4 ms·

Yep. Local corruption was already fairly bad but is gonna get a ton worse now that local papers are all but completely dead, and that shit's corrosive to democr

Yep. Local corruption was already fairly bad but is gonna get a ton worse now that local papers are all but completely dead, and that shit's corrosive to democracy. [edit] and a huge drag on economic productivity, for that matter. In 20 years of thinking about this stuff I've gone from being a huge Internet optimist to wondering if the open Internet is even compatible with a healthy, free society, at all. I'm starting to lean toward "no". McLuhan nailed it, and the message of the medium of the Internet may not include liberal democracy. What happens when instead of killing bookstores, the market "decides" to kill something absolutely necessary for democracy's health?

snapplebobapple 4y ago
I strongly agree with the corruption bit of your statement while strongly disagreeing with the rest of it.Newspapers were begging to be killed because they have been abusing market power to drive large profits for decades because the controlled the main chokepoint for the average person to learn about world and town recent events. They grew their wage/benefit structure to eat a lot of their monopoly profits and that killed them when their ability to abuse their chokepoint for excess profits and that killed them. There are lots of citizen and independent journalists popping up to fill in their place these days with much more streamlined cost structures. The really big problem is lack of effective self directable filtering and aggregation of news for the average person. Nerds like me can kind of make it work with an rss reader, rss bridge and hundreds of rss feeds across broad content sources (i.e. websites, twitter, youtube, specific mastodon users, etc.) combined with a service like ground news to give some feedback on who is promoting what and point to other sources for the same story, but it's really hard to impossible for the average person. Instead what the average person has are echo chamber creating things like their facebook feed that tend to amplify the loudest, often cringiest voices.
bombcar 4y ago
If something beyond individuals voting is absolutely necessary for democracy's health, then it is already dead. Because however you provide that thing, it will be co-opted and controlled.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  So... it's never been alive? Several things beyond the franchise are necessary.
criddell 4y ago
Canada (and other countries[1]) levy a tax on blank media (cassettes, CD-Rs, DVDs, etc...) to compensate rights holders for piracy of their work. Do you think something like that would help? I'm thinking of an ISP tax where the proceeds are used to support local journalism. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
- endtime 4y ago
  State-funded media isn't great for liberal democracy either.
  - criddell 4y ago
    The only state-funded media that I know of (BBC, CBC, and PBS) are all pretty good. I'd be sad to see any of them go away.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      PBS, or really mostly member stations, do get some funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but it’s not really state-funded media and the best known programming would probably easily find a home elsewhere. What public funding there is has also been a political sticking point from time to time when some show or other has ruffled some legislative feathers.
      - criddell 4y ago
        > the best known programming would probably easily find a home elsewhere You're right - the popular stuff doesn't really matter when it comes to subsidies. If CBC has their funding slashed, Hockey Night in Canada will continue there or elsewhere. It's the unpopular stuff that needs support.
pstuart 4y ago
I share your concerns. It brings to mind seeing videos of primitive tribes being given automatic weapons and thinking "you don't 'deserve' this, you haven't evolved to create them and therefore shouldn't have your hands on them" That's the way I feel about the internet with "modern" society -- we're still too primitive to use these tools. We're still of tribal mindset but we've been given something quite dangerous that we are not well equipped to handle. I see the tribalism here in HN (which I consider to be a top site for intelligent dialog).
brian-armstrong 4y ago
It's not clear people even want democracy at all now. It takes a lot of work and moves slowly. People want an autocracy like Disneyland which permits only the right thoughts and actions.
- causi 4y ago
  Indeed. Nobody complains about the evils of suppression and oppression anymore; they complain about how the wrong thoughts are being suppressed and the wrong people are doing the oppressing. It's not freedom vs suppression anymore; it's "ban teaching about racism" vs "ban saying naughty words". The idea that you should defend the rights of people you hate is completely dead in the water.
shuntress 4y ago
"the open Internet" in theory should be good for local newspapers because it enables fast easy(ish) efficient publishing but the fact that it also enables fast easy efficient copying kills existing models of monetization. The fundamental problem is that copying digital media is so easy that it breaks the intuitive publishing model reliant on physical possession of any media inherently acting as license to access that media.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Right—I think there are two chief problems: 1) There is no longer a business model that can support strong local media. It's completely gone, and there doesn't seem to be any replacement or substitute coming from "natural" market action in the current environment. 2) The rage-algorithms and radicalization-rabbit-holes of social media giants have so completely captured everyone's attention that it's not clear anyone would read local reporting, anyway, even if it could somehow get funding. Unless it could serve the rage-algorithms and radicalization-rabbit-holes. Though perhaps at least the most shocking stories would get picked up more widely and be noticed.
  - shuntress 4y ago
    Sort of. What I am saying is that the ease with which digital media can be copied and distributed is the fundamental problem. Prior to the free open Internet and widespread access to digital media, physically producing and distributing the actual newspaper was the hard part. The time and difficulty of physically printing and delivering the actual paper media automatically covers for all the effort that goes in to producing the content of that media. Anyone who would want to steal that content still had to do the actual hard part (physical production and delivery of the paper media). Now though, with the free open Internet, production and distribution of the physical media (beeps, boops, zeros, and ones) is ludicrously cheap and easy. The content is now not only the most valuable part of the deal it is also easier than ever to steal.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      There was also a forced bundle and local monopoly. The person with an apartment to rent out probably didn’t especially want to pay for the reporter covering the local town zoning board meetings. But they didn’t have much choice but to take out a classified as.

