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Funny how this suggestion comes up every time Google or Facebook are subject of some minor regulation outside the US. Yet suggest they should give up their par

Funny how this suggestion comes up every time Google or Facebook are subject of some minor regulation outside the US. Yet suggest they should give up their participation in military or US border security, two areas that are unlikely to be larger than their business in Australia (or, other times, the EU), and there’s no shortage of people explaining what a stupid trade-off that would be. I guess the tech crowds’ priorities are clear: drone targeting? So what? This is strictly business! A bit of taxation to maybe rescue the journalism a democracy depends on? To the barricades! We will gladly give up 100% of earnings to take a stand against the injustice that is...taking 5% of earnings.

remarkEon 7y ago
"democracy", broadly defined, does not "depend" on journalism. This narrative seems to have been invented recently as traditional outlets lost the trust of their viewers after getting things continually and fantastically wrong for at least 2 decades while a new medium (the internet) exposed how little they actually know.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  I'm slightly more bullish on journalism and its importance than you are, but I broadly agree. It's been embarrassing watching the death throes (or transition period) of journalism, seeing people used to being treated as high-status pathetically lash out at every possible entity involved in exposing their inadequacy. I do think that journalism plays a role in a healthy democracy. I assume that at some point, journalism will settle into a new equilibrium and play the role that it's always played, without the messianic complex that journalism as a whole is currently afflicted with (and so dramatically fails to live up to).
- chillacy 7y ago
  Democracy definitely depends on citizens being informed enough to collectively make intelligent choices, but whether infotainment is serving that right now is debatable. In real life that happens through peer networks as much as the news.
- uniqueid 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
- KarlKemp 7y ago
  Voting without information is like air conditioning without a thermometer, or self-driving cars without LIDAR, or regular cars with a blind driver: It just doesn't work. Because the information flow needs to be circular to allow the actuator (voter) to react to the results of previous actions. There used to be this fantasy that hobbyist bloggers would fill in where professional journalism fails. Here's a map "news deserts" where the latter has happened: https://www.usnewsdeserts.com https://www.usnewsdeserts.com. There is no map of the former, because bloggers tend to get up too late to attend boring 9am meetings of the residential refuse working group. You might be under the impression that relevant news will somehow "diffuse" to get to you. That's a common idea among what's called "low-information voters", who tend to never read any news themselves and extrapolate from there. It's wrong because they miss that the information that gets to them is simply second-hand journalism: It's full of holes and sometimes has (brown) stains. But the parts of it that are accurate almost invariably originate from professional news sources.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    So voting "didn't work" until very very recently? The idea that there was this golden age where people all knew what they were talking about, and the citizens of a democracy dutifully read their newspaper and carefully considered their options, went to the polls etc, is a fantasy. The map of "news deserts" is really a map of "population density" - it tells me nothing about information consumption (or retention) in those areas. >You might be under the impression that relevant news will somehow "diffuse" to get to you. I am under no such impression. I am challenging the idea that "journalism" is "critical" for a democracy to function. It only seems critical to me insofar as "function" is defined as "people vote in the way journalists expect them to".
    - KarlKemp 7y ago
      > So voting "didn't work" until very very recently? The time from about 1740 to 1800 was for newspapers what the 2000s was for the internet. 1787: US Constitution (first democracy) 1789: French Revolution (2nd) 1832 (to 192x): British Reform Act (expanding right to vote) > I am under no such impression. Then how does information about, say, laws being passed, or viruses going around, or wars being lost or won get to you? And if it doesn't get to you, how do you decide whom to vote for? > It only seems critical to me insofar as "function" is defined as "people vote in the way journalists expect them to". This is just superficial, cynical, contrarian ignorance. Power in the US has been flipping between the parties quite freely, so the press either changes their opinion just as often as the electorate, or their influence is rather limited. Unless you watch C-SPAN all day and read every law yourself, you'll neither not be informed, or you'll get your information from people who do some of that reading for you (and, if you're lucky, also ask questions, send & litigate FOIA requests, call experts, speak foreign languages etc). Professional journalism is the closest you can get to the source of information unless you do it all yourself. Your 4chan pals or that YouTube bro yelling at his webcam can't and won't do that legwork, either. So what you like about them isn't that they are better informed––they add one step of transmission and can therefore only decrease information content, never increase. What you like is their capability to pre-digest the news, remove anything that might challenge you, and regurgitate the rest in a form that doesn't conflict with your conspiratorial mindset.
asddubs 7y ago
the new york times intentionally mislead people in order to get them to support war in iraq
- KarlKemp 7y ago
  It wasn't intentionally, and it happened two decades ago. I'm pretty sure, for example, that the Times gets criticised for this at least ten times as often as the Republican Party does, even though the latter was not only the origin of the lie the NYT fell for, but the actual group of people making the decision to go to war. Only Google shutting down Reader has a worse <magnitude of mistake>/<longevity of criticism> ratio.

