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The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility o
by Bakary 4y ago
The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession.
The platform is a journalist's fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.
Of course, this is fairly illusory and the resulting quality of stories is poorer each year to the point where Twitter threads repackaged as articles are a significant portion of most outlets.
It's the Mercator projection but for the opinions of people who don't touch grass. The significance of Twitter users' opinions is blown way out of proportion because the medium itself is easily accessible and attractive to journalists.
- cinntaile 4y ago> The significance of Twitter users' opinions is blown way out of proportion because the medium itself is easily accessible and attractive to journalists. This has given rise to what I saw coined as Twitter professors a couple of days ago (I read it somewhere on HN), their fame made it easier to get funding was the claim. This is a bit problematic because that should be based on the merit of the research. The same issues could arise for other experts or famous people, where as you say their opinions are disproportionately echoed due to their presence and activity on Twitter.
- BlueTemplar 4y agoI am happy to see professors engaging with the public, especially if it helps to make the underappreciated half of their job that is teaching more glamorous. I am very unhappy that some of them would debase themselves by using Twitter to do so.
- crmd 4y ago>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying".
- analog31 4y ago>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. I'm struck by the parallel to typing the right prompt into GPT-3.
- dylan604 4y agoI've read articles where I'm not convinced GPT-3 was not the author It also sounds like a Wikipedia editor's job
- pclmulqdq 4y agoFor many articles, the one dead giveaway that it was written by a human is the fact that almost all news articles have typos and severe grammar errors in the first hour or so of release. If these Twitter journos had better spelling and grammar, they would likely be indistinguishable from GPT-3 output.
- dylan604 4y agoso to improve GPT-3, have it make spelling/grammar mistakes too?
- bombcar 4y agoIt’s really obvious when you follow through some of the “people are saying” links - it’s one thing to report on what Musk said, with fifty billion likes and replies already, and another to back up a statement with a link to a tweet with four likes. Some are obviously “go out and find what you want someone to be saying”.
- dredmorbius 4y agoA few years ago there was a mild dust-up when a pre-written "response" piece to a pop musician's latest release was leaked (possibly early). It included a bunch of pre-written filler and included several slots for Twitter responses to be filled in prior to actual publication. This is a very poorly-kept secret in journalism, with certain genres (entertainment, politics, business press-releases, fashion industry) being especially prone. See pg's "Submarine" essay. The practice isn't entirely bad or unethical --- obituaries in particular are frequently written in advance with details filled in on publication. For particularly notable names, they're updated regularly. Similarly election outcomes and major technological events (e.g., space mission launches / milestones). It's much easier to have something prepared than to start from scratch as the event occurs, and these in particular have predictable deadlines. From the 1980s through the aughts, the term "fake news" applied to VNR and ANR (video and audio newsreels), which were pre-packaged "news" segments for television and radio prepared by corporations and/or PR firms. See: <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news> But in other cases, especially where something's being sold, it's at the very least deceptive.
- polytely 4y agoIt is very convenient if you want to run influence operations, to change the perception of reality for news consumers you only have to influence a handful of journalists by planting some tweets on their timeline.
- j-bos 4y agoAnd in theory, praising them with a disproportionate (compared to their own average's) number of likes and retweets when they tweet something to you(r organization's) advantage.
- busterarm 4y agoInteresting how you see people "leaving" careers in the CIA and NSA for posts in news organizations.
- flerchin 4y agoHow would one "see" that?
- busterarm 4y agoIt's been in the news. There've been over a dozen high profile agency staffers who have left for CNN, MSNBC, etc just in the last few years. CNN has: James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Steven Hall, Phil Mudd, Susan Hennessy, Samantha Vinograd & James Gagliano MSNBC has: John Brennan, Frank Figliuzzi, Chuck Rosenberg, Malcolm Nance & Jeremy Bash
- snarf21 4y agoI agree that this is true but don't just blame Twitter. Look at the major "news" networks. Look at the poor quality of "reporting". The bigger cause is the engagement above all else mentality of generating advertising. Click-bait, faux outrage, sensationalism, half-truths, posting 5 year old images out of context as "just in", creating scary fake crises, etc.
