On Tech: Sports are the internet’s secret key

Plus, who wins the internet: pros or amateurs?

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story March 5, 2021 Sports are the internet's secret key Illustration by Scott Gelber; photograph by Tom Brenner/The New York Times By Shira Ovide Sports, especially the National Football League, are instrumental to charting the future of entertainment on the internet. Maybe you think that's nuts. But Edmund Lee, a New York Times media reporter, said we should pay attention to current negotiations over where Americans will watch football games in coming years. They may determine which television companies thrive in the digital age, and offer a glimpse at what types of programming will dominate our favorite websites. To conventional television companies like Disney and CBS, the N.F.L. is essential to prevent TV viewership from shrinking too quickly and to support their future in streaming. And internet stars like Amazon and Facebook might — maybe? — want big ticket sports for themselves. Shira: Why is the N.F.L. so important? Ed: Fewer Americans are watching sports, but football is still by far the most popular TV programming. The N.F.L. needs TV, and TV network owners need the N.F.L. And whether you watch football or not, the billions of dollars that the TV networks pay for the N.F.L. translates into higher bills for cable or satellite television or online TV packages such as YouTube TV. The TV networks hate paying so much to air the N.F.L. to shrinking audiences. But you say they're going to pay maybe twice as much in the next contract. Why? Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT It's a complicated dance. Disney, Fox, CBS, NBC and others are trying to become streaming video companies. But they're still losing money on streaming and making billions of dollars of profit from conventional TV. If TV networks can make N.F.L. games available to watch on TV and on their streaming services, they hope viewers will stay glued to TV and get pulled into streaming services. Are you saying that sports, and especially the N.F.L., are key to whether entertainment companies live or die? Pretty much! I'll give you a personal example. English Premier League soccer matches are one of the few things I consistently watch on Peacock, NBC's streaming video service. Sports, particularly live sports and most of all the N.F.L., are still a huge draw. The entertainment companies that have must-watch programming will be the ones that make the transition to streaming. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT There are billions of people on YouTube and Facebook. Why aren't big sports like the Olympics, European soccer and the N.F.L. there? There have been experiments. Facebook has live streamed some professional baseball games and Indian cricket matches. Amazon's Prime Video streams a handful of N.F.L. games on Thursdays, and it seems Amazon is willing to pay for more games. But the reality is, sports on those big websites are just one piece of programming in an ocean. When games are on these big tech websites, fewer people watch. Why? Maybe people aren't in the habit of watching sports there. When an N.F.L. game is broadcast at the same time on Amazon Prime Video and on cable TV, many millions of people watch on TV but only a few hundred thousand on Amazon. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT I've been surprised that sporting events on Amazon or Facebook aren't very internet-like. It's mostly the same as a TV broadcast. Watch what the National Basketball Association does. It has started to incorporate digital features into the N.B.A. app like statistics that pop up in games and choices of camera angles. The internet-ification of sports isn't there yet. But whatever the N.B.A. does will likely be widely copied. If you don't already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Who wins the internet: pros or amateurs? One point that Ed made in our conversation is that Facebook has had a change of heart about the wisdom of veering into the lane of Netflix or Disney and paying top dollar to host professional entertainment such as the very popular N.F.L. games. For Facebook, why pay billions a year for football or Martin Scorsese movies? The company is already getting us to spend hours surfing its news feed and Instagram, with posts and videos that we mostly make for free. But I should mention that Facebook was eager to grab for live sports until relatively recently. Maybe the company will change its mind. Again. This has been one of the original questions about leisure time on the internet: Will professionally made entertainment, including sports, win, or will the websites and apps filled with amateurs? The reality is probably that a mix of both will rule the internet, but it's a fun question to explore. There are two basic paths for the online video hangouts that we love. Some of them are mostly drawing people with stuff that regular people make — think TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. Others like Netflix and the streaming video services from the big television entertainment companies are offering the same as the manicured programming you see on TV. These two paths do blur. Professional internet stars make some of the most popular stuff on sites like YouTube. Facebook pays for video programming on its TV-like hub called Watch. A big advantage of the amateur path is that, well, it's cheap. TikTok and Facebook aren't paying anything for most of the videos or posts that we spend hours surfing. YouTube does split the advertising money it makes with many people who create videos, but it isn't handing over Scorsese-type money for PewDiePie to be a star. But at the same time, Ed said, the internet companies are seeing the merits of professionally created entertainment. Netflix and HBO Max aren't worried about QAnon conspiracy theories going viral, because the companies control everything that appears on their streaming services. The downside is that it costs a lot. The upside is it generates fewer horror shows. If you've found this newsletter helpful, please consider subscribing to The New York Times. Your support makes our work possible. Before we go … The ripple effects of Amazon's pay practices: The company's decision to increase employees' starting pay to $15 an hour appears to have pushed up wages paid by other companies near Amazon locations, my colleagues Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley reported. The online aftermath of the coup: Reuters reported that Myanmar soldiers and police officers are using TikTok to threaten violence against protesters opposing the recent coup. The app's usage in Myanmar sharply increased after the military blocked Facebook. And YouTube followed Facebook in removing video channels run by Myanmar's military, my colleague Paul Mozur reported. They want to share the riches: My colleague Taylor Lorenz wrote about a newly created collective for people who are big draws on audio chat room apps like Clubhouse. They want to lobby the company for stronger oversight of the apps and more ways for them to turn their popularity into income.Related: Vulture has a fascinating article about Trisha Paytas, a YouTube celebrity whose genius is, essentially, being charismatic and courting controversy. (Be aware that the article contains photos that may not be safe for work or small children.) Hugs to this Look at the newborn gorilla at a zoo in Berlin! We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you'd like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. If you don't already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story Need help? 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On Tech: Fixing what the internet broke

