4 ms·

Coral Talk is a Vox Media endeavor.

Fellshard 7y ago
That certainly puts a very different angle on how this will be used, and what use cases it's targeted towards. From prior experience, Vox outlets are extremely stringent about what they permit in their comments: specifically, only people who agree or can extend the arguments of a given article further are preserved; or quibbles about minor details. No true discussion is allowed outside the article's bubble.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Source? Those are pretty serious accusations.
  - ggm 7y ago
    Funny, I don't see these as accusations, I see these as curated engagement. The upside is there, if you know up-front its the basis of the engagement. If its applied retrospectively it sucks, for a number of people. But curation is not always bad. "it depends"
    - Noos 7y ago
      There's no "engagement." It just ends up with banal "I agree" posts that add nothing to the article. And it doesn't add many to them, Polygon's comment sections tend to be tiny and not worth reading, for example. You get better news and engagement on reddit.
      - Fellshard 7y ago
        They used to be larger, and I believe that restrictive, inconsistent moderation drove people away, but that's merely a guess of one probable cause.
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    Personal anecdote. Vox itself removed comments after a time, probably because this bubble could not reasonably be preserved in response to the majority of their articles. The Verge is somewhat more open, depending on the topic and whether it is technical or political in nature. Polygon's Ben Kuchera is a caustically aggressive moderator, and is the primary one I saw behaving in this manner, in addition to antagonizing commenters who disagreed with an article's premise; doubly so if he himself wrote the article.
- wmf 7y ago
  Since it's decentralized, maybe someone could create an alt-right instance that allows only the highest-quality and most ideologically-correct comments. Then we could see how long it would take for Vox to distance themselves from the project.
  - camdenlock 7y ago
    Isn’t this what Vox and friends already do, just with s/alt-right/leftism/ ?
    - Fellshard 7y ago
      I believe that is their point.
jp_sc 7y ago
Their license says the copyright of the project belongs to Mozilla. How weird. https://github.com/coralproject/talk/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/coralproject/talk/blob/master/LICENSE
- Fellshard 7y ago
  https://scroll.blog/2019/02/25/scrolls-new-collaboration-with-mozilla/ https://scroll.blog/2019/02/25/scrolls-new-collaboration-wit... With this recent product that is also closely integrated with Vox properties, I'd say this is a deeply concerning move how closely the two are becoming entangled.
  - camdenlock 7y ago
    Indeed. Some creepy language on the Scroll site, e.g. “With Scroll, journalists get paid to report the stories important to democracy [...]” These Vox-alikes seem to fancy themselves arbiters of meaning with regard to “journalism” and “democracy”. Anything which disagrees with their personal definitions must be “alt-right”...
- ianbicking 7y ago
  It started as a Mozilla Foundation project, and then Vox Media took it over.
  - KajMagnus 7y ago
    Why didn't Mozilla continue leading the project? (If you happen to know) Here's a blog post about the change: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/22/the-coral-project-is-moving-to-vox-media/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/22/the-coral-project-i... It writes: "After 3.5 years at Mozilla, the time is right for Coral software to move further into the journalism space, and grow with the support of an organization grounded in that industry", and "... The Coral Project will receive the backing of a large company ...". — However, Vox could back the project, also if it was still led my Mozilla, right. Still unclear to me why Mozilla didn't want to continue leading the project? Maybe Talk was too different from other things Mozilla does, and maybe it cost money and didn't bring any revenue?

That certainly puts a very different angle on how this will be used, and what use cases it's targeted towards. From prior experience, Vox outlets are extremely stringent about what they permit in their comments: specifically, only people who agree or can extend the arguments of a given article further are preserved; or quibbles about minor details. No true discussion is allowed outside the article's bubble.

andrepd 7y ago
Source? Those are pretty serious accusations.
- ggm 7y ago
  Funny, I don't see these as accusations, I see these as curated engagement. The upside is there, if you know up-front its the basis of the engagement. If its applied retrospectively it sucks, for a number of people. But curation is not always bad. "it depends"
  - Noos 7y ago
    There's no "engagement." It just ends up with banal "I agree" posts that add nothing to the article. And it doesn't add many to them, Polygon's comment sections tend to be tiny and not worth reading, for example. You get better news and engagement on reddit.
    - Fellshard 7y ago
      They used to be larger, and I believe that restrictive, inconsistent moderation drove people away, but that's merely a guess of one probable cause.
- Fellshard 7y ago
  Personal anecdote. Vox itself removed comments after a time, probably because this bubble could not reasonably be preserved in response to the majority of their articles. The Verge is somewhat more open, depending on the topic and whether it is technical or political in nature. Polygon's Ben Kuchera is a caustically aggressive moderator, and is the primary one I saw behaving in this manner, in addition to antagonizing commenters who disagreed with an article's premise; doubly so if he himself wrote the article.
wmf 7y ago
Since it's decentralized, maybe someone could create an alt-right instance that allows only the highest-quality and most ideologically-correct comments. Then we could see how long it would take for Vox to distance themselves from the project.
- camdenlock 7y ago
  Isn’t this what Vox and friends already do, just with s/alt-right/leftism/ ?
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    I believe that is their point.

jp_sc 7y ago

Their license says the copyright of the project belongs to Mozilla. How weird. https://github.com/coralproject/talk/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/coralproject/talk/blob/master/LICENSE

Fellshard 7y ago
https://scroll.blog/2019/02/25/scrolls-new-collaboration-with-mozilla/ https://scroll.blog/2019/02/25/scrolls-new-collaboration-wit... With this recent product that is also closely integrated with Vox properties, I'd say this is a deeply concerning move how closely the two are becoming entangled.
- camdenlock 7y ago
  Indeed. Some creepy language on the Scroll site, e.g. “With Scroll, journalists get paid to report the stories important to democracy [...]” These Vox-alikes seem to fancy themselves arbiters of meaning with regard to “journalism” and “democracy”. Anything which disagrees with their personal definitions must be “alt-right”...
ianbicking 7y ago
It started as a Mozilla Foundation project, and then Vox Media took it over.
- KajMagnus 7y ago
  Why didn't Mozilla continue leading the project? (If you happen to know) Here's a blog post about the change: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/22/the-coral-project-is-moving-to-vox-media/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/22/the-coral-project-i... It writes: "After 3.5 years at Mozilla, the time is right for Coral software to move further into the journalism space, and grow with the support of an organization grounded in that industry", and "... The Coral Project will receive the backing of a large company ...". — However, Vox could back the project, also if it was still led my Mozilla, right. Still unclear to me why Mozilla didn't want to continue leading the project? Maybe Talk was too different from other things Mozilla does, and maybe it cost money and didn't bring any revenue?