NewsPicks CEO: Humans, Not Algorithms, Pick Content to Counter Fake News
*By Michael Teich*
At a time when misinformation floods digital news platforms, and internet trolls take over comment sections, online news platform NewsPicks is turning to high-profile curators for quality content.
Curation led by trusted sources increases the "chance of bringing in the best content that's obviously not fake," said CEO Ian Myers.
The growing need to purge tech sites of potentially problematic content was highlighted most recently by Twitter which, [according to the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/06/twitter-is-sweeping-out-fake-accounts-like-never-before-putting-user-growth-risk/), suspended 70 million fake accounts over the last two months and was banning more than a million accounts a day.
Fears that such a culling would cut into user growth sent shares of Twitter reeling Monday, though the stock was about to pare losses after CFO Ned Segal [tweeted](https://twitter.com/nedsegal/status/1016371745933033472) that such accounts were not counted in the company's metrics.
Still, the way news is digested and delivered is undergoing a period of disruption, and tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook are looking to seize the market. But the aggregation by Silicon Valley natives lacks originality, Myers told Cheddar.
“It’s commodity news. Doesn’t matter where you get it. It’s just where you click first.”
NewsPicks is owned by a Japanese media company that also acquired Quartz last week for up to $110 million.
For the full segment, [click here.](https://cheddar.com/videos/newspicks-ceos-key-to-winning-digital-news-quality-over-quantity)
While it was a volatile week in tech as Meta experienced the biggest one-day drop in the history of the U.S. stock market, industry giant Amazon reported 40 percent growth — largely on the strength of the cloud. Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to break down how the e-commerce company stock managed to pop despite headwinds against its core retail business. "It's all about cloud because of sum of the parts, you could argue, amazon could be $3,500/$4,000 stock just based on cloud," he said. Ives also addressed the apparent the differing impact of Apple iOS changes on Facebook and Snapchat.
Following Ford's earnings miss, the stock price dropped despite a bullish outlook from the auto giant. Karl Brauer, an executive analyst with ISeeCars.com, joined Cheddar to break down why investors may not be sold on the carmaker because of the ongoing factor of supply constraints. "The product is not an issue. There's really good product coming from them, including the electric vehicle side, and the demand is not an issue. There's plenty of demand, but nobody really has a solid grasp on when we're going to get past the supply chain issue," said Brauer.
Image-sharing app Pinterest reported big beats on its Q4 earnings for the top and bottom lines. The social platform surprised investors after seeing a decline in users while earnings and revenue were much higher than expected.