How sites like Facebook and Twitter can help reduce election misinformation.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story March 4, 2021 Fixing what the internet broke Angie Wang By Shira Ovide January's riot at the U.S. Capitol showed the damage that can result when millions of people believe an election was stolen despite no evidence of widespread fraud. The Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of online information researchers, published this week a comprehensive analysis of the false narrative of the presidential contest and recommended ways to avoid a repeat. Internet companies weren't solely to blame for the fiction of a stolen election, but the report concluded that they were hubs where false narratives were incubated, reinforced and cemented. I'm going to summarize here three of the report's intriguing suggestions for how companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter can change to help create a healthier climate of information about elections and everything else. One broad point: It can feel as if the norms and behaviors of people online are immutable and inevitable, but they're not. Digital life is still relatively new, and what's good or toxic is the result of deliberate choices by companies and all of us. We can fix what's broken. And as another threat against the Capitol this week shows, it's imperative we get this right. 1) A higher bar for people with the most influence and the repeat offenders: Kim Kardashian can change more minds than your dentist. And research about the 2020 election has shown that a relatively small number of prominent organizations and people, including President Donald Trump, played an outsize role in establishing the myth of a rigged vote. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Currently, sites like Facebook and YouTube mostly consider the substance of a post or video, divorced from the messenger, when determining whether it violates their policies. World leaders are given more leeway than the rest of us and other prominent people sometimes get a pass when they break the companies' guidelines. This doesn't make sense. If internet companies did nothing else, it would make a big difference if they changed how they treated the influential people who were most responsible for spreading falsehoods or twisted facts — and tended to do so again and again. The EIP researchers suggested three changes: create stricter rules for influential people; prioritize faster decisions on prominent accounts that have broken the rules before; and escalate consequences for habitual superspreaders of bogus information. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT YouTube has long had such a "three strikes" system for accounts that repeatedly break its rules, and Twitter recently adopted versions of this system for posts that it considers misleading about elections or coronavirus vaccinations. The hard part, though, is not necessarily making policies. It's enforcing them when doing so could trigger a backlash. 2) Internet companies should tell us what they're doing and why: Big websites like Facebook and Twitter have detailed guidelines about what's not allowed — for example, threatening others with violence or selling drugs. But internet companies often apply their policies inconsistently and don't always provide clear reasons when people's posts are flagged or deleted. The EIP report suggested that online companies do more to inform people about their guidelines and share evidence to support why a post broke the rules. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT 3) More visibility and accountability for internet companies' decisions: News organizations have reported on Facebook's own research identifying ways that its computer recommendations steered some to fringe ideas and made people more polarized. But Facebook and other internet companies mostly keep such analyses a secret. The EIP researchers suggested that internet companies make public their research into misinformation and their assessments of attempts to counter it. That could improve people's understanding of how these information systems work. The report also suggested a change that journalists and researchers have long wanted: ways for outsiders to see posts that have been deleted by the internet companies or labeled false. This would allow accountability for the decisions that internet companies make. There are no easy fixes to building Americans' trust in a shared set of facts, particularly when internet sites enable lies to travel farther and faster than the truth. But the EIP recommendations show we do have options and a path forward. If you don't already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. If you've found this newsletter helpful, please consider subscribing to The New York Times. Your support makes our work possible. Before we go … Amazon goes big(ger) in New York: My colleagues Matthew Haag and Winnie Hu wrote about Amazon opening more warehouses in New York neighborhoods and suburbs to make faster deliveries. A related On Tech newsletter from 2020: Why Amazon needs more package hubs closer to where people live. Our homes are always watching: Law enforcement officials have increasingly sought videos from internet-connected doorbell cameras to help solve crimes but The Washington Post writes that the cameras have sometimes been a risk to them, too. In Florida, a man saw F.B.I. agents coming through his home camera and opened fire, killing two people. Square is buying Jay-Z's streaming music service: Yes, the company that lets the flea market vendor swipe your credit card is going to own a streaming music company. No, it doesn't make sense. (Square said it's about finding new ways for musicians to make money.) Hugs to this A kitty cat wouldn't budge from the roof of a train in London for about two and a half hours. Here are way too many silly jokes about the train-surfing cat. (Or maybe JUST ENOUGH SILLY JOKES?) We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you'd like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. If you don't already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Tech with Shira Ovide from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

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