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Original article here: https://ellacydawson.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/how-news-genius-silences-writers/ https://ellacydawson.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/how-news-g

Original article here: https://ellacydawson.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/how-news-genius-silences-writers/ https://ellacydawson.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/how-news-geniu... Interesting snippet: > After some back and forth, Ella blocked this person, who then took to News Genius to annotate the article, noting it may be "punching down a little bit here." The editor of News Genius joined in with snarky and hostile comments. Despite having blocked both individuals on Twitter, they linked to Ella's tweets, which is potentially a violation of Twitter's terms of service, but certainly indicates a violation of agency when, say, a political figure isn't involved or some other newsworthy person. My take: If Genius wants to succeed in the newspace, its moderators and annotators will need to collaborate and communicate more effectively with the authors of articles. This debacle reminds me of Yelp Reviews: my colleague who worked there said that Yelp positioned itself early on as neutral and as hands-off as possible, trusting that the community[1] would average out any shadiness or extreme reviews. What actually happened is the small business owners who didn't understand Yelp or who found certain reviews to be very unfair were not engaged by Yelp. Feeling left out, these business owners thought themselves without recourse on the Yelp platform, so they turned to other avenues, like lawsuits and the public space, e.g. the theory that Yelp promotes negative reviews if you don't pay them[2]. Building software that can create value automatically, without constant human intervention, is the lynchpin for a software startup. Most if not all software problems, however, require a delicate, and perhaps dedicated, human touch. A startup can't simply fall back on the claim that it's just a "facilitator" for a transaction. Users aren't dumb: "facilitator" conveys being a platform minus responsibility, and they will take that negative message to heart. [1] Sometimes, I feel like you can regex replace "Community" with "mass of users who will do our QA for us and/or fill in the customer support/social problems of our software." [2] I don't fully know yet if the more extreme claims are true; I have no doubt that at least some Yelp employees felt that corners should be cut in pursuit of growth.

CM30 11y ago
That's an interesting point, though I do wonder whether it's really reasonable to care about whether the author wants their images to be discussed or annotated. Is there a huge difference between doing this and doing the same thing on a site like Reddit or Hacker News? I'm sure quite a few people on these aggregators aren't on good terms with the authors of the articles, or are even banned from those source sites. I guess you could say Reddit comments don't appear on other sites when you browse to them, but you can get extensions that show them instead of a site's original comments: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/reddit-on-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/reddit-on-you... And linking to Twitter posts you're blocked from seeing being against the rules? That seems excessive, given how many news sites and articles will link to tweet by people with a hair trigger temper and a very low tolerance for criticism. Should all these sites now have their accounts banned from Twitter? I see your points, but I'm not sure how something like this is particularly different from commenting about a site on an aggregator or third party blog or discussion forum. The site staff at News Genius getting involved might cross the line (I'd hope the people behind a 'service' like this would stay out of any drama), but you can't stop people discussing your work or actions on third party sites.
- hitekker 11y ago
  The difference here is that Genius overlays its annotations on top of the main article. From a design, and even a business POV, this means the content of Genius and the news website are "merged", i.e. not clearly separated. Disqus Comment Threads can easily be hidden or shown and segmented from the text of an article. Reddit plugins like the one you mentioned are installed by the user's choice. News Genius however, has aspirations of being your go to site for reading the news. So this adds an additional bar for Genius to clear (i.e. make it work well without pissing people off) than your normal aggregator. Compare this: www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/jennifer-garner-minivan-majority Versus this: http://genius.com/8863764/www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/jennifer-garner-minivan-majority#.kpxXnRPGD http://genius.com/8863764/www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen... Never-minding the substance of the original article, observe how News Genius says "We’re annotating this not just to discuss Garner’s career and apparent acquiescence to the “minivan majority” but to analyze the way movie stars in general appeal to particular demographics and what that says about society." and then see the annotaters descend into snarkiness and children's fare. If I was interested in the subject matter, I know which version I would read, and which version I would warn others against reading.

CM30 11y ago

That's an interesting point, though I do wonder whether it's really reasonable to care about whether the author wants their images to be discussed or annotated. Is there a huge difference between doing this and doing the same thing on a site like Reddit or Hacker News? I'm sure quite a few people on these aggregators aren't on good terms with the authors of the articles, or are even banned from those source sites. I guess you could say Reddit comments don't appear on other sites when you browse to them, but you can get extensions that show them instead of a site's original comments: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/reddit-on-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/reddit-on-you... And linking to Twitter posts you're blocked from seeing being against the rules? That seems excessive, given how many news sites and articles will link to tweet by people with a hair trigger temper and a very low tolerance for criticism. Should all these sites now have their accounts banned from Twitter? I see your points, but I'm not sure how something like this is particularly different from commenting about a site on an aggregator or third party blog or discussion forum. The site staff at News Genius getting involved might cross the line (I'd hope the people behind a 'service' like this would stay out of any drama), but you can't stop people discussing your work or actions on third party sites.

hitekker 11y ago
The difference here is that Genius overlays its annotations on top of the main article. From a design, and even a business POV, this means the content of Genius and the news website are "merged", i.e. not clearly separated. Disqus Comment Threads can easily be hidden or shown and segmented from the text of an article. Reddit plugins like the one you mentioned are installed by the user's choice. News Genius however, has aspirations of being your go to site for reading the news. So this adds an additional bar for Genius to clear (i.e. make it work well without pissing people off) than your normal aggregator. Compare this: www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/jennifer-garner-minivan-majority Versus this: http://genius.com/8863764/www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/jennifer-garner-minivan-majority#.kpxXnRPGD http://genius.com/8863764/www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen... Never-minding the substance of the original article, observe how News Genius says "We’re annotating this not just to discuss Garner’s career and apparent acquiescence to the “minivan majority” but to analyze the way movie stars in general appeal to particular demographics and what that says about society." and then see the annotaters descend into snarkiness and children's fare. If I was interested in the subject matter, I know which version I would read, and which version I would warn others against reading.