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I read ZH pretty regularly. It carries a wide variety of opinions, and they often have the scoop many hours before any MSM. Yes, the comment section is useles

I read ZH pretty regularly. It carries a wide variety of opinions, and they often have the scoop many hours before any MSM. Yes, the comment section is useless. They don't do any real moderation, and it's filled with, well, a lot of inappropriate material. So, I don't read the comments. (They don't even show by default.) Is this really a good reason to "cancel" the site, though? Yeah, unmoderated free speech isn't pretty, but how much do you really hate it?

irjustin 6y ago
Unmoderated/fully-self-moderated free speech for political content trends towards extreme ends of either stance. I've seen it repeatedly in reddit, 4chan and others. Reddit attempts to walk the balance of site-moderation vs user-moderated and it's extremely difficult on that knife edge. The hope with ZH that it would span the political divide and allow proper discourse and exchange of ideas from both/any side of thinking. But without moderation, it trends towards mud-slinging, vitriol where arguments become so divided that it's no longer discourse.
- downerending 6y ago
  Given the choice between Reddit moderation and ZH, I'll take the latter. Really, though, I rarely read the comments on either platform anymore.
- nfoz 6y ago
  > But without moderation, it trends towards mud-slinging, vitriol where arguments become so divided that it's no longer discourse. I think of it as performance art of insane babble, satire, potty-humour. Should "proper discourse and exchange of ideas" be the only thing allowed to exist? (I have no problem with advertisers pulling away from it, either.)
  - wyclif 6y ago
    No site, not even ZH, has a worse comments section than YouTube. Seems to me that it's going to be really hard for Google to escape charges of hypocrisy by banning sites not because of news content but because of unorthodox and offensive comment threads.
testbot123 6y ago
The site isn't "cancelled" though. Google has chosen not to do business with another business because advertisers that pay Google don't want their ads to appear on ZeroHedge, whose comments section features language that said advertisers don't want associated with their brand. ZeroHedge still exists, is still listed in Google's search results, and can still make money -- just not on Google's ad network. This is the free market at work.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  I'm willing to bet that businesses that pay Google to advertiser is not a homogeneous whole. So it seems plausible that Google could put ZeroHedge in a bucket tagged with, well, whatever seems appropriate, and let advertisers decide. If they wanted to. Which they appear to not. And here we are.
- SllX 6y ago
  I don’t buy that. I’m not going to cry over Google not doing business with someone, but let’s call a spade a spade: this was a partisan choice. Google’s entire business schtick is that advertisers can use Google’s ad platform to target who they do and do not want to serve ads to. If advertisers really don’t want their ads to show up next to a site’s content, it won’t. Ironically the only people that would see the ad are the people that actually go to the website, so presumably they want to be on that site, and presumably advertisers would like to be where their audience is, wherever they are, unless they themselves are worried about getting “cancelled”. EDIT: Forgot the other half of the point. It doesn’t matter if Google makes partisan choices, it’s a free market, and we’ve got choices in life. It does matter when a company makes partisan choices and tries to pass themselves off as objective. Are you objective or do you have a bias? It’s a simple question: we all have biases, they do affect our choices, so be upfront with them rather than passing yourself off as something you’re not.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    I think you forgot a very important element. Its a free market, they can do what they want. In a normal market However they enjoy specific liability protections (230),unlike most market participants. So, if they exercise choice, they also forego the liability protection. They can choose to editorialize, at a cost of losing regulatory priviledges
beamatronic 6y ago
How do you feel about the strong pro-Russia influence on the site?
- koheripbal 6y ago
  They were easily a MONTH ahead of everyone else on the covid-19 crisis. The talk about the Fed's USD impact, like no one else today. If you can sift through the bullshit, there's a LOT of good content - especially in the finance space - that you simply cannot find anywhere else. I have not seen a lot of content about Russia - and when it's there, it's not flattering - so I'm not sure why you think it has a specific Russia slant. The thing with ZH is you need a good BS filter.
  - chewz 6y ago
    > The thing with ZH is you need a good BS filter. Independent thinking and drawing your own conclusions from lecture is too painfull for most people... As for Russia influence ZH is very much dead set against US troops and weapons close to Russias borders (Baltic States, Central Europe). This is exactly Russian line. But perhaps ZH genuinely wish for world peace...
    - marcusverus 6y ago
      Isn't ZH generally oriented against foreign meddling by the US?
  - downerending 6y ago
    > The thing with ZH is you need a good BS filter. Sadly, these days that's as true with NYT, WaPo, etc. One of the reasons that sites like ZH have become more popular is that the "papers of record" have abandoned their historic standards.
  - MR4D 6y ago
    I'll second this. Tons of financial info from JPMorgan (e.g. Marko Kolanovic, their top quant), DeutscheBank, UBS, Merrill, etc. That content is usually not available to people unless you spend tons of money with those firms. And yes, a BS filter definitely is needed, and I've found reading through a newsreader makes that much, much easier.

