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Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic
- Minor49er 3y agoThis article only has two paragraphs about NPR. Neither of those paragraphs explain that NPR left because Twitter was labeling them as "government-funded media" since they receive government funding. NPR doesn't like this label since it doesn't take how much government funding they receive into account, and that they maintain editorial independence Here is NPR's original response https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter...
- jagtstronaut 3y agoMaybe it’s a hot take (I didn’t think so until the violent reaction) but I felt the label was accurate. I like NPR a lot , but certainly the fact that liberal policymakers vote in favor of its funding affects their content. Do we really consider ourselves that much better than other nations that their state media is labeled as such but ours has a high moral calling that is unaffected by dollars?
- TylerE 3y agoNPR receives almost nothing in Federal funding. Like, less than 1% of it's income. The individual stations get a little, but I stress little, it's typcially less than 10% of their budget, and is mostly state/local, not federal. Total spend by the CFB is a whole $1.40/yr per person, and the lion's share of that goes to PBS, not NPR.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoThey don't receive it directly, but the Federal government gives it to local PBS stations, which then pay NPR for the content rebroadcast rights. Because the money is now passing through multiple pockets, you can say the federal money isn't directly going to NPR, but local PBS fees amount to about 1/3rd of NPR's revenue. If the 1% number NPR touts was real, they should advocate for the disbandment of CPB so their independence would be undisputed, but they live on that money so they don't.
- dragontamer 3y agoLast time I checked, EVs got $7500 from the Federal Government for every car, which is more than 1% of a typical car price. Does that make Tesla a government funded company? Should Tesla be given state-sponsored flags on Twitter?
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoMedia organizations that receive non-trivial government funding have to be wary of criticizing the politicians who secure them that funding and then readers want to be aware of that potential bias, because media companies are otherwise expected to critically investigate politicians. There is no such expectation for car companies. The reason car companies don't get the "state sponsored media" flag isn't that they're not state sponsored, it's that they're not media organizations.
- pauldenton 3y agoMusk spoke at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Summit Monday and suggested scrapping the Biden infrastructure package. Musk said that Tesla didn't need the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, which provides a tax credit of up to that amount to individuals purchasing plug-in electric vehicles, to drive demand for its vehicles. He also called federal support for charging infrastructure unnecessary. "Do we need support for gas stations? We don't," Musk said. "There's no need for support for a charging network. I would delete it. Delete."
- greedo 3y agoSure, now that he's entrenched after sucking on the government teat, shut that stuff down so competitors can't benefit.
- smrtinsert 3y agoFinally, I can get that government motors commie car!
- WillPostForFood 3y agoDo you think Tesla falls under "government-funded media"? Last I checked they made cars. But if they start a newspaper, and the federal govt financed it, I'd support the label.
- SmartJerry 3y agoI think Musk got it right when he posted on X that NPR's own 'about' page said "federal funding is essential"
- manonthewall 3y agoHe'd be wrong. If all federal funds were cut off most would lose 5-10% of their funding income. It would suck for them, but they'd still be fine. Elon had it entirely wrong and implied they were just a state run propaganda source.
- skyyler 3y agoNPR is not US state media. The US does have a state media news org. It's called Voice of America. They have a youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVSNOxehfALut52NbkfRBaA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVSNOxehfALut52NbkfRBaA
- avar 3y agoAlso Stars and Stripes: https://www.stripes.com https://www.stripes.com
- jagtstronaut 3y agoIf I recall the label was “state funded media” not state media
- handelaar 3y agoInstead of feeling like the label was accurate (it is not), why not instead do a quick search and actually find out how much of NPR's income comes from the government? (Spoiler: government advertising pays significantly more of the budget of a great many commercial and "independent" radio stations)
- jagtstronaut 3y agoSo your argument is that it’s okay not to label it as state funded (which it most certainly is) because other media companies are? And you feel the best course of action is to continue hiding all that?
