Facebook Stands By Info Wars as Real News

In a recent media event held by Facebook to discuss misinformation, a reporter asked why sites like Info Wars haven't been shut down. The answer was "I guess just for being false, that doesn't violate the community standards". This has spurred a big discussion on Twitter (yes, the irony is real) about FB's lack of ability to actually deal with fake news. You can see the full post here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/facebook-says-infowars-valid-opinion-and-analysis-but-what-about-the-martian-slave-colony.html

Key Takeaway

If Facebook isn't truly fixing fake news... Then who is? If this is where 2/3 of society gets its news (https://www.recode.net/2017/9/7/16270900/social-media-news-americans-facebook-twitter) and they're not doing anything about it, I weep for the future.

Related to this note – I strongly recommend reading this article https://aeon.co/ideas/say-goodbye-to-the-information-age-its-all-about-reputation-now. It does a great job of explaining that we’ve moved out of an age where we’re bombarded by information, and now are in an age of filtered information by “reputable sources”. In other words, none of us truly read anything, we just skim the headlines of authors or friends we know and trust. It’s a five minute read that’s well worth the time.

AT&T To Turn HBO Into Netflix

In 2016 when AT&T began talks to purchase Time Warner for ~$85 Billion. The agreement has finally closed and they got HBO with it, which, as it turns out, isn't as valuable as it may have been in 2016. The CEO of WarnerMedia has already started butting heads with the CEO of HBO over what they consider success in TV today - this quote made my day:

“We need hours a day,” Mr. Stankey said, referring to the time viewers spend watching HBO programs. “It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes.”

“I want more hours of engagement. Why are more hours of engagement important? Because you get more data and information about a customer that then allows you to do things like monetize through alternate models of advertising as well as subscriptions, which I think is very important to play in tomorrow’s world.”

https://gizmodo.com/at-ts-big-plan-for-hbo-is-to-fill-it-with-more-random-t-1827449321

Key Takeaway

If HBO is considered no longer worthy of production budget - we're in a lot of trouble as Netflix leads the way. Netflix has produced some great content, but they've been focusing on quantity over quality as of late. It's looking like HBO is going to go the same way. The only saving grace is if the resulting data from this will result in content that is truly better as a result of actually understanding what we want. That said - Game of Thrones wasn't produced by data...

Amazon Now Holds 49% of eCommerce Market and 5% of Retail Overall

According to eMarketer, Amazon will clear $258 Billion in sales in 2018. This chart puts things in perspective:

Key Takeaway

I end up writing some story about Amazon aquiring a large part of America's supply chain once every two months (very rough estimate). This is what buying up a country's supply looks like. This is impacting clients in the CPG space in a huge way where less and less retailers are driving to their own eComm and putting up Amazon storefronts. This dovetails with some of the Kleiner Perkins report that showed most consumers start their journey at Amazon instead of Google.