|
Silver2195 posted:Yeah, I don’t really have an answer to the problems of journalism funding. Part of the problem is that basically all funding models are potentially corrupting in their own way. The problems with advertiser and government funding, as well as the patronage of a “benevolent” individual rich person, are obvious, but what we’ve surprisingly learned over the past few years is that reader funding can have unhealthy effects too. People sometimes talk about the “audience capture” that afflicts Substack types, where the journalist’s worldview becomes more and more aligned with the worldviews of his readers. People like this are sometimes called “grifters,” and maybe that’s not wrong, but the really horrible thing is that I think most of them aren’t even consciously aware that they’re grifting; people are very good at convincing themselves that something that benefits them financially is morally or factually right. for most of history newspapers were never supposed to be an impartial source of truthful information: they were supposed to be partisan outlets meant to build a community of likeminded people. Alexander Hamilton founded one of the first newspapers in the US explicitly to trash his political opponents. That was just the default state of media for vast majority of US history. So newspapers were ok with losing money so long as it represented the political viewpoints of their sponsors. I think for a brief era spanning from roughly the post-war through to the 90s the nature of media technology (Television) consolidated media "readership" into a few big entities (ABC, NBC, CBS) in the US. Because each station has trying to appeal to like 90% of the population they couldn't be explicit partisan outlets anymore, but has to put out news which is closer to objective reality. It's probably no accident the golden age of investigative journalism (exposing Watergate, My Lai etc) took place around this era. And when you have audiences that big advertisers have no choice but to pay you boatloads of money so media companies had an independent source of funding. But in the age of Twitter/Social media fractured the media landscape again, now any rando on twitter can bot enough accounts to generate a large enough following so long as they market their message towards their niche audience enough. And everyone is back to listening to people who conform to their worldviews, the gatekeepers are all dead and people are getting their news from easily faked twitter screencaps. Even if legitimate journalism does get funding through fining facebook/twitter their audience will probably continue to shrink: for better or worse. Necrobama posted:Would it be too god damned much to ask for to see DV eat more than a token sixer for their consistency in speaking down to other posters as though the simple act of questioning him were a personal offense? I do find it kinda meta that a page or so into the thread the discussion has already shifted to forum drama about DV and Cspam vs DnD round 999999 LOL Typo fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jan 2, 2024 |
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 06:30
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
Probably Magic posted:The constant fear mongering over RT that's completely absent from Western sources who are just as propagandists is just xenophobia, unless you want to argue Brian Williams talking about the beauty of our weaponry is objective analysis. Almost like the objection is not to impartiality but who the impartiality is for.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:04
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Any time I try to search for anything now, half the top results are clearly AI generated spam articles, often even when I'm searching truly obscure errata. the problem is that SEO has gotten too good at gaming google search algorithms, we are kinda back at the earlier days of the internet when instead of having reliable search engine to give you what you want you kinda just have to know 3-5 places to look for answers to things you want nationalizing whatever won't fix the problem: there's way too much money to gaming search results
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:14
|
|
|
socialsecurity posted:Nationalizing an online platform has always been an idea I've toyed with, I mean Twitter or something like it basically serves as an online Post Office in a lot of ways. But yeah government control means censorship and moderation become real tricky things. there would be -less- censorship/moderation on a 1st amendment protected public platform than on a private platform. however keep in mind this might not produce the results you want. A lot of the content coming out would just be transphobia and racism, now protected by the constitution from being removed.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:19
|
|
|
socialsecurity posted:Yeah that's the problem, it would be full on hate speech 24/7, the right's very good at organizing harassment and bot armies already with no censorship or moderation everything would turn to unusable poo poo very fast. yeah when twitter first came out I was pretty optimistic about the democraization of information etc turns out reality really really doesn't work that way
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:24
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean we could also nationalize Google and stop selling advertising on it at all. you don't need google to show ads on your website, you just need google to show your website at the top of the result list so ppl click on it
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:25
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean it *can*. Wikipedia is still doing pretty well overall, and provides a perfectly usable model . . Wikipedia depends on an enormous amount of moderation (which you can easily frame as censorship) by volunteers and is yeah, still a private organization it would be pretty interesting how Wikipedia functions if it gets nationalized now that I think about it, does every single mod action to remove some BS now eligible to be taken up in court on 1st amendment grounds?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:30