- afinlayson 3y agoBy labeling it that - you are devaluing the term for dictatorships that use state run media to manipulate the state. How is NPR being manipulated by Biden? Has he been talking to their staff like the previous administration spoke to a conservative media star? Words need to matter. You could call this Federally funded media - but he didn't .. And like others have said funny he didn't label Tesla or Space X state sponsored car company. They are (and should be imo) This was just playing politics.
- mardifoufs 3y agoThat's not what it means. Even the BBC is state funded media. That you think your media shouldn't be labelled by what it objectively is, is just peak American exceptionalism. And yeah sure, they weren't directly funded but that's semantics. The stations, which constitute NPR are state funded. It's such a weird position to deny something like this, it just exposes your biases (aka, the label was never meant to be factual but mostly to be a smear)
- smrtinsert 3y agoSpend some time there and you'll hopefully get a broader view of its content. It's frequently critical of both parties, and leaves plenty fuming on both sides. Outside of nonsense politics, they actually educate their listeners instead of focusing on opinion blather.
- mardifoufs 3y agoWhich has absolutely nothing to do with it being state funded or not. It can be funded by the government and still fairly unbiaised. Why hide it? It's fine to be state funded, as long as the public is aware
- jagtstronaut 3y agoAgreed with both of you actually. I enjoy NPR and I certainly agree that it allows for both sides at times. However, it is a fact it is state funded (it is in the name) and I think it objectively leans one way (which you can verify by looking it up on one of those companies that evaluates media bias) and it just so happens that the way it leans is where the votes for its funding comes from?
- manonthewall 3y agoNPR is not owned or controlled by the US government. At least read the wiki article or something if you think that.
- CharlesW 3y ago> NPR doesn't like this label since it doesn't take how much government funding they receive into account… No. As the article you linked to notes, the problem is that Musk's label was designed to suggest that NPR is state-controlled media rather than the independent non-profit that they are. And of course, Musk doesn't apply the label to his companies, which have received billions in government funding and support. It didn't help that Musk encouraged his Muskovites to attack NPR while this played out. All of this is a distraction from the point of the story, which is that being on X is virtually worthless for brands.
- adamrezich 3y ago> And of course, Musk doesn't apply the label to his companies, which have received billions in government funding and support. which of his government-funded companies are media companies such that a "State-Sponsored Media" label would be warranted?
- PhasmaFelis 3y agoMissing the point. If Musk's companies are no more "state-sponsored media" than NPR is, than it's hypocritical to label them differently than NPR.
- phatfish 3y agoDoes social media count? Apparently it's now where everyone gets their news. Which reminds me, didn't Musk hit up the Saudis or some other middle eastern sovereign wealth fund when he was forced to actually buy Twitter?
- mike_hock 3y ago[flagged]
- EA-3167 3y ago> The reaction proved the label right. So wait, if someone calls you a Nazi and you refuse to engage with them, does that also prove their claim right? I'm pretty sure NPR leaving didn't prove anything, other than the fact that NPR made the rather sane decision to skip pre-boarding on the Titanic.
- simonw 3y agoKey note from that story: > In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter's decision to first label the network "state-affiliated media," the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries. The reason NPR didn't like that label is that it was applied to them in a way that directly compared them to those propaganda outlets. Also from that story: > Twitter's own guidelines previously said, "State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy." It looks like Twitter re-instated that policy - that text now appears on this page: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affiliated-china https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affilia...
- gnicholas 3y ago> This article only has two paragraphs about NPR. Wow, I thought I had clicked through to the wrong article because there are so many paragraphs that are seemingly unrelated to the headline. Also, Cory seems to have fudged the facts a bit, since NPR's move didn't have "no effect" as he claimed. It had a "negligible" impact, according to NiemanReports. [1] Is this nitpicking? Yes. But when you choose a headline that misrepresents the facts (even those you present in your article, many paragraphs down), then it's appropriate. NiemanReports' article also has some enlightening data regarding the magnitude of the impact. > A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped So if less than 2% of the total traffic came from Twitter previously, and the total traffic has since dropped by 1%, that means that by removing their account they lost more than half of their Twitter-sourced traffic. For a publisher like NPR, which had minimal Twitter-sourced traffic in the first place, that isn't too big a deal. But it means that other publishers shouldn't hastily delete their Twitter accounts, thinking that their traffic won't drop materially. If NPR's experience is representative, a publisher should expect to lose just over half of their Twitter-sourced traffic if they delete their account. 1: https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/ https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/
- blfr 3y agoOP is largely about Facebook which is genuinely terrible, very much unlike Twitter. I spend 1.5 hours a day on the Twitter/X app, follow over a thousand accounts. However, none of them are the NRP/CNN/BBC/Economist-type old media slop. Twitter started with celebrities and journalists but today you can always find an independent voice or some niche group that has better info, smarter analysis, and hotter takes, all while not being boring. Everything a modern journalist is constitutionally incapable of. It's like the blogosphere of a decade ago. Muting these outlets makes the platform better for its users.
