Could this be the end of Facebook controlling news? — theguardian.com

Has social media – that ad-guzzling tyrant of a teenager – reached a turning point on the way to adulthood? Scandals over electoral fraud and misuse of data appear, for the first time, to be affecting the behaviour of Facebook and those who use it. Journalists love to announce a watershed moment and the relationship between those who produce most of the world’s news, and those who host it online, is still as fractious as that between parent and teenage child. But two hefty reports last week show signs of a shift. First, the Reuters Institute digital news report found that the use of social media – such as Facebook – for news has started to fall for the first time since records began seven years ago. Then, the latest study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that social media groups themselves were responding to evidence of dysfunction, not by citing market forces but with “civic duty and fear of regulation”.

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