irjustin 6y ago

Unmoderated/fully-self-moderated free speech for political content trends towards extreme ends of either stance. I've seen it repeatedly in reddit, 4chan and others. Reddit attempts to walk the balance of site-moderation vs user-moderated and it's extremely difficult on that knife edge. The hope with ZH that it would span the political divide and allow proper discourse and exchange of ideas from both/any side of thinking. But without moderation, it trends towards mud-slinging, vitriol where arguments become so divided that it's no longer discourse.

downerending 6y ago
Given the choice between Reddit moderation and ZH, I'll take the latter. Really, though, I rarely read the comments on either platform anymore.
nfoz 6y ago
> But without moderation, it trends towards mud-slinging, vitriol where arguments become so divided that it's no longer discourse. I think of it as performance art of insane babble, satire, potty-humour. Should "proper discourse and exchange of ideas" be the only thing allowed to exist? (I have no problem with advertisers pulling away from it, either.)
- wyclif 6y ago
  No site, not even ZH, has a worse comments section than YouTube. Seems to me that it's going to be really hard for Google to escape charges of hypocrisy by banning sites not because of news content but because of unorthodox and offensive comment threads.

testbot123 6y ago

The site isn't "cancelled" though. Google has chosen not to do business with another business because advertisers that pay Google don't want their ads to appear on ZeroHedge, whose comments section features language that said advertisers don't want associated with their brand. ZeroHedge still exists, is still listed in Google's search results, and can still make money -- just not on Google's ad network. This is the free market at work.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
I'm willing to bet that businesses that pay Google to advertiser is not a homogeneous whole. So it seems plausible that Google could put ZeroHedge in a bucket tagged with, well, whatever seems appropriate, and let advertisers decide. If they wanted to. Which they appear to not. And here we are.
SllX 6y ago
I don’t buy that. I’m not going to cry over Google not doing business with someone, but let’s call a spade a spade: this was a partisan choice. Google’s entire business schtick is that advertisers can use Google’s ad platform to target who they do and do not want to serve ads to. If advertisers really don’t want their ads to show up next to a site’s content, it won’t. Ironically the only people that would see the ad are the people that actually go to the website, so presumably they want to be on that site, and presumably advertisers would like to be where their audience is, wherever they are, unless they themselves are worried about getting “cancelled”. EDIT: Forgot the other half of the point. It doesn’t matter if Google makes partisan choices, it’s a free market, and we’ve got choices in life. It does matter when a company makes partisan choices and tries to pass themselves off as objective. Are you objective or do you have a bias? It’s a simple question: we all have biases, they do affect our choices, so be upfront with them rather than passing yourself off as something you’re not.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  I think you forgot a very important element. Its a free market, they can do what they want. In a normal market However they enjoy specific liability protections (230),unlike most market participants. So, if they exercise choice, they also forego the liability protection. They can choose to editorialize, at a cost of losing regulatory priviledges

beamatronic 6y ago

How do you feel about the strong pro-Russia influence on the site?

koheripbal 6y ago
They were easily a MONTH ahead of everyone else on the covid-19 crisis. The talk about the Fed's USD impact, like no one else today. If you can sift through the bullshit, there's a LOT of good content - especially in the finance space - that you simply cannot find anywhere else. I have not seen a lot of content about Russia - and when it's there, it's not flattering - so I'm not sure why you think it has a specific Russia slant. The thing with ZH is you need a good BS filter.
- chewz 6y ago
  > The thing with ZH is you need a good BS filter. Independent thinking and drawing your own conclusions from lecture is too painfull for most people... As for Russia influence ZH is very much dead set against US troops and weapons close to Russias borders (Baltic States, Central Europe). This is exactly Russian line. But perhaps ZH genuinely wish for world peace...
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    Isn't ZH generally oriented against foreign meddling by the US?
- downerending 6y ago
  > The thing with ZH is you need a good BS filter. Sadly, these days that's as true with NYT, WaPo, etc. One of the reasons that sites like ZH have become more popular is that the "papers of record" have abandoned their historic standards.
- MR4D 6y ago
  I'll second this. Tons of financial info from JPMorgan (e.g. Marko Kolanovic, their top quant), DeutscheBank, UBS, Merrill, etc. That content is usually not available to people unless you spend tons of money with those firms. And yes, a BS filter definitely is needed, and I've found reading through a newsreader makes that much, much easier.