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The Daily Mail can definitely simmer down. If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit "journalism" you can't complain when your main source of traffi
by maxehmookau 6y ago
The Daily Mail can definitely simmer down.
If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit "journalism" you can't complain when your main source of traffic decides to squeeze a bit more cash out of your enormous money pit.
Cry me a river.
- comboy 6y agoI have no idea if The Daily Mail claims have any merit, but you do not want to live in a country where thief cannot report burglary.
- maxehmookau 6y agoThis is exactly the completely deregulated free-market economy that op-eds in the daily mail have been asking for for decades. They don't like it when it comes back to bite them.
- comboy 6y agos/burglary/theft then
- optimalsolver 6y ago"No capitalist ever saw a market and wished it free."
- treeman79 6y agoOf course people don’t want to compete. Too bad. Capitalism is about increasing efficiency / resources through brutal competition. Just don’t let them make laws giving one group special treatment. Like banning the competition.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoWho don't want to compete with who? This is between a news publisher and a search engine; they're not exactly in the same business.
- elliekelly 6y agoSure they are: they both make money from selling ads don’t they?
- bagacrap 6y agoIf they're equals does it make sense to ask when's the last time the DM sent traffic to Google?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- treeman79 6y agoGoogle news
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoThe article says the DM is accusing Google of burying the DM's results in favor of other news outlets'. The dispute is not about Google favoring its own news, as if there were such a thing, over the DM's.
- vixen99 6y agoA completely deregulated free-market economy would have no recourse to the courts. Such does not exist. I have no idea regarding the merits of the case but so far we don't know who's to get bitten.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoCourts are integral to a free market. Without them all sorts of markets evaporate completely. More generally, having a market does not mean having a government that supplies no public goods -- that is, having a government, since supplying public goods is all a government does.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoThe confusion may be a linguistic one -- conflation of the terms "competitive" and "unregulated", and of "a" market with "the" market. The existence of some free markets does not imply that every market is free. Excepting failed states, nowhere is every market free -- the markets for grenades, ivory, medical licenses, political appointments, assassinations, etc. are all things most of us want either tightly controlled or entirely suppressed. And even in an extremely competitive market, like the ones for lettuce or generic drugs, there are still important roles for government to play. Of course regulation can be and often is grossly wasteful, even corrupt. But it's also critical to our safety.
- rchaud 6y agoThis is a level of gotcha akin to "NYTimes shows ads, so they have no authority to criticize Google" that we see on HN.
- sldksk 6y agoNo, it’s not. Participating in capitalism is not equivalent to advocating for it.
- roenxi 6y agoBeing pro-free-market is against the interests of incumbents, and if in fact an incumbent was pro-free-market regardless then that is laudable. Incumbents are protected by regulations. There is a lot to dislike about the Daily Mail I'm sure (I don't read it). But you aren't catching them in a moment of hypocrisy here. Everyone hates losing, doesn't mean they are wrong about what the rules of the game should be.
- treeman79 6y agoWhy not? The poor thief is just trying to support his 20 orphan kids. People should feel honored when they are robbed and left for dead.
- sshagent 6y agoI agree with what your saying, but have no sympathy for the rag that is the Daily Mail
- 0898 6y agoI used to be very much of the same opinion. But increasingly I find the Daily Mail to be the only place to turn for a sensible reaction to woke hysteria – like the supposed "rape culture" in schools, and the recent walkouts over the flying of the Union Jack at the Pimlico Academy.
- sldksk 6y agoTry r/stupidpol
- maxehmookau 6y agoWait.. what? You find the DM a home for "sensible reaction" to cultural issues? That's horrifying.
- 0898 6y agoI would have been amazed even 5 years ago too. For example, I listened to Harry and Meaghan's cringeworthy new podcast on Spotify. Afterwards I clicked around the web, trying to find some commentary that would truly sum up my feelings. Eventually I landed on the Daily Mail's site and what do I see? A headline: "Woke Word-Salad". At that point I had to concede: okay, maybe this is where I belong.