remarkEon 7y ago

"democracy", broadly defined, does not "depend" on journalism. This narrative seems to have been invented recently as traditional outlets lost the trust of their viewers after getting things continually and fantastically wrong for at least 2 decades while a new medium (the internet) exposed how little they actually know.

wutbrodo 7y ago
I'm slightly more bullish on journalism and its importance than you are, but I broadly agree. It's been embarrassing watching the death throes (or transition period) of journalism, seeing people used to being treated as high-status pathetically lash out at every possible entity involved in exposing their inadequacy. I do think that journalism plays a role in a healthy democracy. I assume that at some point, journalism will settle into a new equilibrium and play the role that it's always played, without the messianic complex that journalism as a whole is currently afflicted with (and so dramatically fails to live up to).
chillacy 7y ago
Democracy definitely depends on citizens being informed enough to collectively make intelligent choices, but whether infotainment is serving that right now is debatable. In real life that happens through peer networks as much as the news.
uniqueid 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
KarlKemp 7y ago
Voting without information is like air conditioning without a thermometer, or self-driving cars without LIDAR, or regular cars with a blind driver: It just doesn't work. Because the information flow needs to be circular to allow the actuator (voter) to react to the results of previous actions. There used to be this fantasy that hobbyist bloggers would fill in where professional journalism fails. Here's a map "news deserts" where the latter has happened: https://www.usnewsdeserts.com https://www.usnewsdeserts.com. There is no map of the former, because bloggers tend to get up too late to attend boring 9am meetings of the residential refuse working group. You might be under the impression that relevant news will somehow "diffuse" to get to you. That's a common idea among what's called "low-information voters", who tend to never read any news themselves and extrapolate from there. It's wrong because they miss that the information that gets to them is simply second-hand journalism: It's full of holes and sometimes has (brown) stains. But the parts of it that are accurate almost invariably originate from professional news sources.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  So voting "didn't work" until very very recently? The idea that there was this golden age where people all knew what they were talking about, and the citizens of a democracy dutifully read their newspaper and carefully considered their options, went to the polls etc, is a fantasy. The map of "news deserts" is really a map of "population density" - it tells me nothing about information consumption (or retention) in those areas. >You might be under the impression that relevant news will somehow "diffuse" to get to you. I am under no such impression. I am challenging the idea that "journalism" is "critical" for a democracy to function. It only seems critical to me insofar as "function" is defined as "people vote in the way journalists expect them to".
  - KarlKemp 7y ago
    > So voting "didn't work" until very very recently? The time from about 1740 to 1800 was for newspapers what the 2000s was for the internet. 1787: US Constitution (first democracy) 1789: French Revolution (2nd) 1832 (to 192x): British Reform Act (expanding right to vote) > I am under no such impression. Then how does information about, say, laws being passed, or viruses going around, or wars being lost or won get to you? And if it doesn't get to you, how do you decide whom to vote for? > It only seems critical to me insofar as "function" is defined as "people vote in the way journalists expect them to". This is just superficial, cynical, contrarian ignorance. Power in the US has been flipping between the parties quite freely, so the press either changes their opinion just as often as the electorate, or their influence is rather limited. Unless you watch C-SPAN all day and read every law yourself, you'll neither not be informed, or you'll get your information from people who do some of that reading for you (and, if you're lucky, also ask questions, send & litigate FOIA requests, call experts, speak foreign languages etc). Professional journalism is the closest you can get to the source of information unless you do it all yourself. Your 4chan pals or that YouTube bro yelling at his webcam can't and won't do that legwork, either. So what you like about them isn't that they are better informed––they add one step of transmission and can therefore only decrease information content, never increase. What you like is their capability to pre-digest the news, remove anything that might challenge you, and regurgitate the rest in a form that doesn't conflict with your conspiratorial mindset.

asddubs 7y ago

the new york times intentionally mislead people in order to get them to support war in iraq

KarlKemp 7y ago
It wasn't intentionally, and it happened two decades ago. I'm pretty sure, for example, that the Times gets criticised for this at least ten times as often as the Republican Party does, even though the latter was not only the origin of the lie the NYT fell for, but the actual group of people making the decision to go to war. Only Google shutting down Reader has a worse <magnitude of mistake>/<longevity of criticism> ratio.