You’ve probably noticed this in the last few weeks on Facebook. Maybe a friend of yours, maybe it’s even you. Someone particularly impassioned about politics, or perhaps someone who usually keeps quiet but has been moved to post all of a sudden. Perhaps the language of it doesn't not really seem like the way your friend usually talks.

It’s a text post, usually a pretty long one. It’s political – but more than just an opinion, a call to action. Maybe it’s instructions of how to call your local legislator, or maybe it’s just instructive in a vaguer sense of like “if you voted for [whoever], fuck off!”

But the last line has an interesting twist: “COPY AND PASTE TO SHARE&033;”

Facebook, of course, has a way for you to share text statuses: the “Share” button. These people know that. They also know that Facebook’s newsfeed has an algorithm, and that algorithm is confusing and opaque. They know some things will get pushed to the top of their friends’ feeds, and some things won’t. The theory here is that a NEW text status, rather than a share of an existing one, will be shown more prominently.

There’s a practical design issue here too: A long text in shared post gets cut off – you have to click to “see more”. In a fresh post, more of the text shows up in your friends’ feeds.

I asked one of my Facebook friends why he was doing it. “[It] came down to how it looks when you share something that is just text on Facebook,” said Preston Olson, 40, of New Jersey. “It just shows only the first line or two. Then you have to click on it, it opens up a new page to get the full text. It’s annoying.” He had posted a long list of political actions since the Women’s March on Washington that he saw as positive (I saw other friends, completely unrelated to Olson, also copy and paste the same text).

People are revolting against the medium to get their message out. We’re starting to fight the tyranny of the feed, the sense that in a deluge of information that our friends see, our own voices won’t cut through.

This isn’t the first time this kind of attempt to game the algorithm has happened. You may have seen a life event update that your friend Got Married, and then in the description something like, “don’t worry, Mom, I’m not really married. I just wanted to tell you all about something very important to me….” People figured out that “life events” like changing your status to engaged or married is hugely prioritized in Facebook’s algorithm, and they used that instead of a text post to write their political screed. Others noticed that even if you didn’t do the full-on “life event” but just MENTIONED words like engaged, married, ring, baby, announcement that Facebook magically knew that this was probably a life event announcement that would be prioritized.

Via businessinsider.com

Losing our voices to the chaos of the feed is a fear to more than just the politically minded among us. Remember the great chaos this spring among C-list celebrities and social media stars when it was announced that Instagram was going to switch to an algorithmic feed? They all posted asking their followers to turn on notifications for their images so that they wouldn’t miss them. Can you imagine? Getting a notification alert on your phone each time a former contestant from The Bachelor posts to Instagram? Hell is truly within our reach.

So why are we seeing this “copy and paste, don’t share&033;” Facebook meme all of a sudden? Well, for one thing, it’s got a built-in call to action to share. That does actually help things go viral. But more than anything, the last two week have stirred some sort of political passion inside people who would normally never bother posting political messages. Innovation springs from need, and these people who have been pushed over the edge into the realm of political posting have invented something new: a way to trick Facebook into pushing their message into your face.

Unfortunately, for those who are allergic to political talk on social media and have been dealing with a full year now of watching relatives and high school friends arguing back and forth, this is just making 2017 worse.

Quelle: <a href="People Are Figuring Out How To Cheat Facebook To Spread Their Political Messages“>BuzzFeed

4. Februar 20174. Februar 2017

da Agency

Amazon Employees Are Trying To Force The Company To Cut Ad Ties With Breitbart

Jeff Bezos at a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City, Dec. 14, 2016.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

As Amazon positions itself as an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, inside the company, dozens of employees are voicing deep concern about another political issue: Amazon’s choice to advertise on Breitbart.com.

According to internal emails and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, employees have begun voicing concerns about the company’s advertising relationship with the provocative far-right website. Some piled on to a complaint ticket in Amazon’s internal issue escalation system urging the company to sever its relationship with Breitbart, the site that former editor and now–Senior White House Advisor Steve Bannon once called “the platform for the alt-right.” Others are taking even stronger stands.

