Thursday News: Scribd adds 9,000 audiobooks, is Facebook manipulating its algorithms, moderating Monica Lewinsky, and Tennessee legislators love the Bible

JanetPublishing Newsaudiobooks / comment moderation / Establishment Clause / Facebook / First-Amendment / news feeds / online speech / Penguin Random House / religion / Scribd / Ted12 Comments

SCRIBD ADDS PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO TITLES TO ITS LIBRARY – In the current battle between digital book subscription services, the reader definitely seems to be gaining. Now Scribd is adding 9,000 audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio. From the press release:

SAN FRANCISCO, April 16, 2015 — Scribd, the leading subscription reading service, today announced thatit is expanding its audiobook offering to include more than 9,000 audiobooks from Penguin Random House Audio, increasing Scribd’s audiobook selection to more than 45,000 titles. New titles include fiction and non-fiction by internationally renowned authors such as Alice Munro, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Anne Rice, Sue Grafton, Deepak Chopra, Danielle Steele and more. Scribd is the only unlimited subscription service to include unlimited access to more than one million e-books, audiobooks, and comics, all for $8.99 per month.

The deal brings Penguin Random House Audio’s titles to Scribd, including bestsellers such as The Girl on the Train, Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl, Wild, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and A Game of Thrones; award-winning recordings such as Bill Clinton’s My Life narrated by the former president, John Grisham’s Runaway Jury narrated by Michael Beck, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help narrated by Jenna Lamia, Octavia Spencer, Bahni Turpin, and Cassandra Campbell; and renowned narrators including Christopher Plummer,Diane Keaton, Barbara Walters, Kate Winslet, and more.

“Penguin Random House Audio is one of the world’s most admired publishers, and we are excited to work with them to expand the potential audience for audiobooks by putting thousands of their amazing titles at readers’ fingertips,” said Trip Adler, co-founder and CEO of Scribd. “Since we launched audiobooks last fall, reading time on Scribd has doubled. This is great news for Scribd and for our publishing partners.” –Scribd

The ‘Faceboocalypse’: Publishers See Drop In Facebook Shares – In the wake of reports that Facebook had solidified agreements with several news publishers to directly host their content, a number of news publishers detected a significant drop in Facebook shares for external content in February and March, which drew attention to the fact that Facebook can basically manipulate their algorithms in whatever way they want. Now, in the meantime, Facebook claims that a “bug” was responsible for this shift, if you believe that. Perhaps this bug is first cousin to the bug that tracked non-Facebook users.

April 1 update: Facebook have told Mashable that a bug was behind the fall-off in reach last month. A Facebook representative also contacted NewsWhip with the following statement:

“We experienced an issue with Page Insights logging in February that failed to count some viral reach accurately. Importantly, actual delivery of posts was not affected by this issue; this was a reporting issue only. We identified and resolved this issue in early March and Page Insights are now correctly reporting organic reach. We apologize for any unintended impact this may have had to our partners.” –NewsWhip

WANT TO HELP PREVENT ONLINE BULLYING? COMMENT ON FACEBOOK – Continuing the theme of speech and moderation that GRRM’s post on Hatespeech raised, here is a very interesting piece from Ted’s social media editor, Nadia Goodman, who was in charge of moderating comments to Monica Lewinsky’s Ted talk on online bullying. Goodman describes the immediate reaction the talk got of aggressively personal attacks on Lewinsky, which three moderators tracked through, deleting those they believed “attacked, disrespected or shamed her,” and responding to positive comments in order to push them upthread, intent on providing a safe space for her message. As Goodman describes, after several hours, the entire character of the commenting changed in response to the priorities the moderators set. Goodman’s piece raises a lot of complicated issues around how to balance safety with robust debate, as well as how to differentiate ad hominem attacks from harsh commentary on the issues. I’m not sold on the aggressive nature of her approach, but it’s clear that moderation can shape the nature of discussion and response.

While it took much longer and was much more work for Monica, this is actually how we deal with all negative comment threads. When we clearly show what is and is not acceptable, the tone does change. People who want to share thoughtful comments start to feel that theirs are welcome, and people who want to spew hatred start to realize theirs are not. It may not change people’s reactions, but it does change the sample of voices that chooses to speak up.

I think of that moment of sea change like a sort of herd immunity. The positive voices, when there are enough of them, keep abusive ones from spreading, just as a mostly vaccinated population protects those few people who are not. Together, we have the power to protect the most vulnerable among us. –Ted.com

Tennessee House votes Bible as official state book – And then there’s the Tennessee House of Representatives, which, despite an opinion from the state attorney general that the move violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution (pdf), have voted to make the Bible the official state book. There was an alternative proposal on the table, which was to make Andrew Jackson’s personal Bible the official state book, which supporters thought would bypass the Constitutional issues, because the focus would be on honoring the book’s owner rather than the book itself, but legislators decided that just wasn’t good enough, and instead voted 55-38 for the original bill. 

Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris opposed the bill in committee, and he hopes the bill doesn’t pass when it’s considered by the Senate.

“I sure hope it won’t pass. I think it’ll be a dark day for Tennessee if it does,” Norris said.

“All I know is that I hear Satan snickering. He loves this kind of mischief. You just dumb the good book down far enough to make it whatever it takes to make it a state symbol, and you’re on your way to where he wants you.” –The Tennessean

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

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