the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers, the willingness to wrestle with what it means to engage with the community – and whether Facebook is the best place to conduct that engagement – is a discussion worth having, in ConvergenceRI’s opinion. The question, of course, is this: How do you have that conversation in a time of social distancing?

Here is the rationale that ecoRI News publisher Joanna Detz published on Twitter, explaining the decision.

“It’s been an ongoing conversation here at EcoRI News whether or not to leave Facebook,” she began.

“On one hand. Facebook allows us to distribute our content to a wider audience. However, many people simply like or comment on a post without actually clicking the link to read the story. And Facebook’s algorithms are such that many of our fans never ever see our content.”

Furthermore, Detz continued, “Facebook has engaged in troubling behavior with respect to data security of its users, the spread of misinformation, and an abdication of responsibility when it comes to violent content and misinformation.”

Just this past week, Detz explained, “The company took a hands-off approach to the President’s inflammatory post about protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Internally, we wonder if we’re contributing to the deterioration of media, civic discourse, and democracy by feeding our content for free into the maws of Facebook.”

As a result, Detz said: “We’re going to take a two-week break from this space and see how not posting impacts our content engagement and web traffic as we reassess how Facebook [and Instagram, which is directly controlled by Facebook], fits into our nonprofit news model and our values as an organization.”

Detz added the caveat that it was still possible to get content from ecoRI News on a daily and weekly basis, suggested that folks could bookmark the environmental news platform’s homepage, which is updated daily, or become a subscriber to the free weekly e-newsletter, which currently has about 13,000 subscribers.

To better understand the bold move by ecoRI News to disengage with Facebook for two weeks, ConvergenceRI spoke with Detz about the reasons behind the decision.

ConvergenceRI: It is a really strong move to disengage from Facebook. What prompted your decision?
DETZ: It’s something we’ve been thinking about since the 2016 Presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica data breach [where personal data was shared by Facebook for political mining purposes, allowing its use to be weaponized].

Facebook has positioned itself as a publisher without any of the liabilities [around content] that a publisher has to assume. Our decision came after an internal conversation that has been going on for a while.

Facebook is obviously a way to reach an audience that is beyond our walls and our [more than] 13,000 newsletter subscribers. It is a hard decision for us, so we decided to try it out for two weeks and get some feedback from our readers and see what people say on social media platforms.

We’ll look at how it impacts our traffic and then make an assessment about whether Facebook readers are thoroughly engaged or they are just “liking” and responding to comments – without ever reading the content.

ConvergenceRI: Was there something in particular that made you take the decision to disengage from Facebook now?
DETZ: Mark Zuckerberg [the founder and CEO of Facebook] failed to assume any responsibility for President Trump’s post that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” In contrast, Jack Dorsey [the CEO of Twitter] flagged it.

That was the last straw. We are seeing the value of advertising in news platforms eroding, with content and advertising moving to Facebook. But having access to a “bigger” audience, I’m not sure what that gets you.

Advertisers are more interested in loyalty and engagement on Facebook that they can easily target geographically.

ConvergenceRI: Can you explain a bit more what you mean about the value of advertising?
DETZ: The model of advertising as a source of funding for journalism is going by the wayside. You have to ask: what is the value of the audience on Facebook? You want as many people as possible to read your articles. But, for a niche publication like ours, we’re never going to be the newspaper of record; we’re not going to replace The Providence Journal.

But, why do we have to be there?

ConvergenceRI: It is a question that I have often wrestled with myself. It is frustrating when people on Facebook post their likes or respond to other people’s comments, but never actually read the story.
DETZ: Why are we giving free content to the for-profit Frankenstein monster, a publisher that doesn’t have to play by the same rules?

It’s completely fractured. Why is it so addictive for people to get “likes” or posts that are shared? It seems to create an endomorphin rush. The power of the click is slick, like candy.

ConvergenceRI: Coffee is addictive, too.
DETZ: But coffee isn’t causing democracy to come apart at the seams.

Fight for a more human future
The conversation with Detz changed course, away from the specific decision ecoRI News had made, into a broader discussion of social media.

I suggested that Detz read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power, by Shoshana Zuboff. It is the kind of massive tome that defies a simplistic equation of likes on Facebook or encapsulated descriptions on Twitter.

“Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data,” Zuboff wrote. The collection of information becomes “proprietary behavioral surplus” that are then fabricated into “prediction products” that anticipate what you will do now, soon and later, according to Zuboff. It has created a new kind of marketplace that Zuboff has called a “behavioral futures markets.”

Translated, if you were to purchase a Weber Grill online, you would immediately see sponsored ads on your Facebook page for Weber products. Everything you do online is captured, measured, and analyzed in an algorithm predicting future behaviors. The consequences, of course, are much more sinister in terms of how data is being captured and mined for political operations, particularly to promote misinformation.

In health care, John Moore III of Chilmark Research recently advertised a webinar entitled, “The Essentials of Health AI in a Post-Pandemic World.”

“Health care analytics reveal that people are postponing medical appointments and everything from knee replacements to colonoscopies since the lockdown began in early March,” Moore wrote. “In fact, diagnosis of heart disease is down 37 percent, cancer diagnoses are down 35 percent, and stroke-related diagnoses are down 38 percent.”