snapplebobapple 4y ago

I strongly agree with the corruption bit of your statement while strongly disagreeing with the rest of it.Newspapers were begging to be killed because they have been abusing market power to drive large profits for decades because the controlled the main chokepoint for the average person to learn about world and town recent events. They grew their wage/benefit structure to eat a lot of their monopoly profits and that killed them when their ability to abuse their chokepoint for excess profits and that killed them. There are lots of citizen and independent journalists popping up to fill in their place these days with much more streamlined cost structures. The really big problem is lack of effective self directable filtering and aggregation of news for the average person. Nerds like me can kind of make it work with an rss reader, rss bridge and hundreds of rss feeds across broad content sources (i.e. websites, twitter, youtube, specific mastodon users, etc.) combined with a service like ground news to give some feedback on who is promoting what and point to other sources for the same story, but it's really hard to impossible for the average person. Instead what the average person has are echo chamber creating things like their facebook feed that tend to amplify the loudest, often cringiest voices.

bombcar 4y ago

If something beyond individuals voting is absolutely necessary for democracy's health, then it is already dead. Because however you provide that thing, it will be co-opted and controlled.

yamtaddle 4y ago
So... it's never been alive? Several things beyond the franchise are necessary.

criddell 4y ago

Canada (and other countries[1]) levy a tax on blank media (cassettes, CD-Rs, DVDs, etc...) to compensate rights holders for piracy of their work. Do you think something like that would help? I'm thinking of an ISP tax where the proceeds are used to support local journalism. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

endtime 4y ago
State-funded media isn't great for liberal democracy either.
- criddell 4y ago
  The only state-funded media that I know of (BBC, CBC, and PBS) are all pretty good. I'd be sad to see any of them go away.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    PBS, or really mostly member stations, do get some funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but it’s not really state-funded media and the best known programming would probably easily find a home elsewhere. What public funding there is has also been a political sticking point from time to time when some show or other has ruffled some legislative feathers.
    - criddell 4y ago
      > the best known programming would probably easily find a home elsewhere You're right - the popular stuff doesn't really matter when it comes to subsidies. If CBC has their funding slashed, Hockey Night in Canada will continue there or elsewhere. It's the unpopular stuff that needs support.

pstuart 4y ago

I share your concerns. It brings to mind seeing videos of primitive tribes being given automatic weapons and thinking "you don't 'deserve' this, you haven't evolved to create them and therefore shouldn't have your hands on them" That's the way I feel about the internet with "modern" society -- we're still too primitive to use these tools. We're still of tribal mindset but we've been given something quite dangerous that we are not well equipped to handle. I see the tribalism here in HN (which I consider to be a top site for intelligent dialog).

brian-armstrong 4y ago

It's not clear people even want democracy at all now. It takes a lot of work and moves slowly. People want an autocracy like Disneyland which permits only the right thoughts and actions.

causi 4y ago
Indeed. Nobody complains about the evils of suppression and oppression anymore; they complain about how the wrong thoughts are being suppressed and the wrong people are doing the oppressing. It's not freedom vs suppression anymore; it's "ban teaching about racism" vs "ban saying naughty words". The idea that you should defend the rights of people you hate is completely dead in the water.

shuntress 4y ago

"the open Internet" in theory should be good for local newspapers because it enables fast easy(ish) efficient publishing but the fact that it also enables fast easy efficient copying kills existing models of monetization. The fundamental problem is that copying digital media is so easy that it breaks the intuitive publishing model reliant on physical possession of any media inherently acting as license to access that media.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Right—I think there are two chief problems: 1) There is no longer a business model that can support strong local media. It's completely gone, and there doesn't seem to be any replacement or substitute coming from "natural" market action in the current environment. 2) The rage-algorithms and radicalization-rabbit-holes of social media giants have so completely captured everyone's attention that it's not clear anyone would read local reporting, anyway, even if it could somehow get funding. Unless it could serve the rage-algorithms and radicalization-rabbit-holes. Though perhaps at least the most shocking stories would get picked up more widely and be noticed.
- shuntress 4y ago
  Sort of. What I am saying is that the ease with which digital media can be copied and distributed is the fundamental problem. Prior to the free open Internet and widespread access to digital media, physically producing and distributing the actual newspaper was the hard part. The time and difficulty of physically printing and delivering the actual paper media automatically covers for all the effort that goes in to producing the content of that media. Anyone who would want to steal that content still had to do the actual hard part (physical production and delivery of the paper media). Now though, with the free open Internet, production and distribution of the physical media (beeps, boops, zeros, and ones) is ludicrously cheap and easy. The content is now not only the most valuable part of the deal it is also easier than ever to steal.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There was also a forced bundle and local monopoly. The person with an apartment to rent out probably didn’t especially want to pay for the reporter covering the local town zoning board meetings. But they didn’t have much choice but to take out a classified as.