|
|
|
WarpedLichen posted:I think Wikipedia is in a dangerous spot that it's been pretty good on a broad range of subjects for a long time that people forget that it's edited largely by internet nobodies and is subject to the same stresses as every other source. They even have a page detailing the historical challenges: at least there isn't as much immediate financial incentive to game wiki as there is to gaming google
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:49
|
|
|
Probably Magic posted:but it did give a glimpse on the Chinese state's view more directly than the New York Times pretending they're a neutral party as they call a blatant genocide an "Israel-Hamas War." National agencies like RT, BBC, NHK, etc. have more my respect than Western televised media theater, even if they very much don't have my trust. I don't think RT or BBC are calling it a genocide either
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 19:53
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh sure no system is perfectible. I'm just looking for examples of systems that have proven able to function without obvious corruption, financial collapse, or what Cory doctorow has been referring to as "enshittification". the crass answer is simply that SEO haven't adapted yet so if you just add reddit to end of a search term you get relevant answers like you would have 10 years ago but if everyone starts to append 'reddit' to end of questions like "what phone should I buy" rest assured it will be useless quickly as well
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 20:03
|
|
|
koolkal posted:It shouldn't really be an issue since Google allows you to just search under a site directly. Adding "reddit" at the end is a simpler but worse way but adding "site:reddit.com" will actually filter all results to only reddit. what if SEO companies can just figure out how to make -their- post show up on top of the list if you enter site:reddit.com it's probably harder to do it on someone else's platform tho, and the cost to doing so (i.e getting around anti-botting measures) might be more expensive than it's worth
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 20:18
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:
an interesting tidbit is that this is true even in state media when given some degree of independence like during the 2000s Beijing gave its state owned media agencies more freedom to report on stuff they want: the theory was that they would do investigate journalism on corruption within local governments and help the central government keep them line instead what they got was hyper-nationalistic venting over boundary disputes in the south China sea and elevate a bunch of fairly inconsequential incidents over fishing vessels into a major national cause when Beijing didn't particularly -want- to escalate. And the reason wasn't so much because the people managing those agencies supported escalation, it was just because nationalism sold well and the different media agencies were fighting for ratings.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2024 22:25
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, yes. It's pretty terrible. But it seems to be the best available option, largely because it is driven by a nonprofit model. neither of which actually produces original content insofar you are talking about news, they just aggregate/source existing ones. The entire model of wikipedia relies on sourcing content other people produced journalism presumably involves producing OC, that's media companies (even "new media") pay people whose full time job is to produce news, and signifiacant expenses will be incurred on top of wages paid Typo fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Jan 3, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2024 04:44
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's a fair point, but there is a certain amount of original content produced on Reddit (hell, virtually everything on Buzzfeed is cannibalized Reddit threads from AmItheAsshole or other popular subs). I think journalism consists more than just passing along first degree accounts from people claiming to be witnesses to a particular event The other problem I see (and I"m sure you do too) is that the twitter/reddit model involves a lot of unpaid volunteer work. Good example would be the OSINT community who publishes their content on twitter: very few of whom are paid. Which means a lot of people contributing value are not being compensated for the work they put in. Whatever you say about a journalist working for CNN or NYT or RT, at very least they are drawing a paycheque that pays rent. The utimate profiteers of said unpaid work are owners of platforms, or people who copy/paste their work, in the form of views/ad revenue. Typo fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jan 4, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2024 00:01
|
|
|
I like this one quote which basically goes "Aristotle was one of the greatest scientists in human history, he was wrong about almost everything, but that doesn't stop making him a great scientist"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2024 00:16
|
|
|
T Zero posted:In just the past month, Washington Post had 250 buyouts, The Messenger laid off nearly 10 percent of its staff and contemplated shutting down altogether, Conde Nast and Vox media also had layoffs. I wonder if they went through the same thing as tech, which bloated their headcount during COVID and did layoffs post-COVID to it back down to earth
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2024 08:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
T Zero posted:I think most news outlets were cutting staff the whole time. First it was sports and dining coverage, followed by broader newsroom cuts. But media outlets definitely go through hiring and firing binges, I've noticed. TV networks probably just has an older viewer base who will always turn in no matter what once the boomers are gone tho I don't see how cable news is sustainable
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2024 20:03
|
|