I don't even like Facebook, but really, is this newsworthy now? I know the media sees it as a chance to dogpile the company that has taken them to the cleaners, but there's a reason people don't trust or like the media anymore and "articles" like these are a big reason why.
Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of two very high profile investigations in the UK this past week, which caused Facebook to take punitive action against the firm, even though the firm and its misuse of FB data was written about several years ago. One of the revelations this week is that Facebook's CSO had been critical of FB's lack of response to CA and is now leaving the company: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-...
Sometimes newsworthy things become newsworthy after the actual time of events. Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse had been hinted at for years but only this past year did the amount of reporting and attention cause him to face real legal and business problems. Same with Bill Cosby.
Is it unexpected that that one company asked for a newspaper to change their article to remove references that make one of their C level execs look bad? No, not at all.
It is somewhat thought provoking though that said newspaper may have felt compelled to comply with the request because of Facebook's power (for instance not wanting to lose favorable placement in feed or trending sections).
So to me the newsworthiness of this depends on how likely it is that they changed it because it was simply inaccurate versus something more nefarious (such as above). I believe that may be too subjective to determine at this point so probably no fruitful discussion can come in trying to figure that out.
> I don't even like Facebook, but really, is this newsworthy now?
Yes, it is newsworthy because while those of us on HN have been familiar with all the crap that Facebook has been doing for a while now, the common folk have not.
Why would Facebook making a major newspaper stealthily edit an article to their liking - as confirmed by one of the authors - not be worthy news? Do you think this is normal behavior for a newspaper?