“Without naming names, I can attest that several employees have come to me in the past month questioning this exact point and I’ve stopped them from leaving the company,” one employee wrote on an email chain of worried Amazon employees.

Despite this internal unrest, Amazon has given no indication that it is changing its advertising relationship with Breitbart. Responding to the complaint ticket, Amazon’s ad team said it would not block the site from its program and closed the ticket from further responses. “As per guidance from PR/Policy/Legal, the DA team are not blocking breitbart.com,” Amazon’s ad team wrote. “As per prior guidance ‘our customers are choosing to go there. It is not our place to assume why they're going there, or impose our own standards.’” The ad team did specify that it was looking into a “longer term solution to use a 3rd party brand safety which may block amazon ads from showing up on certain pages on sites like Breitbart in the future.”

Amazon’s human resources department then closed the complaint ticket.

Amazon declined to comment for this story.

Currently, Amazon advertisements that appear on Breitbart are placed there programmatically, meaning they are algorithmically and automatically purchased from third party advertising exchange inventory. The ads are calibrated in such a way that Amazon customers see them on websites they choose to visit. In other words, if no Amazon customers visited Breitbart, no Amazon ads would appear on Breitbart.

While Amazon doesn&039;t have a direct relationship with Breitbart, it does choose which exchanges through which it buys and sells ads, and could potentially earn revenue from Breitbart&039;s audience. Amazon’s Associates program’s rules explicitly state that publishers using its advertising API may not “promote discrimination,” a line item that a number of Amazon employees feel Breitbart violates.

“I actually do believe Amazon does have the right to follow its customers to wherever they may spend their time online, but … I also believe that amazon employees have the right to reject profiting from and funding any website they personally disagree with,” one employee wrote in an email. “It seems evident now that for some current Amazonians, Breitbart is one of those sites.”

Amazon&039;s decision to abruptly close the Breitbart complaint ticket caused confusion among employees advocating for the company to end its advertising relationship with the site.

“I’m deeply, deeply disappointed in Amazon if that’s actually the policy.”

“Maybe I’m misreading this but it sounds like we’ve made a very conscious decision to keep advertising on Breitbart,” one employee wrote. Said another, “I’m deeply, deeply disappointed in Amazon if that’s actually the policy (Amazon would not confirm or deny any policies).”

In a different email on the thread, an employee worried that the decision not to distance itself from Breitbart could hurt the company in the future. “While I understand the business concerns and the current climate make talking about this kind of thing a minefield, we’re rapidly approaching the point where not talking about it will only foment bad blood, and at best we’ll start silently losing customers and employees,” the employee wrote on the internal email chain. “That’s not the Amazon I know.”

Since Trump’s election, a grassroots online protest movement has emerged that’s attempting to cut off advertising revenue to sites it feels promote racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. One anonymous organization that goes by the name of Sleeping Giants has taken to Twitter to exert pressure on advertisers, including Amazon. So far, nearly 400 advertisers, including some prominent brands like Kellogg’s, have pledged to stop ad buys on Breitbart. Externally, frustrations over Amazon’s decision to advertise on Breitbart continue to mount. A quick search of Twitter returns hundreds of tweets urging the company to “join 750+ corporations & stop advertising w/ Breitbart.” A viral petition on the activism site SumOfUs.org titled “Amazon: Stop Investing in Hate” has collected over 311,000 signatures.

The SumOfUs Breitbart petition.

This outcry comes despite Amazon&039;s pointed criticism of President Trump’s refugee ban. On Sunday, CEO Jeff Bezos denounced it in an all-hands message to employees. “This executive order is one we do not support,” he wrote. “Our public policy team in D.C. has reached out to senior administration officials to make our opposition clear. … To our employees in the U.S. and around the world who may be directly affected by this order, I want you to know that the full extent of Amazon’s resources are behind you.” On Tuesday, Amazon joined Expedia to file a sworn statement in Washington state court to aid in the state attorney general’s lawsuit against President Trump&039;s order.