- AuthorizedCust 6y ago> where thief cannot report burglary Written from the perspective that the most straightforward explanation is true: Bad analogy. Nobody entered anyone else's business. The defendant prefers that its users get good quality information, and the plaintiff's reputation for low quality information runs afoul of that practice. Also, why would a thief report his own crime?
- bluefirebrand 6y agoI don't think it's meant as an analogy, it's an idiom. > Also, why would a thief report his own crime? The thief isn't reporting their own crime, they are reporting that they have been robbed by someone else.
- deelowe 6y agoIt's an idiom. It basically means that someone who committed a lesser, but similar crime wouldn't be able to report a crime themselves.
- blackshaw 6y ago> The defendant prefers that its users get information that a) maximises the defendant's ad revenue and b) advances the defendant's preferred narratives. FTFY
- jhgb 6y ago> you do not want to live in a country where thief cannot report burglary There was a Daily Mail article about a thief who was unable to report a burglary? Or what exactly did you mean by that?
- RKearney 6y agoIt appears to be an idiom for a party in the wrong (Daily Mail for clickbait article) from being allowed to report that they were wronged (manipulated search results by Google) since the parent poster seemed to suggest that Daily Mail somehow deserved that treatment and two wrongs make a right.
- jhgb 6y agoThat's a weird idiom, then, considering that Daily Mail is in the UK and Google is in the US. And considering that Daily Mail is not a search engine, so they're not comparable entities to begin with. And that I'm not even sure that Google was in the wrong here in the first place. So I was confused on multiple levels, apparently.
- scatters 6y agoPer Wikipedia, 70% of the Daily Mail's web traffic is from outside the UK, mostly from the US.
- jhgb 6y agoNot quite sure what this has to do with the idiom's inapplicability, unless "country" in it meant "world". But clearly the reason for what you point out is that the English-speaking world is way larger than the UK.
- Neil44 6y agoRight but if true the Daily Mail probably aren’t the only people they’re doing this to.
- rbut 6y agoAll online "journalism" which uses advertising as its main source of revenue does exactly this. For example in Australia we have news.com.au who uses the exact same tactics. In fact their headlines and blurbs are even shorter than Daily Mails, forcing you to click to learn what the carefully worded (yet extremely manipulative) headline is talking about. This is not exclusive to Daily Mail.
- maxehmookau 6y agoI'd argue the DM was one of the pioneers of this approach. Ad-supported and not-garbage online news sites _do_ exist, although they are a dying breed.
- ChrisRR 6y agoThe DM are worse than clickbait. They actively attempt to manufacture rage for clicks
- jtbayly 6y agoKind of sounds like the New York Times.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoThe NYT and most other mainstream news outlets go out of their way to avoid making people angry -- often too much so, IMO. Many truths are infuriating. Reporting them does not in itself imply a lack of ethics.
- corporateshil1 6y agoYou and the MSM will have to repeat that for quite a long time if you want it to eventually be true.
- DocTomoe 6y agoI would not consider anything that is written in the Daily Mail "truth" by any reasonable understanding of the word. They write op-ed pieces at best, and more often than not just make things up or deliberately twist things out of proportion or context.
- tootie 6y agoIt enrages me to see this kind of hot take on HN. People here used to be rational.
- sofixa 6y agoSeriously, what is wrong with people? How can anyone look at the Guardian and Daily Fail, and conclude they are of the same quality.
- 6y ago
- ErikVandeWater 6y ago> If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit "journalism" you can't complain when your main source of traffic decides to squeeze a bit more cash out of your enormous money pit. Is that a legal argument?
- maxehmookau 6y agoAbsolutely not. I'm not a lawyer, just a citizen of the UK who has to live in a society that the DM has poisoned over decades. I have no sympathy whatsoever, but as for the legal case I have no idea how this plays out.