- d3w4s9 3y agoGood for you. Given the article links I see here, I think most HN users prefer the "old media" that abide by a set of ethic rules, have rigorous fact checking and have professional editing. I would rather see factually correct info that can be corroborated than "better info".
- Clubber 3y ago> I think most HN users prefer the "old media" that abide by a set of ethic rules, have rigorous fact checking and have professional editing. Why do people still believe this? https://effectiviology.com/knolls-law/ https://effectiviology.com/knolls-law/
- d3w4s9 3y agoI didn't say everything in nytimes is "true" (whatever it means) according to that article, but I'll trust nytimes more than a random person on Twitter any day. Even better, I have subscriptions to multiple newspapers, some of which have opposite political positions, and you'll need to work pretty hard to say you have better sources than what I am reading every day. I read/watched a lot about the behind-the-scene stories of these media organizations, and I have faith in their methodology in verifying sources and checking all the details. They have hiccups, sometimes really bad ones, sure, but that doesn't mean alternatives sources are better.
- zwieback 3y agoI never understood why journalists loved Twitter so much, as it turns out they were writing for each other the whole time and the general public didn't really care.
- webmobdev 3y agoYou don't get the appeal of celebrities writing the story for you, than chasing them for one? ;)
- simonw 3y agoWhen something happened, Twitter used to be the first place that eyewitness accounts of that thing would emerge - often within seconds of the event.
- Aloha 3y agoYeah, during the 2020 election, I was often 48+ hours ahead of print news, and 24+ hours ahead of NPR and TV. I miss that bit, I dont miss most of twitter though.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI found that the hard part was separating the signal from the noise. There was too much noise and too many conflicting narratives. Not that there wasn't any of that on TV, but with Twitter it was amplified and came at you so quickly.
- flkenosad 3y agoTwitter is where journalists find out what the different view points even are.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Twitter is where journalists find out what the different view points even are. That's actually disturbing, since Twitter users are a unique demographic all by themselves. Twitter has never adequately represented the wider spectrum of viewpoints (and, from everything I hear, is worse at it now than ever before).
- iguana_lawyer 3y ago[flagged]
- TurkishPoptart 3y agoWhy would they leave Twitter/X? There's so much needless Musk-bashing ever since he made the purchase.
- stonogo 3y agoThey left because Twitter started demanding thousands of dollars for organizations to maintain 'verified' status. Not just journalism outfits, but any 'organization,' to include e.g. popular web comics. NPR decided the value prop wasn't worth the fee. This article seems to indicate they made the right call, from a dollars/engagement ratio.
- manicennui 3y agoIt wasn't just that. Twitter labeled them as "state-affiliated media" and threatened to do all kinds of other nonsense like give their account away.
- Ajay-p 3y agoI would say the prototypical audience for NPR would already be inclined to leave Twitter.
- zeroCalories 3y ago[flagged]
- flkenosad 3y agoThere has to be someone to filter through the noise. You'd probably call those people maladjusted freaks tho. Judgmental ass.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brink 3y agoYou sound like you'd fit in perfectly.