But Amazon’s aggressive stance toward the Trump administration’s refugee order has left concerned employees mystified as to its relationship with Breitbart. “Given HR’s and Jeff’s latest statements on immigration executive order, keeping Amazon ads on Breitbart, a white nationalist website which has been promoting the same hateful rhetoric behind the EO, for years, is directly contradictory to the principles HR and Jeff claim Amazon stands for,” an employee wrote in an internal email. ”The current stance (from the [complaint ticket]) doesn’t make me feel safe as an Amazon employee.”

According to one employee, Bezos’s stance this week on the refugee ban has “empowered more employees to speak up and ask leadership to put their foot down.” A number of employees have asked that the Breitbart complaint ticket be reopened; meanwhile, they are encouraging further participation from employees to “chime in” and voice their opinions about the company’s advertising relationship with Breitbart. A recent internal email obtained by BuzzFeed News suggests that Amazon’s leadership is revisiting the issue. The last update on the closed ticket notes that it was being “converted to a secure ticket as we want to avoid confidential business details on a public internal forum. We are working with colleagues to determine next steps.”

Meanwhile, employees are continuing to pressure leadership with impassioned emails. “We hope for the best, but prepare for the worst,” one employee wrote on an internal email chain this week.

Another chimed in: “Rest assured our children’s children are watching us, in this moment, from the future (assuming we get there).”

Quelle: <a href="Amazon Employees Are Trying To Force The Company To Cut Ad Ties With Breitbart“>BuzzFeed

4. Februar 20174. Februar 2017

da Agency

Here's What Facebook's Live Video Filter Bubble Looks Like

Lam Thuy Vo / BuzzFeed / Via facebook.com

On Jan. 25, at a speech at the Department of Homeland Security, Donald Trump officially announced his executive order to construct a wall along the Mexican border. “We are going to restore the rule of law in the United States,” the president told the room.

The speech was met with, naturally, divided reactions by the press. “Trump Flips Liberals’ Script,” Breitbart’s headline read. Right-wing blog the Gateway Pundit simply said, “IT BEGINS.” The Intercept, meanwhile, decried Trump’s executive order as “appalling” in its headline.

But millions of people chose to skip the media — and its attendant bias — entirely and watch the speech live, via Facebook. There, however, they were greeted with a litany of comments and emoticon reactions, all colored by the point of view of the outlet broadcasting it. As it turns out, escaping the filter bubble is harder than it seems.

Top comments on the livestream on Fox News’ and Fusion’s Facebook pages.

To better understand how different audiences experience the same event on Facebook, BuzzFeed News video captured two different Facebook livestreams of the press conference last Thursday — one from Fox News and one from Fusion. We scraped comments from the two streams and tallied the total number of Facebook reactions (like, love, laugh, angry, sad, and wow). We also collected and compared comments from the moment of the press conference most frequently mentioned and quoted by both right and left-leaning news organizations.

First, one important caveat: The Fox stream reached significantly more people than the Fusion stream did: Fox News had 2.3 million views and 15,675 shares. Fusion had 531,000 views and 4,309 shares by the end of the day of the press conference. Only 2% to 3% of both audiences chose to comment or react to the stream. But those who did had very different emotional reactions to the same speech.

Ninety percent of the roughly 83,000 emotional reactions from Fox News Facebook watchers came in the form of “like” and “love,” with just 5.9% choosing the angry reaction. Viewers of Fusion’s Facebook livestream reacted overwhelmingly negative to the speech. Seventy-one percent of the 14,000-plus viewers who reacted on Fusion’s feed did so angrily; just 22% reacted with “like” or “love.”

Facebook Reactions to President Donald Trump’s Press Conference, by News Organization:

Note: Reactions were measured seven hours after the livestreams on the Fox News and Fusion Facebook pages, respectively, on Jan. 25, 2017. Fox News’ stream received about 83,000 reactions, and Fusion's received roughly 14,000.
Source: Facebook.

