No Comment(s)!

Nelson Star
With the Star usually running efficient bread 'n butter pieces: comments on their reporting and what they report-or-not to me often were more entertaining than the articles.
I say were.
Sometimes thoughtful, sometimes not so much - no matter: the public coming alive, responding, engaging!
Even 0 comments making a statement.

Until some years ago I could post/read comments online.
And then I couldn't.
After contacting the Star and people within my circle - the Star feigning incomprehension, and none around me having this problem - I found that Facebook was behind this.
Having taken over the whole commenting-thing, not only for the Star but all other publications of Black Press, the Star's parental whip.

Facebook wiring this in such a way that subscribers would be immediately identified when just clicking on anything Star - while I - as non-subscriber - was just as immediately excluded completely from the commenting-process. As such not under their control!
An attempt to have me sign-up: bring me into the fold - convert!
Which I wouldn't and won't!
Willingly!

 











With some digging it became clear that a Facebooklet, just by clicking on any item - article, ad, letter, column, commentary, comment - is factored as a certain kind of person with certain tendencies. These markers channelled into an individualization Facebook has been molding and constantly adding to since the Booklet's day one, in the wonderful world of algorithms. Kept in a jar by the door, and sold - as a whole or in extracts - over and over again to any corporate entity seeing commercial, political or whatever potential in this particular Booklet's gestalt.

Frankenblip!

So - while at the time ostensibly Facebook's function within the Black Empire was - and still is today! - solely that of gate-keeper to keep nasty language out of commenting - it actually has been in control of the employee/reader-psyche: potentially prepared to move - and allowing others to move for financial gain groups, crowds, masses - in a particular direction - by manipulating their most personal soft-spots via smartish-phones.

Therefore - the total of Black Press employees/readers - most probably Booklets - represent a business-opportunity of significant mutual benefit for Black Press and Facebook. And from there between Facebook and any number of personal-info merchants.
It would be naive to assume that the only benefit in this to Black Press - with its about 150 publications today! - is occasional raw language in comments/letters caught for them by a very basic Facebook algorithm.
Black Press paying for that!?

The Booklet mechanism - you click/you're identified - applies to City Hall's relationship with Facebook - as well that with any subscribing organization of any size in Nelson and all over the map - literally!

 Nelson's sci-fi kinda life - today!

About gate-keeping. It's not known to outsiders how many times Facebook has here interfered in the commenting-process with stopping comments - but the Star has several times deleted whole strands of commenting thoughts - done its own censoring - after initially having posted them, leaving them up for days. 

It has also - for no apparent reasons - closed commenting and disallowed comments - period - on particular write-ups.

So it can be argued who is doing what in this comment-thingie.

Anyway - after much emailing with the Star's bewildered publisher and contacting the Black Press president: comments reappeared but as reading-only for this uncontrollable non-believer. Whether I had a part in that is doubtful.

Big-time for me: the (comment-)funnies were back in the online Star.

BUT!

Deep breath - several weeks ago comments again disappear for me - until now staying disappeared: the Star's publisher again doesn't experience such problem, side-stepping that he is a Booklet, so why would he; promptly developing a case of reading-incomprehension; and claiming that no corporate decision has been made to drop comments for non-subscribers.
Right!

So - here I am: somewhere between disingenuous in-house denial, the Black Press head-office, and - scary! - the possibility of Facebook going this on its own.

A pity, because lately commenting had become much more incisive and polished - often relevatory!

And I do miss City Councillors letting themselves get pulled into commenting > commenting on commenting > commenting on commenting on commenting themselves frantically into a corner - stuck!
Nobody understands me!

 


    








Of late many Booklets have developed a clear distaste for Zuckerberg and his documented disregard for user-privacy - expressing this by unsubscribing: so - is this latest comment-act really the way to go, Zuck/Mr. Black!? 

The Star jerking readers around like this is unacceptable - from a so-called community-newspaper yet - and at best insensitive of its suits in Vancouver. 
Such poor P.R. may become reflected in advertising-dollars.

The Nelson Daily
Curiously - The Daily - also having an arrangement for commenting with Facebook - has consistently let non-believers in on readers' comments - not writing but reading them.

The recent ode to itself - submitted by the Cottonwood Lake Preservation Society on its GoFundMe campaign - generated 0 comments.
Makes you think - as comments can!

 















Image Credits:
google+
Marsel van Oosten



David Black, President
dblack@blackpress.ca

Eric Lawson, Publisher
eric.lawson@blackpress.ca

Todd Coyne, Editor
editor@nelsonstar.com

City Council
nelsoncouncil@nelson.ca

John Dooley, Mayor
jdooley@nelson.ca