- zeroCalories 3y agoYeah, I listen to NPR.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 3y agoWeird as the only time I visited NPR was from twitter links and now that NPR is gone, I don’t even notice. Sounds a lot like cope to say a huge distribution channel isn’t helping
- is_true 3y agoMe too, I listened a couple of shows when I saw tweets from them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gfodor 3y agoThis isn't surprising, what would be surprising is if NPR blocked inbound referers for Twitter and it had no effect on their traffic. All of NPRs articles presumably get posted into Twitter by someone noteworthy, and that tweet is what goes viral (if any), not the one from their main account. Now that Musk has recently changed the way unfurls work, I would imagine that definitely affected their traffic. Doctorow has had a chip on his shoulder about Musk for a while now and I would be happy to go out on a limb predicting that any theories he has about Twitter's demise won't age well. The reason Twitter works is because of network effects, and those network effects are a function of Metcalfe's Law, not the presence or absence of a single account on the platform. Being part of the web, Twitter's network effects are intertwined with the web and their social graph. That's about it. The way to know if Twitter is going down in flames is the degree to which Musk breaks the network effects of the web, or if the exodus from the platform turns into some kind of positive feedback loop. Musk seems much more willing to mess with the former than the latter. (Much of the recent changes are about increasing users and time on site)
- j_maffe 3y agoI think the takeaway isn't that Twitter doesn't cause traffic to webpages, just businesses and journalists having their own accounts not affected said traffic.
- gnicholas 3y agoIf you look at the underlying data, described in the linked NiemanReports article, it shows that Twitter-sourced traffic dropped by over 50%. It's just that NPR's Twitter-sourced traffic only comprised 2% of their total traffic before the change, so getting rid of their account only dropped it by 1% overall (though that was 50% of their total Twitter-sourced traffic). So it might not have made much of an impact for NPR (though no publisher wants to lose 1% of traffic), but for a publisher with more traffic coming from Twitter shouldn't nuke their account, thinking that it won't matter for them either.
- parl_match 3y ago> The reason Twitter works is because of network effects Entire niche and hobbyist communities I'm in have left Twitter almost entirely. Those that still do post content there have seen a huge drop in interaction. Musk has made it a platform with friction, and those with less friction are stepping in.
- jvm___ 3y agoIt feels like we're in the transition phase where parts of the open internet are being "attacked" and dismantled by either AI or simply greedy capitalism. https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- majewsky 3y ago> parts of the open internet are being "attacked" and dismantled by [...] greedy capitalism So same as the last 20 years, then?
- OrvalWintermute 3y agoI see it differently - When Twitter stopped being Mainstream Controlled&Censored Media, many in the mainstream narrative development arena left Twitter. Some of the Pro-Palestinian voices (I am not of this viewpoint) I could not have imagined on Twitter before Elon because the Pro-Israeli view (I am not of this viewpoint) is the mainstream and close to the establishment view. Though I take neither side, I think having more voices present and less government censorship and a multitude of voices, including non-US voices, is better for understanding.
- superkuh 3y agoI agree with every argument Doctorow makes about why twitter/facebook/etc are bad. But his proposed solutions are backwards. Don't promote the use of force to make companies do things just because you don't enjoy their service anymore. That's quite aggresively immoral. Just stop using the service.
- majewsky 3y agoFacebook probably has a shadow profile of me even though I never made an account. "Just stop using the service" demonstrates an incomplete grasp of the problem.
- superkuh 3y agoLots of persons both human and corporate that have information about you even though you've never interacted with them. That it's facebook doing it does not make it dangerous. There's no hurt or damage or fraud involved. So how can one justify using force against them to make them act like you want them to? But sure, go a bit further and set your hosts file so common facebook domains to resolve to localhost, use a JS protection extension, etc. I always have. It seems a sensible mitigation for these types without anything else being required. And it's completely non-violent and non-coercive. Something you as an individual can just do without having to have 300 million other people required to do it.
- exabrial 3y agoI don't understand the reason for leaving Twitter? Just seems really petty... it's just a social media channel among many.
- AlexandrB 3y agoGiven that almost every change under Musk has made for a worse user experience - especially for free users - perhaps it's better to flip your question on its head: I don't understand the reason for staying on Twitter? Just seems really petty... it's just a social media channel among many.