Lam Thuy Vo / BuzzFeed News

A similar pattern follows for comments: “About time they get to do their job after eight years of Obama’s reign,” one Fox commenter posted just as Trump pledged to give the nation back control of its borders. At the very same moment, a Fusion commenter wrote, “Omg. He thinks he is a god.”

BuzzFeed News identified the most quoted portion among both right- and left-leaning news outlets to demonstrate the difference in tone between the two feeds.

Below is a side-by-side video comparison of how that quote — “A nation without borders is not a nation. Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders” — played across the two feeds.

Video of Donald Trump’s Remarks About American Borders

View Video ›

video-cdn.buzzfeed.com

Source: Fox News&039; and Fusion&039;s Facebook pages

The result is something akin to a live or real-time filter bubble, where a viewer’s perceptions of a live event are colored by the commentary that surrounds it. It’s a new problem that’s as old as the cable news chyron and the online comment section, but on Facebook, it’s front and center like never before — at times literally scrawled across the viewer’s video feed. And at a time when concerns over media bias are particularly charged, it’s a potent reminder that there’s no such thing as truly raw video on Facebook.

Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s What Facebook&039;s Live Video Filter Bubble Looks Like“>BuzzFeed

3. Februar 20173. Februar 2017

da Agency

Snapchat Wants Its Workers To Call Each Other Out For Food In Their Teeth

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel

Michael Kovac / Getty Images

Letting a coworker know they have food stuck in their teeth might be “a little awkward,” but that kind of candor is an important facet of the creative culture at Snapchat, the social app's parent company revealed on Thursday.

The company, Snap, offered this detail as part of a legal prospectus it filed in anticipation of its IPO. The document, geared toward prospective investors, contained financial information and warnings about possible risks, as well as a series of diagrams showing how to navigate Snapchat&039;s sometimes-baffling interface. But some of the most intriguing disclosures pertained to the culture of the famously secretive company.

Like many tech startups, Snap sees itself as more than just a place where workers punch a clock and collect a paycheck. Instead, the company says, working at Snap means adhering to a particular code of values and beliefs.

“Our team is kind, smart, and creative,” the IPO prospectus reads. “When we say &039;kind,&039; we mean the type of kindness that compels you to let someone know that they have something stuck in their teeth even though it’s a little awkward.”

“We care deeply about kindness because we want to create a space that helps to give our team the courage to create,” the company continued. “We think our team feels comfortable creating new things because they are surrounded by the kindness of their peers and know they have our support.”

But working at Snap doesn&039;t just mean being vigilant about your colleagues&039; oral hygiene. Given the sprawling nature of the company&039;s network of offices, the prospectus says, some employees may not even get the chance to interact at all.

While Snap&039;s main offices are in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, workers are spread across “many office buildings that are dispersed throughout the city,” according to the company. Among the potential side effects? Sadness, isolation, and quitting.

“This diffuse structure may prevent us from fostering positive employee morale and encouraging social interaction among our employees and different business units,” the company says.

“Moreover, because our office buildings are dispersed throughout the area, we may be unable to adequately oversee employees and business functions,” the company continues. “If we cannot compensate for these and other issues caused by this geographically dispersed office structure, we may lose employees, which could seriously harm our business.”

Outlining risks like this is standard practice for a company preparing to go public. Another risk, the company revealed, stems from its own success.

“We have many current employees whose equity ownership in our company gives them a substantial amount of personal wealth,” Snap says in the prospectus, noting that many employees could grow even wealthier after the IPO.

“As a result, it may be difficult for us to continue to retain and motivate these employees, and this wealth could affect their decision about whether they continue to work for us,” the company says.

Still, Snap makes an effort to keep employees happy and loyal. It says it has a “Snap-a-Wish” financial support program, which in the past has provided last-minute plane tickets for an employee during a family emergency, and a rental car to an employee whose car was stolen.

In addition, Snap holds a biweekly “Council” program that lets employees “express themselves and listen to others.”

