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The main problem is that this just does not scale. Facebook and Google have damaged the business model of local media all over the world – now how can they fix

by zoul 8y ago

The main problem is that this just does not scale. Facebook and Google have damaged the business model of local media all over the world – now how can they fix that by reintroducing local media to a few towns below 500 thousand people? If they really want to undo the damage, a systemic change is needed, otherwise it’s just feel good PR. (I’m from a former communist country and this almost feels like the collectivization: prevent people from running their own businesses and then be so kind as to let them work for the central government. Spoiler: it did not work.)

kmlx 8y ago
can't the same be said about horse drawn carriage companies? ford model t came in and damaged their business model.
- piokoch 8y ago
  True, the problem is that replacing carriages with cars was a benefit for society, destroying local press is not.
  - kmlx 8y ago
    i would argue that cars, for all their benefits, contributed and still do to global pollution. so you get the benefits of private transport, but also you're indirectly killing off other humans. isn't killing off local press and replacing it with national the same?
- zoul 8y ago
  I don’t think so. How does Google replace the journalism it helped to destroy? How can a single entity with its own political and other biases replace a vast, diverse network of local journalism?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - kmlx 8y ago
    why does google need to do anything? why is it google's fault that the news publishers don't know how to make money?
    - zoul 8y ago
      They don’t have to do anything. But then the society may feel like it’s hard to compete in the ad industry and start breaking the oligopoly down. Which, I think, is the main reason Google does this charade.
    - 52-6F-62 8y ago
      They do know how to make money. Many are even still profitable—just not by a huge margin. Being that many were bought up by conglomerates as a whole, the publishers have had to answer—indirectly—to shareholder demands. Those demands are usually that they want to see continual, even exponential, growth every quarter. When publishing doesn't deliver such exponential growth, their cut of the budget gets reduced and reduced and reduced. They're not failing of their own merit. They're being strangled by several different hands.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > can't the same be said about horse drawn carriage companies? ford model t came in and damaged their business model. More like Perdue Pharma came in with opioids and turned everyone into junkies that stopped traveling, so the horse drawn carriage companies lost their customers and started to fold. The horse drawn carriage -> cars example suggests a poor mental model, since it makes it seem like all hardship caused by technological change seem like it's due to clear improvements in nearly every respect.
  - kmlx 8y ago
    cars brought pollution. a different kind than horse manure, but still pollution. if the news publishers don't know how to make money then they should step aside or consolidate or a million other things.
rjf72 8y ago
Or not so feel good. Rolling with your own experience is the idea to genuinely support local media, or is it to introduce Pravda and Izvestiya? Google has clear political motivations and has been engaged in an increasingly large number of dubious actions. When this organization now wants to start throwing its weight directly behind news, it's not something I would generally see in a positive light. For example Google has partnered with the New America Foundation which is a think tank that provides input on a wide range of issues through a variety of different groups. When the head of their Open Markets group endorsed and encouraged further government action against monopolistic behavior, following Google's being fined $2.7billion in Europe, they terminated the groups leader and closed the entire division. Google, now having plausible deniability since they were separated from the entity again through a 'partner' - as they now plan to do with the media, claimed they had nothing to do with it. [1] This in many ways makes the "independent" partnerships even more disconcerting. It preemptively sets the stage for plausible deniability, while also working to distance themselves from a publication - even though there's every reason to doubt that distance actually exists in practice. [1] - https://theintercept.com/2017/08/30/google-funded-think-tank-fired-google-critics-after-they-dared-criticize-google/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/30/google-funded-think-tank...

by zoul 8y ago

kmlx 8y ago

can't the same be said about horse drawn carriage companies? ford model t came in and damaged their business model.

piokoch 8y ago
True, the problem is that replacing carriages with cars was a benefit for society, destroying local press is not.
- kmlx 8y ago
  i would argue that cars, for all their benefits, contributed and still do to global pollution. so you get the benefits of private transport, but also you're indirectly killing off other humans. isn't killing off local press and replacing it with national the same?
zoul 8y ago
I don’t think so. How does Google replace the journalism it helped to destroy? How can a single entity with its own political and other biases replace a vast, diverse network of local journalism?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kmlx 8y ago
  why does google need to do anything? why is it google's fault that the news publishers don't know how to make money?
  - zoul 8y ago
    They don’t have to do anything. But then the society may feel like it’s hard to compete in the ad industry and start breaking the oligopoly down. Which, I think, is the main reason Google does this charade.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    They do know how to make money. Many are even still profitable—just not by a huge margin. Being that many were bought up by conglomerates as a whole, the publishers have had to answer—indirectly—to shareholder demands. Those demands are usually that they want to see continual, even exponential, growth every quarter. When publishing doesn't deliver such exponential growth, their cut of the budget gets reduced and reduced and reduced. They're not failing of their own merit. They're being strangled by several different hands.
ardy42 8y ago
> can't the same be said about horse drawn carriage companies? ford model t came in and damaged their business model. More like Perdue Pharma came in with opioids and turned everyone into junkies that stopped traveling, so the horse drawn carriage companies lost their customers and started to fold. The horse drawn carriage -> cars example suggests a poor mental model, since it makes it seem like all hardship caused by technological change seem like it's due to clear improvements in nearly every respect.
- kmlx 8y ago
  cars brought pollution. a different kind than horse manure, but still pollution. if the news publishers don't know how to make money then they should step aside or consolidate or a million other things.

rjf72 8y ago

Or not so feel good. Rolling with your own experience is the idea to genuinely support local media, or is it to introduce Pravda and Izvestiya? Google has clear political motivations and has been engaged in an increasingly large number of dubious actions. When this organization now wants to start throwing its weight directly behind news, it's not something I would generally see in a positive light. For example Google has partnered with the New America Foundation which is a think tank that provides input on a wide range of issues through a variety of different groups. When the head of their Open Markets group endorsed and encouraged further government action against monopolistic behavior, following Google's being fined $2.7billion in Europe, they terminated the groups leader and closed the entire division. Google, now having plausible deniability since they were separated from the entity again through a 'partner' - as they now plan to do with the media, claimed they had nothing to do with it. [1] This in many ways makes the "independent" partnerships even more disconcerting. It preemptively sets the stage for plausible deniability, while also working to distance themselves from a publication - even though there's every reason to doubt that distance actually exists in practice. [1] - https://theintercept.com/2017/08/30/google-funded-think-tank-fired-google-critics-after-they-dared-criticize-google/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/30/google-funded-think-tank...