Every morning as we wake up and scroll through Facebook and assorted social media networks on our phones, a bunch of annoying videos start playing on their own, thanks to the cursed auto-play option. We’ve assumed this is how it’s meant to be. But it now appears that maybe it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Maybe, and this is a hypothesis more than an outright claim, Facebook ruined modern journalism, all thanks to a lie.
Last year, ‘pivot to video’ became a depressing catchphrase as several major international web-based publications decided to focus their resources on short, snappy video content as opposed to detailed editorial coverage delivered in lots of text. The most high-profile among these was MTV News, which dismantled its editorial team — fancily assembled not that long ago in an effort to push longform journalism — in favour of something that was allegedly more in line with how young people, aka ‘millennials’, consumed content online. Video was the way to go, it was believed. The only way to maximise revenues in the modern world, they claimed, was to throw abrupt moving pictures to lure advertisers. Vice Media laid off some 60 employees in a concerted shift to shortform video. It seemed like decisions were being made for the consumers and the content-creators by advertisers, Facebook, and the fat-cats at publications.
Ridiculous videos
Even in India, many young publications appeared to shift, ever so subtly, towards video content. ‘Multimedia presentations’ of stories were seemingly more attractive to publications than plain old text. My own timeline is filled with ridiculous ‘15 things Delhi people say’ videos, among others.
This came about partly as a result of Facebook pushing its native video platform: videos hosted on Facebook itself, rather than YouTube videos streamed through it. It’s no secret that most media websites get a large chunk of their traffic through Facebook engagement, and the social media network had been keen to get people to embrace its video format. In 2016 though, Facebook announced that it had messed up. That they had accidentally inflated certain figures by up to 80% thanks to incorrectly calculated metrics. Fair enough; mistakes happen.
Fudged figures 900%
But something new, something far more sinister, emerged last week. A report on Wall Street Journal , soon picked up by many other publications, presented previously redacted details of a lawsuit filed by advertisers against Facebook for inflating their figures. They overstated average watch times on paid video ads. It’s claimed that the figures were, in fact, fudged by up to 900%! It also alleges that Facebook knew of this error, but chose to follow a ‘No PR’ policy, laying low to avoid further scrutiny. Facebook has been accused of fraud, an accusation it has denied.
Now a no-man’s land
To be fair, it’s unlikely the pivot was a direct result of just this one metric. But equally, it did play a significant role in pushing publishers to take the ill-planned jump to video. Hundreds of people were out of a job; thousands more were left wondering if they even had an industry left. And, of course, it didn’t work. This inglorious chain of events have led us now to an uncertain, no-man’s-land, where nothing really seems to be working. I feel this comedy of errors is in some way reflective of classic Golden Age nonsense about “the kids today” . People in power everywhere — middle-aged, rich, usually male — seem to have this contemptuous attitude towards the youth. They underestimate them, dismissing them as fickle or shallow. I can only imagine how the conversations in boardrooms would have gone when this shift first began: “ Arre sir, these kids today... with their Netflix and Tinder and all... they don’t want to read only. We’ll give them 10-second video clips, they’ll lap it up like morons, muhahaha!” A glib attitude to ‘millennials’, coupled with some exaggerated numbers, transpired to blow up an industry.
Personally, I believe people read as much or as little as they ever did. Ten years ago, when I was studying journalism, we were taught how, as writers, we have no more than a few seconds to capture the reader before she turns away her gaze. It’s literally exactly the same today. All that’s changed is that now there are multiple alternative avenues for the consumer. Attention spans are as abysmal as before, only there are far more options.
There will always be more than enough readers, just as there will always be people who would much rather spend all their time streaming shows or something, or consume news in a video format. One isn’t better or worse than the other; reading isn’t a ‘superior’ activity. But publishers, advertisers, and Facebook have, by choosing one not just over the other, but at the cost of the other, fanned the flames of an already burning industry. It’s dire.
The freelance culture writer from New Delhi wishes he’d studied engineering instead.