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoI'm pointing out you're not really adding anything to the discussion. Saying you morally disapprove of the Daily Mail without substantiating it with facts isn't for HN.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThe facts are easy to check. The DM regularly loses libel cases for publishing fake smears about various victims. But apparently it considers these losses a cost of doing business. It has been called out for its racism on numerous occasions. It's notorious for wildly exaggerated tabloid abuse of legitimate refugees and immigrants. It called judges who forced proper constitutional proceedings during Brexit "enemies of the people" - sparking a record number of complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Its comments section is a cesspit of race hate and petty ignorance. It literally supported Hitler before war was declared. There isn't a rational case to be made for not disapproving of it morally.
- ben_w 6y ago> There isn't a rational case to be made for not disapproving of it morally. That, and I say this with sadness, doesn’t follow from your other points. It just means they have different morals from you and I.
- tootie 6y agoTheir business so thoroughly dependent on SEO it's probably worth their while to sue. Even if they lose, getting Google to loosen up a tiny bit out of caution is worth the price.
- hermitcrab 6y agoThe Daily Fail is a hate-filled stain on the name of good journalism. It ran the headlline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in the 1930s and it hasn't changed much since. It bears no small part in the UK's currently catastrophic situation. I hope Google takes every penny they have.
- Spivak 6y agoBad things happening to bad people is still bad if it’s done unjustifiably so. There’s nothing really about this story that prevents it from happening to a site you like.
- JohnWhigham 6y agoGod help us all if people like you become judges; "I don't like the plaintiff so this case is automatically invalidated"
- maxehmookau 6y agoThat's fine, I have no plans to become one. I'm not legally trained, nor do I pretend to be. The Daily Mail, however, has spent the last few years describing the UK judiciary as "Enemies of the People", so they can continue to cry me a river.
- hrktb 6y agoArguably shouldn't judges follow their judgement on the cases they work on ? Throwing out baseless cases happen every day, a company abusing the system having their ridiculous complaints thrown out would be reasonable. To me that is the basic reason for having humans in the process.
- _-david-_ 6y agoI think the point was the case should not be thrown out because the judge doesn't like the plaintiff but only if the case is baseless. You can't judge the validity of a case just because preconceived notions about the plaintiff.
- hrktb 6y agoWether a case is deemed baseless is not cold and dry facts, there is a judgement of merit and intention of the filing side. Also taking into account the surroundings of a case, including who’s involved and their history is not preconception (or then everything becomes preconception). It’s not the same if you’re a CEO filing a suit against a grandma who shouted insanities at you when you fired their son, and if you’re a worker subject to verbal abuse from your boss.
- throwawaysea 6y agoTo me, this is just a tired hot take. The Daily Mail regularly covers stories that others don’t, and they do so with perspectives and plain speak that others don’t provide. I feel like everyone here attacking the Daily Mail doesn’t actually read them, but are blindly repeating an opinion they’ve been told to hold, because the Daily Mail’s existence is inconvenient for other newspapers and for certain ideologies. It’s tactically easier to attack the source rather than individual pieces of content. We see the same thing with the N.Y. Post. During these polarized times when censorship is rampant and diverse perspectives are hard to come by, I’m glad to have someone like the Daily Mail around. A recent example of a great article is their story on COVID vaccines potentially affecting menstruation (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9446907/Some-women-report-heavier-painful-PERIODS-getting-COVID-19-vaccine.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9446907/Some-wome...), which they wrote about before any other major news media. Read for yourself and decide how you feel about the content.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoWhen you engage in chumbox journalism don't be surprised that all your content gets treated with suspicion.
- CountDrewku 6y agoSo, you support doing this to every major media outlet on the planet? Because they operate on sensationalism just like DM. I'm guessing there's particular outlets you don't want this to happen to because you agree with their bs more than opposing outlets. Your argument can be summed up by just saying you only want information that supports your preconceived notions available. Which, is obviously bad for a variety of reasons....