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I don't understand this post from The Verge. First it adds nothing to the original reporting, just two paragraphs with a headline. The original reporting comes

I don't understand this post from The Verge. First it adds nothing to the original reporting, just two paragraphs with a headline. The original reporting comes from Cheddar, which is essentially a cynical publication and news channel built around giving airtime to PR initiatives and poorly sourced reporting. There is no indication that Facebook is creating a cryptocurrency. Blockchain can be used for other purposes. They may or may not be, but there's no public proof one way or another. The only indication that anything is happening beyond research is this quote: > “They are very serious about it,” said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced plans. That's it.

spike021 8y ago
It's The Verge, what do you expect? Most of their content is click-bait style now and lacks depth. When they first launched their bread and butter was supposed to be complex, long-form articles. That didn't last.
- alexkavon 8y ago
  It's worse than that. It's essentially a social media feed based around a few people. Most of their articles are like this one where it's regurgitated writing or reporting that another outfit reported something. Actually if you visit many of The Vox "culture" sites you will see this trend. A lot of the times it will be a brief summary of a video someone else produced. A good example is The Vox McDonald's coffee lawsuit article[0] that summarizes an Adam Ruins Everything video on the subject. We live in an age where blogging careers required tricking Google algorithms to thinking your site was valuable in order to increase traffic and thus serve ads to consumers (or grab their email for later product blasts, for example signing up for a free ebook on passive income). This trend spiraled into "spinning articles" which essentially was a method of using software to change articles via word/sentence substitution. The spun articles would then be posted to similar websites that then linked back to one of your main sites. All of them nicely littered with ads of course and leading you in a research circle. This of course evolved into clickbait headlines. Buzzfeed and its ilk are born to maximize this growing pile of garbage echoing, and labels itself as a brilliant strategy which is then echoed out again. Release a few high quality long form articles every once in a while, call yourself journalism instead of blogging (difference being the above strategies and highly opinionated pieces), badda-bing-badda-boom, media is changed. Now instead of reporting on a subject, we regurgitate something else for a few sentences and post the source and call it a day. No understanding, investigation, expansion, or reworking required because the author is no longer writing for an audience but instead for an advertiser click minimum. It's not hard to understand why The Verge specifically went from long form tech website to culture slog (sloppy whatever goes weblog). I'm not saying there isn't good journalism/ists out there. I'm saying somethings were lost and confused along the way for many reasons. /rant [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13971482/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit-stella-liebeck https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13971482/...
  - sterlind 8y ago
    Good rant, though. You should be a journalist! Is there a way to visualize link circles and spun article chains on the web? I've wanted something similar to track astroturfing.
    - alexkavon 8y ago
      I'm not aware of any tools but that would be a fun project. A lot of the problem stems around Google search result ranking. If you research this issue, you will recognize the name Pat Flynn [0] as a knowledgeable source (proliferator?) of spinning and "backlinking" (the term for link circles/chains). I think a tool could be a cool way to identify bias or weakness of an actual article or source. Kind of a reverse Google search/page rank explainer, which may be needed this day-in-age to help improve the quality of information on the net. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQe8GxlB8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQe8GxlB8E

spike021 8y ago

It's The Verge, what do you expect? Most of their content is click-bait style now and lacks depth. When they first launched their bread and butter was supposed to be complex, long-form articles. That didn't last.

alexkavon 8y ago
It's worse than that. It's essentially a social media feed based around a few people. Most of their articles are like this one where it's regurgitated writing or reporting that another outfit reported something. Actually if you visit many of The Vox "culture" sites you will see this trend. A lot of the times it will be a brief summary of a video someone else produced. A good example is The Vox McDonald's coffee lawsuit article[0] that summarizes an Adam Ruins Everything video on the subject. We live in an age where blogging careers required tricking Google algorithms to thinking your site was valuable in order to increase traffic and thus serve ads to consumers (or grab their email for later product blasts, for example signing up for a free ebook on passive income). This trend spiraled into "spinning articles" which essentially was a method of using software to change articles via word/sentence substitution. The spun articles would then be posted to similar websites that then linked back to one of your main sites. All of them nicely littered with ads of course and leading you in a research circle. This of course evolved into clickbait headlines. Buzzfeed and its ilk are born to maximize this growing pile of garbage echoing, and labels itself as a brilliant strategy which is then echoed out again. Release a few high quality long form articles every once in a while, call yourself journalism instead of blogging (difference being the above strategies and highly opinionated pieces), badda-bing-badda-boom, media is changed. Now instead of reporting on a subject, we regurgitate something else for a few sentences and post the source and call it a day. No understanding, investigation, expansion, or reworking required because the author is no longer writing for an audience but instead for an advertiser click minimum. It's not hard to understand why The Verge specifically went from long form tech website to culture slog (sloppy whatever goes weblog). I'm not saying there isn't good journalism/ists out there. I'm saying somethings were lost and confused along the way for many reasons. /rant [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13971482/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit-stella-liebeck https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13971482/...
- sterlind 8y ago
  Good rant, though. You should be a journalist! Is there a way to visualize link circles and spun article chains on the web? I've wanted something similar to track astroturfing.
  - alexkavon 8y ago
    I'm not aware of any tools but that would be a fun project. A lot of the problem stems around Google search result ranking. If you research this issue, you will recognize the name Pat Flynn [0] as a knowledgeable source (proliferator?) of spinning and "backlinking" (the term for link circles/chains). I think a tool could be a cool way to identify bias or weakness of an actual article or source. Kind of a reverse Google search/page rank explainer, which may be needed this day-in-age to help improve the quality of information on the net. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQe8GxlB8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQe8GxlB8E