4 ms·

I believe that the theory is that having "skin in the game" in the form of money would help optimize the news for something other than clickworthiness.

jonathankoren 8y ago
You’re assuming that a publisher would be willing to put enough money into a prediction market to make a profit from the market machinations rather than advertising or subscriptions. This is also assuming that prediction markets are actually useful in general, and useful in this specific case. Both of which are open to discussion, but even for this specific case, it’s not even clear what the the prediction market would even be predicting. The Politifact meter? What about all the stuff Poltifact doesn’t bother reporting on? Poltifxt (or any other org) aren’t perfect, and can be played as well.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  > You’re assuming that a publisher would be willing to put enough money into a prediction market to make a profit from the market machinations rather than advertising or subscriptions. The publisher doesn't (need to) interact with the prediction market at all. The idea isn't that the publisher isn't directly financially punished for inaccurate reporting. That doesn't happen in the RT analogue, isn't what's proposed by the OP service, and can't really happen in any constitutional system (plus, subscribers may be looking for content that isn't factual but feeds their biases). The conversation is about a third party for those who want to know about the factual accuracy of a publication. That being said, I agree with you that prediction markets aren't quite a good fit. When the NYT publishes some clearly inaccurate nonsense and leans on its reputation as "the paper of record", the issue generally isn't predictive analysis which is later uncontroversially falsified. The issue is usually lying about statistics in ways that are clear with close attention but that escape the attention of the casual reader and thus shape the conversation. Prediction markets wouldn't really help much here: if the outcome the market was predicting was uncontroversial, then you wouldn't need a system for checking the article in the first place.
  - jonathankoren 8y ago
    If the publisher isn’t interacting with the prediction market, then it doesn’t, as jerkstate said, “have skin in the game” beyond the traditional revenue and reputational metrics (eg Pulitzer Prizes). Even if they were interacting with the market (even for just braggadocio reasons), then they’d just be matching the biases of those that self-select for participation in what is essentially a small value and meaningless game. I could easily see the equivalents of pump-and-dumps and other market manipulation just for political / tribal reasons.
    - jerkstate 8y ago
      These days, it seems like news media outlets suffer very little from publishing unsourced claims that turn out to be false. If media consumers would/could participate in these betting markets and put their money where their eyes and ears are, they would use more critical thinking when deciding what to believe and how strongly to believe it (or else they would be punished financially). If popularized, this would have a feedback effect to the media outlets and they might start using better journalistic practices.
daveFNbuck 8y ago
How would a prediction market give you skin in the game on reports about past events? What are you putting your money down on?

jonathankoren 8y ago

You’re assuming that a publisher would be willing to put enough money into a prediction market to make a profit from the market machinations rather than advertising or subscriptions. This is also assuming that prediction markets are actually useful in general, and useful in this specific case. Both of which are open to discussion, but even for this specific case, it’s not even clear what the the prediction market would even be predicting. The Politifact meter? What about all the stuff Poltifact doesn’t bother reporting on? Poltifxt (or any other org) aren’t perfect, and can be played as well.

wutbrodo 8y ago
> You’re assuming that a publisher would be willing to put enough money into a prediction market to make a profit from the market machinations rather than advertising or subscriptions. The publisher doesn't (need to) interact with the prediction market at all. The idea isn't that the publisher isn't directly financially punished for inaccurate reporting. That doesn't happen in the RT analogue, isn't what's proposed by the OP service, and can't really happen in any constitutional system (plus, subscribers may be looking for content that isn't factual but feeds their biases). The conversation is about a third party for those who want to know about the factual accuracy of a publication. That being said, I agree with you that prediction markets aren't quite a good fit. When the NYT publishes some clearly inaccurate nonsense and leans on its reputation as "the paper of record", the issue generally isn't predictive analysis which is later uncontroversially falsified. The issue is usually lying about statistics in ways that are clear with close attention but that escape the attention of the casual reader and thus shape the conversation. Prediction markets wouldn't really help much here: if the outcome the market was predicting was uncontroversial, then you wouldn't need a system for checking the article in the first place.
- jonathankoren 8y ago
  If the publisher isn’t interacting with the prediction market, then it doesn’t, as jerkstate said, “have skin in the game” beyond the traditional revenue and reputational metrics (eg Pulitzer Prizes). Even if they were interacting with the market (even for just braggadocio reasons), then they’d just be matching the biases of those that self-select for participation in what is essentially a small value and meaningless game. I could easily see the equivalents of pump-and-dumps and other market manipulation just for political / tribal reasons.
  - jerkstate 8y ago
    These days, it seems like news media outlets suffer very little from publishing unsourced claims that turn out to be false. If media consumers would/could participate in these betting markets and put their money where their eyes and ears are, they would use more critical thinking when deciding what to believe and how strongly to believe it (or else they would be punished financially). If popularized, this would have a feedback effect to the media outlets and they might start using better journalistic practices.

daveFNbuck 8y ago

How would a prediction market give you skin in the game on reports about past events? What are you putting your money down on?