- ProAm 4y agoI agree but how do you suggest they make money?
- snarf21 4y agoThat is a fair question to ask. One big issue is that the Fairness Doctrine was repealed long ago. TV news used to make quite a lot of money actually reporting the news. While times have changed, they have taken the easy road down the TMZ path. I think people would be even more interested in actual news instead of the "who can shout the loudest" nonsense we have now.
- suoduandao2 4y agoThe sci-fi seried Buck Godot proposed an entertaining solution - allow only a limited number of journalists to exist, and let the aspiring journalists sort it out between themselves. The one living journalist in that story was completely amoral, but boy was she willing to go to great lengths to get the story!
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe Bloomberg/Reuters model seems to work well: charge hedge funds $xx thousand per person per year for super-fast up-to-date news, and use that to fund reporting for a $10-50/month subscription service that also has a limited free tier (a few articles/month with ads).
- nradov 4y agoSubstack is trying to provide an intermediate channel where journalists can develop an audience independently of publications, but allowing for long-form content. It will be interesting to see if that works but I suspect only a small number of journalists can be successful in that model.
- bombcar 4y agoIt also introduces even more weakness to certain types of influence. The NYTimes has some defense against people not liking an article because while people can cancel a subscription it’s not directly tied to the editor-author/journalist. But substack is directly tied - so unless people really trust the author and refuse to cancel if they write something they don’t like you’ll be more inclined to avoid going outside the margins.
- Bakary 4y agoI think the causality is reversed here. Financial success on substack will come from developing a particular style that doesn't exist elsewhere in quite the same way, just like a writer or musician. It's not that people will walk on eggshells as they build a bigger audience, but rather that they have to start flanderizing themselves from the start to get that audience in a crowded market.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, what I was getting at is that you end up with a very defined market and you can’t easily switch out of it. A substack started around “public transit is pretty cool/good” will eventually be unable to have any article that implies cars have value, to pick and arguably bad example. It’s an interesting personal question to ponder - who of those I read would I read if they wrote something diametrically opposed to what I hold? The lists are often pretty short, sadly.
- gonzo41 4y agoThis is a good take on twitters effect on journalism. I was just thinking the other day about why journalists don't separate their work account and private accounts. I grew up in a time where you generally tried to keep your real identity to a minimum on platforms. Yet journalists seem to suffer from an identity fusion with their professional work, their personal views, and their ego all coming together under a single persona on twitter. I won't name any person in particular but there are some big names out there who are just off the rails crazy these days.
- marban 4y agoWell, you gotta build your brand and launch a paid newsletter the minute you got laid off.
- tsol 4y agoI was thinking about going into journalism for a time and an ex- broadcaster teacher of mine connected me with a journalist to talk to. One of the biggest things, he said, about being a journalist nowadays is you need to build your own brand. Most journalists nowadays don't get hired as staff writers, they mostly work freelance. So in order to stay relevant and keep getting work, they need to develop a SM presence and get likes, clicks, etc. That part was what really turned me off from journalism as any sort of career.
- gnz11 4y agoNot really all that different from the software industry.
- treis 4y agoI'd say it's pretty different. I don't have any social media brand to speak of and AFAIK neither do my co-workers.
- BlueTemplar 4y agoThe constant pull to start using GitHub and LinkedIn are quite annoying.
- jqgatsby 4y ago"It's the Mercator projection but for the opinions of people who don't touch grass." Well said! Also, the sample bias phenomenon being raised in the article comes up so often, and is so easy to be deeply fooled by. It's the same type of issue that makes people think that recidivism rates are much higher than they are: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/10/why-do-so-many-prisoners-end-up-back-in-prison-a-new-study-says-maybe-they-dont.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/10/why-do-so-many-p...