“We believe that this type of sharing teaches and reminds our team to listen and learn from those around them,” the company says.

Quelle: <a href="Snapchat Wants Its Workers To Call Each Other Out For Food In Their Teeth“>BuzzFeed

3. Februar 20173. Februar 2017

da Agency

10 Big Numbers From Snapchat's IPO Filing

Scott Eisen / Getty Images

Snapchat will soon be traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with its parent company Snap Inc. publishing the paperwork for its initial public offering on Thursday. The company is seeking to raise $3 billion by selling shares to investors. .

The IPO filing revealed all sorts of new information about Snap, giving the public detailed information about the financial health of the company for the first time, among other juicy details. Here are the 10 most essential details from the filing.

1. Snapchat’s daily user growth is flattening

As BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday, Instagram recently overtook Snapchat in the critical time-spent-per-user category. Snap’s filing contains even more concerning details for investors: daily active user growth is flattening, meaning the company may have hit a growth ceiling. “The growth in Daily Active Users was relatively flat in the latter part of the quarter ended September 30, 2016,” the filing said.

The flattening user growth Snap describes coincides with the rise of Instagram Stories, a near-direct clone of Snapchat’s Stories product.

2. Snap lost $514.6 million in 2016

Startups are often comfortable losing money in the pursuit of growth, and Snap is no different. The company generated $404.5 million in revenue in 2016, and reported $924.9 million in expenses. While its 2016 revenue was almost seven times greater than in 2015, Snap warned prospective shareholders that it “may never achieve or maintain profitability.”

3. Spectacles were not a big money maker

Spectacles “has not generated significant revenue for us,” Snap said in the filing. When Spectacles came out, some wondered whether the video-capturing sunglasses were a major new product for Snap or a brilliant marketing device. It seems like it might be the latter.

4. We still don’t know the valuation Snap is seeking

All the details Snap provided will help investors learn more about the company, but the key detail, the amount Snap believes it’s worth, is missing at this point — which isn’t surprising. Snap is expected to release this information in a revised prospectus in the coming weeks. If Snap aims too high, it could end up in a situation similar to Twitter, which has spent its post-IPO existence trying to live up its IPO valuation.

5. Evan Spiegel will own about a quarter of Snap.

The Snap CEO currently has a 22.4% stake, the prospectus shows. After the IPO, he’ll get a special bonus — a “CEO award” — of an additional 3% of the shares.

6. New shareholders will have no say in running the company

Snap’s founders, Spiegel and Robert Murphy, currently control a combined 88.6% of the company’s voting stock, according to the prospectus. The company is selling only one class of stock in its IPO, and these shares will have “no vote on matters submitted to our stockholders.”

“Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy, and potentially either one of them alone, have the ability to control the outcome of all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval,” the IPO document says. This set-up is similar to ones used at Google and Facebook that let the company’s founders control it with little-to-no input from other investors.

7. Snapchat will spend $2 billion on Google services in the next five years

The company has committed to $2 billion of spending on Google's #cloud computing services in the next five years, and is very dependent on Google. Snap warned potential investors it has “built our software and computer systems to use computing, storage capabilities, bandwidth, and other services provided by Google, some of which do not have an alternative in the market.”

8. Spiegel borrowed $15 million from Snap last year.

The Snap CEO borrowed the $15 million in February 2016, on top of $5 million he had previously borrowed from the company, according to the prospectus. He repaid the loans before the end of the year.

9. Snap paid $890,339 to protect Spiegel last year.

The bill for the CEO’s personal security was bigger than his $503,205 salary, but not as big as his $1 million bonus.

10. Snap has been very friendly to Evan Spiegel’s dad’s law firm.

Snap has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal services from the Los Angeles corporate law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, where Evan Spiegel’s dad John Spiegel is a partner. While the elder Spiegel hasn’t done any legal work for the company, it has paid almost $650,000 for legal work in the past three years.

Quelle: <a href="10 Big Numbers From Snapchat&039;s IPO Filing“>BuzzFeed