Moore continued: “Unfortunately, this is likely to be a precursor of substantial strain to our health care system – as patients begin to suffer the consequences of delayed care. During this webinar, hear from experts on how advanced analytics incorporating AI can be utilized to triage patients and make sure the right ones are prioritized as we begin our return to ‘normal’ operations.”

Articulating the challenge
As a publisher, navigating the relationship with social media is a constant challenge. There is the illusion of connecting with a greater audience, much like the brass ring on the carousel rides of painted ponies, with the promise that if you can reach out far enough you can grab the ring, even though, in reality, you are merely traveling up and down, round and round in a circle game, without actually going anywhere.

There are armies of social media cheerleaders, ready to retweet and “like” posts, in support of positions by political candidates and elected officials and members of the news media, shouting woo-hoo at glimmers of news reports that support their political agenda. Instead of encouraging conversation in the public square, it becomes more like the canned laughter soundtrack in a situation comedy, with someone holding up the cue sign: You’re supposed to laugh and applaud now. And, of course, there are the trolls and bots.

Measuring value
The story published by ConvergenceRI that received the most play in the last year [more than 20,000 shares] was a piece written by a Providence schoolteacher, outraged at a news conference called by Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza in front of Hope High School, in which she laid bare what was actually happening in the classrooms. Despite all the hoopla and media coverage around the Providence schools following the release of the Johns Hopkins study and the speaking tour of the new state commissioner of education, Angelica Infante-Green, what the teachers had to say was something that had not been heard or listened to, and the story told in the voice of a teacher resonated with thousands. How could she have been left out of the conversation?

In terms of value, the average time spent reading a feature story in ConvergenceRI during the last year is north of five minutes, with some in-depth stories reaching an average of more than eight minutes, a remarkable piece of analytical data, which speaks to the continuing value of the content and its retention in a world driven by immediate gratification.

The question is: How do you have a conversation about something you haven’t read, haven’t listened to?

Trouble coming every day
As in other cities across the nation, thousands descended on the State House in Providence on Friday, June 5, to articulate the belief that “black lives matter,” in a civil protest marking an inflection point in how we talk about race and violence and policing policies. The story was covered in breathless breaking news fashion by the local media, including the moment when Gov. Gina Raimondo emerged from the State House to address the throng.

At one point, the dialogue between the news anchors back in the studio at WPRI and the reporter on the State House steps, Kim Kalunian, was about whether or not Kalunian had heard what the Governor was saying, and Kalunian responded, saying it was about 50-50, given the protesters’ refusal to be silent. Kalunian then reported that one of the protesters had shouted back at the Governor during the tumultuous scene: “Now you know what it is like not to be listened to.” Indeed.

Did Kalunian, in her insightful reporting, make the next leap in her own self-awareness? Would the “eyewitness” news team acknowledge and take to heart that they were a big part of the problem, amplifying the voices of those who have no problem being heard, while excluding so many whose voices are never listened to or heard? Good questions.

Organizations – including United Way of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Foundation, the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown University, Care New England, and the R.I. Attorney General’s Office, among numerous others – issued statements in support of efforts to engage in a sustainable conversation about the country’s future.

“We find ourselves in an incredibly challenging time, but the rage and civil unrest that we are witnessing across the country and at our own doorstep, following the senseless killing of George Floyd, is not new,” wrote Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation. “Ingrained, systemic racism and the impact of that on the Black community in our country is pervasive and unacceptable.”

Steinberg continued: “We recognize that the calls of the Black community have gone unheard for far, far too long. Centuries too long. The fight for full humanity for Black community members is imperative.”

The question is worth repeating: How do you have a conversation about something you haven’t read, haven’t listened to? And, adding for the news media, not reported on?

Selective hearing
In the aftermath of the protests and demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers, I considered posting the YouTube video of “Trouble Coming Every Day,” recorded on the first album of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, “Freak Out,” in 1966, which was Zappa’s take about the “riots” in Watts in Los Angeles and his biting lyrics about the way the riots were portrayed on TV.

You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head begin to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
The newsman say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so

And further they assert
That any show they’ll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They will be the first to tell,
Because the boys they got downtown
Are workin’ hard and doin' swell,
And if anybody gets the news
Before it hits the street,
They say that no one blabs it faster
Their coverage can’t be beat

And if another woman driver
Gets machine-gunned from her seat
They’ll send some joker with a brownie
And you'll see it all complete

It seems remarkable how little has changed in 54 years since the song was first recorded. A big difference is that today, with phones being able to record incidents on video, the citizens have become the reporters, capturing what the news media often misses or excludes, and what the authorities often deny until confronted with the video evidence.

I decided against posting the link, except on a friend’s page, where she had posted “For what it’s worth,” by Buffalo Springfield. The reality was that I understood that few folks would actually click on the link and listen and watch the YouTube video, no matter how relevant it was. The song lives on in galaxy of experiences long ago and far away from the immediacy of the social media savvy crowd. [For those willing to take the challenge, see link below to YouTube video, "Trouble Coming Every Day."]