- greggman3 4y agoI'm curious what you see as wrong there? The original study said that 50-55% made it back into prison. The new study says it's more like 33% that make it back into prison. Yes, 1 of 3 is better than 1 of 2 but it's still 1 of 3. I'd call that high personally. In what other circumstance would I take a risk of something bad happening if the bad outcome happpened 1 out of 3 times?
- DonnyV 4y agoDisagree The amount of events posted on twitter that aren't covered by traditional news is staggering. If anything twitter has exposed how much main stream news doesn't cover real major events. If not for twitter I don't think the #MeToo or #Occupy movement would of ever been acknowledged. Also the amount of abuse the police do to citizens.
- SamBam 4y agoThere's also an excellent Exra Klein podcast where he talks to game-philospher C. Thi Nguyen about Twitter's Like button's effect on journalists. [1] He says that as a journalist on twitter (which almost every journalist is) it's nearly impossible to get away from measuring your worth/impact by the number of likes you get. It's so buit into our minds, we can't not use Likes as a proxy for how engaging our story is. The issue is that it subtly, though completely, changes how you write a story. For example (taking as a premise that even plain factual reporting is essentially political at this point) if you are a New York Times journalist and you write an environmental story that appeals to the emotions of the people who already understand the dangers of climate change, you'll get thousands of likes. But the story won't be impactful because you're preaching to the choir. If, instead, you wrote a story framed in a way that might change a few people's minds, you won't get nearly the number of likes, because the very angles you'd approach the story at would be ones that would be less comfortable to your core audience, your choir. Preaching to the choir is one of the biggest causes of our echo chambers and widening divides, and it's directly caused by counting likes. 1. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-philosophy-of-games-that-is-really-a-philosophy-of-life/id1548604447?i=1000552204773 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-philosophy-of-games-...
- bachmeier 4y agoThis is less of a problem to me than the other side effect of like-driven journalism. If you only preach to the choir, you can get away with misleading or inaccurate claims. Like-driven journalism encourages a style where you present only some of the facts or even just make stuff up. Folks like stuff because of what it says. They don't care if it's partial truths or lies. Like-driven journalism quite literally punishes honesty.
- samatman 4y agoThis is an insult to the Mercator projection, which exists to provide an objective map of longitude to up and down. The social graph of Twitter journalism is an ephemeron, it means only itself and maps to no other part of reality. This distorts in every direction it can, while giving no useful reference frame in return.
- tux1968 4y ago> Mercator projection, which exists to provide an objective map of longitude to up and down. While true, it also distorts reality and leads to mistaken ideas about the world: https://wonderfulengineering.com/the-authagraph-world-map-is-a-true-geographical-representation-of-the-world-and-its-weird/ https://wonderfulengineering.com/the-authagraph-world-map-is...
- samatman 4y agoIf you cut meat with an ax, this is a mistake, but it isn't the ax which is mistaken.
- tux1968 4y agoIf everyone in society is still cutting meat with an axe, it's a mistake to not mention better alternatives ;-)
- bnralt 4y ago_Every_ map projection distorts reality in some way. There's simply no way to accurately portray a sphere as a two dimensional object without some trade-offs. The Mercator projection has some useful trade offs, which is why Google maps used it for so long (and still does as certain scales, I believe). I don't believe the authagraph projection is even the best map projection for preserving things like shape and area (other projections such as the Cahill–Keyes projection or Dymaxion projection seem better for both). But of course, if you want the least amount of distortion, just get a globe.
- 4y ago
- chrismarlow9 4y agoReal questions here, I'm not a Twitter user: are blue check marks ever re evaluated or audited, and not just for authenticity of the person being who they claim but for the general validity of what they say or report? Are there other badges similar to the blue check for other things? My understanding is that the blue check is for verifying people are who they claim, is there another badge to signify "hey this person posts legit things with references as a reporter"?
- labrador 4y ago> Mercator projection but for the opinions of people who don't touch grass I wasn't sure what you meant by that. Now I'm really confused: https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Projection https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Projection