5 ms·

I've been seeing the same sensationalist language even in "respected" publications like the NYT lately. For example, they recently published a story where it wa

I've been seeing the same sensationalist language even in "respected" publications like the NYT lately. For example, they recently published a story where it was implied that because Spotify's Messenger plugin has standard read/write permissions (necessary to ensure basic functionality like sharing songs) that it could also actively monitor, store, and modify your private messages. In smaller publications, some shoddy reporting can often be attributed to a lack of experience or resources. It's hard to find an excuse for larger publications with well-established editorial resources, however. These stories are presented under the guise of public interest, but in reality they seem increasingly driven by politics and sinister ulterior motives. The end result is the spread of misinformation and further public distrust of the media and technology as a whole.

_s 8y ago
I doubt the sinister / political motives - these headlines and articles are nothing more than to drive traffic / revenue. Pick a popular company / product / service, find something that they could be doing, throw up an article suggesting that's what they could be doing but have the title inferring that it is what they are actually doing. Rinse / repeat.
- EGreg 8y ago
  However! This is what happens under capitalism when private news organizations are disrupted by the Internet. The solution is a collaborative news site, we don’t need intrepid reporters going into war zones when everyone can record video on their phone. We don’t need biased clickbait news providing fodder for soial network algorithms to herd us into echo chambers. We need a place where people of all viewpoints meet and duke it out like Wikipedia but for news. PS: wikinews in particular sucks though
  - whitexn--g28h 8y ago
    There's a difference between the photos people take on a phone and the journalism that people like Tyler Hicks do. It's just not the same. Please show me a crowd sourced article that has this impact. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/20/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-invisible-war-yemen.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/20/world/middlee...
- rjf72 8y ago
  I'm not going to get into the subjectivity of what is or is not "sinister", but there's a more fundamental issue with the pattern you've described. Increasingly often today headlines are defacto articles. They get shared on various social media outlets and then people start discussing the title, filling in the body themselves. When the title is 'fake', it leads to mass disinformation. This gets even worse when the title and lead paragraph say one thing and it's only later in the article that the more nuanced reality is revealed. In that case you not only mislead the 'titlers' but also the skimmers. I imagine readers on HN actually read articles at a vastly higher rate than e.g. Reddit or Facebook, yet on reading the comments it often becomes quickly apparent that many users, even here, do not bother reading articles before commenting on them. In an ideal world I wouldn't mind seeing misleading headlines put in the same bucket as false or misleading advertising. Of course in practice that'd be a terrible idea since this rule would simply be used for the powers that be to litigate against anything they don't like being published.
LearnProg17 8y ago
But you do agree that Spotify can read private messages, if it wants to. The news may not be clear about this, but we do need tighter permissions.
- o10449366 8y ago
  No, I don't. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-messaging-partnerships/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-messaging-par... I don't want this to devolve into an argument of semantics, but given NYT's editorial resources there's no doubt they carefully scrutinized how the "read" and "write" would be interpreted by their readership in the context of a negative report about Facebook.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Well if Facebook say "nothing to see here" then I'll definitely take their word for it.
anyfoo 8y ago
Wait, how is read/write permissions to messages (assuming that’s what you allude to) in any way necessary? On iOS at least, apps can’t even get access to your messages, and sharing works very well. I must misunderstand something.
- extra88 8y ago
  No, they mean Facebook Messenger. The extension can be used for things like collaboratively creating a playlist with contacts in Messenger, sounds like that would require being able to read messages from Messenger and write messages to it. https://support.spotify.com/is/using_spotify/playlists/group-playlists-with-spotify-and-messenger/ https://support.spotify.com/is/using_spotify/playlists/group...

_s 8y ago

I doubt the sinister / political motives - these headlines and articles are nothing more than to drive traffic / revenue. Pick a popular company / product / service, find something that they could be doing, throw up an article suggesting that's what they could be doing but have the title inferring that it is what they are actually doing. Rinse / repeat.

EGreg 8y ago
However! This is what happens under capitalism when private news organizations are disrupted by the Internet. The solution is a collaborative news site, we don’t need intrepid reporters going into war zones when everyone can record video on their phone. We don’t need biased clickbait news providing fodder for soial network algorithms to herd us into echo chambers. We need a place where people of all viewpoints meet and duke it out like Wikipedia but for news. PS: wikinews in particular sucks though
- whitexn--g28h 8y ago
  There's a difference between the photos people take on a phone and the journalism that people like Tyler Hicks do. It's just not the same. Please show me a crowd sourced article that has this impact. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/20/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-invisible-war-yemen.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/20/world/middlee...
rjf72 8y ago
I'm not going to get into the subjectivity of what is or is not "sinister", but there's a more fundamental issue with the pattern you've described. Increasingly often today headlines are defacto articles. They get shared on various social media outlets and then people start discussing the title, filling in the body themselves. When the title is 'fake', it leads to mass disinformation. This gets even worse when the title and lead paragraph say one thing and it's only later in the article that the more nuanced reality is revealed. In that case you not only mislead the 'titlers' but also the skimmers. I imagine readers on HN actually read articles at a vastly higher rate than e.g. Reddit or Facebook, yet on reading the comments it often becomes quickly apparent that many users, even here, do not bother reading articles before commenting on them. In an ideal world I wouldn't mind seeing misleading headlines put in the same bucket as false or misleading advertising. Of course in practice that'd be a terrible idea since this rule would simply be used for the powers that be to litigate against anything they don't like being published.

LearnProg17 8y ago

But you do agree that Spotify can read private messages, if it wants to. The news may not be clear about this, but we do need tighter permissions.

o10449366 8y ago
No, I don't. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-messaging-partnerships/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-messaging-par... I don't want this to devolve into an argument of semantics, but given NYT's editorial resources there's no doubt they carefully scrutinized how the "read" and "write" would be interpreted by their readership in the context of a negative report about Facebook.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Well if Facebook say "nothing to see here" then I'll definitely take their word for it.

anyfoo 8y ago

Wait, how is read/write permissions to messages (assuming that’s what you allude to) in any way necessary? On iOS at least, apps can’t even get access to your messages, and sharing works very well. I must misunderstand something.

extra88 8y ago
No, they mean Facebook Messenger. The extension can be used for things like collaboratively creating a playlist with contacts in Messenger, sounds like that would require being able to read messages from Messenger and write messages to it. https://support.spotify.com/is/using_spotify/playlists/group-playlists-with-spotify-and-messenger/ https://support.spotify.com/is/using_spotify/playlists/group...