- exabrial 3y agohuh? what quantifiably is "worse"? I'm not defending him, but this seems extremely petty.
- AlexandrB 3y agoNo 3rd party app support, more ads that more closely resemble content, payment required to rank highly in replies, non-chronological sorting of tweets when viewing an account's page if not logged in, more prompts to log in if not logged in, missing context (title text) from linked websites. That's just the more objective changes that have made for a worse UX. One could argue that Twitter's overall culture has also gotten worse, but that's much more subjective.
- favorited 3y agoNPR left Twitter because Musk falsely labeled their account as "state-affiliated media." https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter...
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoMore discussion last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37848074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37848074
- gnicholas 3y ago@dang perhaps it would be useful to change the link to the original NiemanReports page, which he links to? I realize that would render some of the threads about Cory and his feelings about Elon off-topic, but the headline here is about NPR, and Cory's post is not the original (and is mostly not about NPR).
- renewiltord 3y ago> Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick. Right... I have never understood this kind of "Yay! We're kicking their ass! Our team is winning! We're winning! Look at them suck!" kind of thing. Perhaps it's because the rest of society goes to a sports game and yells that kind of thing. But people who have some animosity towards Elon Musk or Twitter have been proclaiming its death for a year now. "I give it two weeks" and so on. What value does anyone gain from this kind of experience? Just the repetition of one's imminent victory? It's fun for a while but why immerse oneself in this stuff. Cheapens the mind.
- DoneWithAllThat 3y agoExactly two paragraphs in Cory’s mind-numbingly long rant is regarding NPR. It links to an op-ed in NiemanReports, which itself goes on at length about topics unrelated to the headline, and in fact only has this single sentence regarding it: > A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped. So it had almost no effect because it was driving a minuscule amount of traffic in the first place. Although I suspect that 2% represents the nadir, and earlier changes to Twitter drove the number down to that. But overall this topic is mostly just two people using a single line in a memo (a memo not confirmed by NPR but I suspect it’s true and exists) to go on at tiresome length about things they wanted an excuse to complain about. And Cory desperately needs an editor, good lord. I even agree with most of his points but that is a screed in need of a point besides “I’m angry about a lot of things”.
- paulpauper 3y agoThis is not a big surprise. Twitter's algos tend to penalize tweets which contain links
- KittenInABox 3y agoIMO the effect of Twitter is not the major media traffic but the indie organizations advertising their stuff through word of mouth. Think freelance editors or smaller one-off courses on media analysis, centers for various nonprofit educations, or little events geographically local. A lot of drop-off I've noticed have been in these places, to the point where the indie/freelance folk I know have been begging folk to try and up engagement metrics now more than ever just to get seen.
- spandextwins 3y agoTwitter sucks. My account, which I've had since around 2012, got hacked. Twitter is unwilling to restore it or unlock it. They suck. So does Tesla. Try getting your Tesla fixed. All the Tesla repair shops suck. All of them.
- evanjrowley 3y agoPerhaps the unfortunate truth revealed by this is that the ratio of Twitter/X users who share links vs. read links is effectively 1:0.
- Vicinity9635 3y agoAccording to whom? This says it's down 6% just by June: https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1668274511383240704 https://twitter.com/xDaily/status/1668274511383240704
- elicash 3y agoI haven't evaluated to see who is right, but to your question they cite this link: https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/ https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/ That says: > A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped. Again, I'm not taking sides here between "XDaily" and an internal NPR memo. This is just to give you the answer to your question.
- is_true 3y agoI'm not sure they know how to measure traffic correctly. When I saw a post from Planet Money I opened my podcast app
- DoreenMichele 3y agoBut with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience. So, maybe it's not just me that my current handle is getting no traction.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bigfryo 3y agoAnyone who reads a lot of Twitter is already tapped into massive streams of information and news, thus mooting NPR's output
- jklinger410 3y agoThis is a much better source for this story https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/ https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/
- nokya 3y agoNot that surprising. What is surprising is that they are discovering this after leaving Twitter, which indicates their analytics is failing.