Sean Parker Biting the Hand that Feeds

It's Friday. I'm struggling to find anything that interests me enough to post about, certainly not anything else about Hernandez... god knows there has been enough media coverage forever on that one. So I settled on a few interesting quips from Sean Parker regarding ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/226e637e-df79-11e2-881f-00144feab7de.html#axzz2XQr1RAN9">the current state of social media in the United States.

Projecting the time-honoured pain of celebrities whose personal reputations have been trashed by the media, Mr Parker complained: “Never mind the fact that none of the accusations were actually true: truth has a funny way of getting in the way of a great story.”

However, compared with journalists in the traditional media world, who he painted almost as paragons of balance in his online account, the former Facebook executive denounced the new online pack as “link-baiting jackals who believe that ‘truth’ is whatever drives clicks”.

Alright. I'll give him that the blogosphere allows for immediate dissemination of information and that in large part headlines are what drives much of the online blogosphere. Bold, Exclamatory headlines that may misconstrue the true nature of the topic but generate clicks are the name of the game and drive much of the traffic and thus revenue to many bloggers. I don't begrudge them for this, but then again I'm not under constant scrutiny like many people of his stature are. What is interesting to me is how he acknowledges that although he benefited greatly from this disruptive tech he is beginning to come around to a line of thinking where he has more irreparably damaged society rather than helped it.

A kind of mob mentality reigns supreme in the unrestricted, uncivilized world of social media: whether it is found on Facebook, on Twitter, in blogs, or even in the remnants of traditional journalism, where the old guard is now forced to compete with the instantaneous news cycle of the “real-time web” and the blogosphere. The economics of this new media have, in so many ways, rendered obsolete the economics of the old journalism and the value system that went along with it. The ethics of journalism, a commitment to objectivity, accuracy, and civility, formed a kind of loose social contract between the creators and consumers of news.

This is where I somewhat part ways with his line of thinking. I absolutely disagree that 'old journalism' is in any way less biased or superior to the bottom up approach through the blogosphere. This is clinging to the nostalgia of small town newspapers where you knew the writers personally, but I still doubt that any amount of bias or hype never existed. The difference is that everything simply happens faster than it used to which scales up stories far faster than anything we have previously known.

I'll take the good with the bad if it means larger, faster and more widespread dissemination of important information along with at least some form of commentary that helps me to maximize my efforts when understanding what is going on. There is plenty of good commentary out there, you just need to parse through it and think for yourself.

Take the time to read the piece here on TechCrunch if you haven't already. It really is worth a quick read.

Is Parker biting the hand that fed him or does he have justifiable points and should feel shame about the 'den of jackals' he has unleashed upon us all?